when a flame dies

& the way a drunk mosquito burns—roasted
when it strikes a humming electric
racket, sweet pleasure is found

in the touch of a fire, getting
closer, warming undulating nerves,
burning many skins and hearts —

i sit beneath a cornucopia of thoughts,
shaded by empty words and loss, un-
true to the universe, unforgiving of
black nights and their igniting stars.

i want to learn how to perform in symbols
and when there are shortages of voiced whispers,
i need to let go of my vernacular, my colloquial
lips in favour of a rusted language, that
i have borrowed and bracketed for my cause.

i don’t remember the words, not their units
of deflated lungs, alight clay lamps, final
sparks of a flying cracker in the air, so
i absolve myself of all that has gone,
not knowing, not even writing, because
i don’t know how to do that anymore.

.
© Anmol Arora

Linking it up with “Kerry Says ~ What is Metamodernism?” at With Real Toads
Image source (Untitled [glossy black painting] by Robert Rauschenberg)

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