When no flicker from a candle held to a mouth, <br />Gone are the days and the night put to sleep, <br />Hushing the muted tongue on death ears, <br />A blink of an eye and the shutters nailed down, <br />On the loops and twines of a life's mere instant, <br />Settling red dust on the tombs of crumbled bridges, <br />Wringing out the tick of a stuck clock, <br />Clanking the fading toll of a bell’s muffled gasp. <br /> <br />When no jolt of the heart to electric surge, <br />A circuit breaks on the route of a thought. <br />And the rubbing of words off a blank page, <br />Ink slipping up through the nib of a pen, <br />And a book, back to pulp to wood to a tree <br />Flat lining a deathbed of rusting leaf. <br />Root- to bulb- to seed, <br />Mountains to rock and pebbles crushed <br />To sand to silt, that's washed far out <br />To an empty sea. <br /> <br />When no beat of the blood comes to the thumb, <br />Menstrual cycles synchronize a halt. <br />The unborn sucked from the red-hot womb, <br />The top dog sperm, slipping off an egg, <br />Ejaculating back to a stiff- limp shaft. <br />All life and dead things tumbling off- <br />A matters spinning speck, <br />Tarried down to an ancient glow, <br />Beyond an eons blackness, <br />Beyond nothingness, <br />Dense as air, as water –iron. <br />Beyond- before, <br />The gaping cracks in a theorist's critical point.<br /><br />Francis Curran<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/k-when-no-flicker-from-a-candle-held-to-a-mouth/
