Alight

Please won’t you 

stand up against the wall

that I may strike 

my bundle of matches 

against the powdered glass

and red phosphorus

surface of you

as we have learned

with martial arts

all the important movement

is with the hips 

that’s how you transform

red phosphorus into white

with the alchemy of motion.

I need to become

everything that I imagine 

and so I need a lot of light

to illuminate all of my

designs

some of you are laughing 

and whispering Machiavelli

but I have been taught well

that the best plans 

run downhill to the same point

like the course of water

and so I have been 

designing hills.

I am smiling because 

I’ve been writing poems 

and each phrase pulses

in me like a heartbeat 

like a tiny detonation 

to carve from the rocks 

a route for the cascade to travel

every point on this path

is dear to me now

as I trace it with mental

fingertips and think

of our destination.