kiss of the salamander

 i.

Six nights, flicker out;

seven candles consumed.

Black wick sorrows

smother a charcoal soul.

The taste of Rahab’s sin,

baptized in voodoo tears.

ii.

Dripping fingers begin to fall,

creeping down;

walls of wax crumble,

cold and motionless.

Wishing away the kiss

of Jericho’s folly.

iii.

Bloated worms devour their fill,

leave an empty corpse.

A vacant cocoon,

laced with tenuous silk;

a wandering whisper

lost on the wind.

iv.

Shrouded by a thin veil;

a broken smile

swings

from a sliver of sinew. 

Hope on a twisted noose;

pale Japanese maples,  

stripped of scarlet leaves.

v.

The sun wields a rusted shank

slicing open the amethyst sky.

It shines through me,

around me.

Disguised,

languid light

casting not a shadow,

nor lost in brazen clouds. 

I linger in these days,

where the shadows and light

are one.