Nirvana for the Same Song

Nirvana (for the same song) Don’t bring me the candle. I have had the candle all day. Thinking about you was the flame. Not knowing how I would get along was the flame. The rant, the glass, the third try at the lock, all flame. I am tired of feeding it and too proud to put it out myself. So maybe you should just come over here and do me until there is nothing left to ask for in words. Not forever. Not a cleaner soul. Just the old trick of the night: Babylon spends the fire, and nirvana is whatever happens when it gutters. I know that isn’t how the monks meant it. They meant stop reaching. I am reaching with both hands and a drunk theology. I want the blowing-out anyway. I want the moment your shoulder becomes ordinary, the sentence dies unfinished, and the day, which has been pacing since morning, forgets what it came into the room to say. Nirvana is not the high. The high is still a city. Nirvana is the street after the city closes, no billboards, no name I have to keep repeating so I don’t disappear. It is your breath counted against my throat like a small, stupid proof that the wanting can pause without me having to become a better man first. If it doesn’t come, I will still call the night by both names. That is the determined part. That is the lie I am willing to sing until it tells a little truth. One night long. Same song. The empire, then the match gone black. Stay for the black. Don’t talk. Don’t start the next fire. Let me not know, for a minute, how I will get along, and not be afraid of the not-knowing.