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Combustion
by Jon Wesick
Jelaluddin Rumi baked his heart into kindling
in the kiln of awareness. When he met Shams of Tabriz
it was as if passing a flame from one candle to the next.
Both were consumed in a blaze of ecstasy.
This poem is a cigarette butt tossed into the brush,
an unattended campfire, a meth lab hotplate, static electricity
on the Hindenburg’s docking tower in Lakehurst NJ,
James Cagney on a burning oil rig: “Top of the world, ma!”
the plutonium core that ignites a thermonuclear bomb.
Look around for sparks of rapture. Frayed wiring
and overloaded outlets surround you. Someone’s jammed
pennies in the fuse box, packed the garage with oily rags,
and left a space heater too close to the curtains.
Why conjugate verbs on an electric typewriter
at a desk filthy with asbestos dust? Haul that pile
of soggy newspapers out from behind your bulletproof vest!
How can you create light without heat?TO COMMENT ON THIS POEM CLICK HERE
© Wesick, 2006
Holding a Ph.D. in physics and having studied Buddhism for twenty years, Jon Wesick has enjoyed a front row seat at a collision of worldviews. When he spots a shiny piece of wreckage, he darts into the roadway and retrieves a poem, story, or novel. Jon has published over a hundred poems in small press journals such as American Tanka, Anthology Magazine, The Blind Man’s Rainbow, Edgz, The Kaleidoscope Review, Limestone Circle, The Magee Park Anthology, The Publication, Pudding, Sacred Journey, San Diego Writer’s Monthly, Slipstream, Tidepools, Vortex of the Macabre, Zillah, and others. He’s published eight chapbooks, including two that have been honorable mentions in the San Diego Book Awards. His latest chapbook is License to Rant.