(k) When No Flicker From A Candle Held To A Mouth Poem by Francis Curran

When no flicker from a candle held to a mouth,
Gone are the days and the night put to sleep,
Hushing the muted tongue on death ears,
A blink of an eye and the shutters nailed down,
On the loops and twines of a life's mere instant,
Settling red dust on the tombs of crumbled bridges,
Wringing out the tick of a stuck clock,
Clanking the fading toll of a bell’s muffled gasp.

When no jolt of the heart to electric surge,
A circuit breaks on the route of a thought.
And the rubbing of words off a blank page,
Ink slipping up through the nib of a pen,
And a book, back to pulp to wood to a tree
Flat lining a deathbed of rusting leaf.
Root- to bulb- to seed,
Mountains to rock and pebbles crushed
To sand to silt, that's washed far out
To an empty sea.

When no beat of the blood comes to the thumb,
Menstrual cycles synchronize a halt.
The unborn sucked from the red-hot womb,
The top dog sperm, slipping off an egg,
Ejaculating back to a stiff- limp shaft.
All life and dead things tumbling off-
A matters spinning speck,
Tarried down to an ancient glow,
Beyond an eons blackness,
Beyond nothingness,
Dense as air, as water –iron.
Beyond- before,
The gaping cracks in a theorist's critical point.