Every act of love is an act of destruction, a desecration,
a laying waste to the idol of the self broken and shattered beneath the sandaled feet
of martyrs who take the pieces and use them as incendiaries
to light the stakes of their own making.

Narcissus was drowned by the desire for his own image, not knowing it was nothing but
a constantly rippling wave in the endlessly heaving sea of Creation.

A candle flame persistently flickering in the vast, penetrating darkness
of the incandescent Transcendent becomes crippled with Time, as the stick it rests upon
erodes with the slow drip of melting, leaving the flame to die
in an unlit pyre of wax flakes,
a would-be phoenix blindly waiting to be reborn, its wick a charred, defused wisp,
the only remembrance of a self blown out by the untimely timeliness of Death.

A cracked mirror, splintered into shards of glass,
veins twisting and branching out across its silver-faced lake
entrenching themselves below the surface, splitting wide and deep
the false foundation of our notion of the self, the way an earthquake streaks the ground
with what appears to be the jagged shape of lightning,
is the truest testament to who we are, what we are made of: not one, but many.

Dominick Montalto is founder of A Poet's Perspective, a blog featuring biweekly blog posts on a variety of topics, primarily geared toward writers and those interested in getting their work published, including weekly reviews on Wednesdays. The blog features an Editorial and Writing Services page where readers can take a look at the type of services Dominick offers, and also has a variety of his previously published poetry and essays.