Dorm Room Magic
If you’re attending college
it’s nothing to have ten or even thirty
candles in your dorm room
burning all at once
with some incense,
acrid week-old coffee, cigarette smoke,
and a little touch of unspecified college music
getting stoned.
Wax flows down cheap wine bottle —
Chimes.
You can purchase them
in any number of stores
or you can make them in tin cans,
but they always turn out really crappy.
Since college, however, I haven’t scorched
a single candle,
not even on romantic occasions;
and, in fact, I’m kind of embarrassed
at the fashion with which I burnt them in college,
like I was listening to Phish and the Dead in the wrong way
when I was actually just a cheesy asshole like everybody else.