There is a light
in a glass of whisky
that never goes out
as it travels 
to dark places.
As it goes
on its way it is
its own torch
and what sights
it sees in 
there, in those 
normally unlit 
crevices — things
in some cases
not seen for years,
unexamined for 
decades. Take,
for example, stories
of an absent father
who disappeared seeking
those same items 
the same way years before —
there those stories are,
tucked into a cranny 
above the acid fields
of the deep belly. Or
the Memory of
first taste at twelve,
chased by 
the memory of
that grapefruit soda
chugged after to cool
the Flame that burned
again all the way back up
to the light and out again
leaving you heaving,
swearing never again,
no way, never, no way 
never no more; that’s
all there in the same
shadow as the others
and all the light there is down there
is in the first, second, third, fourth
glasses of gold, dense 
shine barking briefly
in the tongue, its hazy
illumination upon those
secret places counterbalanced
by how it sweeps fact up
into emotion and then,
after a while, the light,
ever a lie, indeed 
goes out while leaving more
dank remnants behind
inside to soon be sought again
with the breaking of the next
wax seal, the next crack of
the cheap tin on the cap
of the next bottle of flame.