No, no, no.
THIS is what you do with sparklers.
May I introduce you to the "Hillbilly Bottle Rocket." The wife of the guy who built our (OK, Red's) potato gun invented it by sticking a lit sparkler into the potato before launching it. Enjoy. We did!
Sorry the video is sideways. That's how I took it, and I don't know how to fix it. Here is what the gun looks like in daylight. We were on the Upper Mississippi feeding the sharks with it a few weekends ago. That video got really pixelly and crappy when it uploaded, or I'd post those too.