Cigarette

Murky cold from which to stay indoors
With fleece cocoa novel
Outdoor change of place at every turn
One glance city dirty city gray
Another fleeting Greece of dreams and marble
The whole drippy day
Poetry like wet paint, slippery

The rhythm of despair
Her lighting of a cigarette
Like a dirge of cupped hand and
Motionless for the briefest as
Flame flickers and bends and yearns and snap
And drag and hand carves
Graceful arc out and side and flicks
And talking out and holding in
Then learned, unstudied turn
Of chin and purse of lip
And milky cloud of acrid pouring-forth
And laugh and her hand,
As if chained, as if on marionette strings,
Drawn to her mouth unceasingly
Drag hold ffff laugh
Until the detritus nonexistent falls behind
Glinting, smashed in a muddy puddle
Done and dead damn wasteful stupidity
Uncared for, contempt, uncaring...

Words which on paper should burn
Lie so flat, unvital, stale, and impotent
I need the MEAT of the world
Into which to sink my teeth, not dry and dusty
Helpless prods and pokes
And uncertain prying into the infinite
Like the feeble forays and grasps of infant arms

Meat for which I clutch
And for which my starving teeth are yearning
Blood on my chin and chest, the math,
The hows and whys and whats
Is too much for my thin blood and I
Meekly subsist on substanceless what-ifs and images
Mindless bloodless herb diet of prey

1996