Trying to quit smoking.
Obsessing.
Obsessing.
…
In quivering hands a plurality of worlds becomes real to me
in which I have a lit torch between my fingers, the
smoke rising up like some strange oracle,
and people's voices stop yelling.
Every possibility becomes
just as real in which
I am sucking a
last butt
again.
Boss gives a speech on not
being a quitter. So
tempting.
Outside, the loose straw
with filtered tips summon me
with laughter and delicious soot
with dormant embers like road signs.
Even signs from God
"No Smoking Area"
makes it worse.
Obsessing.
Screw it.
Last one, really.
This winter morning in Boring, Oregon.
- throat full of ice pick-
- gotta choke it down-
cause its my thirst.
Obsessing.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
This poem is grippingly vivid, but what a traumatic experience it relates. May I provide a memory? I smoke Camel non-filers for five years, eventually a pack and a half a day. One June night after I turned 23, I went to a bar, then a restaurant with friends and I must have smoked two packs in record time. But I had a plan. The next morning my throat was too raw to smoke. Too raw in the afternoon. Even all night - too raw. So I got through one whole day without a cig, and I never looked back, never tempted to go back. LA COMEDIA E FINITO! But of course there is no poem in that story, just a goddam moral lesson. If this poem is autobiographical and immediate, G-O-O-D L-U-C-K but you K-N-O-W you can do it! ! LA COMMEDIA...