1. Fading Utopias Poem by Tony Miller

She absorbed more smoke than top paper walls.
With that bleach-blonde hair,
golden as roving suns, she could
draw it down, the smoke, and the dreams
the smoke inspired.

Upstairs in her bedroom in her parents house
we became the smoke, rising human mist,
turned whiter and loftier, drifted upward
toward the ceiling, toward utopia,
brimming with laughter at a pointless world.

Where is she now? Lost in civilization
(she had a knack for invisibility)
like I am lost among the faceless walkers,
lost among the talk of lifeless lovers,
thinking of her and the smoke of youth;
this dwindling man, white wisps in my blood.