Cigarettes Poems

One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.
...

In my dream,
drilling into the marrow
of my entire bone,
my real dream,
...

The young maricones and the horny muchachas,
The big fat widows delirious from insomnia,
The young wives thirty hours' pregnant,
And the hoarse tomcats that cross my garden at night,
...

So you think its Stephen?
Then I'd best make sure
Be on the safe side as it were.
Ah, theres been a mistake. The hair
...

Consider
a girl who keeps slipping off,
arms limp as old carrots,
into the hypnotist's trance,
...

call it the greenhouse effect or whatever
but it just doesn't rain like it used to.
I particularly remember the rains of the
depression era.
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Who is he?
A railroad track toward hell?
Breaking like a stick of furniture?
The hope that suddenly overflows the cesspool?
...

Here is a coast; here is a harbor;
here, after a meager diet of horizon, is some scenery:
impractically shaped and--who knows?--self-pitying mountains,
sad and harsh beneath their frivolous greenery,
...

(from a song)

Perhaps I was born kneeling,
born coughing on the long winter,
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I like Canadians.
They are so unlike Americans.
They go home at night.
Their cigarettes don't smell bad.
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To end up alone
in a tomb of a room
without cigarettes
or wine--
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I'll settle for the 6 horse
on a rainy afternoon
a paper cup of coffee
in my hand
...

I am too big. Too big by far. Pity me.
My eyes bulge and hurt. They are my one great beauty, even
so. They see too much, above, below. And yet, there is not much
to see. The rain has stopped. The mist is gathering on my skin
...

They are building a house
half a block down
and I sit up here
with the shades down
...

The gay young men and the love-sick girls,
and the abandoned widows suffering in sleepless delirium,
and the young pregnant wives of thirty hours ...
...

I sleep a lot and read St. Thomas Aquinas
Or The Death of God (that's a Protestant book).
To the right the bay as if molten tin,
Beyond the bay, city, beyond the city, ocean,
...

Poland, France, Judea ran in her veins,
Singing to Paris for bread, singing to Gotham in a fizz at the pop of a bottle’s cork.
...

My doctor, the comedian
I called you every time
and made you laugh yourself
when I wrote this silly rhyme...
...

So like a flower and a current of air
the flow of water fleeting shadows
the smile glimpsed at midnight this excellent evening
so like every joy and every sadness
...

Sometimes, I, too, tell the ah's
of my heart one by one
like the blood-red beads
of a ruby rosary strung
...

with wages earned on the assembly line he stopped drinking cognac it's worth drinking only in the company of soldiers buys burgundy by the gallon cigarettes by the carton facing the wall in his living room in a chair he sits telling stories in the evenings smoke the silhouette of a woman dancing from tobacco tucked between fingers lips if i could just smoke while sleeping if only she could of stories told the gun he held to a general's head the general who cried hung my promotion i was supposed to be colonel the american officer who ate at his table he described the meat how tender it was simmering in a clay pot i told him names are for people a dog is a dog while on leave as if one could just leave he had his nephews stand guard with plastic rifles tin foil helmets they could have been officers if only they would listen of the stories the one he liked best was about a woman not just any woman my bride to be full of anger and spit and love she cleaved her finger the engagement ring intact in a fit of jealousy she returned it in a box with a note that read I return this ring for you have been taken she discovered my secret my mistress the war
...

She screams without her cigarettes,
She cries without her "man toy."
She complains about never having a job.
You know my mother sounds like a teenager.
...

Smoking is injurious to health warning advertisement has
Not stopped smoking tobacco cigarettes all over the world!
But its restrictions by laws of nations have considerable
Effects over world men and its expose by experts has stopped!
...

SMOKER

I use to be a smoker
Many years ago
...

Cigarettes,
Lottery tickets,
And Beer.
...

Great people.


You have met your friends and smoke together.
...

He always smelled of cigarettes and wine
in his faded blue jeans and cowboy boots
whose smile was as bright as the day's decline
or a black hellebore plucked by its roots.
...

somewhere far away from here
a mad guy committing suicide
slowly and in comfort (he told me so)
with filtered cigarettes
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Well I suppose that this is one of the perks of waking up an hour and forty minutes before your alarm goes off; plenty of time to fiddle around. I could (and should perhaps) do my dishes or hang up my laundry, but writing seems to be a better use of my time.
My time, lately, is packed full of activity. Between work, friends, family, recreation, and the pursuit of happiness and well being; time seems to be a scarce and fleeting thing. And so, I focus each morning on packing a lot of living into every day. Every moment counts. Time is a terrible thing to waste.
I floated down the elk horn creek yesterday. Myself, Cody, Joe, and Hillary. It was fun. Mostly. Cody got upset with me a few times. I think it's because I was flirting with Hillary, and it was working. At one point he even told me to stand up about it... That means he wanted to fight me. Cody would throttle me. He's a beast. Ha, I would've ended up drowned in the creek if Joe was unable to stop him.... Gladly I declined his provocation and simply floated along. Kept my mouth shut for a while until he cooked his jets. Of course we were friends again by the time we got off the creek. We're more like brothers really at this point.
Once we were off the creek I drove my tan truck over to the launch point to get my blue truck. Cody and Joe road in the bed of the truck. Hillary sat in the passenger seat and flirted with me the whole time. I tried not to flirt back, because I could tell Cody was watching me like a hawk. Luckily it was only a short ride.
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