poets smoke

they issue cool in a flick of dashed lines

collar bolted shut by the button

smoke from the fingers

shoulders slouched arched

puff

lips parted no words long stare

words in their marbles spinning in place

eyeball plates

that was me

trying

poets smoke

now

i am so really screwed

i am not smoking

damnit

here i am all set free -- buildingless

spires cooled and on the walls around me

the eyes of the dagger

the pen loaded

like a bullfighter's halo crimson and ghost coming church

burned red

damnit

i got set free

every time i see the inhale i see the cancer ripping apart the

lungs

i see war drums and toxic marsh lands and zombies

ripping through all that helpless pink flessh

them lungs ripped by the smog monster

that stick of "fuck you and go-fuck yourself-myself-my body"

yelling

yelling that through blood raining down on

the emphysema-riddled dawn

the street concrete gray blue neon-blue sky

one white cloud

and in the alley

milk cartons and cigarette butts litter the brick surrounding

each side

like it rained candy paper

in there the ghosts of the wars my grandfather fought are in

there with him

he is dying again

on the oxygen maching

crying

for his life

he was losing

because of the arch-shouldered-poet smoking trick

because of what the twenty years did

did for me

because when it hits your lungs yoiu just kill it some more

each time

plus coffee in the morning and somehow

somehow it's okay

but

what if it killed your wife too because it lingered in the halls

of the house

and who you were built to protect

you kept out the rats

the mice

the serial killers

the poison vats of crack

and

instead

you let in the fog that caused sixty types of cancer immediately

no matter what

and

she dies alone after you die because you hit that arched

golden door

poets smoke harder

what

for?

for a reason to have the suit match the insides of the darkened palace

of bad posture

and reckoning

i think not

i got set free

thank god

i got set free

one more day alive

uncool

breathing in the elmed-car-lined neighborhood air

while

poets smoke

Ryan Adams

From: Hello Sunshine