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BY BERT MEYERS

 

1

A suburb of coffee cups;

napkins, those crumpled hills;

silverware, freeways

spotted with grease, with flesh...

 

and the ash-tray,

a ghetto full of charred men

with grizzled heads

who wasted their flame;

where every breath

scatters its bones

and small gray mounds

accumulate, then crumble,

like nations

or the knees of elephants.

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2

Like a cleaning plant, steam

comes through a hole in your face.

Your exhaust is the last

wild horse that gallops away.

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3

Smoke waters the flowers

that grow in the lungs.

The cigarette, like your life,

is a piece of chalk

that shrinks as it tries to explain.