Observances In Smoke

A poem

Cigarettes keep dying on my lips…

Martyrs, marching endlessly through my lungs, staining them in ritual suicide with every drag. Weed, and cheap red wine, ablutions and a long ago diet I’ve since replaced with harder tastes. Aderal, Yayo, and hydrocodone. Got none right now, a pill-pauper, probably why I’m so distracted.

Outside my painted-closed window, just past where the roof slants down, blue flecks of paint, ancient by my standards, slough off the arms of the porch. The azure, dead skin of my apartment, rutting in the air sinfully until spent on the ground.

The street lamps, and neon signs beyond it, colour the asphalt. Like whores makeup and temples, they lie about simple things, and safety. I ponder them.

Sage drifts up the stairwell, floating through the open door on the bottom floor, bringing chill air and exhaust fumes, three wise men, today’s version of the gifts offered to the Nazarene. I should close it.

The smoke coils around my head, a snake, then briefly, a crown. It disappears the same as broken dynasties, fading into a haze. No more than a moment-old conquest, crucified, like an hour’s dead history. I need to shave, I need to be something.

The halogen above me hums, my reverie is interrupted, so instead I light up again. A product of boredom, the ceremony of a supplicant.