I held the blood of
A noble ghost, the source
To works of ******* princes
And hotly discourse.

Your eyes, too old
Like glass, broken.
Cutting across thoughts,  
Floating away, unspoken.

We walked down the tracks,
And we smoked our cigars.
Our rational burning,
On stage for the stars.

The room: never aired out.
Smoke hung high, creating its own atmosphere.

Pun intended.

Box of cigars sitting on the coffee table, always within reach.
Glass ashtray to smother your butts, when a forearm wasn't intended.
Burning flesh, each circle telling its own story of a mistake.

That's why I prefer long sleeves.
They hide my stories
about Grandfather's house.

Whispers ride around this world
hand shakes, deals done
lighting cigars with twenties
while flicking pennies at the homeless

******* on cigars;
never was
fully weaned.

Sitting at my lonely barside
I kneel before the patron saint
Of castaways,
And raise but *******.

The peanuts and peasants
Have much in common,
They are roasted, salted,
Glazed with a succor
No sweeter than savage starlight

They serve to compliment
The fine layer of salt
On the rim of my cocktails
The liquor as **** as their company.

This is the rite of reverence
That droops my eyelids
This is the gleaning genuflection
Of the day's stale bread.

Let us spark,
Lest we dwindle on
Such ill preconceptions.

Let us spark
For the steps
We have taken
Towards setting suns
And rising moons.
For the tears we shed
And the blood we’ve sullied
Alongside tobacconists,
Who pray without hands,
Hymnal steam seeping through
Chapped lips
For the sounds of laughter
That erupt from
Inconsequential selves
Who only ask
A tiny bead
Of hallowed light
To cut the smoke
Dense in our skulls.


This heaving ashtray
Will go on for miles.
I beg pardon for
A moment’s reprieve
In dear memory
With cigars.

-Juan Carlos Gomez