Cigarette smoke and despair
I’ve come to know the smell
It adorns the walking dead
As they haunt their waking hell

They have gathered here to die
Desperation has its price
Cigarette smoke and despair
Is the flavor of their vice

Neon lights a sirens call
Taking comfort in the glow
Cigarette smoke and despair
The last smell they’ll ever know

I'm gonna wear
my weathered cardigans
and be swallowed by the pack
of Seattle commutes
with my vinyl records in one hand,
a guitar in the other,
and a backpack full of
J. Kerouac and C. Bukowski
and R. Adams and L. Cohen.

I gonna live
off of the San Francisco Bay saltwater
and the bummed cigarettes outside
of bars that play nicotine music
to my ears.

I'm gonna sleep
on the ground in front of cookie-cutter houses
with their fence posts painted white.
I'll feel my psyche strum its last chord
and soon I'll be gone
without a sound.

I'm gonna die
in a new town where nobody knows my name.
I'll be a Chicago artist
full of New York poetry,
a Great Britain romantic
full of Alameda Victorian architecture,
or a Nebraska idiot
full of Midwest ambition.

Bit down,
****** up tongue.

Little eavesdroppers
run from my windows;
pretentious *****
go vegan
as the world turns;
coffee ***,
cigarette ***,
love ***
all become one;
a lot to say
in the moment 'fore the big bang,
but daddy forgot to pull the trigger,
and
none of us are on the run;
nobody loves me;
nowhere to go,
no-one to be.
Take it.
Be ****** by it.
Love it.

Take that *** of despair,
bite down,
rip away the ******,
and **** up your tongue
on all that up-chuck
because if you don't
you're the one that's getting ****** up.

I wade into tidal waves,
my hands full of dandelions

humbled by the sun
choked up over comets
I’ve given up on sunsets

you are a supernova clad only in my bed sheets
I make a wish every time your chest falls

****** lungs full of anxiety
My mouth tastes like an ashtray
filled with the buts of things i forgot to say
washed down by things i wish i hadn't

Still tripping over shoe laces,
I search for poetry in *** holes.
Forgiveness in pillowcases
my eyes have trouble resting these days

So, why aren't we dancing?

Following the rhythm of our mismatched heartbeats
I clumsily waltz through misleading conversations

I had a really bad day today,
so i went to a dark and quiet place
where i could smoke and ruminate.

I unwrapped a new pack of cigarettes,
lighted a stick, and the tip turned red.
I took a deep breath and raised my head
toward the starry sky and i was amazed
by the resemblance of the lighted cigarette
to those stars. I bet the gods must be smokers
too. Their problems must be just too great,
which made my troubles seem lightweight.


Copyright, Ronnie Ng, 2011 (www.facebook.com/bolametrics)

I would try to write something good
but I've been using **** all day
and my dopamine levels are suicide victim low
just as the amount of cigarettes in this pack is low
just as the amount of money in my wallet is low
just as I am low.

under the boy’s pillow
she slipped
an empty pack
of cigarettes-

the kind
her teddy bear
smoked

They squirm inside their clothes
tweed, chiffon tiered skirts, and bows
of their grandmothers’ sepia, halcyon days

with lumberjack flannel and Kerouac quotes,
but it’s more a matter of age than size,
these charging, listless, candid creatures

with hairstyles that can only be described
as gravity readily defied and self-cut,
frequently dyed to shades that swing

between black coffee and New York poetry
deep imagism and social realism against the backdrop
of American Apparel ads on scratched up Macs.

They slouch up and down trafficked Newbury,
dropping names like Morrissey and Bukowski
pausing now and then to pick up on the ennui

of twenty-three, and how they will one day live la vie
Dharhimian, running on American Spirits,
James Dean, Truffaut chic,

a monthly check from their parents,
an apathetic sneer at holding anything too dearly
and how they hate that word—*hip-ster.