Fumes outline your porcelain lips
Making it hard to forget
The memories that you and I spent
Each time a ciggerate is lit

Bleary, dreary bifocals looked out through seeing eyes. At the maze of apiculture before him. He pushed a cart his whole life, never stepping up on the ledge to ride it.

Every Tuesday night, his fist packed tight full of ones. Uncrumbling, Washington from his back pocketed jeans. He'd lay him out flat, on the desk, like I should be impressed. One pack of cigs please.

He'd take his cart, around the world & back. Show kaleidoscope girls a good time. Because no matter how pretty that **** picture was, no matter how many times you tore it a part...it was always ugly. Just like the make up, that caked up the beauty on her face.

Parking lot pickups, corner cat-calls, was all she would be worth, a penny in the gutter, if she was lucky. Face up, grasped by hands that'll never love her. Such a steep price, for such a cheap use of love. Generic.

He tells them, he loves them as his boots slide on, comfortable. Too much in a hurry to take his socks off. Humming, Spin Doctors under his breath. He breaths heavily, like he worked so hard that day.

She holds onto morales like lose change, change is lose when you're use, to anything. That shows up on the corners on a Tuesday night, with something new to ignite. Not just the ciggerate between his lips. Lion skin, hipocrathy.

I lay the bills neatly in the drawr, wondering what price he really pays for the stress to relieve his mind. What price does the girl pay, how many clinics does she visit in a year. Baby girl YOUR NOT AN ACCIDENT, YOUR WORTH MORE THAN THE WORDS THAT HIT YOUR CHEEK LIKE A SLAP YOU HAVE MORE POTENTIAL THAN THE MEN YOU LET COMFORT YOU INTO THIS ABUSIVE SOLIDTUDE. YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL, I WOULD SPEND EVERY CENT I HAD JUST TO SIT & TALK WITH YOU.

**Luke 7:47
"Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.”"

My hands smell like smoke,
But I haven't used a ciggerate in three years,
My breathe smells like liquor,
But I haven't drank in ages,
Maybe I'm dreaming,
Maybe I'm dead,
Is this hell? Inside my head,
Maybe the LSD finally kicked in

I keep a ciggerate in my pocket
Even though I quit a long time ago
It's half smoked
I **** on the filter whenever something happens to get my nerve
It's somewhat like a relic from the past
That haunts me

I cuddle deeper into your ciggerate coated hoodie. Taking in the scent, making me sicker. But it's so comfortable.

I asked a man for a ciggerate, he pulled the pack out of his back pocket. Handed me one, like it was a loaded gun. Like I was going to laugh and make fun. Turn on him quick & run. I stood there in the dark breeze humming Bob Dylan. He turned to me and said, " kid I see you with a gun to your head, always hiding in bathrooms like that's your heaven instead" he layed out the floor plans on how life worked. Graphs and data of the sorts. No fancy words, no past life inquiry. Not a man but an eagle. He said he still sees me with a gun in my hand as he flew away to some unreachable tree top. The lights faded out, realizing how alone you are, with a gun to your head, on the bathroom floor trying to make it to heaven instead, you dip your toes in the lake of fire. It's warm, I could stay a while.

On an evening dance show I wasted a ciggerate on thoughts
The light shimmered on the ball,
The music was new, all the songs were turned into stew
A soup of melody and a constant beat
Trembling the floor and the ceiling~
I gazed upon the upcoming crowd
"A beer" They crooned.
The ancient smell of ***** and liquor gassed up the entire floor.
The ciggerate, it burned too loud, and the poet was not allowed,
Saddned by the echoes of silence in a room full of noise, I left the premise with nothing but nicotine stains and words without sentences.
~
The ladies,  cursed by design
The men, manipulating the minds
The children, running to hide.
Where are the people who once promised a dinner?
Where are the shackles of chains that were
Left unattended to the working class?
-
I saw him throw the trash at the
river that sprung from a feet of a cow.
Vrishabhavathi, she cries.
A symphony of dead plastics and living garbages.
Decorated by the lush pink trees
With the smell of rotting cabbages.
-
Did they bring more people to build a holy land?
Did they fight communists holding flowers in their hands?
Were there people overlooking the waters filled with foam?
The forests filled with food packets and rotting homes
-
If a tree fell in a forest. Would you **** me?
This way?

Just light up another ciggerate
And let me smoke my lungs dead
How else am I supposed to handle it
When my heart can't lead my head

Let the air I breath change for worse
Don't call out when my pulse slows
No need to bring a doctor or a nurse
For I am that single withering rose

Sun drops and ciggerate kisses,
Hot pavement buildings,
Side walk cracks,
Flower stems,
Fish kisses,
Fall for me

It hasn't even been ten minutes yet,
Already outside sweatpants hanging off my hips, you can finally see the bones again,
A ciggerate between my lips so quick,
I don't have time to remember that I don't smoke, but the offer was there so why not take it, I've got more toxins in my body I can handle it, cold hands on colder concrete, I can hear the boys next store talking about me, they say I'm a broken bird in a world where I'm forced to fly,
They whisper the words pathetic, yet have never outstretched a hand to a childhood friend, who's dying, trying to believe in a God,
When every else knows she's lying, the unforgivable sin always dancing in, her brain, a mess, a wreck. Her heart, a detached chain link fence, always looking through but never reaching, and she's sick and tired of all the needless beating, the 3 am screaming, knocks on her bedroom door during the night send her reeling into terrorized wakings, remembering who's always on the otherside waiting, what did she do wrong this time, like living in the hood, but all her family thinks it's good, the way her parents raised her up. They don't know about the glass and beatings and the blood. Cause she smiles, & Yaweh smiles they use to say, but it all leads back to a scared little white girl in the suburbs, sitting on the porch step, asking God what he's doing, she cries out," lord my love for you is abundant some days I get lost in it, 1 hour of intimacy and feeling wanted, I walk away broken and daunted, sitting on a porch stoop waiting for the next train to come by, you won't see me in the morning"