Strep throat. Out of nowhere really. I went to a meeting on Friday, interviewed at PaperSource on Saturday afternoon, and then just slightly later an awful toothache. I never suspected anything so out of the ordinary to occur. Saturday night, two to four a.m.ish, i thought it was caffeine pills, or not drinking enough water, or even, worst of the worst, an attack of hypochondria. I kept lighting up Marlboros though, tasty red branded things that make writer's mouths happy. Two days in and I'm pretty sure my ***** are a fever below my body, droopy like snoopy. Super soft droopy *****, that's a sure sign of a fever or a great BJ they taught us in 6th grade science, and I wasn't getting my favorite ice cream social.

I hadn't talked to the gf in a couple days, and missing her company I made the phone call only discover that my voice had turned into a baby turtle shouting English from the bottom of a stuffed baked potato. Garbled. Discussing. Useless. I promptly hung up, and began texting. But it was too late she heard me and called back, and I had to give it all I had to put together a few words.

An hour later I was dropped off at the ER, the benefits of Medicaid at 30 is never being able to just go to the doctor's office. Within 2 hours they told me it was strep. Four nurses, two residents, one first day resident, and a 2nd year resident, and the ER doctor for a swab and a spray, and the take home Z-pack.

Then she said she'd come over even though I was sick. That's real love. "If I get sick from you, it's still worth it." 3 days on antibiotics, no more sore throat, I feel great- I think tomorrow I'll be having an ice cream social for someone who I love dearly. Maybe we'll even skip the ice cream.

I can smell Marlboros

cold hands
warm mouth

gold
gold,gold,gold, yellow hues

red-hot flame
burning,burning aching for you

life's in shambles
but i know for sure

want to hold you kiss you touch you
til my lungs are filled with tar

His nicotine tongue was the most conniving part of his existence.
Every time it made contact with mine,
I tasted Marlboros,
the only brand he would buy.
Whatever his nicotine tongue
did to mine sent me into
a tornado of insanity each time,
like I was one of his cigarettes,
but he put me out,
stepped on me,
before I could burn his lips.
His nicotine tongue told his mouth
to speak such brutal words
that would make me
fall in love with him
over and over,
lighting me up and up,.
He had never kept me lit,
put me out before I could
trick him into thinking
"love"
could be a hole
he could also fall in.
He had carried me
around in his pocket,
his nicotine tongue
telling him to fuel his craving
and pull me out,
wrapping his mouth
around me and breathing me in
until I was no more.
But the more he
breathed me in,
the more his
nicotine tongue
started to die.
I was toxic.
He never did fall in love with me,
but I did end up
being the one to
stomp
him
out.

the first free minutes of the day find me
scrambling for the lighter that will ensure my
good standing with a
young and dumb, restless addict
of the two-years-older-than-me generation

her cigarette hangs limp from her lips
waiting for the fire that I promised her
I had to offer
eyebrows arching
fingers followed by toes tapping
in an anxious less-than-patience

so I fumble through the pockets of my jacket
tapping fingers into gum packets
doing what I can to keep from laughing
at the whole
****
thing

until at last I find the lighter
for the babe who's smoking Marlboros
and says she doesn't care who knows
that she smokes cigarettes

Your love is hard
like rocks
in my belly
in the morning;
like starting the countdown
to a three-day drunk
a week later,
at every turning point,
every shadow
of an angle,
I am taking roads
I have never
crossed,
I am watching
water run
in crystalline rivers
toward alleys
I've never known.

When they ask me
for money
or Marlboros,
I say yes,
please,
I would like those too.

I would like to eat
bagels
in the sun
with crinkly paper in my teeth
and sour cream cheese
sweetening in the liquor.

My landscaper's shoulders
and granite deltoids
are now green with lime
and lichens.

Girls like to run
their
hands over them;
but they are hungry
for your hands
and the lavishing footsteps
of your fingernails.

When I wake up
I put enough water in the
coffee-maker
for about
twenty cups,
and enough
***** in those
twenty cups
for a three-day drunk.

Your love is hard like ice-cold *****
and boiling coffee
that
mutilates tastebuds
and
makes my belly feel real good.

But not talking to you for awhile;
it's easier to warm up in the morning
so I can cool down at night,
and by the pink dawn
of darkness
I could get back to working my belly
with *****, rocks, and
Marlboros.

Exhaling
Grey grumbling
Storm clouds
You sit
So artistically
Arms and legs folded
You form beautiful human origami
With your elegant thinness
Paralleling paper
So enchanting I almost forget
You are not impervious to cancer
Nudging that thought to the back of my cortex
I allow myself to drift with the smoke
And tumbling out of your mouth
I drift onwards, upwards
Away
Lazily but surly
Step outside
This time when you exhale
It’s the air in your lungs
once again I cling to
Anything from you
Even something as empty as this air
So for a moment we’re frozen
Transfixed
Hanging without context
Sitting out in the cold
Things become clearer
You can see the product
Of working lungs
And unblocked trachea
Carbon monoxide
I call upon lessons and remember
This is also poisonous
And that some folks
Breathe fire to earn a living
Wonder if you could be the first
Greatly acclaimed poison breather

you smelt of
nicotine and wild dreams
tapping your feet
to the music inside your head
that no one else could hear

& as you put away your box of cigarettes
i couldn't help but wonder
what it would be like
for you to be more addicted to me
than to *your marlboros

Wanderer.
From window to window.
Seeking
             something
in different glass scenes
from offices and trains and restaurants.
Like she'll see something or someone
or somebody.
And the world will no longer be
a tilted painting.

Clear spring cold
papers over
the scene of the city of her world.
She's freezing.

There is a cafe at the end of the
road
where sidewalk snow has mingled
with trod-on mud
from commuter's shoes.
It's called
'Les yeux qui voient tout'

She can smell coffee and cigarettes and paper and words
and smiles and wine all the way from Bordeaux.
She sits by the window.

Tendrils of hair cut
across her cheek
as she lowers.
The seat is cold.
Legs crossed,
                       arms clasped,
high-heeled shoes with straps
that cross,
head bent
over a crossword.

'Un cafe au lait, s'il vous plait.'

Last four-letter word pencilled in so
she crumples up the paper.
The eyes don't notice
origami birds dangling above her.
Somehow
they're all angled
towards the glass window
like sunflowers reaching for the sun.
Perhaps the casual
shuttered-open winds
are the birds' oxygen;
reminders that
                          something
like
sky,
air,
wind,
exist, beyond
coffee-smoked counters.
Reminders that
they could breathe, live, fly
in some other city of some other world.

Cup and saucer on a silver platter
hover over.
Idle fingers
and then a clatter.
She stares down into
the white porcelain pit,
teeming with hot brown
                                           alarms.
It isn't a portal
into
       something.
Just a cup of coffee.
Now that is an alarm.

Slow and
                shaking,
drip,
         drip,
                  drip.
The milk is poured.
Curling, italic, Persian carpet spread
from the cup's centre into warm-cream brown.
She imagines it is
blood in her heart.

She raises the little silver teaspoon
napping on the saucer and
stirs.

'Le sucre?'
Does she want it all
to be
sweeter?

Two packets, long like
Marlboros,
hastily, desperately dumped
into the mix.
Quick and
                  shaking,
she raises the little silver teaspoon and
stirs.
Little sugar grains ******
into a vortex,
dissolved and melted into
the city of the world of the cup.

With her little finger, she
dabs
stray sugar grains
on the table
and tries to bring sweetness
to her sleep-thick tongue.

Slow and
                shaking,
sip,
      sip,
            sip.

She's­ tricked herself
into feeling warmth.
Ticker-tape banner
pops up in her head:
'All of this will not
fix you.'

Porcelain clatter
as cup meets saucer.
Again.
She arms herself with
a cigarette case and a book.
Maybe now she will belong
amongst these people
with sad eyes and burning lips,
clinging on to cups and drinks.
So desperately-lit smoke
trails out of
her warm mouth,
steaming up her face
like a window on a cold winter day.
And meanwhile Camus perches
in her hand.

Her eyes swim
in the choppy seas
of French.
The cigarette dangles,
painting the air grey, grey,
tilting, tilting, tilting.
Slow and
                shaking,
she weeps.

Half-aglow in the white sunshine filter
from the glass window,
a woman is wondering.
She drinks her coffee,
wipes her smudged mouth
and leaves.

Nobody notices the wobble
in her high-heeled gait.
She's just a part of
another tilting painting,
another glass scene.

These simple acts,
           simple things,
define
the speaking soul.
In a scene of the city of the world.

finally you came back to me;
for good we thought.

we'd walk out in the dark, and sprawling streets in
the empty mornings
and smoke packs of our favorite kinds, we had thought.

and there was one glorious weekend when we wore
long skirts and smoked
rollies on
the white painted balcony.
we stole six bottles of wine from
an unlocked cellar,
fully clothed in our
indian dresses,
underneath were our lacy bras
and silky underwear.

we walked the path barefoot
to the Nest, and we tattooed the dead and dying branches
with the sharp art of our burn marks,
and under the bridge where we
jumped into the frigid creek,
and let the sun shine through our hair while
a blond boy played his guitar.

we stayed up late,
jumping on the soft pink carpet of my room,
making small earthquakes in the quiet town,
screaming the songs
that beat to our own heart.

we crawled onto the red shingled roof
and inhaled the
thorn filled
atmosphere of
November,
smoking newports and marlboros faster than
Olympic champions.

we were naked but for our limp hair, hanging at our sides and
shivering skin,
“smoke me like a cigarette”
we softly sang, with the light of my room
slowly slinking into the night.

we took a drunken shower afterwards,
a bottle of chardonnay
reflecting the red light overhead,
the water rolling off our bodies,
ash falling from our hair.

we woke up in the light of one another's
morning eyes,
with splitting heads and cracked grins,
we had more plans.

we laughed on the secret
flower hotel porch,
bringing out more of our wine bottles,
playing our music loudly,
unfiltered spirits
was slowly writing their tragedy on our
wilting lungs.

that night we stuffed our beds
and created sleeping bodies out of ***** clothing and
small pillows.
we ran into the fresh night,
trouble as a steel edge on our
summer filled laughter.

we danced to the music that filled our
murky brain,
stumbled into a smoke filled room and burned
our throats
*****.

we walked in the deserted hours
of four in the morning,
and stamped on the counters,
of some boys house,
voice hoarse from
singing Neutral Milk Hotel at the top of our
brimming lungs
and banging on guitars.

we broke ashtrays,
and hearts,
and we snuck back in
with orange-chai hookah fresh on our
dry lips,
when the sun was threatening to
rise.

we wandered around the sunken down
town
the next day,
unfilters again.

we smoked three packs in two days.
sixty cigarettes,
for the sixty days we've been apart.

my mother told me later that she could smell it on me
riding on my breath,
she could tell by our dry eyes
and bed made hair,
we were hungover.
we smelled like ashtrays,

Hydrocodone is no excuse for you to be
torn so violently apart from me,
everything is falling out of
place.