1.
A suburb of coffee cups;
napkins, those crumpled hills;
silverware, freeways
spotted with grease, with flesh…

and the ash-tray,
a ghetto full of charred men
with grizzled heads
who wasted their flame;
where every breath
scatters its bones
and small gray mounds
accumulate, then crumble,
like nations
or the knees of elephants.

                  2.
Like a cleaning plant, steam
comes through a hole in your face.
Your exhaust is the last
wild horse that gallops away.

                 3.
Smoke waters the flowers
that grow in the lungs.
The cigarette, like your life,
is a piece of chalk
that shrinks as it tries to explain.

1979

 = Daniel Myers