Can you shoo a ghost
away like smoke,
do you
hurt its heart when you do?
Tag Archives: smoke
Cupped fire in the twilight
The face,
the point of light,
the smoke
Smoky woods
My mystical trip to Missoula
My heart has been troubled
with my wanting
it’s to be –
like moons and planets far away –
but who would go there?
One will one day I pray
go to scoop the lot of it,
retrieve it to twirl
again within me,
but that will be where it’s never been,
real smoke in the heart of Missoula.
I see people smoking in a square
I see people smoking in a square.
Someone’s marked it off for them
with tape.
It’s where smoking people go –
one foot in, one foot out,
smoking at the edge.
But the smoke doesn’t stay.
When fear comes it spreads like fire in the dry season
That brief sick hope of escape
is willing grass and the comeliest of tinder.
Where is the rock, the lake?
He’s wide-eyed in a glade
in a smoky wood.
He tries to piss it away, the dirty dream.
And succeeds. The dream isn’t the problem.
Where is your faith, man?
He thinks of all he’s afraid of,
of all the present and future threats.
He checks the clock. And prays. And twists
and turns.
A man’s a man, though a little slow
till he’s swift as smoke in Idaho.
