Cigarettes
It is like this:
I go outside
to throw a plastic bag
of garbage in the bin.
I see the neighbors
across the street.
They are older than me,
maybe younger.
It is difficult to tell these days.
She has short purple hair
and he is obese in a misshapen
LONGHORNS t-shirt.
Both lean against a car
in the driveway and smoke cigarettes.
I smoked a million cigarettes
when I was years younger than now.
I destroyed my lungs. Emphysema.
I smoked and drank.
I did illegal drugs
and drove a car while intoxicated
and did socially impermissible things
and had unprotected sex with drunk women
and checked out library books
and never returned them
and broke the law a thousand times,
and here I am, still alive.
I watch the elderly couple
across the street smoke cigarettes.
They are mute as they smoke.
I want to smoke
five cigarettes,
a hundred cigarettes,
and drink Four Roses bourbon
right out of the bottle.
It is an echo from a dark
and departed past.
It is an after taste.
I throw the plastic bag
of garbage and cat shit in the bin.
I look over my shoulder
and see a final glint of the past
slip without scrape or complaint
into a swirling black hole
where the past is lost
and the future
is a pale green hospital.
Kurt Nimmo published the literary magazine Planet Detroit in the early 1980s and The Smudge Review in the late 1970s. His chapbook imprints and magazines published noted poets, including Charles Bukowski, Lyn Lifshin, Belinda Subraman, Gerald Locklin, and many others. He now lives in southern New Mexico with his wife.
