Best Cigarettes Poems

One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.
...

The young maricones and the horny muchachas,
The big fat widows delirious from insomnia,
The young wives thirty hours' pregnant,
And the hoarse tomcats that cross my garden at night,
...

So you think its Stephen?
Then I'd best make sure
Be on the safe side as it were.
Ah, theres been a mistake. The hair
...

Consider
a girl who keeps slipping off,
arms limp as old carrots,
into the hypnotist's trance,
...

call it the greenhouse effect or whatever
but it just doesn't rain like it used to.
I particularly remember the rains of the
depression era.
...

Here is a coast; here is a harbor;
here, after a meager diet of horizon, is some scenery:
impractically shaped and--who knows?--self-pitying mountains,
sad and harsh beneath their frivolous greenery,
...

Who is he?
A railroad track toward hell?
Breaking like a stick of furniture?
The hope that suddenly overflows the cesspool?
...

I like Canadians.
They are so unlike Americans.
They go home at night.
Their cigarettes don't smell bad.
...

(from a song)

Perhaps I was born kneeling,
born coughing on the long winter,
...

To end up alone
in a tomb of a room
without cigarettes
or wine--
...

I'll settle for the 6 horse
on a rainy afternoon
a paper cup of coffee
in my hand
...

I am too big. Too big by far. Pity me.
My eyes bulge and hurt. They are my one great beauty, even
so. They see too much, above, below. And yet, there is not much
to see. The rain has stopped. The mist is gathering on my skin
...

They are building a house
half a block down
and I sit up here
with the shades down
...

The gay young men and the love-sick girls,
and the abandoned widows suffering in sleepless delirium,
and the young pregnant wives of thirty hours ...
...

I sleep a lot and read St. Thomas Aquinas
Or The Death of God (that's a Protestant book).
To the right the bay as if molten tin,
Beyond the bay, city, beyond the city, ocean,
...

Poland, France, Judea ran in her veins,
Singing to Paris for bread, singing to Gotham in a fizz at the pop of a bottle’s cork.
...

So like a flower and a current of air
the flow of water fleeting shadows
the smile glimpsed at midnight this excellent evening
so like every joy and every sadness
...

My doctor, the comedian
I called you every time
and made you laugh yourself
when I wrote this silly rhyme...
...

Sometimes, I, too, tell the ah's
of my heart one by one
like the blood-red beads
of a ruby rosary strung
...

He didn't want to do it with skill,
He'd had enough of skill. If he never saw
Another villanelle, it would be too soon;
And the same went for sonnets. If it had been
...

How funny you are today New York
like Ginger Rogers in Swingtime
and St. Bridget's steeple leaning a little to the left
...

Wealthy I am! Can wager on vices
Eager they’re too to take me zenith
Avarice-whisky, anger-cigarettes and
Lust-harlots lined up to keep me afloat
...

Sun soaked revelations
on a patio deck.

I had long forgotten
...

'Do you like me?'
I asked the blue blazer.
No answer.
Silence bounced out of his books.
...

Wrapped in a cylinder
Tobacco's nicotine
Mixed with many flavors
Around soft paper
...

Because there was no other place
to flee to,
I came back to the scene of the disordered senses,
...

Yes, long shadows go out
from the bales; and yes, the soul
must part from the body:
what else could it do?
...

Sinuously winding through the room
On smokey tongues of sweetened cigarettes, --
Plaintive yet proud the cello tones resume
The andante of smooth hopes and lost regrets.
...

Whatever we do, whether we light
strangers’ cigarettes—it may turn out
to be a detective wanting to know who is free
...

The first time I drank gin
I thought it must be hair tonic.
My brother swiped the bottle
from a guy whose father owned
...

A glass of milk, of water, and wine -
Which one that suits you best?
Which do you prefer to drink?
Me? The first two are my faves.
...

The day my doctor died of smoking
I bought myself a fat cigar -
I realised he must be joking,
His funeral was so bizarre:
...

my friend has a new guy
he's evil in my eye
it's only been about two weeks
and already her body reeks
...

Over the terminal,
        the arms and chest
                of the god
...

Looking for distinctive stones, I found the dead otter
rotting by the tideline, and carried all day the scent of this savage
valediction. That headlong high sound the oystercatcher makes
came echoing through the rocky cove
...

What is death, I ask.
What is life, you ask.
I give them both my buttocks,
...

Whenever the wind
drops an alder catkin into my palm,
or a cuckoo calls merrily,
with trains screaming by,
...

The last of day gathers
in the yellow parlor
and drifts like fine dust
across the face of
...

When your bedroom for you very far

When already you stand -nearby by bar,
...

HAD cigarettes no ashes,
And roses ne'er a thorn,
No man would be a funker
Of whin, or burn, or bunker.
...

Coffee and cigarettes in a clean cafe,
forsythia lit like a damp match against
a thundery sky drunk on its own ozone,
...

Hungry and cold, I stood in a doorway
on Delancey Street in 1946
as the rain came down. The worst part is this
is not from a bad movie. I'd read Dos Passos'
...

beside me in this garden
are huge and daisy-like
(why not? are not
oxeye daisies a chrysanthemum?),
...

Smoke, withdrawal, smoke, withdrawal, cough
Smoke, withdrawal, smoke, withdrawal, cough
Buy cigarettes, smoke, withdrawal, smoke, withdrawal, cough
Smoke, smoke, withdrawal, smoke, withdrawal, buy cigarettes, cough
...

'My age, my beast!' - Osip Mandelstam

On the lips a taste of tolling we are blind
The light drifts like dust over faces
...

I am surprised to see
that the ocean is still going on.
Now I am going back
and I have ripped my hand
...

This above all remember: they will be very brave men,
And you will be facing them. You must not despise them.

I am, as you know, like all true professional soldiers,
...

I was sitting for ages on a bench
In a bus station
An able bodied man
Approached me for a donation
...

suffer the little children!
suffer they do, and how!
they are padded, protected, petrified
as they dangle ‘neath broken bough!
...

A true friend will be there for you no matter what
A true friend will listen to you if you have a problem
A true friend will care for you
A true friend offer you gum but not cigarettes
...

...

'A plague upon you, murderers, traitors all!
I might have sav'd her; now she's gone for
ever.'
[ King Lear,5.3.269-271]
...

I

Mr. Styrax 1
Mr. Hecatomb Styrax, the owner of a large estate and of
...

When you are nine years old
and sifting the seeds out
of your parents pot for them,
you can't really preach
...

And then we began eating corn starch,
chalk chewed wet into sirup. We pilfered
Argo boxes stored away to stiffen
my white dress shirt, and my cousin
...

As the morning sunlight brightly shone
Through the window of the corner shop,
It lit the rows of pop bottles
That stood upon the shelves.
...

My father: younger, handsome, downright square,
eyes like brown buttons fastening his face
over his soul, mouth not too straight to swear,
...

The spring-it had simply been you,
And so, to a certain extent,
The summer; but autumn-this scandalous blue
Of wallpaper? Rubbish and felt?
...

Bumble bee, let's play
Flying flower to flower
But today, don't sting
...

It's with your laughing picture that I'm living now,
You whose wrists are so slender and crackle at the joints,
...

Smokes
of cigarettes
and mugs
full of coffee,
...

I left a poem on the side of the highway last night.

With every exhale, words, like litter, escaped me
To flee-float out and about and along,
...

All they said was true:
I wrecked my father's bank with my loans
To dabble in wheat; but this was true --
I was buying wheat for him as well,
...

Abracadabra, wikitizam
A fresh air breather is what you am
Abracadabra, wikitizoom
Flooded with light, no longer in gloom
...

You ain't hittin' on nothin
Forget about homemade bread
Forget about coffee at 5a.m.
Think about things you said
...

UR ADDICTIONS N MINE, ARE HABITS FORMED THRU TIME..
its a constant, that becomes this contagious condition....
your now FEEL LIKE a REAL addict... from this habit... formed in2 a real addiction
IN ADDITION, TO THIS CONDITION WHICH HAS GROWN
...

A boy of thirteen wears the pitch black pants
of German scouts. Some women look with glee
and try to drown his cries. They curse in chants.
They’re Jewish guards from State Security
...

There are many smells of Africa
That I at times recall:
The quay side waft of tainted water
In the harbor pool,
...

Low misty cloud swirls damp close to the ground
Ancient parlour pubs lined the terraced street,
Slurred speech from beer costing only a pound
And smoke from cigarettes hangs around their feet;
...

Bri's 'Showcase-Intro(duction) ' poem:
...

Why cover up ourselves in our own lies
We fill the air with guilty smoke
If only I could print her portrait in my heart
And leave behind my cigarettes
...

In days before the trouble Jo was rated as
a slob.
He chose to sit in hourly expectation of a job.
He'd loop hisself upon a post, for seldom
...

1. IN THE BACKS.

As I was strolling lonely in the Backs,
I met a woman whom I did not like.
...

Roughly figured, this man of moderate habits,
This average consumer of the middle class,
Consumed in the course of his average life span
Just under half a million cigarettes,
...

He didn't want to do it with skill,
He'd had enough of skill. If he never saw
Another villanelle, it would be too soon;
And the same went for sonnets. If it had been
...

The light of our cigarettes
Went and came in the gloom:
It was dark in the little room.
...

Ireland’s boom is in full swing.
Rows of numbers, set in a cloudless blue
computer background, prove the point.
...

We have met the enemy, and they are us.
—Walt Kelley, Pogo
†
...

And one morning while in the woods I stumbled
suddenly upon the thing,
Stumbled upon it in a grassy clearing guarded by scaly
...

Angel eyes are colourblind,
On a whim she lost my mind,
Something's there I'll never find,
Angel eyes are colourblind.
...

Some people have short hair, some have long.
Some people have thick hair; some people’s hair is all gone.

Some people have black hair, some have gray.
...

the white man dropped the newspaper
lay it aside
seeing this woman with bangles
and brightly colored clothes
...

My handwriting is not calligraphic.
Not following the rules of beauty,
words stagger about,
reeling,
...

Some of you have asked for part three so here goes.

Here we want to expand upon part 2.
...

When you see someone drag on a cigarette
They appear to be feeling great pleasure
You would like to get some of that too
You want enjoyment in the same measure
...

Noise control
The sounds
They are deafening me
...

Altermann, sipping wine, reads with a look
Of infinite patience and slight suffering.
When I approach him, he puts down his book,
Waves t the chair beside him like a king,
...

The clairvoyante, a major general’s wife,
The secretaries’ sibyl, read the letters
...

At that time I didn't understand
snow, the absence inside July,
water and what holds the water
in. Heard "It takes more than a forest
...

Into old rhyme
The new words come but shyly.
Here's a brave man
Who sings of commerce dryly.
...

All I want is love...
Say it.
All I want is the world...
Wrap it.
...

Their reward is
they become innocent again,

and when they reappear in memory
...

Darkness, coolness,
Overcrowds our happy universe,
The moon looks amused,
The stars peek fondly on
...

Still half drunk, after a night at cards,
with the grey dawn taking us unaware
among our guilty kings and queens, we drove
far North in the morning, winners, losers,
...

I was smoking a cigarette;
Maud, my wife, and the tenor McKey
Were singing together a blithe duet,
And days it were better I should forget
...

1.
When she was thirty-five
my mother said, “I shall be dead
when I am fifty-three
...

Last month's showcase, for me, has come and gone, ignored by many.
But, hey, that's one good thing on PH; you may read all OR not any!
I prefer to use poems not too long, so some I'll edit. Don't you fret.
Each poet may have one poem each month here. Will I get ………..
...

immortality is bullshit
the only thing that lives forever
is the night
love is bullshit
...

Wish to wash my sadness away....
(This is not a poem, just her words in her last letter)

Not by monsoons or rain showers,
...

Standing here a victim of a slanderous tongue
Pleading my innocence with a song left unsung
Easing my troubles with liquor and cigarettes
Trying to imagine what happened inside the silhouettes
...