smoking

on the corner of sepulveda and rayen
taking in the amnesia of that which is artificial
snubbed out a cigarette on the side of a painted brick building and flicked the butt end into the street, at that place where the blacktop meets the curb, so when the rains come the little fiberglass boat will be able to take that journey down the l.a. river, swim with the contaminated fishes, be released at sea somewhere down by long beach and go on to ride the currents all the way to the phillipines, my dna all over the end of that filter, so a living part of me will be along for the ride. what do people think about leaving their saliva all over the streets of life, every flicked burned out stick of nicotene on all the avenues, boulevards, freeways, interstates, parking lots, parkways, driveways of life, leaving little love notes out of an infatuation with mortality, always flirting with the end of things, our own flame so aromatic and divine, snubbed out at some indefinable future point, leaving behind the great golden state of dust and smoke and too many people.
snubbed out and rotten, the landscape smolders and molds over, leftover from heartier feasts, a glowing orange flame so aromatic and alive, now rubbed out and suffocated, all's left is tarry and dead, smelling something awful. the landscape begs and whimpers like an untrained dog up on its hind legs scratching for a scrap of the good stuff. all of it is begging, begging for release, for relief, for refuge from the heat of the blacktop that sparkles with broken glass that melts back into sand in a post-desert sun.
nighttime, broken bottles - remnants of a sordid evening alive at one time, the emerald and chestnut glinting shards beckon with the headlights of each passing car. all's silent, until a jet rips the sound barrier or a siren breaks from its sleep like a bat into flight. dread the sounds of this Goya scene, because at some point you will come to rely on them for solace. despise the shards of glass; at the same time the texture underfoot is like that of a stony beach, you will come to love it. dogs' barking into the post-midnight inky soup will come to be as the birds of the forest, so much so that you will know each yowl by name and face. each baby crying across the stucco and brick corridors will come like that wind that blows off the ocean and across your skin, chilling and comforting at the same time. you'll go to sleep one early autumn night and sleep the sleep of restful things, wake up to see the mountains on fire, go about your day as if the rapture were not rolling down from the north. amazing how the fires of fall can roar across the horizon and blot out the sun, cover entire neighborhoods in a blanket of soot (continuing the cycle of transformation of all things) and not invoke so much as a collective turn of the head in recognition of a very tangible something, the only real thing most people will ever witness in their urbane lives. and the mountains will smolder like a snubbed out 7,000,000 ton cigarette, as a reminder: we are merely wingless insects in trackless deserts beneath a huge magnifying glass

smoking