Author Archives: Puff Of Smoke Poems

Again, this morning ritual
the alarm, the awkward scramble for the snooze button
so I can hurry after the tail of that last dream
before it slips out the window.
But now the door between worlds is drifting open
and I wonder if we need milk or what day it is or remember
an early morning meeting requiring coffee and donuts and what flavor
donuts and the real world
has wound itself around me again, like a cat
rubbing against your ankles.
I try to wake just enough to shoo it away
but it’s too late, that other world is gone again
Except for the certainty that it included elephants
and lace.

January and everyone I know
who regrets
all they ever ate and drank–
which includes everyone I know–
is on a cleanse diet. Like the one person
who never gets the flu, I though I was immune
since each magazine’s Earnest Diet
begins with a No-Coffee rule,
the whim of a madman.
But all those photos next to the recipes
finally captured me too—
dark purple radicchio, orange squash, lemon yellow,
bright green leaves I can’t pronounce the names of–
It’s marketing genius on their part,
all these fruits and vegetables,
to look the way they do
when our eyes are starved
hungry for red, craving green,
yearning to be filled
in this winter world cleansed of color.

I want to stay there,
at the Hotel Mandalay
Which I read about in the newspaper.
I don’t remember where in the world it is,
The Hotel Mandalay–
but I read that if a guest catches flu while traveling,
the staff at the Hotel Mandalay brings a tray
with a bowl of chicken soup,
a glass of ginger ale
and a get well card.
And now that I’ve written its name
so many times, I’ve changed my mind—
I want a job there. I want a reason
to say, every time I’m asked
where I work, “Oh,” I cay say,
“I work at the Hotel Mandalay”
which is not even close
to the worst reason I’ve
kept a job. When the interviewer
asks me why I’m applying
I’ll tell him or her that I must
have this job and not just because of
the kindness of the chicken soup
or even way the word rolls off the tongue
luxurious as chocolate
It’s how it flows onto paper like
writing the word luxurious.

When ordinary life sails away,
becomes a ship in the distance, then gone,
you can finally hear the sounds of the dock.
It creaks in the ebb and flow of waves,
the bump of mighty fish hidden
among the seaweed and the pilings.
Wind and salt have worn away the paint,
left you standing on bare and splintered wood.

You still have choices.

You can fall in love with the dock,
with studying the slivers of paint left behind
with waiting to see what happens next.

You can gather your breath and dive into the sea,
swimming hard, chasing the life that’s already left.

Or turn toward shore—
leave the ship, the dock,
walk into the town.
Buy a basket of bread and oranges
and keep walking till you
reach a new story.

On the road to the doctor,
radio silence for your nerves,
The Cranberries blasting in my head,
singing about life’s habit of changing every day,
we passed a battered junkyard
with a sandwich board out front.

                      Buy
                    Kittens
                   Used Cars
                For Sale Here

is what the sign said.
I considered the possibilities
in waiting rooms for the rest
of the day. Thank you,
thoughtful proprietor
for your kind restraint
in the use of punctuation,
for letting me wonder
what it all means.