Author Archives: Puff Of Smoke Poems

A year for sorry you didn’t
move to a hemisphere
where April would behave but
then she pats your arm with her
cool damp hand and suggests
a nap. Who are you to argue?

Travel with the given season.
Prop your head against the
grimy window close your eyes
doze till the train jolts to a stop
at the edge of Spring. Someone
washed the windows while you slept
this world is one lush sweep of green
and April? April’s walking away
without even a wave and you promise
yourself to be sweeter to her
next year.

Before,
Imagine travel by plane
to Amaze new sights faces you’ll
never see again oh, the stories
and then the departure boards
full of cities you may
you could
decide to visit right now
by walking through
a different gate

But every time
instead
it smells stale
the other faces tired and
not looking at anything but
where they wish
to have never left
or dream they’ve already arrived
The journey itself lost on us

five a.m., fat yellow moon
poses on the neighbor’s roof
Waits
while I fish the air for words
Moon yawns, says, I told you
it had to be a short one

 
who knows who you just
Missed
rounding the corner
a second too late?

that keeper of cool
that proselytizer of poems
gone thirty years
by the time we meet

No matter.

Bob bops into my brain
fills me with fine instructions on
the folding of sorrows
Deep inside, my frantic self calms
some thing small but vital clicks into place
just as this morning’s birds begin

being transformed to who knows what
we discover and we wisely cherish
this view—cottage full of women
with our gray hair, aging parents,
emptied nests, non-lethal medical
conditions Oh what comfort for those
young careless girls we were to grow
into this, all our selves
Reflected
in a loud shiny gaggle
of laughing mirrors

haiku and rain meet
in the forest to tell tales
and hear each other

That grizzled tough guy
leather cap
battered Harley jacket
scuffed work boots?
Turns out, he makes
snickerdoodle cookies for a living—
French bread, apple pies, pink
frosted cupcakes too. With sprinkles.
Doesn’t this constant unlikeliness
make you leap out of bed each day?
Life keeps itself lively and full of
alliterative amusement for us all
like today, the day we met
that biker baker

April drizzles by
bad tempered seat-mate
on a long trip by slow train
The local—which stops
everywhere whether there’s
a there
there
or not

some days you lose that
small gratefulness for
what doesn’t shake the world
but opens you to turn
your face to the sun
even for a minute to be
thankful for remembering
how to imitate a flower
any flower even the tiniest
strawberry blossom

Slow Down
is what I
whisper or yell
to every single thing. Listen
to that, wind rushing as always
Smell the bacon frying mingled
with your aftershave both of you
egged on by the sun that wants
to rise and get on with the day
Oh, for crying out loud, I cry
out loud
Could you all just settle down
sit and love this dark minute we’re here
in the middle of?
Well–No, says the whole planet
hurtling Forward