Here, this is for you
The name on the package is
Already Arrived.
Wave back to the sparkling now
Delivered by jumbling pasts
Quicksilver future bundled for travel
Bedraggled but Here.
Author Archives: Puff Of Smoke Poems
Warm Wishes
Warm wishes
for a little snow
come December
but just this once
Christmas Eve
will be
as warm
on the outside
So
go ahead and glow
soft or bright
whatever matches
your holiday heart
How Long Were You Married?
So long I forgot—
oranges tucked in the toes
of Christmas stockings
was your tradition, not mine.
One more thing
crossed off the shopping list
then added back in.
My mostly grown up children lost
undeliverable perfect childhoods
but will find, at least,
all the expected oranges
About To Be Authors
In the basement, there’s a hidden room
next to the ancient boiler.
Always warm, this is where their club meets—
the yet to be famous authors.
They have no cheerleaders or fight songs,
no spirit weeks or scoreboards.
It is a room for the dreamy-eyed.
Adventures rush through their heads,
their heads haloed with messy, flyaway hair.
It is a room crowded with spaceships and swords,
daring rescues, mythical creatures. Epic romance.
It is a room where the best story is this:
One reads aloud, then another.
When they receive, as advertised, only
Applause, bravery is poured into the air.
The quiet others
open their secret notebooks
and begin to speak
The Lion Daughters Of Mir Samir
this whole story is a poem—
on a once nameless height
young Afghan girls formerly
known as at home are on the move
These Lion Daughters of Mir Samir
call their mothers every night
homesick but ascending because,
the expedition leader explains,
The mountain needs to be climbed
Trimmed
Inordinate Guaranteed Enjoyment
is what the label should have said
on the box of glass and glitter
ornaments. When you have a choice
(and you have a choice) why
would you do any thing except
Open The Box?
these small nots
not the world which fails
but some small hard knot
Inside each of us, now
and then the part of us
that turns away the part
clutches hard the part
keeps you and I
apart
Story Of My Life
Story of my life: condensed version
this morning, I meant to
check my bank balance
but
with the time I had
wrote a poem
instead
December 14
one of those days when
some thing
restless and lost runs
its furtive race
along the baseboards
or through your heart
Pending Approval
for a while I posted
favorite poems to share
the gorgeous and true
masking-taped to the walls
by drinking fountains
copy machines bathroom doors
all the places we pause
But now there is a New Rule
signs must be approved
and stamped Approved
or be torn down
It’s some small comfort that
Shakespeare and Stafford,
Whitman and Rexroth
and all the others
will never know
if they made the cut
Puff Of Smoke Poems 