Poem: Coffin Nails

 

Coffin Nails

 

a chain gang of creatures

that never made it to the Ark,

sins not cleansed in the Flood,

raspy dinghies of thought and air,

 

each launched

from the phlegm-dock of the last,

rising on smoke rings of foreclosed death,

born to grapple and die

in wispy tentacle embers.

 

this shadow broth 

of poisonous gas mimes slow,

imps of twist which screw and strangle to cinch,

their incense rooty and frayed,

kelp-like brianchiae

splayed and left by dried out lungs.

 

another camel, another winston, another marlboro,

gone,

burned as the brief high of Icarus,

hissed from a pyre of puckered lips,

of rattle and ooze,

of torpid gestures from an old thrillseeker,

now a prophecy of throat.

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My grandmother was a chain smoker.  Constant clouds of smoke.