Behind The Leaves
[ On SMOKING ]


In smoking I am
trying out the detachment of packet love

absorbed in the pall of the person,
self-wrapped behind a smokescreen,

a pipedreamer who takes ‘Time’ out
from tasks, from people, (and mouthing)

to roll-up, retract, light-up,
and take ash-space for myself
also going to be dead.

The smoke I inhale is more
the breather I know I need
than the urge for smoke inside me.

Yet smoke does set a person apart
for, as fag-mouther, butt-sucker,

I tell myself I am no thrall joiner
no quick-grip conformist, even
if unweaned.

I puff all the signs
of the fire dragon from my nose,
taking draconian measures, to act
impregnable as a dragon, a ruse
my self-conscious self likes.

In the drag I am firing myself up,
I say protesting, a moratorium in space and time
for my snail-soul to catch up the pace
of real immensities,

the Goliath’s, battle fronts,
which I fear would
otherwise quell me.

There is weakness; a fag dragon.

Firebreathing a detachment from immensities
belies the limbo I’m out in,

sucking my fragile
soul through paper tubes,
filtered through the smouldering
stuff of poisonous foliage

which go one better
than the fig leaves
behind which Adam and Eve
covered their butt from God,
but fashionable enough till now.

1990 © Wayne David Knoll 2002