Smoke Break Poem by Lamont Palmer

Rings are made: gaseous jewels.
Through the corner of the mouth
The world is rising and falling

Slowly; cities white and misty
Are under her eyes, around her head,
Near her resolve, doomed to linger.

Afternoon oddly blackens moods.
A poverty of spirit shades
Recrimination in ten minute intervals,

But there is never more time;
Miniscule pleasures come
In short breaths. Now comes misfortune:


If she's late for her drudgery,
She'll be there with purposeless eyes;
No doubt settled into wary sockets,

Because where else could she be?
Perhaps on Coastal Highway, being a friend,
Or on hills, near skiers, far removed?

Nothing expands but the chest
Of her; nothing can expand
Or grow. Nicotine eyes

Know deadness, know the shop
Walls, knows what holding them up
May mean; exasperation,

An infinite searching,
Slipping through cold clean air.
Everything is alive and nothing

Lives. Inhaling breaks
The distance, the heights
Between low clouds and

The open tears. Exhaling
Releases the only ghosts known,
Lingering within vacations of grayness.