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Dave Bonta
I mistook dysphoria for euphoria once on purpose, and it almost worked. When you live in the forest, winter—not summer—is the season of light. And so an empty plate became the full moon, and the mouse in my filing cabinet was a companion animal. I could sometimes hear her late at night, shredding my old poems for nesting material. I meanwhile was building a cenotaph out of cigarette butts. My disemboweled television watched over me while I slept.
last cigarette
as long as grass grows
or rivers run
To bite into a chicken’s fried leg
And tear it with a twist of the head
Lick the morsel stuck on the cheek
With the gravy dribbling down the chin…
To light and draw deep on a cigarette
And watch the plume rising
Or the rings reluctantly vanishing
Gazing at the clouds rolling by…
To fondle a glass of whisk y
And listen to the ice clinking
The nip in the air fading
As the cool breeze waltzes by…
To stretch back on the park bench
And ruminate on nothing
Content, still, fulfilled
And admire a young girl passing by…
Only until this cigarette is ended,
A little moment at the end of all,
While on the floor the quiet ashes fall,
And in the firelight to a lance extended,
Bizarrely with the jazzing music blended,
The broken shadow dances on the wall,
I will permit my memory to recall
The vision of you, by all my dreams attended.
And then adieu,--farewell!--the dream is done.
Yours is a face of which I can forget
The color and the features, every one,
The words not ever, and the smiles not yet;
But in your day this moment is the sun
Upon a hill, after the sun has set.