chain smoking
cigarettes at dee’s café
the air looks purple and hazy
the weather man on the big screen tv
keeps telling me it’s going to snow again and again
a book on the beatles open
reading like ancient history
on brand new tables that don’t wobble
the way that they used to
four pints of bud in my stomach
another in front of me on the bar
the memories of this place
a tidal wave of long lost nights
pool sticks and puking vodka on porches
lemon drops licked off the thumbs
of available young women
pitchers of beer poured over heads
the nicotine hair
the nicotine clothes
my nicotine hands enveloping her nicotine fingers
they say the older you get the more things change
the more they stay the same
and the places that you used to go
clean themselves up or they go to shit
they rot
they fade to black
they become indifferent new strangers
any way
they no longer belong to you
and i realize this
as i sit there contemplating this new draft
rolling years off of my tongue
like brittle yellow parchment
a stranger in a strange land
that i used to call home
one of the oldest men in this joint tonight
waiting for my wife
while these kids keep sitting here
talking over the ghost of me
chain smoking cigarettes
at dee’s café
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