-First smoke-

Near twilight and I'm riding shotgun

In the '57 Mercury Turnpike Cruiser as it sits
Like a stone in sculpted sheet-metal at the curb

In front of Mike Lipsky’s house.

We’re too young to drive,

We don't have "permission" to smoke cigarettes

And my sneakered feet are resting

On the dashboard, its girth running door to door.

My mouth is dragging cautiously 

On one of two Pall Mall's

Mike lifted from his old-man's pack the night before,

The open pack foolishly abandoned on the easy chair's armrest

At the close of late night television.   

Now the smoke's penetrating harshness

Is stinging the back of my throat,

Burning the inside walls of my nostrils.

The late Friday afternoon in August is clear

And the smoke is drifting

Through the Mercury's open windows.

The plan is in place;

Smoke a couple of long Pall Mall cigarettes

Then chew a few sugary sticks of "Juicy Fruit" gum
In an attempt to mask the scent of tobacco at the frantic

Supper tables.

Mike's puffing away behind the wheel
Pretending to wind through the heavy Mercury's

Three speed "Merc-O-Matic" transmission
As a pine-scented deodorizer in the shape of a tree,
(Purchased from Chasidor Leo's Variety Store)

Hangs from the dashboard radio's knob
In our clueless attempt to perfume the interior.

How beautifully the ejected blue-

Grey smoke expands its shape, adding

The colors of nature into surrounding space

Like the veil of the Crab.

But a side-yard away, standing at the living-

Room window of his house, my father

Is grinning with a cool disposition  

And with a mouthful of Pall Mall smoke exhaled

To beautify the atmosphere, I see him.

This is why the condemned consent

To a blindfold at the wall.

Home from work early

He's close enough that through the lifted

Set of venetian blinds I clearly

Map-out the whiteness of his dress-shirt,

The ballpoint pen protruding upward from its pocket

Attached to the riven cover of his sales ledger and lastly
The dark-blue narrow tie with its nifty clip attached.

(This tie clip is like all the tie-clips

Of all the salesmen on the road;

A gold-plated bar

Fastened too tightly into the shirt

Causing a disturbing tension

In the material at the button-hem

And In the middle of the clip,

A recess holds a square

Of fake black onyx with a little fake

Diamond glued in the center of the onyx.)

The grin of my father’s mouth

Seems an inch from my face

And when he sees that I've noticed him

Through the hanging smoke

His grin expands to a smile

Worthy of a Hollywood slasher.

He’s young enough for a full set of teeth.

Frozen, with a non-retrievable

Pall Mall cloud simmering at my face,

The Mercury Turnpike Cruiser becomes a metal tomb,

The smoke of tobacco shivering in the atmosphere
Like the anxious testimony of a stool-pigeon.

Dissipating slowly in its muted blues

The remnant of the great Pall Mall fails in the end
As I had failed at the face of my father, the skin of my own face

Inheriting the khaki color of nicotine. —

And I longed for the blindfold standing before the wall,

Not for the smoke of a last cigarette,

And pissed in my pants the way all of them do.