ODE  8316
TO ALBERT HUFFSTICKLER

It was a bad day
but I knew something
 was good  about it.

I pulled a deap waft
of smoke into my mouth
as far down the thoratic cavity
as it would go
before it hit my stomach.

Then slowly I let the smoke
flow, like poetry, first ramdomly
out of my mouth until I could catch a
drift with my nostrils.
Then I slowly
inhaled two thick
runners of smoke
through my nose,
directly into my brain.

Then she walked in to the room.
It was a coffee shop
with portrait of an old man
wrything in red and black self torment
The title of the painting was
internal portrait number 8316.

Yes, in to the room a woman walked.
I knew at that moment,
that if I were a piece of thread
in the strap of her bra,
I would  not be so all alone.

Suddenly, the problems of
hunger, the increasing
reproductive sterility of  living species,
and world war disappeared
like the smoke--yes,
I am an efficient smoker--
like the smoke that seeps into
and disappears in the dark recesses of my brain.
 

By Jeff Woodruff, the NetherWorld Poet
Austin, Texas