Smoke Ring

Marley slaps the butt of wisdom

And begs a smoke from the choking man.

From her stool, she surveys life,
Takes a drag, and nags her neighbor,

“Give me your hat, Vince, you dented it all wrong.
The dip goes along here.”

She squints as the smoke laughs its lurid,
Snaking path past her bloodshot eyes.

And Vince gropes after his prop, the
Wince of uncrowned humility playing atop

A whine, “It’s mine, I want it like I had it.”
His habit carved in pine,

So easy to indent with her talons,
Smoothing the felt, replacing benevolence spent

In misused crags of his frown.
“You need a good woman,” she narrows it down.

Reading his fear with a sniff of regret
Before stubbing out her lent cigarette,

Brushing away a phantom curl and sliding
Her legs slowly against his in the hush of his terror.

Because what he wants is a good, stiff drink
To blind his mind to memory, blink away

The gal who once touched the brim of his ego
And smoothed the lick of him on her mouth.

A snort of mocking from the corner not meant for him
Locks down his ambivalence.

“You are a puzzle, Vince.”
She spreads her hands, laying them like cards on the bar,

Empty-handed, straight flush of vanity, sanitizing
His eyes with surrender.

“You give up so easy, but what you’ve got
Locked up in there is pure gold, you’ve sold me.

“You gotta give me the key, a hint at the
Combination.” His hesitation fills her chest.

She strokes her shoulder, consoling herself,
As she feels his soul freeze, his knees buckle.

“I don’t know, Marley,” he mutters to her toes.
She closes her eyes, “You don’t want to know.

“But that’s OK, Vince, I’ve got sense enough
To play one last song and go on home.”

She scoots her jeans from the stool and
Leaves a cool wake, stirring stagnant air.

She closes in on the juke box and
Bums a dime from the bouncer draped over the neon sign.

Three good cries for a quarter, a dime buys just one.
She bites her lip and sighs before pressing the confession

Of a temptress: Willie Nelson, a man crossing the line
In dress, intention, not to mention convention.

That seals the distress. Vince will wait out the rest
Of the night alone. He, too, will go on home,

Leaving comfort for the known sour sheets
And incomplete thoughts of a man who’s grown

Narrow and cold in the safety of his jingling coins,
Mismatched socks, and sweat-sogged boots.

His head burns with what might have ignited
Within at her caress, what the mess of his life

Might have fractured into, letting in the fire
Of feeling again… The pulse of voiced pain,

The gain of laundered thoughts of a man insane
From his injuries. As he flees even the mildest degree of sympathy,

Marley saunters to his thighs, dips his hat with a tap and
Stares hard into his hazel eyes.

“If not me, let someone in,” she grins, as he places a
Trembling hand at the nape of her moist neck

And tastes the cigarette, the rum and coke, the choking
Spit of regret in her sweet mouth before jerking away in liquid anger,

The nerve twitching in his face, the stroke breaking through his consciousness.
He hears the bell, the itch of escape, but his boots stay

On the rung of his chair, and he sees her hair brushing
Her cheek. He tries to speak, but the air becomes too thick with need.

So he grasps his hand behind her head, as a tear from the sting of smoke,
Or the spring of relief,  traces her nose to her rosebud lips.

He licks this salt, eats her anguish, ingesting it, his diet not deferred--
He dines on his own often.

“Maybe two deads are better than one,” she quips. Then his lips again
Meet hers in forced risk.

She lifts his hat and flattens her curls with its damp weight,
Crawling inside his psyche to transfer

His prayers to her God. She reaches in with veteran fists
To wrestle free his dimming spirit, as faces flash before his reddened vision.

He presses against her, crumbled at last, his past fresh before
Her blinking gaze, a haze of sacrifice.

A smoke ring rises from the ashes, signaling the flash
Of change in the timbre of a worn out man’s survival.

“Strange how I can be with you,” he murmers to the drawl
Of the music and the stench of swollen consequence.

They’ll share a view of a dying star from
His roof, proof that salvation comes in a bar.