Poem: It's the Cigarettes

The secret, common drug of the writing community.

It's the Cigarettes The writers in Prague, our shabby bunch     who’ve left others to wonder at the leaving Where some profess to come for noiselessness,     the contemplative silence of an unspoken language Still others from failed loves or the pressures     of that ever-upward mobility back there,     the strangling, dangling, wrangling     push of everything that’s home But I’ll square with you and tell a truth     that must be told, so listen up The thing that binds us all, that holds us here It’s the cigarettes Language in its full, rich velvety lustiness,     or thin, squeaky tremulous tone     has always found its voice, however written     in pubs and coffeehouses Hung with smoke, yellowed, peeling, hazy, friendly places     of conversation drawn out in drifted clouds None left back home, all ferns, brass and smokeless,     The thin veneer of words sealed and re-circulated ionized, sanitized, rarified and clarified ‘till nothing’s left of sweat, nicotine belligerence and argument Liquor doesn’t make writers and poverty’s overrated It’s the cigarettes To hell with being shoved outside in guilty congregation,     bringing a whole new meaning to huddled masses Down with the smoke-police and up with ashtrays,     call the Liggets and the Meyerses to barricades     and set a place for old Joe Camel’s field of fire Prague settles back in smokiness, lights up, mellows out     and welcomes us, passes its tribal pipe If something good should come from that,     don’t tell me Prague’s the Paris of the nineties     or speak of Hemingway or F. Scott Fitz There’s magic of a different kind that haunts this air It’s the cigarettes

This poem is included in Jim Freeman's poetry collection THE SMELL OF TWEED AND TOBACCO available here in print or as an e-Book in your favorite formats.