It's the Cigarettes

The writers in Prague, this shabby bunch
who've left others to wonder at the leaving
Where some profess to come for noiselessness
that contemplative silence of an unspoken language
Still others from failed loves or the pressures
of that ever upward mobility
the strangling, dangling, wrangling
push of everything that's home
But I'll square with you and tell the 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 lustiness
or thin, squeaky tremulous tone
has always found its voice, however written
n pubs and coffeehouses hung with smoke
yellowed, peeling, hazy friendly places
of conversation drawn out in drifted clouds
None like this left back home, all ferns and brass
a thin veneer of words sealed and recirculated
ionized, sanitized, rarified and clarified
'till nothing's left of sweat, nicotine or honesty
Liquor doesn't make writers and poverty's overrated

It's the cigarettes

To hell with being shoved outside in guilty congregation
bringing a 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 to sit down
Prague settles back in smokiness, lights up, mellowes 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