YA CAN'T SMOKE

in hospitals,
sanitariums, on beaches,
in pool rooms, movie theaters,
restaurants/diners/dives,
in subway stations or
airports. Ya can't smoke
in churches or temples,
or saloons nursing
your last call
while hugging the wood;
ya can't smoke
in apartments and offices
and trailer parks and boatyards;
and you can't smoke around babies
and the near dead
and the demented and deformed
and spiritual and con men
counterfeiters, confabulists
contortionists and
the forsaken.

But you can
& are encouraged to
contribute to every condition
that gives rise
to disturbance & disease
that births that lazily uplifting cloud
of tubular and cylindrical sooth saying
and soothing.

Yeah, sure
I'll put it out.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017