Smoke

Thirteen times the dreams came to me like ghosts
Riding the waves of each episode,
Leaving ghoulish trails inside my head
until only sleep could relieve me of their stench,
of their ugly melancholic clouds:
clouds like bracken smoke,
like the heathen, putrid, gnawing smoke
That refuses to be shaken out of your coat
the day after you've returned from your night of drink
a night on some or the other cataclysmic brink.

That sinking feeling

As if it weren't already so damn tough
to keep these things together
in one place behind a straight face,
this space is losing trace
of any semblance of who I used to be
or the thoughts I used to see.