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.