Fred Aiken Writing

I found a pack of Camel cigarettes on the sidewalk

with a note tacked onto it that read, ‘if u found these, then kep ’em, cause I gots no use four ’em’,

and when I looked inside I saw that there were no cigarettes,

which either meant the person that left the note either smoked them all and was playing a drawn-out farce

on strangers whose reactions they’d never see, or someone else found the Camels, smoked them, and promptly put the note and empty pack back where they found them,

or a secret community of nicotine-addicted forest animals scurried off with their newly discovered

cancer treasure to smoke gaily through the meadows, while feasting on a fleeting buzz

synthesizing through their nervous system in paralytic fashion,

as their bones become slave to an unnamed craving that wakes them up in the middle of the night

to hunt, the owl slicing through the sky, trapping, the scent of hypnotic musk alluring its prey

through thickets built to last millennia in swamps surrounding ecologically sound diaspora

found smoking behind the oak wood,

catching fire,

lighting up, right, down, to the endless step-in-step-out crossover fit,

burn it all down,

though maybe I’m reading too much into it and litter’s just litter to the common man’s mist