The Litter on the Sidewalk
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
Fred Aiken Writing 