Asthmatic sereneness
induced by your sleep
chokes me awake

to find Marlboro stubs
brimming an ashtray by the sink

a day’s rank ash

charred by jealousy
hot-boxed by suspicion.

Your cigarette voice ignited it
with a hacked response

exhaling smoky words
drifting from the table
through planks of morning light
slanting in the kitchen window

a pungent blend
of contrived deceptions

curling blue grey
from a vanilla veneer
of porcelain perfection

packing lines you tend to repeat
with caustic words when you speak.

The way you abuse
second hand emotions around you

ignoring signs of despair
broken sticks of conscience
misused like an old habit

is detrimental to the mental
health
of any who care.

You hook their trust
with a smile staining lips

your words
a black spot on the tongue

picked from the back of your teeth

until feelings become snubbed
under a heart’s unwashed feet.

About the Author

A’keith Walters

A’keith Walters (pen-name, Gray) was born in bustling Houston Texas in 1956 and has lived there all his life. He enjoyed his university years and received his B.A. in English Literature in 1978, with a minor in general sciences. After nine unrewarding years in banking and a life and death struggle with alcohol and drugs, Gray is living proof one can drink oneself almost to death and still survive. He is very proud of his lifetime membership in AA since 1988. Gray is now in semi retirement, utilizing his professional experience to attend to the daily business and lives of his two elderly parents. He is an avid collector of black and white photography. Gray was recently shaken by the loss of his life partner of twenty-one years, and this among other things, drove him to pick up the creative pen again.

Gray’s primary occupation these days is the creation of a body of poetics for eventual publication, an endeavor that was just recently started during the past year.