poetryvlog.com

Welcome to poetryvlog.com
A weekly video reading of poetry by the poet.

The Smoker
by Alexandra van de Kamp

I do not wish to obscure
what is clean and unworried.
But it is true, I covet the small,
wandering stairway
that is smoke. It unfurls
its tenuous, deliberate ladder
down my throat.
It makes what was pure
misted with gray—a furry light
plummeting towards my heart.

With each drag, I row a supple enemy
towards my soul—smudging it over,
shading in places
that could have been unsmothered,
whole. Is this how I test the devil?
See if he'll arise out of me—
written in the black script
I've inhaled? How intimate
darkness is—we willingly
mingle it with our breath,
let it fill our lives
with a blackened wind.

By confusing myself into smoke,
I blur what is light and dark,
clear and clogged, and challenge
within myself the boundaries
of God. After such a collision,
what true essence
could survive?

One day my lungs'
shivering palaces, long bombarded,
will collapse. I am the constant metaphor
for what this world could be
but is not. The inner-vagueness
which breeds human error.
Each day I fail to live
out of the sure places I could.
And still, with this imperfect breath—
torn sail, sooty feather—

I try to love this world.

home