Mr Writer

Mr Writer, I have watched you with your blank inch of cigarette

blowing blue air at the moon, one fluttering streetlamp

lighting you in your crowd of smoking-girls, their slim legs

bending like lilies. You shrug in your coat, suck in nicotine,

tender veins quiet with chemicals.

Streetlamps hum between laughter.

The girls light their umpteenth cigarette, dying for a rhyme

and a kiss, thinking you a wordsmith, the unbitten man, uninterested.

I drain my glass and cradle it like a small skull.

Drunk enough, I could ask it a question

about you or the meaning of Life.

How the alcohol reds cling on and on 

like the night wrapped around a blue rooftop,

the girls open-mouthed with laughter, or you being lyrical,
breathing smoke to a huddle of stars.