Smoke curls out his lips
Billowing in clouds around his face
The yellow cigarette providing no consolation
He wants to smell
The bitter poison of alcohol
Pouring endlessly in drink after drink
The scent of cement
Covering secrets and erasing mistakes
The stench of sweat dripping
Marijuana unfurling
Through the streets of New York.
He wants to hear
The angry taxi drivers swearing,
Honking horns and fights brewing
Hear the screams of girls late at night
The tearing of fabric and then,
Silence.
He wants to see the lights,
The color of the neon signs
Hanging over the desolate bars and clubs
Beckoning the lonely man into a whirl of confusion,
desperation,
and despondance.
So different than the poverty
The sad children walking with cracked feet
The scheming, thieving market keepers
His country is sad to him
It holds him back from who he wishes to be.
The cigarette blows out
A yellow stub in his hands
He tosses it to the ground and steps on it,
Leaving it behind as if it's nothing.
He is that cigarette, he realizes.
A yellow stub in the hands of an unsatisfied man,
Stomped on and left behind
Like he's nothing.