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smoking
is not an activity
he is a banished man for
a time because
his wife hates cigarettes. He tries to
understand this
as he sits in the hallway
in his own smoky exile
feeling like Trotsky without an agenda.
And because "smoking is not an activity"
he makes it one,
bringing books with him to his
Siberia of vapors. The neighbors
can't understand it (nodding
neighbors
who don't use adjectives), they speculate
that his wife has allergies, or that there is
a nightly misunderstanding that plants him
in the hallway smoking and reading,
his wife, perhaps, in the bath, surrounded by
scented candles. He thinks of
when, long ago,
there were smoking rooms,
and further back in history
no one read silently. You might have been
a heretic to do so and what were you hiding
anyway, with only your eyes moving? It made
people nervous and ready to gather stones and
who knows? In an undeciphered world perhaps
you get what exile you deserve. A hallway,
a half-smoked cigarette, a book
written by a dead man open on your lap.
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