The Apple Pipe

a late cousin speaks

           Let’s walk to this open field where no one

can listen. As that murdered governor was to have said,

           Never write what you can say, never

say what you can imply, nor imply when a wink

           will suffice. Though I will stand here

with my thumb cocked & my forefinger straight, do not

           make too much of it when this hammer drops

& a puff of air, which at this distance no one else

           can hear, escapes my pressed lips. Like that girl

who said, slipping in the needle, like this, like

           this, as if it were a pool cue, you can believe me

now. Coffee is not my first vice, neither my last, but the one

           I begin the day with, the red bridge light

of Mr. Coffee turned on, promising that the buzzing lights

           of the world will be turned on, too. Sometimes

there’s cannabis, its dried flower tops broken in the bowl where first

           an apple stem is twisted off, where with one

sharp chopstick a bore is pressed down through the seed-darkened,

           chambered heart, which intersects a slightly

angled second vent, likewise tunneled out by the red & gold

           enameled stick. Hence, a pipe, by which one hit

can be drawn into the lungs, into the black blood,

           the now-illuminated day, to soothe the itch, if this be

the bent of need, for methadone, or what has been called

           the chemical life. And driving by, a woman

cannot hide her craving, the glass pipe & a white rock

           & her white face briefly blooming;—but some

wishes, unless spoken, not so obvious, as when

           a happy-looking couple splits up, goes down

respective aisles of their own kinks, she, the spit-

           roasting section, he, where DVDs promise milking mothers,

so that each, strangely partitioned, their heads just visible

           above the display racks of the mom-and-pop porn emporium,

as in that circle where in stalls or vats or livid clouds

           of wasps, stung by lust or greed, & close by they laugh

in recognition of each other & knowing that this is how,

at first, we practice happiness.