“SMOKE AND DOOM” is a richly atmospheric noir-gothic narrative poem that blends occult romance, dive-bar Americana, and supernatural suspense into a cinematic tale of betrayal and reckoning. The tone is smoky, seductive, and increasingly ominous, while the voice carries the swaggering cadence of a late-night folk ballad told by someone half-drunk and fully haunted. One of the poem’s greatest strengths is its immersive world-building: neon-lit bars, whiskey-soaked card tables, and spectral witchcraft merge seamlessly into a coherent emotional and visual landscape. The poem excels at momentum and escalation, moving from grounded details of gambling and masculine bravado into something mythic and uncanny without losing narrative clarity. Its imagery is especially vivid, creating a palpable supernatural tension that transforms a barroom into a ritual space. The recurring archetypes deepen the poem’s thematic obsession with temptation, jealousy, and fatal attraction. Written for the “A Shattered Cup of Doom” novella, this poem appears in the “Third Shards of Broken Glass” chapbook.
“SMOKE AND DOOM”
with taillights red, a witch ascends
and disappears around the bend
and out beyond his line of sight
she hooked a left when home was right
she soars off to master midnight
some old wolf who wears her bat bite
and wishes on this shooting star
and lives on main atop a bar
and downstairs where the neon burns
where whiskey rules and tables turn
and cut-throat spades and smoke and doom
a golden blonde entered the room
just playing cards and scarred and jinxed
while waiting on his midnight minx
and he was falling far behind
drew a two, bid seven blind
replete with beer and losing hands
and broken dreams and one night stands
he ate the minus seventy
and then the blonde pulled up a seat
and no one seemed to take it strange
how suddenly his luck had changed
she bucked up next to where he sat
and rubbed against him like a cat
and like new money on skid row
another round for all his bro’s
joking laughing bold and young
stuck in that old seattle grunge
no one heard them steps a-comin’
through the thudding and the strumming
but who could ever trust the moon
when sometimes midnight strikes too soon
unseen but all could smell the sin
like black smoke she just drifted in
and hovered there til she took form
and drew the wolf across the floor
the world stopped spinning, time had ceased
the witch drew all the air to breathe
a whisper from some black beyond
asked master midnight
who’s the blonde
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