at the molecular level

the smell of metal on a cold day
is terrifying. in a train yard,
for example,
all that cold metal, tracks,
trains, parts of trains,
steel bolts, sliver-angled iron shafts
holding the tracks to the
icy ground. terrifying. awful.
to be trapped there for
even a few moments, the
warmth being sucked right out
of your body and into
all that cold flat gray metal.
terrifying.
you can smell the near-frozen grease.
**
in a sculpture garden on
a cold day -- all those
statues of naked men
and naked women in
vibrant active poses; they
look like they should be
warm, but they're not -- they're
cold, icy, same temperature
as the coldness that surrounds
them, perhaps even colder,
and you, alone in
that sculpture garden
on a cold cold day.
you can smell the frosty bronze.
**
makes you long for
heat -- perhaps you think
of hot sexy naked young
men on hot sandy beaches
under the blazing sun,
lying there in the
sand, their arms and
legs wrapped around each
other, there on the hot
sandy beach under the
blazing sun.
you can smell the tanginess of
slippery suntan lotion on tawny,
shiny, pheromonally-charged young skin.
**
in the train yard, in
the sculpture garden,
on the beach, on hot days,
on hot days when
metal radiates
heat instead of sucking it up,
things go on there,
in the summer, on hot
days, coins strewn haphazardly on
the hot sand, flesh and cigarettes
and booze, the dead cold
a banished thought, an
unspoken word, a fear
that foments revolution.
you can smell the smoke.

--Carl Miller Daniels (This poem also appears in my book Gorilla Architecture, published by Interior Noise Press in 2011.)