A General Warning

Smoke from pursed lips wafts and wends Its crooked path from lung to grave, For a second perched in my trembling hand, Quiet like a wisp of snipe stuck in a hazy bog, Trapped in a swamp of sin and vice, As a cool death eyes my troubled ghost, My wailing spirit, suckled by this dry teat Lit by an orange light, a weary puff blown By a whisp of breath, as pale fire Burns the warp and woof of a tired soul, But days and nights no longer matter, Could that be death at my chamber's door? The call of night too loud to silence, A maddening rap upon the window Of this threadbare, smoke-filled room, Where sleepless on this bed, a casket really, Through the floor I fall, into the ground, Till with a final puff of smoke I am no more.