He was the last of forty-four.
Educated killers in clean boots.
The best, they said, then broke.
Forty-three went into stone.
Into fluorescent burrows, teeth bared.
They fought until numbers meant nothing.
Then only one kept breathing.
It should have been two survivors.
We flipped a coin, like drunks.
One takes tags, letters, names.
The other stays with the sun.
A fusion bomb, hand-detonated.
I don't know if I won. I'm alive, still, technically speaking. But the room eats silence whole.
Shadow screams behind my ribs.
I turn around, you're there.
Cigarette trembling in cheap ash.
Then I blink; you're gone.
Dreams lie like bar mirrors.
They show you, then sell you.
I searched alleys of sleep.
Your name slipped through my fingers.
When it was time, you vanished.
To prove some brutal splendor.
I never bet on miracles.
I miss you before knowing.
Like hunger, beginning with b.
Paff puff
I smoke you like a cigarette
Paff puff
And then again paff puff
I am addicted to you.
Cigarette butts tossed to wind.
Planet earth seemingly one big dirty ashtray.
A simple question of respect.
Also major cause of 'accidental' forest fires.
AP: Honorable Mention 2025
**Cleaners**
~ O.P.E.N ~
Mon-Fri: 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Sat: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Sun: Closed
- 7a.m. 7°C -
The key scratches
alongside the knob,
cobwebs capture
every corner of the door.
The cold air thumps
against the windows,
as the lightbulb flickers
morning and night
in the gaps of the ceiling
outside the barely
shut door.
Underneath,
reddish pigment cover
the bricks and the cracked
mortar spews out moss,
releasing all creatures
from its remnants.
Squirming around,
tossing about surrounding
the cigarette bud left
from last winter.
The distant air smells
of cheap store bought coffee
mixed with gasoline.
Above rests a pair of shoes,
tarnished from all the weather,
tangled since last year.
The shoes aged
along with the time
whereas the boy,
since last winter,
dissipated
with the once lit
cigarette,
As white blankets
the grounds,
the embers sparks
rises with the ashes
up the telephone wire,
I barely remember
the time,
that boy
never came back.
Edited (7.18.26):
1.18.17 ~ 2.19.18
i die in november
whenever it comes around
under the smoke rising from fire
someone burning, someone long-gone
and then time decides to slow down
i die in november
whenever it comes around
i sit at the station, smoking a cigarette
as a way to calm myself
and fight my anxiety before i get drown
The difference between ‘to borrow’ and ‘to bum’
~ a weather-beaten book or a fresh stick of gum
My Aunt Ruby was a bingo fanatic.
Every Friday she'd get her hair done ~
a visit to the 'Strands To Go' salon.
She left feeling like a graceful queen.
Friday nights were sacred at the bingo hall.
She'd pull out her money from her purse
and buy as many bingo cards as possible
then head to her favourite table to wait.
She'd light a cigarette to calm the nerves
and say a little prayer hoping to win big.
Someone had to win the jackpot ~ why not her.
She prepared her dabber and braced herself.
The bingo caller was always right on time.
Her cards always ready and perfectly aligned.
She waited with bated breath for numbers called
loud and clear as they possibly could be.
And so it was that every week on Friday,
Aunt Ruby spent her time doing what she loved best:
smoking, dabbing, and chatting among other devotees
... even coming home odd times with some cash winnings.
AP: 1st place 2025
You are like smoking a cigarette
I am addicted to your kisses and hugs
At three am at the park
Meanwhile I touch your smooth skin
And hear your beautiful voice.
I’m seventeen.
I have not smoked.
I attend my classes regularly.
I still haven’t gotten my permit.
I’m unattainable, and slightly unattractive.
The smoky fumes of the cigarette surround the air;
not from my mouth, but rather my mother’s.
She looks stressed as she puffs in and out the concentrated smoke.
Her forehead frowns beneath a soft smile.
I have not lived her life.
She has not lived mine.
I feel her frustrations now
and worries.
My lips now touch the same burning cigarette.
Cigarette Smokers
In a world tainted by pollution and smog you're adding to the problem
Please don't think for a second that electric cigarettes will solve them
Cigarettes wouldn't be half bad if they just took the smoker out
It isn't fair that it kills those who wouldn't put one to their mouth
Parents smoke but would brake out in a rage if their children tried
What if each pack kept up with the growing number who died
Each smoker fails to realize what they smell and look like
The x-rays of their lungs to the doctors must be a horrible sight
They should ask themselves if this nasty habit is worth dying over
Are they recognizing with each puff their calling death much closer
What ingredients makes up the tobacco anyway
I heard rat poison makes up some of it so is that ok
Who's worse, neighborhood drug dealers or the tobacco company
They both make money from the lives they take if you're asking me
It’s whispers.
Can you hear them?
I don’t want to,
but they force me to.
Sitting in an empty room,
with no one—
just a cigarette in my hand.
Every time it touches my lips,
it kills me
and makes me want to avoid it—
I know that cigarette is not good for me,
but I like doing something
I know is going to kill me.
But he likes that I do that—
killing myself, he whispered to me,
saying, “Can we switch places?”
I said, “How can I get into the wall?
You are a shadow.”
But how…
I was talking to a shadow
in a room
completely empty and dark.
The whispers say to me:
“Look at me.
Look at the darkness,
and feel both sides of it
that you don’t think exist.”
I thought something was wrong.
I kept hearing him
until he said:
“Come closer…
to someone else in the room,
because my name isn’t dead.”
When I turned on the light,
I saw nothing
but my shadow dancing in front of me,
my body frozen, watching.
And when I looked back,
something was coming out of the wall
with a cigarette,
saying to me:
“I like doing something
I know is going to kill me."
On a warm, dew-weakened day,
Watching the grey void of a lost
Sense, anxious moments recline
On whiffs of ancestral propitiations
When rafters regain possession of
Filched roast fish, balanced with
The fumes of a wild dance heckled
By chokes of a chagrined weekend.
Who rises faster than smokes of a
Low tar, ascending
Gently,
Whimsically,
Lazily,
With rings of white life
Extinguished through banalities,
Through clamoured waste? . . .
Such rise — gay, sensuous rise
Of the thin beam,
Goes with every thread of meaning
Long since posted on the banner of
Meaningful dreams.
Just one more taste.
Just one more hit.
How I miss your smoky, ashy, charred aroma, that taste.
Your smoky, ashy, charred aroma haunts me, begging me to take one hit.
Just one more inhale.
That smoky, ashy, charred aroma, taste of that rebellious girl I once knew.
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