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
Some days, I’m still fighting the urge to light a cigarette—missing those rippling ribbons of smoke and the way they would uncoil in the dark, humid air. I’ve been coughing so much lately, and my lungs will hardly expand for any air that isn’t polluted at the source. I’ve been hacking up my lungs, and each time it feels like trying to drag them out through my throat just to see how charred they’ve become. I ignore any signs of disease—any signs of my own actions catching up to me—all because I’m so afflicted and so addicted to slowly ending my own life. Undoing the veiny strings of my body for no reason other than my love for being unhappy, only allowing myself to breathe the poison I think I deserve. After long nights, when my daydream canopies crumble, I always wish to commit blasphemy for you again—treat your white ash like the god I sometimes think stopped loving me long ago. I wish I could still believe the burning in my chest when I run is the only thing that will save me from a future that’s not home—because it saves me from a world where I feel like all I am is my flesh and bones.
Massaging me with body oil,
I am now your woman to spoil.
My hair’s become ringlets.
With an arch in the jacuzzi,
I lay back let you taste me.
String pearls and cigarettes.
There is an absence of my voice,
save an inarticulate noise.
The sound of a branding.
Your adept hands apply pressure,
hit that line of pain and pleasure.
My heart’s understanding.
Where do you end and I begin?
My safe word is ‘Separation’.
Manicured nails cut glass.
Mirrors left completely shattered,
lips left soiled and tattered.
Pure lux in sassafras.
Dropped the receiver, when Jill tried to phone
my old retriever, won’t pick up his bone
no more beer or cigarettes
I’m still here, with my regrets
she’s in Geneva, with that guy, Jerome.
Cleverness in chaos.
Twisted mischief threads
beneath razor intellect.
Urban antiquity,
out of place,
sherry to eyelash to eye.
Her cigarettes go better
with beer wisdom and
starry sky humidity.
Grand Dame, ferocious girl.
Lead me up a garden path that
stings until 5am on barren streets.
Vampiric. Languid.
There is no elegant sufficiency,
no want contained.
Faded lilies.
Threadbare wisdom swings
to giggling gallows below, aloft.
One more drink?
Reckless friend, take my hand
and drag me sweetly away.
These walls that lie before me are all I have left of my past
The scars bring back the memories I wish I didn't have
Enclose me in your boiling rain in which I can't escape
Cut myself with my lies and all of my mistakes
This place feels like Eden to the world outside
No love, no pain or sorrow, just a place where I can hide
I regret ignoring all of your advice
Now I wish I listened because it could've saved my life
But if I could turn back time and do it all again
I'd do everything the same, I love the mess I'm in
I am that slender lady in sexy white sheets,
my figure is smoking hot when my body touches the heat.
I’ll give you moments of pleasure and a fill of nicotine,
but around your healthy lungs I’ll weave my tricotine
I am a silent killer
causing deadly disease,
but people ignore the warnings and signs of expertise.
I am the international
loved by all my fans,
I’ll send them to the graveyard in polished caravans.
I am those smokey rollies the filthy cigarette,
you’ll find me on every shelve I am not that hard to get.
I’m craving a smoke
I’m craving a drag, a poisonous and toxic puff of smog
to fill my empty lungs to
pass the time to
feel the burn in my throat. I fill my body with
solitude
and meditate in cramped spaces with no air.
Lightheadedness
I hope one day you find what you are looking for but I still won’t
count my blessings. Despair is
an art
and I
try too hard sometimes to ignore pain.
And other times to fill my lungs with
a kind of tragic beauty
that kills.
I know you too feel the endless bitter burn of existence, I know your
melancholy
Oh too well. I’m in love with my suffering now, are you?
The way it
scratches too soft, too hard, tickles and then subsides. The way it
travels through your veins and insides, fills you with
all sorts of burns and bruises but
I’m just craving a smoke right now.
There will simply never ever be enough cigarettes
To erase all of my biggest losses and old regrets.
No matter how many I smoke, not enough to erase my frets.
I once had a lover who was a smoker
I told him I really wish he’d quit
The smell alone was quite a choker
And his clothes were full of it
I knew he was addicted and afflicted
So I tried to inspire change
Gave him a sucker hoping he’d lick it
Maybe retrain his smoker brain
When that didn’t work I continued to search
For he was my sun on cloudy day
His feelings I didn’t want to hurt
But kissing is like licking ashtray
So let’s try acupuncture this time
With a little luck and love you can
Beat this habit that should be a crime
To market or sale to woman or man
This really helped and he does well
His cravings are less with a stick
He turns to me all smoke free saying
What about your addiction to chocolate
When everyone wore Calvin Klein
I wore pairs of Old Navy jeans and graphic tees
When everyone carried a mouthful Menthol Cigarettes
I carried a mouthful of Sour Patch Kids
When everyone was having cups of Kalik
I was having cups of Pina Coladas
When everyone was rocking Air Jordans
I was rocking flip flops and Converse
When everyone went to Atlantis and Baha Mar
I went to Blue Lagoon and Ardastra Gardens
When everyone wanted to go to Miami
I wanted to go to Key West, Maui or Bora Bora
When everyone grew up to be a police
a teacher or a front desk clerk
I grew up to be a tour guide,
a beach nomad and a storyteller
Cigarette
Most of them enjoy it once in a while; some are addicts; some see it as a socialising asset.
You know what's one thing common among all of them somehow it gives them some kind of comfort, ease, or maybe helps them burst stress as most of them quote?
But you know that no matter what, if asked publicly, they smoke? If they like it? If they want it to be a part of their lives, These questions would be dealt with with either avoidance or a firm denial.
However, it may be that one thing they need right when they wake up, or maybe on a stressful day, or they even include it in their happiness at times with a few drinks.
But it never gets accepted by them or by society.
You are just like a smoker.
And I.? I don't want to be What?
Your cigarette.
She's lavender and cigarettes,
With passion's marks upon her neck—
A lover's touch, a mother's love,
With blue-green eyes and tender tongue
She's laughter and she's soothing song,
With smiling warmth and welcome arms,
Effacing fear and sorrow's stain,
With calming walks within the rain
She's past and present memory,
My oldest ache and newest joy,
With hands that heal the damage done,
Rebuilding what had been destroyed.
We rather wish that someone would
lead him to a tree.
They can be so useful
for life and death.
He might look more elegant
from a distance.
But this one decides to join us
in this bar,
sits at our table, displaying
his filthy fingernails,
his rather snotty tissues, sniffing,
so audibly, so blatantly.
Each half-hour or so he has a smoke,
so leaves the room,
permitting us to take
a deeper breath,
drawing somewhat cleaner air
into our lungs.
Ah, who has the courage to say
please go away -
though it would be better to use
some choice language?
But all we do is sit -
just hope, ho hum!
(Sep 2022)
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