here's to a package of
Marlboro Reds
in the hands of
someone other than
the Marlboro Man
standing in
for those slack-jawed outlaws
my heroes now lack jaws
tongues
lungs

I swear it's been too long
since I inhaled manhood
The Great Darrell Winfield
rolled
packed
and filtered
into the only thing I know
that makes a man a man
the essence of
cowboy boots and farmer's tan
in every drag

see, I inhale my heroes
all the dusty red-necked
cowboys
Darrell Winfield
and my dad
men whose lives
went up in smoke
to coat my throat
in my own self-righteousness
I'm frightened this
is all that I'll have left
of him
lung cancer
and the lingering stench
of cigarettes

he always smelled
of cigarettes

he'd pull me into these
firm embraces
he held so long
that he'd suffocate me
in tacky business
and cigarette smoke
masked only
faintly
by a poor man's
cologne
still I breathed him in
until I'd start to choke
it was too much man to handle

my grandpa told me
“smoking doesn't send you
straight to Hell,
but it sure does make you smell
like you've already been there”

he was
a grown man
cursing
crying
lying
dying by himself
trying to drown out the inferno
with a case of beer
but sobriety finds you sometime
and I'd rather suffocate in cigarettes
than lose him altogether

and even if he smells like Hell
at least that means he made it back

Canada is afire and I’m confused, shouldn’t the snow put that out?

The Boston sky is an interesting shade of mustard yellow,
and there’s a pale orange haze where the sun should be.

Lisa, drowsily asleep-walked into the kitchen for her morning coffee.
“So this is Mars,” I observed, “Elon Musk will be so jealous.”
“Good,” Lisa said, “I was afraid it was nuclear winter.”
“There’ll be no breathing today.” I updogged.

We could almost hear the slow, delicate pitter-patter fall of micro-ash.

“There’s aaaa bright golden haze over Boston..” Lisa began to sing softly.
Lisa knows every Broadway score and can easily interpolate a song into every conversation.

But would you burn for me
like i burned for you
or could you only smoke
so everyone thought we had wildfires
but it was only me being razed to the ground
while you stand there

ready to smoke for another

you looked at me
through half-closed lids
sleepy smile on your lips
my hand touched yours
swiftly exchanged the smoking gun
I watched your lips wrap around it
and wished it was me instead
if I could freeze time
it would be that moment
locked in the smoky room
and the prison of your mouth

I wish I could burn those years away,
And watch the memories disappear between the flames
Whispers of that hell go up in smoke,
I cover up my ears, lest thoughts provoke

I am at a crescendo of this mercurially
fervent woe, maimed by the visage of
smoke and mirrors;
"a death in chrysalis is to live once again."

Draping into the worn out disheveled
silk, beautifully withered
lulled by the sound of riverbanks
as if it's pacifying the feral.

A star-lit eyes deluged with bliss
rose with thorn-teared flesh
overwhelmed by a mawkish melancholia. Although we were haunted by our old love, it will never be the same.

Oh sorrowful song,
As the chords they go—lifting minors
And falling majors, flat to the eyes, D minor
Of the saddest song:

                    He sings with a choke of voice
                    Smoke from the lungs, a smokers abyss
                    His pipes are cold,
                    Blackened in the airways of the exhaust
                    Exhausted by the pleasures; only pleasurable at first.

Oh where are the words
The words to speak ill of another colour
Must of been caught up in the smoke—in the years
The years he said them marginalizing without remorse
In it's race, sped into discriminating; on his own tracks
Of how the world must only revolve around him
His wife had shed a tear in her prayers, "Lord do a working in him"

                   But his heart was made cold and hard
                   A stone—paved by cement of his opinions concrete
                   His racist abuse was made public, non discreet
                   So how would he fit a colour of world being discrete?

Oh the upbringing, hierarchy forced in eyes
To follow a father's pride—a fitting bride
He was unaware she wasn't hundred percent white
And in the end, both father and son died alike
Ironically chocked by the black smoke rewarding cancer inside

                    The sad life of the black smoke racist🚬


                        The son hopes not to follow his father's line of smoke.

Who do you think you are
to pollute the air I breathe?
It smells like dead toes,
You smell like ****.
Costs a ******* fortune,
Why are you doing it?

Go find another ******* window,
Window of a fellow smoke.
Maybe they´ll join you
And together you can choke
Your filthy ******* lungs
With instant cancer joke.