The End of Tobacco

Apr 09, 2008 - 08:01 AM PST

I’m mourning the end of tobacco.
The end of tobacco has come.
No longer shall coffee and cigarette stuff
Supplant early bowls of chilled sugar puffs
For tobacco of me says it’s had quite enough.

It’s been plotting to kill me one day.

At seven I took my first puff of a fag
And at seven since then every morning
I’ve opened my packet to fire up a drag
Within minutes of finishing snoring.

Tobacco’s no sin. It’s a natural thing,
But like snakes it comes with its own poison.
Quite clearly it’s something one shouldn’t begin
But in truth it supplies many joys, on
Which schedules are planned and dinners partook,
Tea breaks arranged and leisure time booked.
And many arrangements are simply forsook
For that chance of a peaceable smoke.

I am mourning the end of tobacco.
It’s somewhat a terrible shock
To a system like mine that’s accustomed
To puffing away round the clock.
To one who’s chased dragons and Lebanese Red
To one who’s sniffed coke till his nostrils have bled
To one who’s had ecstasy flood through his head
The baccy’s the toughest to put back to bed.

When you’ve tried all the patches, inhalers and gums
Sucked a lozenge so hard that your tongue has gone numb
And then after all that begged a fag off a bum,
Well, you’ll get the distress of the feeling
As I once again crawl to the ceiling
With my nico-withdrawal nerves squealing
As my dopamine, crying and appealing,
Quite frankly in riot and revealing
The depth of the desperate peeling
Of bells in my soul so unyielding,
Scrambles round through my system
To see if it missed some
Trace particles of nicotine.

I am mourning the death of tobacco.
I have dug it a pit in my heart
And I’m quietly learning the knack of
Surviving it, now that we are both so firmly apart.
But every minute it calls me
And asks, seeing I’m doing so fine,
If I wouldn’t prefer a moment to purr
In contentment with old Nicotine.