The End of Vice (A Song of Cigarettes)

“The End of Vice”
(A Song of Cigarettes)

Tell me I’m the mist, and I am starving
While you, in your shadows, are carving
The earth that shall be my final resting place—
I am in those shadows; I am passing
Hoping for a glance of your dying face.

Coughing the bile and blackest smoke—
Such a shade as this shall be my cloak.
What will you wear for the final breath,
That last remark of the heaving stroke?
Ah! What will you wear upon my death?

Pain! Taste of my flesh. Taste my sympathy
I am at your mercy. So, tell me I’m pretty
Tell me my corpse is unlike any you have viewed.
It seems so frail and such a pity
To lay such darkness in the solitude.

Let it be displayed…
My passing, beautifully laid.
With the smoke and gases
Left to the moors and the grasses.
I hear a bell through the flame
Calling me to enter by my name.
Please open that door, and let me inside…
This is a long anguish: A long suicide.
So, take me from out of my cloud
And let me enter the silent shroud.
I know the end is coming and near,
As my breath and my soul disappear.

Tell me I’m the mist, and I am envenomed.
And my flowers wilted as they blossomed.
They shall be upon my grave, whither I go
Into depths of a darkness unfathomed
From one Hell to the next Inferno.

© 2022 Marten Hoyle