Jason Mosser Quitting Smoke smoke smoke that cigarette Puff puff puff it till you smoke yourself to death Tell St. Peter at the Golden Gate That you hate to make him wait But you gotta have just one more cigarette --Merle Travis and Tex Williams Because cigarettes are walls smokescreens between where you’re going and where you’ve been Because to smoke means not to do Because smoking is not-doing Because smoking becomes doing Because quitting smoking means doing things you didn’t do before because you were smoking Because smoking regulates doing after meals or on the phone the delayed gratification the tedious repetition of reaching for pack & striking lighter lighting paper & dried tobacco sucking smoke & blowing clouds sucking in & blowing out sucking in & blowing out the systole and diastole of nicotine junk habit Because you don’t smoke cigarettes Cigarettes smoke you Your heart & your lungs Your kidneys & liver soaked in smoke & toked & coked & cloaked in smoke To smoke or not to smoke To smoke or to be smoked Do not send to know for whom the cigarette smokes It smokes for thee It smokes for nicotine junkie Because of the nausea the nicotine dizziness Because smoking closes valves causes heart to flutter fibrillate blacken and die Because it blackens the lungs constricts the esophagal sphincter yellows the teeth causes mouth cancer lung cancer breast cancer bladder cancer stomach cancer cancer cancer cancer cancer Because smoking is putting a pistol to your head as in Russian Roulette each cigarette a chamber clicking Click Click Because no matter how James Dean it is no matter how rebel how Garbo how noir it is, it is still true that Bogart died of lung cancer Because tobacco death merchants hooked me & maybe hooked you too on nicotine junk Nicotine death squads hook teens on Sickorettes hook those Nico-Teens on Sickotine Child psychologists invent cartoon characters to hook those Sicko-teens Joe Camel pimps corporate sick-o-teen Because cigarettes are slave drivers Because smoking means selling self into slavery to J.R. Reynolds and Jesse Helms who push the poison, nicotine poison who suck green blood from nicotine poison who tear the fat from the cancerous carcass Because smoking feeds on its own junkie sickness self-consuming like the flame feeding on what consumes it to self-extinction Because of my stepfather whose trail of butts and ashes littered my adolescence my stepfather whose heart fluttered fibrillated blackened and died everyday of his not-doing-because-smoking life sucking skinny little death sticks sucking death sucking it in dragging death through the door dragging it day after year his brown bony emaciated body like the silly little millimeter longer cigarette he smoked smoked smoked till he smoked himself to death I see him standing, pleading with St. Pete, bargaining right outside the Golden Gate He’s asking, Do I have to go just yet? I sure would like just one more cigarette