Things I’ve heard:

 

With each puff

I inhale gods

Causing me to grow wings

Easing me above pains

If you ever want an instant miracle

Go embrace the sticks

 

When I pout my lips

And slot in the stick, golden

Smiles return

My troubled spirit simmers

Deliverance becomes my gift

Just as the Bible promised

 

Some people talk about it

As being a cause of lung cancer

Instead, within its sweet bowel

I find load of answers

Please give me one more cigarette

Before I perish

 

Come to think of it

I’ve got several witnesses

Elderly men & women who have been ‘puffing’ for years

Handsome & beautiful without season

Tobacco nourishes their smiles

It adds glory to their skins

 

Things I’ve seen:

 

It was a bleak day

A patient came coughing

He had smoked for 25years

An average of a pack per day

Tobacco was his lover

Nothing else was meaningful

 

He tried calling on me

His doctor, to do some magic

He coughed out blood instead

His relatives beholding in shock

I held on to him

He reeked of death

 

His lungs were already caked

Breathing had become a gruesome task

His blood sugar & pressure were even up

In a few days stroke knocked on his brain

Helplessly we watched

As cigarette gagged him to death

 

I have seen hearts ravaged

By tobacco’s devilish fangs

I’ve seen many become orphans & widows

As father chose to travel beyond

With tobacco as his worthy mate

To depths of ‘nothingness’ & grief

 

True that some smoked it

For decades without a single hurt

While those camouflaging as being ‘holy’

Encountered death in other quarters as they fled from cigarette

But why gamble with the devil?

Why gamble with your life?

 

Kindly save the next stick

For tomorrow

When tomorrow emerges

Save it again for tomorrow

Let it become a relic of your battle

As for the next puff,let tomorrow never come

 

Soyombo Ayomikun tweets from @alabaster85

 

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