Tuesday 4 June 2019

There Are Worse Things


There Are Worse Things



Are there worse things
than passive smoking
in all probability?

Government public information
warns the unwary and unwise
that excessive sugar
floods food these days;
harmful trailers, on colour television,
spoon-feeding the easily consumed
and Rome burns while
obesity broadens its long arm.

And look here: alcohol is cheap
causing carnage on the streets,
disobedience and unrest.
Benefit scroungers are rife,
pram raiding high street food banks,
kindling deficit and hardship,
soaring costs, rising so fast
that soon it won’t be worth living at all.
They’re not joking.

But passive smoking.

You raise me an eyebrow.
I raise you an epidemic whisper
of contagious cancer.
Certainly, there must be a link,
it makes the world stink,
clings fast to our smoky clothes.

Don’t waste your tears on smokers,
banish them quick from propping up bars,
and dripping ash from idling cars,
flicking simmered cinder on the tar.

A sound investment in healthcare:
blitz all glamour from the card package,
extort tax to limit their damage.
It’s rumoured that perfumed mist
hisses like deadly poison
through forked teeth and pursed lips.
And fond they are of tonguing,
spotlessly clean,
the ashtray’s flecked droppings.

No, there’s not much worse
than inhaling someone’s selfish smoke:

It’s like a cheap cladded structure,
smouldering on cityscape skyline
that incinerates in silent screams
its citizens, aflame in their dreams,
howling long into an eternal night
from which they will never wake,
flounder and grasp each other, 
child, father and mother
crumble, dazed to death 
through choking corridors,
in search of the unbuilt outdoor.

A construct robust as your austere
fag packet, shoved up, thoughtless
perpendicular, burning too high
for fire escape or ladders.

Well heeled and fat,
flaccid Government bean counters
sit florid, in their well won fresh air,
sip cool bottled, 
sugar free highland spring water,
check tick lists, pat pockets 
and trouser profit margins;
feeling toasty with a single malt
condemn us to smoking holes.



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