Smoker’s Phenomenon
written by: Sobhan Pramanik
@SobhanPramanik
It’s a smoker’s phenomenon perhaps,
to always hold the last puff a tad longer.
Letting the fumes spiral and widen inside
like ripples across a wind shaken lake,
inflating their chest to a maxima,
until it aches to sink back and then
grudgingly stubbing the fire out against
a tin ashtray; the toxic gas departing
through lips and purring from nostrils
quietly, in what seems to be a dreaded exhale.
Whether the last drag is the sweetest
or breaking from the high is sad,
it is all still an acceptable agony.
Unlike mine where I seem to be smoking
minced memories, rolled in a flammable leaf
of Time and burning recursively
between my lips.
My scarred heart that fervently
drags upon this lingering past,
fills my chest with massive clouds of tears
that never made way to weepings.
They stretch my lungs threatening to kill,
but I am far from quitting.
Smitten for life. And so I go on –
breathing in fire, blowing out voids.
For embers of love, after all,
can never be stubbed.
- Oh! Poor Man - February 8, 2018
- It’s Okay - January 20, 2018
- Fools, Flowers and Falls - January 2, 2018
