Herbert Nehrlich - Dear Fag

Dear cigarette, are you my friend?
Your lovely smiles, are they for me?
The filter on your other end,
does it protect, is it the key
to disallowing noxious gases
from occupying healthy lungs?
I see, when wearing reading glasses
small cuts that look like ladder rungs,
inside your smooth and shiny filter.
The number of those cuts decides
how toxic, let's say out of kilter,
the puffs will be to my insides.
So tell me, handsome cigarette,
could it be true what I have heard,
that I should think and smoke instead
a colourful, though dried out turd?
Cause cigarettes are coffin nails:
You smoke enough, they close the lid,
and turds originate near tails...
I'm talking to my youngest kid!

Perhaps my words for smoky ears
will penetrate the haze,
prevent a tragedy through fears
that years cannot erase.

Herbert Nehrlich

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/dear-fag/