Thank You For Smoking Poem by kyle foley

it is with sympathy that we watch
the film thank you for smoking.
we lament naylor’s storm-plight
because he is firmly noosed by leech-greed.
it is the dollar that hangs and suspends him,
the pound sterling that has cloaked him in night,
and wholly bemired him in cupidity.
mammon has kidnapped naylor’s reason,
hijacked his compass of justice,
and now he slaves medallions to earn,
all this at the people’s expense.
we sympathize with him because we
see so much of us in him.
it could very easily be us
who scrape and scrounge for rust-gold
whilst the innocent grunge in fangs.
we too could find ourselves of morals diminished,
or a haze of maljudgement transfixing us.
he is articulate, well-shaven, attractive,
a faint pleasento-spice around him beams,
a bright smile from his face refulges.
he has a son, desires, hopes,
aims, goals, a vision of bounty,
all of which we share.

it is the cosmos that bewilders us,
not stones at naylor throwing,
it is the cascade of life’s monopoly
that rouses our trembling of nerves,
not naylor’s employment by mephisto.
that same human nature that
eclipses naylor in a blackness of greed,
is the same nature that one day
could bind us cruelly to the maggot,
and lock us unequivocally to the poiso-viper.

naylor’s two superiors do not arouse
our symapthy, only fecal disgust.
they are walking frankensteins of callouseness.
they are stone corpses of ringworm.
we see little of us in them.
they belong to some alien species,
cancerous in their slurs and their speech,
a residue of mind-funk on their tongue hanging,
green bile from their mouth ejecting.

it is thus as we watch the film
that we are reminded of our
frightening proximity to the wrath-serpent.
all are vulnerable,
all can be hoodwinked by mammon,
all are fallacious, all yield,
not one is perfect, not one immaculate.
all crumble given appropriate pressure,
all retreat eventually into the night-woods.