The Cigarette Poem by Muhammad Mannan

Between my fingers, thin and white,
A fragile tower, poised to burn.
In smoke that writes upon the air
A cursive script of fleeting care.
It curls and climbs, a ghostly vine,
Then dissolves in broken line.
You fill the empty spaces in my chest
And put my restless hands at rest
You're a slow dance with a dying flame.

Cigarette, bridge to a calm mind,
But leaves its wreckage far behind.
A moment's peace, a bitter cost,
A dozen calm breaths forever lost.
So here I hold this dying art,
A small, bright lie against the dark.
A elegant weapon, a poisonous queen.
I borrow your fire and borrow your breath,
And dance with a partner whose second name's death.

You're wisdom and ruin rolled into one tube,
A paradoxical, beautiful, toxic syllogism's cube.
You calm me and kill me with each measured flow,
A loyal assassin I already know.

I crush out your reign in the glass ashtray's bed—
A small, smoky funeral for the thoughts in my head.
Then I rise and I leave you, a defeated, gray thing...
'Til my restless hand seeks its paper king.

But you're a loyal company, one drag at a time,
So I'll ignore the warning signs written on the wall
And catch you when I'm falling, 'til there's nothing left at all.