THE BURNING

Statuary warning: Cigarette smoking is injurious to health.

One puff and the answers to life’s toughest questions seem to get lost in the smoke. The questions lose their substance and all that confronts the eye and the mind is a vagueness that even blurs out the need to find answers.

Me, I see as the burning cigarette. Thousand nights I have burnt to hear the sound of my burning heart, I glow with the touch of your lips. Who is the goblet; whose lips are burning with desire; who satiates the quench? Questions that go hazy with the smoke that leaves thy lungs. My existence I see diminishing the more you desire and the more eager I get to serve you. I am your slave, dancing between your fingers to entertain; I am the purchased body that ignites your passion and burns in its heat. I cry my tears of gold. You, the alchemist, strangle me for crying away the gold, I am your lover till I live; I am the dead you trample under your feet once your thirst is over or once my strength to be your servant gives away.