Jaspistos

Benison or bane?

In Competition No. 2370 you were asked for a poem expressing either approval or disapproval of the habit of smoking. About smoking, as about many things, I am in two minds. On the one hand I smoke three small cigars a day after meals and would never go to dinner with hosts who didn’t offer a smoking room; on the other, I dislike the smell of Virginia tobacco and would never allow anyone to smoke at my table. So I was a pretty impartial judge this week. Given the fact that the Victorian temperance hymns are pale ghosts compared to their red-blooded rivals, traditional drinking songs, I was expecting the Devil to have all the best tunes, but that wasn’t so. The prizewinners — three anti and three pro — get £25 each, and the Cobra Premium beer goes to G.M. Davis for his grim cautionary verses.

Tobacco breeds a foul disease
That racks the chronic smoker.
Observe his metronomic wheeze,
His fingertips of ochre.

His breath and hair and clothing smell
Like ashtrays left unemptied.
He knows he’s on the road to Hell,
Yet still the fool is tempted.

His health and wealth alike are lost
To feed the addict’s craving.
How flippantly he blanks the cost
Till everything’s past saving.

Compelled to gasp for every breath,
Lungs blackened and deflated,
He may expect to meet his death
Already self-cremated.
G.M. Davis


















The fur on your tongue,
The blur of your face,
That shadowy lung,
Your raddled embrace,

The growl of your talk,
The snag in your breath,
The phlegm that you hawk
On the highway to death,

Your urinous teeth,
The twitch of your thumbs,
The scum underneath
Your tastebuds, your gums

Not much in the pink:
Is it any surprise
That I can’t stand the stink
Of the smoke in your eyes?
Bill Greenwell


















A bloke buys, for conspicuous cash,
A suggestively mummified turd:
Is he classy and clever, flamboyant and flash,
Or absurd?
When he passes it under his nose
Like a magical wand to be waved,
Are his senses aesthetic, or do we suppose
He’s depraved?

When he closes around it his lips
With no shame for the fact we have seen,
Do we choke, call the cops, look away, check our zips,
Or turn green?

If our habits define what we are —
Whether friendly or prone to do harm —
Then the setting on fire of a phallic cigar
Should alarm.
Andrew

















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