Legal lows

'Legal high' warning following RockNess Death

Inverness Courier, 10 June 2012

Once, when I respected my elders

a tobacconist was really someone

I could look up to.

Parting with my hair ruffled,

one fist clenched about my change,

a fragrant foil-wrapped block

or a sweet-smelling pouch

in my other hand, forfeiting

an Airfix kit for a duty performed.

Years passed, my gifts grew more

elaborate, English cigarettes

ferried home from France:

HM Customs let it pass,

their one concern, their failure,

that I smoke them myself.

Here, now a respirator breathes

through the dog end

of my still smouldering mother.

She speaks with egg-white eyes

and impermanent marks on a dry-wipe slate.

'I'm frightened,' she scratches out;

I know, I tell her, I know.

Her passing is unexceptional, though,

no clamour for public enquiry.

(c) 2012 Slush Poet

Not one of my better Fridays

Smoking is no longer part of life, says Andrew Lansley

The Guardian, Good Friday, 6 April 2012

Walking away from Calgary

some of us were keen for a spliff

or a stiff shot of vodka straight

from the bottle. Something to help us

forget why we needed so badly

to forget him. We certainly

didn’t feel like talking about him

sober and po-faced. ‘Remember me,’

he’d said, forgetting to mention

his most recent carpentry project,

the one he’d been dragging

his feet on, but finally struck

the last true nail through today.

Oh, he’d whispered something

to Judas, his favourite, but us

he just let eat his bread and drink

his wine with no word of warning

about the aftertaste. We don’t know

what we’ve done, but soon

it’ll be cold and I’ll catch my death

if I can’t smoke a cigarette.

(c) 2012 Slush Poet

Steak and mushroom pie

Cancer: is meat the new cigarettes?

Camden New Journal, 5 April 2012

Let us play detective, like a character

from one of your throwaway novels.

Whodunit? Who sowed those mushroom spores?

Line up the suspects in stripes clutching placards

to their cancer-free chests: the man who blew

asbestos dust off worn brake shoes to save a bob

at Halfords, the man who once breathed through

Golden Virginia as though his pipe were a snorkel,

the man who fingered a thousand paperbacks,

benzene bleeding from every hackneyed cliché,

the man who furrowed a million miles

at the pile-inducing helm of a lead-excreting

Bedford diesel, or the one who fell foul

of a spiteful God. All or none of the above.

Now here’s the twist, the last page reveal,

your final meal will be your butcher’s gift.

(c) 2012 Slush Poet