Call Me Nicotine

Call Me Nicotine

When you called me nicotine,

You also called me lung cancer.

You called me lover

But treated me like a private dancer.

Smoke curls around his fingers

Love may be gone, but the smell of it still lingers

In the linings of my sheets;

I bury my feelings deep.

Soft little laugh

But jokes so cruel

You may look like a man

But I’ve never seen one drool.

You escape from me like curls of smoke

I try to kiss you, but I choke.

And when you say that we cannot have this

I turn self-destructive

Swallow fags whole and drink like my liver is endless.

You love me as if I am made of ashes

And as the dust settles with my tears

Atop my eyelashes

You slither like smoke into the air and vanish.

Don’t you smoke anymore?

Don’t tell me I am your regrets

Like putting out your final cigarette

We could have had something

But how quickly you seem to forget!

You loved me and loathed me as if my name was Nicotine

How soon, too soon, how quick you drew sick of me.

We fucked and now I’m fucked up

Like crazy for you, write a poem for you

Kind of fucked up

And I’m screaming at the Shakespeare in my head to just shut up

But he keeps saying

Thou haveth fucked me upeth

I sing you sonnets between your mutters.

Close the shutters until you leave me again;

Until you say I’m just a friend.

You are a cigarette my love,

Bad for my heart and never quite lasting long enough.

You are just like a cigarette my love.

How strange, I have fallen in love without love.

But I have kissed enough burns to learn

That I must stop when it starts to hurt.