Well Bottom Blues

I want a cigarette so bad my hand trembles at the thought  of the flare of the match. Fire. Smoke. Calm as ancient as frankincense, smoke rising up to the heavens.

I want a steady hand so bad my stomach clenches at the thought of the meds paych’s pill nurses would push to calm my craving and my hands and my smoldering mind.

I need a stern psych nurse like Ratched so bad to prescribe my life back in order, a productive and unconcerned citizen mindful of what’s good for the company even though they make me smoke out in the cold.

I need a country where the capitals of the Capitol columns are wreathed in tobacco leaves like smoke, where reasonable people made moderately good laws as best humans could do, a stately progress toward the better.

When I quit smoking churches didn’t dictate laws based on their religious conceptions and masked men in plain clothes didn’t disappear dissidents off the street  and the government didn’t support the industrial murder of people of the wrong faith.

When they come for me, I want to greet them like Bogie, untipped cigarette in hand, stylishly defiant, while the piano plays the John Brown’s Body marching song and the whole bar sings along.

I need a Zippo in my pocket again. For my cigarette. For the fuse.