Cigar Smoke--A Ballad

         Cigar Smoke

You ask, my friend, from where I came
How is it that I carry on this name
I don't make no claim like some folks do
To be a relate of a king or president too
The Marquess of Queensberry ain't my kin
Nor that sadist de Sade they kept in a pen
Of my progenitors I don't know a lot
No doubt there's much that I've forgot
I don't make no claim to be a relate
  of the King of Spain or some northern Duke
Who no doubt would have to puke
 If he saw the motley lot
Of the folks from whom I'm begot
This I do remember when the smoke
Is thick and the aroma clear
My great grand dad was a successful merchant
   for many a year
He bought and sold Turkish leaf tabacco
That he turned and hand rolled
 by the pound and stack-o
With the skill he learned
Into cigars that would burn
Those aromatic fermented leaves
Made his customers very pleased
They savored as they smoked
Drank a cognac and joked
Of women in their high button shoes
Of love they'd lost and gals they'd choose
Their dreams of youth gone up in smoke
As the smell of cigar tobacco stoked
Of brothels where they dared unbutton
Their trousers before they played glutton
With exotic dames from foreign shores
Who after all were really whores
But no one paid attention to that fact
They made love in the room out back
For beyond pecuniary remuneration
Was a greater deep sensation
Of manliness and pleasure
Of sex and leisure
Of something new, of something strange
Of finding sex beyond the range
Perhaps beyond the life they led
As the stars and planets sped
My granddad left when he was sixteen
On a boat to the new world keen
To avoid conscription
In European wars of attrition
To find his fortune, a wife and kids
But somehow the fortune slid
Into the great depression
A sickly wife and kids did vet
all fortune and with regret
Took their toll and grayed his hair
At forty-four no longer fair
A widower whose kids had left
His pleasures lie in beer and chess
And yes, a cheap cigar or two
He smoked them down and when through
Left the butt upon the stove to dry
He knew it was futile to try
To burn tobacco wet with sali-va
The next day, butt in pipe
Tamp it down and lite
In his life nothing was wasted except life
He lived alone without a wife
Although the women paid him visits
Brought him soup and chicken gizzards
As a gentleman he knew
what they wanted him to do
"Your grandpa was a favorite of the ladies too"
My Uncle said, when Pop was fifty-two
His velvet hair so grey did shine
His sky blue eyes still looked up at mine
"Mine boy, mine boy," he'd say to me
Then chatter in a language, a mystery
Above all there was that arom-a
Of tobacco, of cigars, in his park trailer home
In his cloths, on his skin, unmistakeable
A fragrance of cigars lay on the table
In an ash tray over filled
But this was not able
Did not disturb my joy
I was just a little boy
To whom all stuff was normalcy
Was not everyone's life like what I see?
And even now, long years gone by
They all are dead and buried lie
Still the scent of a burning cigar
Be it near or be it far
Congers up my grand Papa
In the mornings when I shave
I look into the mirror there
And see his reflection where
Mine should be
I move an eye
And so does he
I try to spy
Then I realize what I see
It is not him, it's only me
Another in a long line of men
Who live and die and live again
Not knowing much of where we came
Or of our procreation
That we imagine with fascination
Sex and love, sex and passion
Fix your tie and dress in fashion
Don't forget the ladies there
Who lay naked with breasts bare
Savoring our father's cocks
And combing out their long dark locks
Who birthed us all
Yet we forget their names
As other talents of their fame
Their hair with time grew grey
Ending in the earth, decay
Still we sing and dance away
Our lives with work and pray
That somehow we will break the cycle
To live somehow a little while
Longer then the rest
Oh, how these thoughts they do depress
So let me light a cigar and take
In the smell that will awake
In me the lives we've left behind
And ponder as if blind
Of the new lives we've created in our time
The world does change and we change too
There is not much else that we can do
But recline and puff the brown cigar
Inhale the aroma of nicotine and tar
We wait and sip some fine cognac
And think of all the years gone back
As our fathers and theirs did too
What else, my friend, are we to do?