the cigarette smoker

Many men and women
smoke cigarettes
and even more abstain,
but he is "the cigarette smoker"

In Cameroon, Africa,
he runs a huge factory
and a luxury hotel

In Indonesia,
he is the top adviser
to a powerful and charismatic politician,
as he was to several before him

In Cuba,
he wears the olive uniform
and insignia of rank,
but his victorious battles
are in sugar-cane production

In France,
he works for a famous art museum:
every week
obsessively authenticating purchases
worth tens of millions-of-dollars

In Germany
he is a ghost:
a brilliant army general
(an aristocrat and never a Nazi)
charged with defending the fatherland
against the victorious and advancing red army
and monstrous orders from the bunker...
rising to the mad and slaughterous task
knowing it to be just that,
giving savvy orders
to all his willing warriors,
then dying by his own pistol
with a bang of regained honor
(brains splattered on The Knight's Cross
he'd earned for valiancy
in a cause of villainy)

In Kentucky,
he is the manager of 3 vast coal mines,
inspecting the safety reports
and the well-oiled technology,
occasionally arguing with the playboy owner
who wants even more black ink
(but who usually relents to the smoker's hard voice
and hard facts)

On a gray, stormy day,
he can be seen outside
worshipping his fiery God,
drag after drag,
butt after butt

He does not drink
or have any other vice;
Yet he does not smoke
in moderation.
Sometimes,
when the fiend is on him,
he runs through two packs
in a single day
(someday he'll quit,
he sometimes like to say)

And as he puffs on
the cancerous stick,
his eyes are closed,
his brow furrowed...
and great clock-work
machinery turns in his head

He is a man of the world,
though he goes sometimes to church:
great matters
lay in his yellowed hands:
he does have a conscience
but it is blackened with too much compromise,
tarred with power-hunger

He is the decision-maker:
the smoke in his lungs
swims in his brain,
and pink-slips are handed out
or torn-up,
more or less meat is given
to small children,
new technologies are tried
are laid by the wayside,
roads and sky-scrapers
are built or not built

He puts the butts
in the receptacle,
closes his eyes,
and lights another fag ;
the sugar-cane is thriving,
the diplomats are arriving,
and the panzer men
are fierce for fighting