The Cigarette Break
The office is split
along nicotine lines
smokers get the breaks
and the breaking news,
there’s power in the union
of the smokers
a solidarity forged
outside the building,
in the elements
for the essential
cigarette break,
comradeship in the line of fire,
friendships forged in the furnace
of office gossip,
crossing the nicotine lines
is harder for smokers
than extracting oneself
from the grip of an
anaconda.
_______________________
Note: For my good friend and bestie workmate Lynne Biggs who (I recently found out) passed away from lung cancer.
Looks like the anaconda may have won 😦
Gabe Feathers McGee 
Note: a repost of the poem
So sorry to hear the anaconda won, Gabrielle. The analogy is incredibly apt.
thank you Kate – she was a very heavy smoker and tried so hard to give up!
Sorry for you loss…your poem conveys one of the social elements of smoking that few often consider…peace be with you.
thanks Charles
Excellent poem, Gabe, with so many layers of meaning.
“crossing the nicotine lines
is harder for smokers
than extracting oneself
from the grip of an
anaconda”
So true 😦
I am sorry about your friend.
Thanks bb 🙂
Hi Gabrielle. Sorry about the loss of your friend.
Thanks Helen – always a bit of a shock when someone dies before their time.
I’m so sorry, Gabe. Death is sad at any time, but early death seems to cut deeper.
I quit over 20 years ago and yet I’m still very slowly dying from a smoking related chronic illness. I’m gobsmacked when friends and some relations visit, watch me struggle to breathe, know I now depend on carers to shower me, and yet wander out onto my back deck to have a cigarette. Then there are those who no longer visit, I sense because my reality is too confronting. I say nothing because I’ve lived the hold of nicotine, and I know it’s not a choice we can make for others, no matter how much we wish we could.
Take care, grief can be debilitating. xx
Thanks Tricia – sorry to hear about your illness 😦 people can be quite insensitive can’t they
Gabe, it’s not that I feel they’re being insensitive to me, it’s for them I’m concerned. With me they are confronted with reality, the slow slipping away of independence, that will be the future of many who smoke, and in truth, it seems to make them more desperate to for a cigarette. Our minds are complex and confusing at times – well maybe all the time. 🙂
It’s a great poem by the way.
Oh I see – confronting smokers with the facts never did have much effect and they do tend to smoke when stressed – addiction is a very complex thing (I worked in the area for over a decade and nothing is simple that’s for sure).
Very true, Gabe, very true. And I am sorry your friend has died too soon.