Author disclaimer: this is the first of two poems about the American moment. It is not a description of my personal mental state.

*****

If this cigarette was the only thing

That stood between me and God,

I’d smoke it to its filter,

Make ash as thick as fog.

I do not smoke for pleasure;

I smoke to blind His eyes.

My lungs are my own temple

To filter out the lies.

They say the habit’s deadly,

But so’s His breath of life.

And Eve would eat no apples

If she wasn’t hurt inside.

Yet Adam was a rager:

The serpent lay within.

These meds I take are manna,

But smoking is a sin.

So, I keep on sinning—

The buzz, my second birth.

It’s God or it’s this cigarette,

And I’m all in on earth.