The Great Nicotine Search

They always target me
asking so politely
yet quite earnestly
“you got a light, mate?
“have you any smokes?”
these nicotine-charged questions
nervously attempting to drug me
into some kind of embarassed
submission.

Yellow stained hands gesture,
while blackly underlined eyes plead.
They’re always turned away though,
nudged by my clean lungs,
and pockets too deep for tobacco.
The young apprentices in wanting,
the teenage girls craving thinness,
the homeboys desiring hardness,
polyester-clad mid-life crises.

With their addictive quest begun
again, they will accost another
who might indulge their need
for compressed air pollution

bumming cigarettes
its a cheap way
to finance multinational coffers
clog your lungs
and gain a reliance on elevators.