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01 February 2004 @ 5:34 p.m.

Before going bon voyage and not being here for the entire next month (yes, thank you to heavy work load), here's something dedicated to Louis MacNeice, who wrote the poem ' Prayer Before Birth'.

Blood Bath

He used to lit the cigarette

and hand it to me (so delicately)

as if he was an angel from heaven

He carried, hugged and kissed

me, as if we were soulmates

But inside we were children drugged by cigarettes

Mindless, and thoughtless

Blood was slowly dripping

underneath our coarse skins

Except

there was no blood we saw, no pain we felt, and no guilt we thought

Since when did cigarettes controlled our lives so importantly?

He was the first

to savour the blood bath

Hades rolled him gently

that he would die thoughtlessly, painlessly

He died

with one cigarette stuck in his yellow lips, unwilling to leave the cigar

on my skinny arms

But I was too, rolled

into the crimson blood bath

bleeding internally that

I didn't realize I was dying so soon

Blood spurted from my broken lips

One smoker's cough - and I will be gone

Where the blood bath takes me

a death bed in Hade's world

where I suffer all the punishments

Just one wish - there is no next victim

of the malicious blood bath.