Dead Soldiers

poem- alluding to tobacco

                                                 





                        Dead Soldiers



They lay together extinguished, in the defolade



of the ashtray. Brown pants, white shirts. Smoke



yet rising from the latest casualty. Leaderless



their comrades crouch, and await their turn at the trench



of the lungs that, with inhaled breath, will draw forth their



angry smoke, that weapon of mass destruction, to invade



the weakness, the mouth that will suck it deeply



in and propel it down the throat for the awaiting malignancy



to feed on and to fulfil the role created for them in the fields of Dixie



by the Lords of a dying and killing industry. Addiction fueled profit.