Sometimes spilling daily is a chore I put off.
Other times it feels more like sanctuary and I want to confide.
Once in a while it seems like one and morphs into the other.
In most all of my poems a stanza is four lines, but this is not a poem.

I’ve learned a thing more thoroughly by lingering on the edge of quitting the smoke.
I don’t think I’m physically addicted anymore, because when I wake up in the morning my body isn’t screaming for it. I can go a long way into the day without needing any, even after meals, or whatever other triggers would have seemed natural as backsliding points.

Even so, most days in the week past, one or three times a day, I break down and take a few mouthfuls of the poison.
There’s only one trigger and one point of failure left now.

Broadly speaking it’s interacting with people, but not all people or interactions drive me toward the badness.
First it has to be an interaction that engages me emotionally.
Like there’s a reason why smoking after (emotionally engaging) sex is a cliche’. But I’m not having a lot of sex at the moment, so that’ s not an issue. And also: There are plenty of non-sexual but emo-engaging interactions that are positive, and don’t drive me toward poison.

The one trigger that remains is stress about money, authority, and wage slavery. Fucking bosses are at the center of it all. The one trigger left is named Daddy/Warbucks.

After my father and all the check-signing fathers I’ve had to appease since him.

During the week of Spring Break, the week when Corona-Chan became real, the week in the oxy tank, I didn’t have to think about the Dad/War at all. I do remember one awful virulent point where I got asked for a big chunk of co-sign, and I went outside and broke down and smoked, and then I came back and handed her the card and said, "Here. Take it. I really really don’t want to talk about money right now, at all".

But mostly I was free of triggering interactions or any need to deal with the War or the Bucks, and that weekend I was totally and deliciously seclusive and I dropped the patches and even so I had zero-puff days.

When Monday came again I had to go in, and have a stupid meeting, and I backslid a little.
Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday until evening, I went back to my hovel on the dirt road and I studiously ignored the war the daddy the money to a point that was irresponsible, societally, but responsible to my own health and best interests.

Thursday night until Sunday night, I struggled to reset the semester and I struggled to fight off the addiction.

The addicition, not physically to nicotine, but to the addiction-mental of self-medicating against war buck daddy stress.; cancer stick as an effective but counterproductive, slavish, self-hating coping mechanism.

That sentence is the whole story. The thesis statement.

I’ve never really healed from what that bastard did to me because there was always a Daddy/Warbucks that had to be appeased in his place, in order to keep the rent paid somehow.

For a decade the problem seemed solved. The professor beat him and won the rigged game. There was prosperity and there was even quitting, round one.

Then the bastard went mental.

Then I got a grip on myself, almost, quite recently.

This is the second War, the Great War, the viral war.

I put on the fresh leather and I intend to win.

Maybe I will.