Cigarettes And Rum Poem by Quinn Ferry

I like to pretend that cigarettes and rum would make me a better writer.
A fighter like Hemingway.
A lover like Ghandi.
You know Poe wrote somewhere dark.
Maybe Saint Peter wrote in the light.
Martin Luther King Jr. behind bars and
Shakespeare into the night.
You can write or type, cigarette in hand and feel like the people need to hear whatever you have to say.
So I'll swear like the Devil in a chair there next to me.
The Devil of hell where the soul of the sinner dwells.
The Devil, trying to write an apology to God but can't, because maybe his nature won't let him.
So the Devil writes by the lights of the fire that burn him again and again.
'I'm sorry. I'm sorry and I will never damn humanity like I did back then.'
Over and over and over again because before he can send it, it turns to ash but he keeps trying because
What has the Devil got to lose?
The idea of a dazy-hazy room, in a big leather chair with my hand around the throat of a pen as it spits out words that leap in my chest like a man that dives into love because 'Falling' into it sounds accidental.
My pen spits words out and I haven't asked it why, but if you ask me?
My pen has a crush on paper and would give black blood just to give it meaning.
It records everything I write but promises not to testify against me in the court of trial and error.
So if I find myself in that limbo, a dim room filled with the toke of vanilla pipe smoke and the taste of liquor I couldn't stomach, I would feel as fine as the wine inside of me.
A place for the soul with words to throw but no ears to catch them.
But if my mother found myself in a hazy-dazy, dim room she would just as soon wrap her little hands around my neck while I choked and wrote with my pen over and over and over again,
'I will never damn humanity like I did back then.'