Poem
ADDICTION
by
Nick Carding
Imagine this, that after all these years' obeisance
At the altar of tobacco and a bare week's abstinence
I looked into your face, still wrapped in the blue
Comfortable smoke of years and, seeing you anew,
I spied a stranger
To my freshly opened eye, a danger
Set to drag me back to the abyss
From which I'd hauled myself. Would this
Prove at last the sticking point?
Where would I take my stand?
For life, or the tobacco strand?
No, even with my world at stake
You are the habit that I will not break.
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Nick Carding is a Brit who's been hiding in The Netherlands for the past ten years. Married to an itinerant Croat, he escapes south with her as often as he can - but not often enough for his liking.
These days he doesn't often submit - but in the past his work has been published in the UK, USA, Canada, Croatia, Australia and New Zealand.
You can contact him at carding@xs4all.nl