Clueless Ink

Roaming through an antique store in a small American town,
I stumbled on a cigarette ad from the 1950s.

A woman so charming, so confident, staring straight at us,
blowing smoke into the audience’s face,
you’d want to be her,
you’d want to feel that smoke crawl out of your own lips.

Dressed in the finest outfit in town, pearls around her neck,
she takes another drag,
taps the ash into the tray,
steps into her Rolls Royce, and drives away.

1950s, cigarettes were luxury,
she modeled luxury, smoke curling around her aura.
Years later, the lady disappeared.

Smoke labeled poison,
ads regulated,
knowledge reached everyone,
the lungs, the facts, the harm,
yet a choice remained.

From luxury to ash,
change respected,
businesses adapted,
perceptions shifted.

The lady with pearls vanished, maybe hiding her smoke in some dim-lit corner,
she smoked,
but consequences were noted,
in red, in fear,
judgments ignored,
choices made.

Can we apply the same thinking to our antique books and perceptions of religion?

Cigarettes with time got creative, businesses adapted, came in colors so hidden, menthol, watermelon, bubblegum,
but every pack carries the same warning, judgment.
Why can’t antiques of faith
carry a warning too,
for the death, the control, the divide, the fear they spread?

We multiply religions, doctrines, gods,
but questions silenced,
and change misread as disrespect.

Isn’t it just as toxic,
not to the lungs,
but to the mind,
to freedom,
to humanity?

And yet,
no regulation,
no warning,
no awakening.

Let me light a cigarette,
in my dim-lit corner,
and think.