(coughing intro)

I can't -- stand smoky places
Headaches, and nausea forming
Cancer from second-hand smoke, faces
Kindly snuff out, or go outside
As heartbeat races

Oh, teary-eyed:
Smoke blows my way
Better: fart, you break
Than cigarette
Ugh! - But, anyway,
Own life, paying
Each, their own vice, take
(Each, their own choice, make)

Yuk: eating in smoky places
Me: fighting allergic reaction
Moi: no romancing
Of those with wrinkled faces   [1]
Smelly clothes; sticks to hair real tight
In breath, escapes, Miss   [2]

My Honey, pray:
She will be smoke-free
'Cause I can't abide
That runaway: beat, heart
And dizzy, me
So we'll be side-by-side

Fleeing from smoky places
Whoo, hide, please, the smoking-break corners   [3]
Your right: health, chancing   [4]
But not when mine, displaces
Only love that TT, delight:
Smoke-free embraces

Only love, TT's lust, incite:   [5]
Gals, smoke-free, chases

Gland of love, swollen? Shrink from blight
Of smoky traces




[1]
Cigarette smoking causes earlier skin wrinkling in women (says the prestigious Mayo Clinic), and can cause E.D. in men far too young to have it. The State of California's anti-smoking campaign found that those two facts, which hit each gender where they live, were far more effective than the scare stories (true that they be) of cancers that might happen twenty or thirty years from now.

During TT's stint as a ski instructor, that fact came up in a class of children and young teens. A fourteen-year-old girl, who was a competitive gymnast, made a disgusted face, clearly losing permanently any temptation to start smoking (e. g., for energy and weight control for gymnastics). One never knows when or where one can make a difference...


[2]
"The Dating Game" -- learned not even to think about those who said they smoked "occasionally" or "socially". Sad self-delusion: "I'll go outside to smoke." Sorry, Honey, you stink when you come back in (and cause the above-described reactions).

Even sadder self-delusion, or maybe just don't realize: "I won't smoke during our dates" (but sneak one on the way over, usually). .... It's in your bloodstream and lungs for weeks (or more) after the last smoke, so your breath and pores still smell of it; kissing your mouth is still like licking an ashtray; and your hair still stinks.
(Women secrete pheromones -- sexually-attracting chemicals -- through their hair, as well as other places, which, according to Phoebe on "Friends", is why men, on the average, are taller than women -- "So they can smell their hair and fall in love with them." ;)

None of this is eliminated by shampoo, even fruity-scented ones (artificial-scent allergies here also -- what's wrong with the way the Maker made you?), nor by bathing, since it continues to ooze out of lungs and pores. One clothes-washing won't do it, either. Go date another smoker; then neither of you notices, or cares. Don't try to convince a non-smoker (or *yourself*) that s/he'll "never know". The nose knows....


[3] In this State, restaurants that are not primarily saloons or bars are required to be smoke-free, as are grocery stores. Some other businesses voluntarily ban smoking inside. Cool. But make the employee- or customer-smoke-break area somewhere out back, 'k? Having it out front, right beside the door where customers enter and leave, kinda' defeats the purpose.... (coughs through cloud of smoke permeating entire front of building)

[4] "Each to their own poison". Noxious though it personally be, this writer does *not* advocate the prohibition of tobacco, for the same reasons that prohibition of alcohol failed, enriched organized crime, and corrupted officials -- which is why he also opposes the current   prohibition of other recreational substances (of which alcohol and tobacco kill several hundred *times* as many people annually as do the "illicit" ones).
No Government nanny to tell you what choices to make; just please don't make my choices for me, against my will, in enclosed places. Fair enough?

[5] *Seriously*. As strong as that primal urge can be, the offensiveness (to moi) kills it.
(NOTE: Sheep do *not* smoke. *Now* is that whole "I love ewe" thing more understandable? heh, heh, heh! ;)