Nicotine (edit 3)

[newbie]

I put death in my pipe
and smoked it.
It’s as simple as that.
Fuses of tobacco braid strands of nicotine
inside my deathless brain,
hurdy-gurdy death waits around the corner
with all his aching cousins.
I stroll the streets of invisible derelicts
and listen to the crickets for directions
but death leads nowhere
except to an empty pipe
that whistles for the next pinch
of shag and shadow.

I enjoyed the strong imagery of this one TqB
The fatality?/finality, inevitability of being a smoker.
‘all his aching cousins’ I read as cancer and ‘invisible derelicts’ suggested to me they were moving closer to death, both realms almost overlapping as it were.
A dark cyclical poem on addiction.