"Dog's Longevity Due to Tobacco Habit"**

The staple diet of Sebastian, a pitbull-miniature poodle cross-breed owned by Mrs Emmie Snaggletooth of St John's Road, Little Tittington, Berkshire, is Bruno Extra Strength Old **** pipe tobacco. He consumes two ounces of it every week and his proud owner keeps it in his very own tin.

The procedure is as follows: Mrs Snaggletooth rolls a cigarette and puts it between her lips. Sebastian then leaps up onto her lap and removes the unlit cigarette from her lips and sits with it for several moments between his own lips.

His mistress, who is a pipe smoker herself, then lights up and, as she sits contentently smoking her twelve-inch ivory carved Meerschaum, Sebastian eats his cigarette, leaving only the filter tip which he normally spits out into the fireplace. He has twenty cigarettes a day and enjoys his tobacco best after he has eaten his evening meal of Pedigree Chum (Older Dogs Recipe).

Sebastian, who is now seventeen years old, discovered his penchant for tobacco when he found an open tin of Bruno Old **** and ate the lot. "He became very agitated and barked for three hours non stop", says Mrs Snaggletooth when she fondly recalls the incident, "And we have not been able to stop him since. He's become a bit of an addict and has appeared on TV twice as a result."

Emmie Snaggletooth has smoked a pipe for over seventy years; she keeps her treasured Meerschaum on a cord around her neck. Born in Stillfockin in the County Cork eighty-eight years ago, she went on stage with her sister Catriona as part of the renowned music hall act, the Fabulous Snaggletooth Girls. Emmie picked up the pipe-smoking habit when she had to smoke a traditional clay pipe whilst playing the principal boy in **** in Boots at the old Queen's Theatre in Reading, before it was pulled down to make way for the Pay-As-You-Go Municipal Car Park and Disabled-Access-Toilets.

"All this talk of smoking being bad for your health is a load of old *******", declares Mrs Snaggletooth through her few remaining blackened teeth. And it would seem that Emmie and Sebastian are living proof of this. Emmie sadly points to the fact that her sister Catriona, who never smoked at all, died aged only 25 after being run over by a runaway bus and she emphasies Sebastian is the longest surving member of his litter. "Sebby is the only one of his family who ever liked tobacco, I'm sure of that", she says, "Although his sister, Mary-Jean, was fond of a glass of stout with her biscuits."

Readers are invited to turn to page 24 to enter this week's competition to win a year's supply of Bruno Extra Strength Old **** tobacco and a free ****** examination from Hilary Clinton (Mrs).

Fragility is an electric blue
Shock in your system
From which you twist resistance
Gifted to hands open and begging
Consoling the green murkiness
Of people’s forced emptiness
Filling their scaffolding with
Temporary steadiness
Your abandonment shatters
Into heart shaped glass shards
He picks up even though they cut
And his blood brings no fear
Because your reality is malleable
And wounds are fixable
With scars becoming loopholes
Into worlds of distorted art
Branching out of lines protruding
Introducing your skin before your scars
I see the clearing of newly planted
Seeds of future possibility
In the words you gather
Passing by flowers scented with
All the aromas that haunt you
From your youth
Just to string a sentence
For one surrounded by the obtuse
Entirety of reigning bleakness
You are a beacon of what we
Dream to grow up to be
A star in the morning sky
You shine you shine you shine.

You weren't the poetic one, but I just read Kaddish
and thought of you;
           of 1998 beach photo, Sussex somewhere - as I
remember you, perhaps a bit younger;
           of sweet peroxide blonde, hiding brunette. I was
naive to the dye 'til I saw 'the Hepburn shot' - that 1950
something print, you in Rembrandt light,
           or the black beehive wig in family portrait—
1970ish— dicky bows and cocktail dresses - Dad, aged
seven, in a shirt and trousers;
           of youthful snapshots: Portobello Beach, Edinburgh
(4), with parents in Kent (8), your gang of girls some snowy
place (14), painting the house with Raymond in Croydon (20);
           of latter digital images, 2012, more gaunt and wrinkled,
but ever-beautiful - seemingly ageless, as you wished;

           of care and trust and overdone vegetables, thin gravy,
brussel sprout production lines - beautiful, mundane memories
at Cowfold breakfast bar or Langley Green kitchen tops;
           of seaside trips to Shoreham, Portsmouth, Brighton, dogs
homes and holding my hand past the loud ones;
           of picking roses from the garden for 'perfume' - sticky
hands, wet floors and beautiful smells;
           of early morning rude awakenings, met only with cheer
and offers of tea and toast - I still have your butter tray
(hospitable even in death);
           of my brother's wedding, taking time to jive and seem
alive whilst everyone else was dying inside, despite the fact
that it was you, and you only, who should care the most (and
thus, if you didn't, why should we have);
           and of that very temperament, infamous tempers never
shown—at least to us—just pure, kind acceptance and
forgiveness.

           You weren't the poetic one.
           You were; the ninth child of a ****** and his wife
                              the girl with the Scottish accent
                              the wife of an engineer from Mitcham
                              the mother of three, the loser of one
                              the stern face of discipline
                              the BT telephone operator, the masseuse
                              the grandmother of three boys
                              the ageless face of beauty
                              the one I remember best

           You told me you couldn't recall your siblings' names -
I've looked into it. Ada, Jack, Edie, Emmie, Mabel, Joyce,
Raymond, Terence.

It's dark outside now,  darling - tread carefully as you go.
That pallid crescent in the sky will soon be gone and so
make haste. Don't linger in the shadows.....

Jan 2019 © Emmie van Duren

odd ducks and space cadets
curry and whistler
sugary innards
emmie is now green
blackmailing her with secrets
dont accept things that are unacceptable
as sweet as pink eye
.