[Verse 1]
One cigarette lights five different fires,
lungs and larynx, a throat that tires,
esophagus squamous, bladder's burning lane,
pancreas simmering quiet in the flame.
Pour the whiskey on the embers, watch it climb,
alcohol and tobacco dance in rhyme,
throat and gullet pay the double bill,
partners in a slow combustible kill.
[Verse 2]
H. pylori drills the stomach wall,
adenocarcinoma waits after the brawl,
the mucosa answers, MALT tags along,
a bacterium writing a tumor's song.
HBV and HCV, the liver's patient foes,
scarring into cancer the way hepatitis flows,
HPV sixteen eighteen, cervix and the throat,
Epstein-Barr sails nasopharynx like a quiet boat,
and Burkitt's jaw in Africa, swift and wild,
a virus leaves its fingerprint on a child.
[Chorus]
Smoke and drink and bug and dust,
four roads paved with cancer's rust,
asbestos chest, vinyl chloride's liver scar,
aniline dye stains the bladder dark,
aflatoxin's mold turns liver hard,
remember the map, it's not that far,
Barrett's, polyps, colitis's might,
cirrhosis, porcelain gallbladder white,
precursors whisper before the fight.
[Verse 3]
Down in the shipyard, insulation flakes like snow,
asbestos fibers settle where the sailors go,
decades later pleura thickens, breath grows thin,
mesothelioma waiting deep within.
The vinyl plant worker handles pipes all day,
chloride monomer eating liver cells away,
angiosarcoma, rare and sly,
rises where the dye house chimneys lie,
aniline workers scrub their bladder blues,
transitional cells trading health for hues.
[Verse 4]
Barrett's lines the esophagus in salmon pink,
acid's answer to every midnight drink,
adenomatous polyps bud along the colon's hall,
given time, they answer cancer's call,
ulcerative colitis scorches the bowel's lane,
porcelain gallbladder, calcified from strain,
cirrhosis scars the liver's quiet floor,
a silent waiting room behind the door.
[Bridge]
Every surgeon reads the story written on the skin,
the smoke, the virus, and the risk within,
screening starts with knowing where the danger hides,
before the scalpel, let the history be the guide.
[Chorus]
Smoke and drink and bug and dust,
four roads paved with cancer's rust,
asbestos chest, vinyl chloride's liver scar,
aniline dye stains the bladder dark,
aflatoxin's mold turns liver hard,
remember the map, it's not that far,
Barrett's, polyps, colitis's might,
cirrhosis, porcelain gallbladder white,
precursors whisper before the fight.
[Outro]
Smoke, drink, infect, expose,
remember the map before it grows,
precursors whisper, risk factors sing,
know the cause before you know the thing.