Meds by Dan-Vy Nguyen

Meds by Dan-Vy Nguyen

I’m living from pill to pill,

From bed to couch,

What doesn’t kill me,

Only makes me itchy.

Hives as large as mice,

Rise up under my skin,

Followed by ones like peas.

Oh I love my little white pills,

That make everything go away,

That make the gives calm down,

That makes me forget how bad it is,

When taken everyday.

I can tell

When I haven’t taken them.

Heat comes rushing to my hands.

I can feel the blood

Flowing through them.

I’ve had them since I was little,

Though no one knew why.

Not even the doctors.

Not even my blood.

Going back to the allergist years later,

Only to discover they’re not allergies.

Like little eggs under my skin,

Breaking as it desires,

An internal reaction, not external,

An auto-immune disorder,

Simplified, I’m allergic to myself. 

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Meds by Cynthia Huntington

1. 

Living from pill to pill, from bed to couch,

what doesn’t kill me only makes me dizzy.

Pain dissolves like chalk in water,

grit on the bottom of the glass.

Waiting takes forever,

throbs to the soles of my feet, Bella noche . . .

Hives as large as mice hump up under my skin

(“no more barbiturates for you, Cynthia!”)

—itch, stretch, I don’t fit my flesh—

sting, tingle, prick, the sorcerer’s threat.

There’s a knife stabbed through my left eye.

My right foot is made of elephant hide

and weighs in at roughly one cartload of potatoes.

Oxygen twenty-four hours; I’m swelled with steroids,

prednisone buzz in the brain; a motel room

with sixteen foreign workers sleeping in shifts,

playing reggae at three a.m.

2.

Oh I love my white pill

that makes the black fist of pain unclench,

unspasming the nerves. I float,

released to darkness visible,

worlds dissolving.

And the yellow pill, bitter on my tongue,

that wakes me at 2 a.m.

writing out plans in Arabic

to organize an expedition to the Pole.

Drug of hubris searing my eyes,

my scrawl unreadable in daylight: foil my enemies.

Bitter taste of fugue,

my hand shakes: some foreign being in my brain giving orders.

You must You must You will.

Later, the pungent brown liquor

shoots the dark with threads of gold behind my eyes.

One flash as the mind goes out.

3.

I must elude pain

                                                            float past clarity

pain in the brain

                                                            slammed down like a housefly.

It’s a big dodge.

Fly on a stovetop

                                                            sizzle and ash pop.

This is illusion,

                                                                        mental confusion

                                                            born in the synapse.

What can be undone

                                                            down to the last gasp.

It’s a hodgepodge.

If you kill pain

                                                you will become pain;

pain does not feel pain,

                                                            no nerves in the brain.

It’s a mind-fuck.

It’s just your bad luck.

                                                            A torpor sealed my brain

                                                            I felt no humans near

                                                            it seemed to me I could not feel

                                                            or touch or see or hear.

I don’t know who I am

                                                            without my medicine.

My skin will crawl with bugs

                                                            if I don’t get my drugs.

My brain’s a maelstrom,

                                                            singing a sad song.

Reality is so cruel.

Prednisone oh prednisone

so fast my mind racing, never tasting

rest.

Razzle-dazzle razz

Fist bitch piss stitch witch . . .

                                                            (only wait, the fit will pass.)

fast, gash, lash, splash—QUIT!

(I saw a werewolf in a white suit, walking

past the tables at the Full Moon Café.

Floppy bow tie, big furry hands.)

Percodan, Percocet, let you go, let you rest.

When the grip lets you go and you float like a note

on the flow, there’s your life, there’s no worry—

(yeah, it’s funky how the night moves.)

Barbiturate babykins, narcotic slut,

black oil of opiate. Chatty Cathy, dirty brat,

bed-wetter, nasty pants.

Painkiller, painkiller, I have a new friend,

better than my old friend,

plugging holes in the brain:

Sigmund Freud, Sigmund Freud, Sigmund Freud, Cocaine!

I want a soft landing; let me float.

Once the seizure lifted me and threw me down.

I did not like it. I did not like lying there

on the floor looking up

through air like green water.

4.

And there is one so dark, a ghost,

it passes through the mesh of thought

without tearing a strand, whispering

destinies perceived true, pronouncing

sentences of death. 

5.

A cloud, the absence of a noun, no name,

roaring far away in the summer

dark like a train, or a giant fan, or a highway that never stops.

The mind explodes in the dark of space,

unnursed by atmospheres,

as air raid sirens scream for blood

and I am only nerves, strung on constellations,

meridians and vectors quivering. A red and yellow

capsule invades the chemistry of thought; cathode rays blast

from the television screen and signals pass deep into space

until the stars are singing “Rosalita.” You

will not remember this night.