Way of the Wolves
Drugs to mask the failure,
Clothes to grind away the hurt.
We are a society full of
People needing a center stone.
You see, we are materialistic.
Our identities lie in our appearances.
Yet we want to be seen as unique
Individuals, striving for the best. The top.
A good friend of mine, one whom I trust
Gave up his dreams and perseverence
In fear of failure, fear of rejection
Amongst his peers, even his best friends.
Took to the streets his mind at will.
Let himself go, let the mainstream become him.
Identity robbed, his entire being replaced.
He lived on the streets, learned the ways of the wolves.
Drugs and clothes and cars and buzz,
Some call it the good life.
But what it is, what it REALLY is,
Is a bunch of kids scared to branch out.
Scared shitless of a world unaccepting, judgemental.
These material items blanket them.
Consumed by distractions, he kept on his path
To become something much greater
Than himself. To become SOMEONE.
To get rich. Die famous. That's his style?
His wish came true.
Too cool for me, too cool for you.
Turns his shoulder at the thought
Of going back to his roots,
His original, unique, insecure self.
________________________________________________________________________________
Meds
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.
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