Overdose
Poet’s argument
Perhaps the strangest reflection surviving a drug overdose is rather than feel an initial sense of gratitude for being alive, a cloud of remorse and self-loathing linger. For me, this negativity led to a state of depression both physical and mental I can best describe as a blanket smothering out the light.
Trapped in a corner of my own making, I accepted the blanket’s smothering advances until drawing a knife, I sliced the coarse fabric into pieces. I then set the ripped fabric on fire asking the grinning inevitable to go elsewhere to reap and the poet to accept the Mystery.
Twenty-odd years ago, nine hundred and sixty five words began weaving themselves onto bits of scrap paper. Twenty years later, after surviving the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina, these words have changed very little in their arrangement.
“Overdose” is my blanket burning. And thanks to a Poet’s residency at Maker Heights, Cornwall, enough lighter fluid was added to finally finish the job, leaving these words to fly from their cages across uncharted seas towards the many who never swim back.
Overdose
The labyrinth inevitable grins.
Voices snarl. We told you so.
Dumbass.
Panic explodes into torrential remorse
Leaving an ongoing journey unable to connect
And disconnect the lie — This is all there is.
Until remembering not a thing.
Before a stretcher enters Charity Hospital.
Before this emergency room becomes a womb.
Before remembering words scribed in a mist
Many years before on Dartmoor, now resemble
Spilt seconds passing as shadows,
Gliding over granite, lichen and badger teeth.
Remembering I am unable to connect the dots
From 20 odd years nestled in the rocky cavities of time
To 20 years later becoming an abstraction
Extracted into an ultra-bright landscape
Molded from play dough.
Remembering crows screeching.
Spat out gullies. Streams charged with fish.
Remembering bare feet giggling in the River Tavy.
Overdose as if upon your command
I best describe as senseless and stoned,
A state of perpetual being is replaced with wires,
Sticky cords and tubes filled with gluey petroleum jelly.
Expertly attaching themselves to a convulsing frame
With a brain unconvinced if returning back into the divide
Is in anyway necessary.
Knowing failed bravado has retreated
Into the dependency of others.
Paramedics, nurses, doctors, cops and porters
All giving me so much with their jobs.
All human enough to ignore
My unsigned puzzle of vomit.
This is it bucko! I blob,
Defecating my jeans.
Before every remembered word
Designed to cut into the brain
Becomes a stranger’s voice
Fusing a force fused with life
And I’m shivering in 90 degrees.
Overdose
Like waves bulling their way through
Gobs of foam to reach then recede.
Like branches twisted and brittle
Snapping burnt hair across a field.
Pure voltage humming in the shallows.
Overdose
Your fever refracts into splinters
Mingling with a numb buzzing
Under an array of digits and light.
Choirs of hands claw with sterilized gloves
Expertly prodding to keep what’s left alive.
And in the in-between seconds
When the festering tomb
Climbs up through the spine
Clogged arteries shake
Before fading out again
With electricity and singed hair.
Overdose
I admit I’m convinced I pray
With a mouth stuffed with tubes.
Reciting sacred oaths,
Memorized like grocery lists
Once pinned to a door.
Before seconds later
My heart decides to start
Beating an inner mantra
Deafening the tired cop’s ear
As his warm hands hold mine
As I slip into consciousness.
Both knowing
Death smells
The stench of burnt flesh.
Overdose leaves me scrambling for words like
I’m so sorry for wasting so much of your time.
Without pain a fresh needle
Misses my vein.
What’s that burning smell?
I ask the nurse politely.
Before squeezing stone.
Before bits and pieces cram themselves
Into a self, forced to remember who
Or what I have now become.
Through a fuzzy field of monitors,
A doctor laughs, you’re one lucky bastard.
There was enough dope in you to fuel our pharmacy.
Overdose fades into a mixture of silt and slime.
Wishing for a pen to write anything except any of this down.
Hoping words can make this disaster disappear
And banish questions mangled in destiny.
Words ebb
As I look towards a sold out emergency ward.
Studying real people who are really dying.
Their dying feels different.
Their dying feels real.
Perhaps from living a shitty life
A little too fast.
Perhaps unable to recognize
What we are often dealt with
Requires a lot more than love.
Words flow
As I look around a sold out emergency ward.
I feel selfishly alive. Superficially unplugged.
My death over exposed next to their gunshot wounds,
Amputated limbs, diabetic seizures, car wrecks
And miscarriages.
My death feels inadequate and too easy.
A sloppy joke wasting a place in eternity.
As if accepting the stone cold lip of the grave
Appears nothing more than an insurance adjuster
Wearing mirror shades.
And upon his reflection
A need to hug and hold
And cry pulses.
OVERDOSE why do so many pass
Before you unnoticed?
Hours move the mind
Resetting regret into tears.
Gooey puddles form on plastic sheets.
My mate Andy A. appears concerned.
He’s here to check on his investment.
He recedes into a pair of overgrown hands.
Behind a clinical mask,
I’m asked if I can stop scratching.
And no, I cannot leave this hospital.
For now, says the mask,
Let this drip replace shards of broken glass.
Overdose I ask
Never to sleep with you again.
Before the monkey
On my back
Pulls out the needle
And fumbles for a shirt.
Before I stumble off a gurney
Checking my wallet
Before hailing a cab.
Before scoring from the driver.
Before returning to my cage
To focus on the baggage
I’ve already forgotten
To leave behind.
