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 Jul 2017 Kristie Townsend
J
Cold tap water, colder shoulders
are you mad or still waking up?
When is the last time you slept through the night?
or better yet, spent the whole night inside?
What are you looking for out in the street anyway?
This road's been a dead end since the first time
you let the liquid sugar hit your veins harder than your lips,
and instead of sips now you indulge every day just to get by,
but I still don't get why you let yourself get that bad.
You forgot about the daughter, mother, friends you had,
didn't you?

We didn't forget about you,
the sugar still turns you white,
even in your casket I can smell the apologies as I bend over for
one last goodbye,
I refuse to watch a family breakfast crumble
at the hands of ****** again,
I refuse to let a substance win,
like it did with you.
 Jul 2017 Kristie Townsend
Derby
Come on and dance with me
It’s easy if you try
Come on and dance with me
Follow my lead and glide

Slip in the mud
Racing through your blood
You’re as good as gone
Drifting away with eyes half-shut

Come on and dance with me
It’s easy if you try
Come on and dance with me
You’re stepping out of time

It’s a living Hell
Cold sweats, puke, and pain
Your skin goes blue
When you drink the blackened rain

Do you want to dance with me?
It’s easy if you try
Come on and dance with me
As we fall down from the sky

Oh, come on and dance with me
It’s easy if you try
Come on now, dance with me
And I’ll shiver down your spine

The warmth is gone
The rush is fleeting away
You’ve nodded off
For the last time

You’ve come here to dance with me
So give me your best try
You've tread upon my dancing shoes
It’s now your time to die

Come on and dance with me
It’s easy if you try
Now, tell me 'bout your dance with death
Was it worth the high?

Come on and dance with me--
Title obviously a play on Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death." Where Poe's piece was about plague and disease, this piece is such for drug use, namely ****** (hence "Brown Death," "Blackened rain" "mud," and other such references). Drug use and abuse is an epidemic here in the United States. It is a disease, it can almost be described as a plague. This is just a quick poem (song) about the true hazard of drug use. The high is not worth the side effects, the psychological and physiological addiction, the pain and suffering, and the effects on others the drug(s) cause.
(You know exactly what drugs we're talking about here.)
I saw an old friend today.
She'd aged 30 years
in the few she'd been away.

Her former glow is all but gone,
No spark behind her green eyes.
Little more than skin and bone.

Time takes us all for a ride,
And leaves the marks on us
To check our faith and pride

But the woman I saw was not
A victim of time, no,
Her fate has been hand-wrought

My heart is broken, I fought tears
While she stood there
Recounting addiction that had added those years

I saw an old friend today
That time and ****** have taken away.
She says she's clean,
Trying to get her **** together.
Her face is skeletal,
The track-marks got her arms like leather.
But she says she's better.
It's hard, but she's better.
She just needs a break,
And if the world will let her
A chance to come back,
A chance to start over,
She says she's clean again,
She tells me she loves me,
And that last part is the straw
That breaks my emotional back,
And the pain in my chest
Feels like a heart attack
And I hugged her as if
I'd never see her again.
And begged any God that would listen
To prove me wrong.
I know I'm typically tighter with form and pattern and syllable counts, but this is some emotional work. I'm not even proofreading.  I'm a mess right now.  My little podunk home town is a ****** wasteland and seeing somebody that I love so much looking like death really gave it "a face", so to speak.  Pardon my language, but **** ******, and the people that sell it.  And while we're at it, the doctors that get people hooked on the legal stuff.
You entered into my bloodstream just like the drug I was once so hooked on.
You said, “At least you can see your ghosts, mine prefer whispering things into my ears and never showing themselves.”
I laughed because what else was there to do. You smiled, too.
I told you never to be like me; never to act like one of the ghosts that hovered around and stifled you.
You said that every time you saw me then, you couldn’t help but see a blue light glowing around me.
You said I reminded you of hospital bathrooms and lies and imperfections. I reminded you of thin needles and punctured skin.
I was just glad we were finally getting somewhere, getting to know each other.
And I was glad you never asked why all my poems were written in the past tense, too.
let's not pretend the reason i have all these scars is because i was sad.
dots and not lines.
 Jul 2017 Kristie Townsend
Hannah
Entry ~
By the pit of a black hole. That's how it'll happen. By the flick of a lighter, and a burnt up spoon tucked away in the corner. A half *** attempt to be discreet. It'll sit there. Staring at you, haunting you, taunting your very existence. By the death of a friend you called your family. A stupid, avoidable death at the hand of ***** needle. That's how it'll happen. You'll look up one day, at the bottom of a hole you can't remember falling into. You'll climb, and climb, clawing your way to the top. Desperately slipping back down every time you make headway. It's a hopelessly dark place. It's the kind of place that stays with you forever. Even if you're lucky enough to claw your way out for good. It's the kind of place that leaves you void of love. It's a place for broken down souls. For desperate addicts turning tricks just to get their fix. You'll find yourself there, alone. Cold. You'll find yourself wishing it all back. Wishing you never took that one little hit, never sniffed that innocent little line. You'll hate yourself for thinking just this one time, because you knew it was a lie the second it crossed your mind. You just didn't want to believe it. It was a choice. Falling to the bottom of this hole. You made it the second you chose to say yes that very first time. It was the moment you sold your soul to the devil. A signature scribbled half heartedly on a piece of charred up tinfoil. It was a choice, and you knew you were making it. It's the worst part about being this kind of addict. You know you'll die eventually. Just like that friend you called your family, but nothing is enough to make you stop. The opiates leave you hollow. A shell of a person that used to love. You'll find yourself so empty. You don't care about your family, or those friends still around that don't **** with what you're doing. You can remember a time when you were so close to them. So different. Still an addict, but just circling the rim of that hole you're in now. You weren't addicted to those drugs, but you were on your way. It was those friends that kept you in the light. That kept you from falling into those harder drugs. They were a lifeline. A silver string hanging from the stars. You held on for so long. Every time you looked down you got so scared. It was a long way to the bottom, but you had scissors in your hand the whole time you were hanging on. At a certain point, you got weak, and cut that silver cord. You fell so far down, and at the bottom of that hole, sitting in the corner to comfort you, a burnt up soon and a white bic lighter. You traded in your lifeline. It was no longer your friends that could bring you back to the light. It was a bag of tar, and a silver spoon. It was a choice, and when the day comes when you say you're getting clean, you'll reach for the hands that used to be there. Out spread, patiently hanging there waiting for you to grab them, and they won't be there.
This is not a writing about me. This is something I wrote in regards to a dear friend.
**
there's a syringe filled to the dropper with ******

and a blackened spoon on the kitchen counter.

he was in the bathroom shooting up and left this one for later
but in a daze
forgot to consider
that others would be home early.

i didn't care.

i've stepped on many ***** syringes before
and as a child
poked myself by accident
a few times as well.

i don't have hepatitis luckily
but to me
it was just an annoying prickly receptacle

full of enough intoxicant to be
lethal to any person
without a tolerance.

i just banged on the door.

''hey if i see this ****
again
i'll break your arm''.

i heard faint mumble from within
and left him to get high.

he was going to leave within the next day or two any way.

must be fun,
and millions are having fun,


why bother them?

they know what they're doing
it's just
the lack of respect i don't appreciate.

and the fact that they get to **** themselves in plain view
while
we die
oftentimes in slower subtler ways
It feels like I'm drowning
Maybe that's just because
I'm downing
Ten shots of ******
An hour
The power
Of comparison
To what I used to be
Straight.
Addict free
Every ounce of purity
Now stained
By an unclean bloodstream
So I'm far underwater
Committing my own manslaughter

Sinking
With every breath
Inhaling death
Free from thinking
It may be true that I'm dying
Supplying
My own toxins
Lacking proper caution
All this to avoid crying
Maybe it's wrong
But ******* it feels right
A fall with no flight
Clenched fists
With no fight

Because I can still breathe
When I'm drowning
And being underneath
The fluids
Is just as natural
And seemingly gradual
As a heart that's still beating
All my regrets retreating
The pain quickly fleeting
So I shoot up again…

And then just keep on repeating.
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