Confessions of a former drug addict

I was an alcoholic
Did drugs into the night
I started at 11
Did anything in sight
'Til my brain was addled
I wasn't very bright
Soul sickness was my problem
Did not know wrong from right
But Jesus healed my spirit
I finally saw the light

I started as a bartender
For my family do's
I catered to their parties
And I began to use
I served up martinis
They could not refuse
Made 'em good and strong
Began with one or two
Soon I became drunk
And started to abuse

Then I did white crosses
Marijuana trees
I did angel dust
Also known as ***
No ******* or ******
But I did LSD
Discovered yellow jackets
And drank peyote tea
I couldn't ever get enough
And that was all for me
At 14 years old
It was catastrophe
Then I found religion
Known as Scientology
It was total *******
But I finally broke free!

I went for years not drinking
Had no acid trips
I loved a natural high
And no drug passed my lips
But life has twists and turns
Much pain and great hardship
I had to run away
Just took a couple sips
Embarked upon a journey
On substance abuse ships

I finally found the needle
******. *******.
I preferred the uppers
Manic highs obtained
I found I could not get away
And so my soul was stained

Then I started smoking it
I liked that best of all
It was like the peak of bliss
That high I still recall
But with every High
There's always a hard fall

I tried Scientology
The SRF and more
But my soul was very sick
Rotten to the core
I was finally Shipwrecked
On a hostile shore
I tried AA and Rehab
But they could not restore
Beaten down to nothing
I was finally floored

Then I met my Jesus
And I was so inclined
To go to church 3 times a week
And the Spirit shined
Gave water to my thirsty soul
My very bones aligned
He restored my body
And He restored my mind
When I finally broke free
Of the religious grind
No matter how the roads will turn
How they wend and wind
I have seen the valley
Mountains I have climbed
Now I know within my soul
His Mercy I will find

And so Jesus saved me
It happened overnight
I woke up a different person
With the strength to fight
I have new eyes to see now
He's restored my sight
No longer in deep Darkness

I have seen the light!*


SoulSurvivor
(C) 9/3/2016

A Poem For Each Of The Boys I’ve Ever Loved

Ⅰ.
sometimes your scent travels in the wind,
suffocating me like a nasty perfume,
leaving me to wonder if i’ll ever forget your smell.

Ⅱ.
you wore the sweatshirt you let me borrow a few days ago
i mean, i don’t even think you remember i had it at all.
it was just another sweatshirt in your drawer.

Ⅲ.
your handwritten notes sit in neat pile next to my bed.
it has occurred to me that maybe thats the cause of my nightmares.
but really i think you’re the reason for everything and anything.

Ⅳ.
you have the prettiest eyes in the whole entire world.
im satisfied knowing i was once the reason they lit up so bright.
I’ll never let someone take the sparkle in my eyes away again.

Ⅴ.
we used to listen to music together and we’d laugh a lot.
you’d snicker at they way i lip sang to myself.
and id laugh because you really didn’t care i was a ******.

ⅤⅠ.

most of my days are spent wishing you were still here
you never really know how much you love someone
until they don’t love you anymore and thats a sick thought.


(ps, each of these poems are about you and only you and always you. i miss you. love always, the pathetic girl with a big heart and green eyes.)

So, tell me boy with the cerulean eyes, do you remember our first kiss? You stained my mouth with a sunset. You left your name on the roof of my mouth and I haven’t shut up about you since. You left me sitting alone in the library. You left me picking dandelions. Nobody told me dandelions aren’t a flower. Nobody ever told me that maybe you didn’t love me. I just thought, “how could someone kiss like that and not be in love with me?” But you didn’t love me, I know that for sure. It hurts to leave someone you love, even if it’s just for a day, it aches to be without them. Now I’m stuck with your sunset in my mouth and any boy after you who thinks they want to kiss me will taste your name and vanilla. I think you should apologize to the next boy who thinks he wants to get to know me. He doesn’t. He doesn’t. He doesn’t. Getting to know me means getting to know you. God, I wanted to love you so badly. I wanted to kiss the corners of your mouth and listen to all your secrets. I hate you for ******* that up. I hate you for giving me the worst case of writers block known to man. I hate you for being my muse. I hate you for kissing me so hard that I thought the trees were talking. I loved you so much and now it’s not the same and I hate you for making me question my love. I hate that you felt the need to raise your voice to tell me you didn’t love me anymore. As if I needed to be hurt anymore. I love you only always. And I think that’s the worst part, dandelion boy.

We had something special. I mean, that’s what they all say in the beginning. You spend so much time building up a city, sit on a bench and realize, “well, ****, the lights are blinding.” And that’s what happens. People spend so much time creating what they think they want. and when they’re stuck with it, they close their eyes the entire time in disappointment. Here we are, sitting on a park bench wishing we lived somewhere in the country where we could actually see the sky, touch it, taste it.

We wanted more, but we stayed quiet. Mostly we wanted different, but instead, we started apologizing. You apologized for everything under the sun. The way you clicked your gum when you were bored, how you talked to yourself when you were stressed, the way you walked further ahead than me. You were hurrying ahead of me and I never understood where you were trying to go, but I knew it was away from here. I wanted to say something, anything, to break up the monotony of the silence that enveloped us. But I stayed quiet. I didn’t want to argue, just scream.

“I want to go home.” You finally said one evening. “I hate these **** lights and I can’t sleep knowing the city is awake.” I wanted remind you that you had insomnia, that if we lived in the country and the world fell asleep as we laid our heads on our pillows, you’d still never be able to sleep. You’d probably say the silence was too loud. I could never win with you.

We created something so electric, so terrifying and you were closing your eyes through it all. “If I can’t see her, she can’t see me.” Right? Not. I saw you, I witnessed your every move. But, I stayed quiet. I let you pack your things into boxes without question. I let you fall asleep on the couch for weeks. “I just can’t sleep. You breathe too loud.” You’d say. I felt a scream inside of me. Insomnia. You had insomnia. And of course I was breathing loudly, I was dreaming of drowning. And you were the ocean. That’s how it started feeling from then on.

I wondered where home was for you? With your parents? Where they could tell you about all the wonderful things you could’ve done? I knew that wasn’t it, but I also knew home wasn’t here either. In this city with a thousand stories. In this city that never sleeps. In this city where things are always happening. I began wondering what I didn’t know about you, but I began wondering, mostly, what I didn’t want to know. How when you can’t sleep, you sigh and toss and turn. Toss. Turn. Sigh. Turn. Toss. Sigh. Sigh again.

I sat on a park bench. Alone this time. Staring at the billboards, I closed my eyes and gulped. I tried to forget the awful color of the boxes that surrounded our my home. I tried not to think about how you forgot to say goodbye. I wondered what you saw when you closed your eyes? Because I saw lights. And I smiled. Because you hated the lights here, I began to love them. I began to love crowds in small rooms just out of spite. I started opening my eyes, asking questions, speaking out when I agreed with something, speaking up especially when I didn’t.

Insomnia wasn’t contagious but I think you gave me every symptom. My doctor told me to lay back on the coffee and maybe take NyQuill if it got worse. How was I supposed to pinpoint when I would miss you, though? I couldn’t. I reached for the phone before I could find the NyQuill, dialed your number. Like riding a bike, it’s something you don’t forget. I winced as it rang, I shuddered when you answered. I had so much to say, I had rehearsed this.

“Hello?” I felt my bones realign into the way they were when we fell in love. Perfect form to fit beside you in bed without disturbing you. Perfect form to hold your hand without getting too close. A perfect structure to love you without saying much of anything. I gulped. I wasn’t at a loss for words, words were at a loss for me. I reminded myself this. I wasn’t at a loss for you, you were at a loss for me.
“Hello? Who is this?” “I don’t think either of us have an idea.” When someone is quiet with you, you begin to memorize their voice. You didn’t have to love me to know what my voice sounded like. You had to love me in order to listen to me. There’s a difference. You sighed, “Oh, you” There was a sigh on the end of the line and I thought about the way you’d do this when you couldn’t sleep. Toss. Turn. Sigh.

I hated it like you hated the bright lights and the city.

“If you don't need anything, then stop bothering me.” I shivered at the harshness of your voice. And sighed myself. I started from the beginning, in screams that echoed throughout my home. I went on and on and on and on and on about everything I had ever suppressed until I heard the dullness of a dial tone mimicking me. I pressed end.

That’s when everything went quiet.

You hated noisy, crowded rooms, the city, the bright lights. Now me. You had it all wrong though.

Because here I am in the middle of the city that never sleeps staring at the nights and listening to the voices around me. I wanted to hear everyones story, but all I could hear was your voice telling me to stop bothering you. Your harsh tone, the way it cut through the silence of your small home in the country. I bet you can’t sleep there either. I bet you blame it on the crickets being too loud or the moon being too bright. I was drowning and you were sighing over and over again as if to say, “Great, another mess to clean up.”

Just so you know, you have insomnia. Just so you know, I can swim. Just so you know, there’s a difference between listening and hearing. We choose what we hear. Just so you know, there’s a difference between looking and seeing. You can choose what you see. You can’t keep your eyes shut for months and expect them to be accustomed to the bright lights when you decide to open them.

They say love comes unexpectedly
But they never told me how it leaves
Suddenly, painfully, helplessly

And this is just another poem about you
But unlike the other ones from before
It's the last of it all, with no more

See I already felt it coming
Long before it all fell apart
Before it shattered my living heart

Usually in books, they talk about heartbreaks
Emotional stress, vulnerability, and crying
But they never mentioned physical heart aches

The throbbing, and the sobbing
And what feels like a bullet clashing
Every millisecond, pounding, literally breaking

And it's something chocolates can't fix
And obviously, neither will the chick-flicks
Something not even sleep could do the trick

I've realized we grew apart
Became distant, not just because of the miles
Already separating us apart

And I know I've pushed you away
Leaving you in dismay
Unsure of tomorrow, scared of yesterday

But I didn't know you knew
Knowledged of the game I've put you through
Unaware that you could hurt me too

Now all's been said and done
I've lost the better part of me, my number one
My lover, my bestfriend, all gone

Unlike other scenarios, I choose to act differently
I aim to take it well, and not selflessly
I won't let my vulnerability get to me

And now I know better
Right now pathetically missing you
Wouldn't do

And someday, hopefully
We'll meet again, in a parallel universe
Within each other's existence, unknowingly

Maybe then, in another life, I could love you

But for now thank you for the pain and tragedy
I needed it for my poetry.

*-djs

if words are food for the mind,
then here is a glimpse of mine
if words are drugs for the brain,
then here is why i'm so pained.

abandoned, abhorrent
abnormal, absent
abstract, abuse
addicted, anxious

betray, bitterly
blank, blasphemy
bloodless, breakdown
breathless, brutal

captive, casually
catastrophe, cautiously
change, cigarettes
crucial, clueless

damaged, dangerous
deadly, disastrous
disheartened, disconcerting
dramatic, dreading

eager, eccentric
ecstasy, eerie
effete, effortless
embittered, excess

faded, failure
faintly, fallacy
faltering, fatally
fearfully, finally

garbage, gawky
gibberish, gloomy
gone, goodbye
graphic, gratify

hallucinate, harshly
hazy, heartless
hectic, helpless
hesitant, hit-and-miss

idiotic, idly
ignorant, intimacy
illogical, imaginative
infatuated, intoxicated

jealousy, jittery
journey, journal
joylessly, judicial
junk, juvenile

keen, killing
knavish, knocking
knockout, knotty
knowingly, knowledge

laborious, lacking
lame, languishing
lifeless, literature
lovelorn, lugubrious

madness, maintenance
make-believe, malaise
mean, melancholic
mellow, melodramatic

naff, naivety
nameless, naturally
nauseous, nebulous
neglected, nervous

oasis, objectionable
obliged, obliterate
oblivion, obscurity
obsolete, one-and-only

pacifist, pained
pale, panicky
paradise, paralyze
passionately, passively

raging, ranting
rationalize, raving
realistic, reasonable
rebellious, reckless

saboteur, sadness
sake, sameness
sanity, satisfactory
scar, steady

taint, tangled
tasteless, tearful
telling, temperamental
terror, theoretical

unaffected, uncanny
uncommon, unconsciously
undesirable, uneasy
unfortunate, untidy

vaguely, vanish
vanity, vanquish
versatile, vicious
violence, voracious

waiting, waking
walkout, wanting
wasteful, weary
withering, wrecking

if words are food for the mind,
then you've seen a glimpse of mine
if words are drugs for the brain,
then no wonder i'm so pained.

*-djs