I awakened myself with a start
and crammed my medicine down
Opened old with fresh wounds
hunting myself with a pack of wolves

My soul choked within the morning
as it crawled to my daily tasks
Performed them standing on my head
when the wolves went to take a nap

(see me)
                See me running while I sleep

(tease me)
                   Tease me with that slab of meat

(please me)
                     Please me as I feel no pain

(free me)
                Free me with sweet insomnia again

Lulled me to sleep with soft panting
I opened mine eyes within your dream
where stones and metal ease the pain
Holy eyes closed in unholy sleep

The night stampeded like oxen
My soul dimly lit your face
My home now this haunted keep
since I never woke again

Just try to pull me from my bed
and flush my medicine away

Try and close my open wounds
and put a lead on the wolves

My sleep will only get deeper
The dosage will only get higher
The wounds more infected
The wolves bigger and faster than you

(see me)
               See me alive when I awake

(tease me)
                  Tease me then let me wholly partake

(please me)
                    Please me by letting me feel again

(free me)
                Free me with sweet peace again.

You're my fault,
The product of my imagination,
Everything in life I wanted,
Everyone I wanted to live in stagnation,
I'd rather live in my anger,
Then let it live in me,
And if the meds aren't in my head,
It's all the broken images of what I wanted life to be.

Let us remember Aristillus & Timocharis,
Like Halley & Galileo.
Of Zhang Heng & Dao Lee,
Like Newton & Max Born.
Of Werner & Yermolyeva,
Like Curie & Oppenheimer.
Of Paracelus & Fredrick Banting,
Like Tesla & Pythagoras.
Of Richard Feynman & André Ampère,
Like Michael Faraday & Benjamin Franklin.
Of Payne-Gaposchkin & Joseph Swan,
Like Ignacy Łukasiewicz & Kikunae Ikeda.
Of Takamine Jōkichi & Berners-Lee,
Like Robert Hooke & Gutenberg.
Of Talos Attalus & Perrilus,
Like William Bullock & Franz Reichelt.
Of Abū Bakr al-Rāzī & Ibn al-Haytham,
Like Archimedes & Johannes Kepler.
Of Aldini & Henry Russell,
Like Edison & Graham Bell.
Of Carl Bosch & Richard Fiedler,
Like Mr. Hyde & Dr. Jekyll.
Of Brokkr & Sindri,
Like Gullinbursti & Hephaestus.

Step 1: Sign away your rights

Step 2: Take your medicine

Step 3: Don’t tell them you’re a witch

they'll give it a name,
but a name doesn't mean
they'll take it more seriously
now that it has a place
in the common vocabulary.
it's still something
they don't understand,
since they can't relate
to battling the heaviness
just to stay present,
they don't know the weight
of staying awake.
now they put it on screens,
they promote it commercially,
mass-produced relief.
it still doesn't equal acceptance,
and just being able to live
shouldn't need to be paid for.
they give it a name,
but a name doesn't mean
they're no longer afraid to say it.
though it has its own place
in the vocabulary,
the victims remain unseen.

She is a medicine that I must take in small doses.
A prescription that I've hated the taste of since I started it years ago.
I can't stop taking it now, we've gone so far together,
And I don't want to cause any issues.
If I take my medicine more often than usual,
She will give me stomach aches.
I hate the taste of my medicine,
But if I take it every once in a while, it's tolerable, and I don't mind it.
Then I think about the fact that I'm taking medicine,
And my body aches once more.
If I don't take it, I'm full of guilt.
If I do take it, I'm full of pain.
She is a prescription that will pain me forever

you're not sleeping well,
every next new pill
is but a means to an end,
and it barely means anything at all.
if you dream, you fall,
and that fall's prolonged
by every mantra that someone
advised you to try,
by every breathing exercise
to the sound of the rain or the sea,
and the only thing you see
is the fear of losing your mind.
there's no chemical relief
as there is no magic spell,
for what it's worth
you've tried everything
just to keep your eyelids closed
a little longer.
nothing's working,
you're not sleeping well.

When one self-medicates,
Sometimes they grab the nostrum
Rather than the cataplasm.
Trying to clean the well, they mistake belladonna for myristica.
Perhaps it was the region or the season,
Maybe the water table atop which they were building.
Were it a town,
Perhaps its citizen lacked hygiene
Or had no care to maintain things.
Maybe they sparsely talked things over
And thought little of one another.
Of the many circumstances,
It could've been the building materials
Or the architects.
The dictates we lay out
For ourselves and those around us
Rarely are truly followed
In the case of relations between each other,
And typically less so
In the case of the larger world.

The juxtaposition betwixt
Hope & agony is often sharp,
Short but sudden.
Yet, is pain not longer suffered
All the times worse?
And of the flames snuffed?
Is this not the worst?
Of our fatigues,
They are addressed only in comfort,
Dressed by the garbs of one who understands
Our needs for medicine.
For the soul downtrodden
And the body corrupted,
As healers or like doctors,
Those whom we love enough to be as companions.
For the best remedy of any wound is care,
Borne out of love & not necessity
But because they wish to be there.