Going to chill with a pill like 'the fool on the hill' and watch the world go by
getting high, unreal as anything that is real can be,
see me,
I'm dumb,
don't think I'm wired to the mains,
got brains,
unused,
but what to use them for?

Going to light up the sky with my eyes while I chill and watch the world go by, getting high as high as anything that could ever be,
see me,
not plumb,
don't think I'm wired to the mains,
no volts,
just faults and every kind of an insane,
going to chill with a pill be the fool on a hill and watch the world go by, I wonder why I never thought of it before,
one door
closes,
another opens and revolves.

Shirtless, barefoot, and
reeking of self-loathe;
he sat in silence
at the edge of his mattress.
Studying the black
lettering on the face of
the prescription bottle
through bloodshot eyes.
His name indicated in bold
just above the RX number.

Aloud he read the words
Amphetamine Salts
To the layman- adderall:
A quick fix for your
run of the mill '*****-up'.
But to him it meant yet
another night without sleep.
One more night away from his demons.
Without the crippling nightmares;
The reoccurring remembrance
of events no longer (if even ever)
within his immediate control.
Glancing over at the clock-
counting quickly on fingers,
he’d figured it’d been about
sixty-four hours since his last sleep.

The lack of rest accompanied by
excessive alcohol consumption,
was making things hazy.
Days bled into one another.
His eyes started playing tricks.
Now sitting up straight,
he applied pressure to the
childproof lid, and twisted.
Plunging his fingers into the bottle,
removing two more pills,
he held them for a moment—
Then, with the help of a
flat, warm, beer swallowed
another twelve guaranteed
hours without sleep.

Laying back, legs hanging
off the edge of the bed
muscles aching,
stomach growling,
eyeballs burning;
content in knowing
he'd die before ever
facing that dream again.

Tea time which means

beans

on

toast,


the most beans I ever got was thirty six

I was going to save them in an album

but

mum

said

NO.




So I ate them

one by one until

all the beans

all thirty six

were gone

and

then I burped

(actually it was a ****)




I only said burp because

I don't want to hurt

the feelings of those

who don't like

crudities.




My bro'

the one just older
though

you wouldn't know it

had to sit next to me for tea




haha still laughing about that.

.

As I opened the medicine cabinet
carefully hidden behind a broken mirror,
I discovered transparent orange bottles
with broken childproof tabs on each cap,
concealing diet pills the size of ants.

I replaced the capsules with fully bloomed daisies
and I hope you swallow each petal
and ingest each stem entirely
so you can eat something that,
like you, encompasses beauty.

Wake and do
As you’ve always done
As you will always do
Forever.
Promise after promise,
Beg yourself to be clean,
But you know you’re stuck.

Wake and clean,
Wake and obey,
Wake and bake.
Wake and take
Just one or two.
Wait for the fade out
As it kicks in.

You can try to feel pristine
Live for diamorphine
Ecstasy or caffeine
Numb from the routine.
The ***** truth is that
No drug erases life
Without bringing death.

Wake and panic,
Wake and shake,
Wake and need,
Wake with pain.
You don’t want to feel again.

Pick up the bottle
Glass, plastic childproof cap.
Pick up the needle
You need to feel normal.
But you’re stuck
Somewhere in between.

Xanax in my drawer.
Correctly prescribed, yet unwanted.
Waits for me in a childproof container.

The moon, through my window panes, illuminates my room.
Aside from the most geometric corners of blackness.
My anxiety pains through my dreams.
Prompting me to stay awake.

The moonlight bounces off my nightstand drawer's brass handle.
Where the Xanax rests.
Where I could rest.

No pleasure in falling asleep.
When the only way possible is to stumble into it.
High and depraved.

One pill doesn't work, only two.
And I'm off to the moon.
Finally asleep, but not in control.
There's a reason we haven't gone back.

i think my black coffee self
has started to rot away
and i've become coffee with cream
a little softer with less sharp edges
a little smoother to touch
warm like summer air
the war zone inside my head
has made itself childproof
and i've furnished the place
with pillows and chapsticks
i want you to be comfortable with me
because i am most certainly not

*(a.m.c.)

12:00 am: go to sleep. You've long run out of short tasks to distract you from the heaviness of your body, made of rags soaking in the waters of your despair, and you've quite forgotten why you're awake in the first place. Girl, wring out your fingers, and go to sleep.

1:00 am: sleep is your cold husband on the other side of the bed, tugging the covers away and not sharing in the madness and sacrifice of this night; he has left you behind, girl. You can't remember his last embrace. He lays there, in his silent refusal to acknowledge your desire for him, unloving and untouchable.

2:00 am: you imagine your favorite cartoon characters from the stripes of light on your ceiling. Where is that light coming from? Your neighbor's back porch possibly, bit you don't really know.

3:00 am: you get up with motivation to do something nice for yourself. You haven't surprised yourself in a long time. You start to clean your room. By 3:15, you are lying down again. You're not sure you deserved the hassle in the first place.

4:00 am: you figure that it might be simpler to start your day now, but 4:00 am as a concept puzzles you. The lines are too blurred; is it today yet or am I still living yesterday? By the end of the hour, you decide it is a trick question. There are no lines at all.

5:00 am: suddenly, you realize there is something wicked about the last lingering moments of nighttime and the birthing breaths of morning, that being on a bridge between two opposite places is more like tightrope walking on a rope that extends from both ends the further you walk to one side or the other. Girl, you stand immobilized, barely balanced, above the widest abyss.

6:00 am: you accept the rising of the sun upon you as if mourning the loss of your mistress moon, who leaves you unceremoniously and with only an emaciated duplicate of herself, receding into your back brain, hand-in-hand with the You who only exists in the night time. They'll be back, girl.

7:00 am: showers need to be scalding hot for you to forget your skin. The steam floods you. You are all but present.

8:00 am: you don't precisely look like you in that big mirror in your front hallway. You look lost under coats of time and grief. Girl, who are you trying to forget?

9:00 am: people are talking all around you. Their voices blend together.

10:00 am: despite what you've told your friends, you do have somewhere to be, but that place does not miss you.

11:00 am: maybe it is all in your head.

12:00 pm: if it's all in your head, why does it nest inside your body? It makes a home in all your valleys and canyons and its voice echoes through you - "What you are looking for is not here either."

1:00 pm: you do pay attention in class this time, but only to not notice the boy behind you who reminds you that everybody will leave you.

2:00 pm: you, too, will leave you.

3:00 pm: the bell rings. Another echo vibrates you. "Are you still here?"

4:00 pm: at this point, the only thing that sobers you is holding your father's painkillers in your hand. You play with the childproof cap. You miss the days when you'd wake mom up in the middle of the night and ask her to open it because your perception of your pain is so simplistic and temporary that all you need is what's in that bottle. But now you will not open it.

5:00 pm: you walk the dog. The tips of the grass give you a crawling sensation on your ankles, and it's too unpleasant. You want to leave. The earth is communicating with you. "You don't belong here either."

6:00 pm: I - nevermind.

7:00 pm: you try to understand the way your heartbeat accelerates when people say goodbye. The hurt explodes off the top of your head, sizzling like fireworks. At the end of the day, you are the only burn victim in this flaming building.

8:00 pm: "Are you still here?"

9:00 pm: girl, you're cracking open at your seams and you can't fill those spaces with other people's stories anymore, empty, cellophane wrapped intimacy. Do you remember what it feels like to be touched?

10:00 pm: even the moments that you're in can't tolerate you anymore. You exhaust your seconds and they escape you, like everybody else. You lost the last natural blessing that means anything. You are alone. For God's sake, why are you still here?

11:00 pm: your mother is right. This is drama. Your father is right. You're a bad example. Your lover is right. You've got nothing to offer. Girl, why are you still here? You are the hurricane taking yourself down. You are ripping your own roof off and shattering your own windows; you step on the glass and debris and curse God for his carelessness, his heartlessness, his terrorism. He doesn't respond. God has left too.

12:00 am: you surrender to the sounds of the storm and finally get some sleep.

i asked him where my medicine was
“it’s on your side of the bed"
and suddenly i remembered you
after i had tried so hard
and let in hard
and played hard
and played hard
all i could do
was think about your comforter
and the comfort your words offered
how they comfort her still
when she’s weak and she lets you in
and hard that's softened leaves
even in your absence
imagine…  

the power of your presence to me then

she says she's sorry for my loss
though i’m sorry and i'm not
simultaneously
that she seems not to know
that what i lost was her
but she didn't leave me…
not forever at least…
at least that’s what i hear
my inner monologue speak
when i feel feeble and
i dread waking because it means
i'll have to keep my head above sea
and my true thoughts at bay
and i'll have to swim against the wave
because instinctively i don't give in
and as much as i would **** for you
i won't die because i let them drench me,
till i let the tide consume me
when i ensure that you're
the last image i see
follow me closely,
my tailgating tears

after you, i went to the doctor’s
i thought they were supposed to help
but they had me sat in that waiting room
for too, too long. almost as though they knew
of the last time you sat in the seat
i’m now writing these words on
penned poetry, just like me
you’re not here
and i'm feeling
sad and nostalgic
boxing out
fist fighting
violently resisting
even the slightest semblance of hope
my cruel mind tries to grant entrance

because i’ve been there before
and though they draw comparisons
between my knack of gathering information
that’s not mine to have and felines,
this is the exception
everything has one
and i'm cashing in
ignorance is bliss
it's never made more sense

i felt relieved as i sank at the shrink’s love seat

though i could also feel
the heart you’d enlarged
shrink in me
i couldn’t tell you anything about
our talk if i tried
for the life of me
i was too busy thanking time
for getting me away
from the waiting room
before i slipped away
and got it away from me

i started seeing people like this
you know them,
i was fathered by one who somewhat resembled them
the ones with a bunch of acronyms
listed next to the names their parents
gifted them. it’s saddening.
they’re all the same, robots
rinse
repeat
rinse
repeat
you’d have agreed with me

i guess i’m a hypocrite, though
i always knew little brother was right all along
i always denied the fact that a word that simple
could arouse defenses so complex
so as to divert my attentiveness
from the major setback at hand
aim, grimace, and flick metal at
the innocent fawn whose only wrong
was looking at me for long
enough so for me to see my reflection in
his ******* eyes
but i admit now, yes, i am.
a hypocrite.
because here i am,
collaborating
and manipulating the manipulators
to try to bring her back
because she was so happy
and ever since she left
you fled the negativity
and i don't blame you
that's why i use them
since they'll do me the same
regardless, as it’s a two-way street
i know they know what they're doing
when they hand me pills
in childproof bottles
my naïve questions
are enough "indicators" for them

and i play along
because that's what children do
and i make it seems as though i’ve just learned something new

like walking
and taking deep breaths
and loving sunny days
and life vests
and you

sometimes i get answers but never a handshake
not until we’ve zero'd it all out
by exchanging
pluses in bank accounts with negative NA motifs
at least i know, it’s all a game
and i like those a lot, you know.
you're the only one who really saw the child in me
she's been hiding for years.
shy...but instead of mocking nature
you made her feel how any little girl should feel.
so i win, because it’s all
about winning—my flaw, i know
acting like i know it all too
when i feel like i do
because i don’t claim
to retain
information
i never cultivate.

i drove home—or wherever the hell  
take it as a figure of speech
i’ve never really had that
not in my heart, at least
except with you
and thats all that matters most

like you said to me on the balcony
mama told me all that matters
is her sun
his heart
his soul
and the one
he chooses to sleep
next to each night
faithfully
her sun
his heart
his soul.
not wallet
nor abode
just.
those.

so here i am
sat, placid
apathetic
pathetic

reading him long before
he knew what he
was fixing to do
and i thought of you
so i walked to the room
sinking steeply
thinking deeply
sprinting wouldn't be
fast enough if it could be
that i could outrun
thoughts of a memory
because if that was you
and i’d seen your intentions
long before your own self
the influx of dopamine that would
flood my head
would’ve never driven me
to waiting rooms
in the doctor’s office
but reality is reality
as philosophers would agree

and i am me

though i’m unsure
as to what they’d say here

on my way to "my" side of the bed
right before I swallowed it
one more day out of thirty
pieces of her heart
that somehow
ended up in this
little
orange
bottle
she left for me
all i could fixate on
was the fact
that we had no fixed rules
or obligations or tasks
how we could fall asleep
and wake as we pleased
how you'd rise early
to move my car for me
to save me the officer's money
that i now use to sit in this crook's office
for this orange bottle

remember how we had
dinner for breakfast
true conversations without
no need
to divert attention from any
awkwardness at hand
by stroking our hands
on each other instead
and no curfew
or house laws needless?

do you remember my favorite?
when laughed as if we
were best friends sat by one another
in the classroom
struggling and breathless
because we weren’t allowed
to laugh that’s exactly what
made us red—what we can’t have

remember when we talked about assigned bedsides
the silliness of the notion because, besides,
once the electric shock seizes us and we fall
asleep in each others arms and hearts
left and right would merely do right
side by side just like
how our hearts and
words and bodies and brains
and all that makes us human
did

pure perfection.

you used to move me to the core
when you'd pull me in more
with those strong arms of yours
every time you sensed how on edge i am
and what i wouldn't give now
for that set side of the bed, left, right
that we had mocked as silliness

you’re the only thing
i wouldn’t give, if even
for the edge of your bed.

Stimulants that stimulate
that simulate excitement,
uppers in between the
tragedies we all have seen
filed away

lift the childproof cap and
Zap.
we all converge along the corners
where life can walk along with
shadows,
barely seen and never felt.

Tinker, Tailor, Norman Mailer
books to prop you
read to stop you
words to mop your brow,

and anyway
Portnoy
has a complaint to
complain about every day.

I followed the star
it led me to an Inn,
a bar
no stable,
no straw
no baby and what's more
the beer was warm

not a wise move.

Someone once told me "not to believe everything that I think"
I was cautioned never to leave unattended my drink.

Don't run with scissors or play with matches
All my spaces and cabinets have childproof latches.

Crossing the street I look not once but three or four
At night,  I slide the chain and triple lock my door.

I fear getting it wrong, getting hurt, being alone, getting old
I wish I was stronger, wiser, braver and bold.

Better to stay with the devil you know
then be out in the world all alone.

Life handed you lemons?  Make a drink.
Want something more?  It's a selfish thing to think.

So, I sit in my life watching it go by
and dream of what ifs.

Heavy sigh.

If they're coming to take me away
it won't be today,
the monsters have eaten their fill.

I'm just learning the ropes
fitting the bill
opening the childproof
and taking the blue pill,
the one that puts you to sleep
the one that keep you secure
in the deep of the night.

In the afterlife as an afterthought
a thought.
Wondering if thoughts are as powerful
as words once were
finding out when you're there
is a bit too late as indeed you would be too.


They might come tomorrow
but
I have more blue pills
and a good hiding place.