addiction

MYBESITY / SNORKEL IN HAND

There’s a part of me, tiny,
that wants to rebel, when the rest of my me-ness
wants only to gel with my whole, with my soul,
with my actions and thoughts, but the part of me,
lonely, seeks not what it ought

So I dangle from carrots and chase all my wants
while my needs watch the action with paraplegic taunts,
and the piece of me, hiding, that completes my perfection
instead leads me quickly into full self-rejection

The voice in my head wears me down with its yearning,
though still I do listen without ever learning, and
with each bite addiction grows,
while I only want to run
but I’m stuck to this person in cement shoes for one

I can feed my depression, and a part of me loves it,
but the bigger part tightens the chains while I chew,
as a larger me passes time suffering in silence –
regret dripping puddles from the eyes I once knew

Soon I am drowning and crying for help,
but the megaphone 1% continues to yelp,
and I find myself sinking
and shrinking away
while I wait for the rest of my parts to be saved

MONDAY YEAR BY YEAR

The end of my week has arrived, but I am still battling the Monday blues.
It’s true what they say about loneliness, and how it can follow you, wearing your shoes.
I can’t seem to pick myself up when I’m down, and it’s dark in this tireless mind;
I long for direction, but my amputised purpose seems harder and harder to find.

I’m full with an emptiness and hungry for love but I’m drunk on a silent regret.
I’ve spiked my own drink and I drink to remember but I only forget to forget.
The cure I am missing is suddenly absent and only presents in my dreams;
I walk without frame for my burden is heavy and depression is bursting my seams

I’m sure that I’m noticed by people I pass but not one of them cares to converse.
If only they’d ask why I’m always alone, I would tell them I’m feeling my worst –
but I’d share that I’m patiently seeking intention, distraction, affection, and more,
although I’d not voice that I’m crying too much, and my self-love has gone out the door.

I’m poor in more ways that I care to admit, and bad habits have met me, revived –
my bank account dwindles from playing the slots but they numb me and keep me alive.
The scales are too honest, and I do not appreciate the numbers it flashes so cheaply:
it only declares what I fail to admit, but I continue the ritual weekly.

The fault is my own, and I own my mistakes, but, unwelcomed, they came without leaving.
The past has now gone but my present is filled with the memories I’m constantly grieving.
I did not expect to grow old in this life while still searching myself for more time;
it’s Monday forever for me, it appears, but at least I can say it is mine.

PUPPET

Here comes the addiction again, its
whispering lips disguised as passion, the
touch of its hidden hand tap-running
way beyond the weave of my skin
and I
soaked to my core, allow it to wed me:
these buckling knees and paper mâché vows
impressing the addict impaled inside, and
while it listens
eyes necking everything in raised pulse,
it rolls them back with slack-jawed possession
and I move aside
host to a beaten heart that will not commit to stopping
– a puppeteer’d shell in this limbless silence –
running far without a single step
both of us
gambling with a satisfied purr that only I
once combative
now frail
know as loneliness

THE RIDE

Faced again with options,
– I am –
thumb sore,
from hitching a ride
to any direction
I’m taken:
partial nudity
framing the high risk
beneath these threads –
allowing nothing
but neglect
to course through these veins,
closer than a man’s knife.

Nothing but dis-ease
can stain like old graffiti:
stubborn and unwelcome,
and impossible to wash away.

It beckons to take my life
– this weed that chokes me –
but I know better than that:
it’s already gone.
What little of me remains
is always outside searching.

– red lights –

– red eyes –

– bloodied hope –

So I’ll take their word
– these men who stop to ogle –
and their banter,
and I’ll take the seat they offer
while I push their oily hands away,
just to sink back
for a moment
into the stubborn stench
of leathered history –
into the cosy
but broken seats
of the ride I’m taking now
– not the ride of my life,
but the pick-up
to another stop.

And as I sleep with eyes wide
and ears open
I search within

for freedom and peace

– an end to it all –

But it’s their cigarettes and coffee
that keep me breathing.