An Opiate Odyssey

An Opiate Odyssey

Afraid

…

There's a tight anxiety

surrounding me; a younger me.

I used to believe it was my effect on things.

Maybe my life was

What caused it.

Or it caused my life.

Or maybe it didn't.

It all ends up being somewhat irrelevant in the end.

Violence and tension and chaos;

staples in my world,

the world.

A perpetual search for solace,

Or relief

Always seemingly visible,

But just out of reach.

We all have our scars,

I still look at mine,

My face, my stomach, my legs…

The fights, and altercations,

All the wrong places at the wrong times.

…

Infatuation

And the day came

That I finally fell in love.

What I thought was love.

She had this way about her,

That special kind of lover

you've always known

But never met

And can't explain how.

She can make all your woes

Fade away

Away to the corners of

Your dark, dark mind.

I always expected to meet her

In a certain way, in a certain place.

She'd be standing alone,

In a dark bar with one dim neon light

Flickering brand name liquor and cigarettes,

She'd be leaning towards the bar

Her elbow resting on the wood surface

One foot up on the rest

Exposing her long, silky smooth leg.

You could catch her gaze

From anywhere in the room

It could penetrate the cigarette smoke-stained air

That swirls around her dark eyes and dark hair…

A glass of poison would rest between her fingers

As she clasps the stem

She would wet her lips with venom

And she would pull you through the room.

…

Heroin

As nights press on

We both grow into our true selves.

The thin stemmed glass of poison

Held lightly between her fingers.

Her lips red with the color of my own blood.

"There's something different about you tonight."

"Shhhhh." I remember the whisper.

"Tonight I want you to call me... Heroin."

And I did.

Our love affair.

Her secret tears in my flesh.

We could live our separate lives.

But we need each other,

A chemical obsession.

I can sense her chemistry in the air

Especially on those nights that I needed her so desperately

That I could feel it in the marrow of my bones.

But a polluted love like mine could never last.

Could never be.

…

Adultery

I am weak

With Booze, and Powders, and Pills.

In a twisted kind of love,

an open relationship,

With a pestilent faith to the true one and only.

I lie.

I am shame.

I am fallen.

…

Disease

"Shhhhhh." Her whisper, "All is forgiven.

All I want from you is everything you love. Burn it all."

Her voice… it floated,

From the moisture of her deathly lips.

"Envelope me in your warmth, forgive me, give me solace…

Kill me…"

That solace I used to have to chase.

Her promises are short,

I'd feel the need to chase her again.

And I end up giving away everything I love.

"I'd ... do ... anything."

Imagine your whole life being about the worst things you ever did.

The cold, the ache, the voices in my head

Reminding me constantly

The truth of our romance.

I just need that quiet gesture to help the silence it all, the warmth I crave.

The chase.

I chased her.

I'll always chase her.

"Shhhhh…"

Warm again.

Kiss me with your -

Your -

…

Overdose

"Tonight… Tonight you'll seek oblivion."

I was mesmerized by her whispers.

Our dance of death.

And I step out of the light

To a dark corner of that once magical meeting place.

I don't remember it all;

Our dance of death.

Our love,

My love.

But we were different now.

She was done with me now.

…

Freedom

I left her standing alone in dark

Her and her junk

Years away from her,

And it can still feel heavy;

The burden of surviving our wicked game.

Some nights I hear the soft, entrancing music

Being lifted to my ears

From our ghostly haunts…

I know she's piercing her lovers' hearts

With promises that can't be kept.

And for some reason.

It's no longer me.

Tonight I am free.