Addiction

“Addiction” by Howard Lancaster

neurochemistry
twisted and kinked
ropes of darkness
hang brains from
powdercoat gallows
transmuting the
psyche disabling the
organs of dreams
choking choice
freely burning all
natural identity
down to black ash
here the predator
heat of ferocious
scaled cravings turns
tissues to sopping
with alien moisture
the sweat from a
grim peristalsis
biology bent to
enslavement of
merciless purpose
destruction not
damage sheer
utter destruction
its ruin apparent
just look in the eyes
vacant pods sunken
sallow and sightless
all trace of a man
hidden fetal and deep
cowered under dead
layers of life from
the past wrapped
in skin of what
once was a womb

 

 

From my book Small Noise

 

Huqqa

 

 

“Hookah” by Baraholder

 

 

wet smoke lays down in languorous lungs
condensation to sweeten a bubbling glass
Turkish pipestem draws vapors round tongues
for savoring shish burned in bellies of brass
the mood climbs a flight of transcendent rungs
to a mellow state bourbon alone can surpass

 

(originally posted January 2014)

221B

Image From pinterest.com

inelegant illness afflicts him

who bumps about corridors

rattling locks

with the bones in his tail

stalking for deer

with a rosin-swept bow

in the malformed aesthetics

of calabash pipe-smoke

tainted with henbane

that curls around houndstooth

staining the Inverness cape

knowing bliss has no keys

he kicks open doors

of two-cornered rooms

no doctor would bless

finding stairs Piranesi

could have designed

their paths up or down

all land the same place

where a grandfather clock

ticks the tempo of fear

and brocade paranoia

drapes barrister boxes

of leather-bound brains

and mementoes of sins

hiding fine-pestled clues

behind acid-etched glass

in plain sight

yet unseen

in differently hued

hallucinogens

that powder

alchemical bellies

of porcelain mortars

where hundreds of

gripping good crimes

would be solved

(originally posted March 2013)

Applause

Photo from ‘The Guardian’

(Originally posted February 2014)

(For Philip Seymour Hoffman 1967-2014)

what agony pierces the veins
with such pleasure that art
must be murdered by muscle
and malice self-loathing the
criminal mastermind inside
the psycho-biology tortured
by exquisite talent and pain
breaks the hearts that erupt
in applause moved and lifted
aloft by a consummate body
of work time and over again
left to grieve and consider why
some gifts are so ill-endowed
with inherently punishing
conflict of blessing and curse

Curves

“Abstract Head: Pain” by Alexei Jawlensky

(Originally posted February 2014)
 

finding curves in the wounds
was surprising
the pain always angular
all hard and sharp
acute corners
pushed up under muscle
where only the dirty moons
rising from sickly brown bottles
and bedsheets
give comfort of two or three
midnight click hours
of crippling clocks
as the curves of the wounds
swallow life bit by bit
mean and raw with their red
violent purpose

Overprescribed

“Drug Abuse” by Angu Walters

capsules of sanity
tablets of bravery
consciousness addled
by painkilling chemistry
left in the half-light
of utter dependence
a life inauthentic
one cadre of shadows
exchanged for another
will time tell the tale
whether treatments
prove better or worse
than afflictions

the trinity essence
of human identity
heart mind and soul
find connection
by delicate meshed
metaphysical membrane
connections indifferently
severed by dull
pharmaceutical knives
in the quelling of
pain and depression
collateral damage
the self can’t survive

in the effort
to overcome suffering
physic and psychic
rebalanced arranging
a new personality
lost of original tendencies
sapped of vitality
trapped in a fugue
of unrealized addiction
content to continue
the journey unwary
the path has been altered
away from one’s dreams

Opioids

“Defeat II”
Painting by Yvonne Palermo
From phinneywood.com

hard chemical hammers
smash at deep neuropath pain
a narcotic synthesis driving
a deadfall of drumbeats
that shatter collateral sanity
scored to a psychotrope menu
of dreadful dependence
and nullified memory
blunted acuity
sleepless fatigue
all concomitant
ravaging side effects
worse than the cure
it’s no wonder that
artists and authors and poets
and thinkers are all
better left to their pain

Easier Said Than Done

“Zusammensetzung VIII”
Painting by Wassily Kandinsky
From chmc-dubai.com

all the kindly advice
in the world cannot
light the dull eye
nor release gripping
clinical claws of a
dogged depression

no room to remember
old laughter the mind
grown too busy too
pensive the heart too
despondent no room
left for colors of life

what for some is an
effortless journey
becomes an impossible
trek for those bodies
indeed all but dead
save for pieces of pain

pain that lives like a
parasite carnal of
appetite feeding
on tissue and muscle
and bone endless
meals of tomorrows

here is hopelessness
bleak and as black as
the bowels of Sauron
psychiatry empty of
cures suggests coping
by way of blind stupor

what good is a choice
for a chemical limbo
existence of artifice
vanished of essence
erasing the self seems
no real choice at all

Addiction

“Addiction”
Painting by Howard Lancaster
From fineartamerica.com

neurochemistry
twisted and kinked
ropes of darkness
hang brains from
powdercoat gallows
transmuting the
psyche disabling the
organs of dreams
choking choice
freely burning all
natural identity
down to black ash
here the predator
heat of ferocious
scaled cravings turns
tissues to sopping
with alien moisture
the sweat from a
grim peristalsis
biology bent to
enslavement of
merciless purpose
destruction not
damage sheer
utter destruction
its ruin apparent
just look in the eyes
vacant pods sunken
sallow and sightless
all trace of a man
hidden fetal and deep
cowered under dead
layers of life from
the past wrapped
in skin of what
once was a womb

Coffee

Photo from
Keurig.com

coffee is my drug of choice
it stimulates my sleepy voice
propels me through the daily grind
and clears the cobwebs from my mind
the only downside I can see
is twice an hour I must pee