Caribou Barbi

Caribou Barbi goes to Washington

Your calloused hands

Your calloused hands bring kindness to my spirit every time you touch me. Hard working strong hands with deep creases, even scarred in places. Never pampered hands without compromise as to purpose or background with pedigree in lost wages from tired labor, long days handling heavy things. But I do, I care, I care for your each breath on this earth. I hope for your safety and delight, when you sleep I pray you have dreams of wondrous joy to help balance labor you have had to provide. Your simple existence in my life has provided reality in contrast to fantasy about good that, as a child I lacked. Your touch a blessing, an unsullied truth in a world full of come-on filled deceit. What made you? How did kindness grow so large, so clear in you that no matter what people do to you, no matter what they say you are incorruptly pure? Your calloused hands bring such joy to me that I know you are the one. You are my darling angel, I will always adore your fine, calloused hands.

Drug Company

I lie in bed moving around trying to find a place more comfortable than the last cold uncomfortable sweaty spot. My eyes are drooling and I drift sleepish off and on in a slow nauseous slump. Nose raw from wiping runs thick snot across my parched lips. Last night I woke up lying in a sticky drying pool of my own diarrhea. I’m losing water faster than I can take it in. My heart labors fast and kitty skittish hoping to get some OC soon because everything, each and every cell in my entire body is confused, unknowing of what to do. I’m thirsty and not hungry but there’s simply no energy to get out of my filth encrusted bed to go to the next room and get something to drink. I know I’ll wait for the sweats to run all greasy again to get my weary off enough to lie in the tub and run some water. I stopped following doctor’s orders three days ago and if you’ve never kicked, if you never done the cold cold turkey then you just won’t get it. I’m a medical junky, a friend to the drug companies. Paying my $300.00 a month for the privlege of modern medical care for 90 20mg tablets of everybody’s current fad drug. When you see the stars and radio commentators get down from their gear know that they go to a nice clean clinic and get put into a slumber for two weeks as the nice staff cleans and washes them, changing their sheets every time something happens. when they wake up they’ll be a bit woozy. A little worse for wear but they won’t have to diminish their rich privlege by doing what I and thousands of other do to get clean, they are doing the same dance I do, with better care. Poor folk don’t get care and seeing’s how only %1 of anybody in this country is rich likely is that if you’re reading this you ain’t. My pills can be converted on the street to about $1800.00 but I won’t do it. I am what is called a “compliant ethical patient” and follow their directions. You are simply going to think I am crazy but I followed the doctor’s orders up to now, but now only ‘cuz I really need to find out if I need the drug anymore and there’s no way to determine where I am unless I turkey and see. I’ve done this twice before and both times realized after a month off that I am still in pain so know I’m crazy because I’m doing something over and over with the same stupid result. But I still got damn fool hope.
When you first get clean the pain returns way bad, unsettling and fierce but if you are mad back at it, if you are as mad as I am about drug companies and hospitals you grit it and get it. You wait weeks and then months until there’s no other chance that it’ll go away, chronic pain people understand, you lose appetite, motivation and depression eats away quiet at why you should stay around because each day is exactly as the last and there’s no joy in anything. Most folk who take narcotics for chronic pain become what is called “medically dependant” on the substance. When we kick it’s said by the drug companies to be much easier because we didn’t get to feeling good when we take it, at best we feel ok. Most folk who take it for fun get high, get in high gear over it. They’ll do the stupidest things to get more, increasing their dose, chasing the now I’m in high gear edge it gives ‘em hoping to just get another chance to grab the tail of the bird that flys ‘em so high. They show every now and then on the news and I just do not understand. Narcotic make me nauseous and give me a headache but it’s better than the pain. Even though 80mg can kill a newbie, folks there is no maximum dose. Some well adapted folk can take thousands of milligrams and in their pain or on their gear they either need or seek more. But I’m simply a fool who had a ” negative outcome” gut operation with a whole passel of first time surgeons (tell ya that story later) at the VA so called hospital. Yeah, I’m a “lucky” peacetime vet. I ended up on the dole with Uncle Sugar paying the bill with money I gave him for working near 30 years and the State covering the the rest of my so called needs. Except when I die the State gets first cut at all my leavings. They’ll come into my bedroom and get everything of value and sell it to pay off their kindness. Do you ever scratch your head and wonder why all those people are on the dole? Why so many well intended hard working folk lose their means to work then lose everything? You know them, they’re the people the right wing calls “lazy” or the left wing calls “underemployed.” What kind of vile inhumane system does this? Yours does, you own this one all by yourself. Our sanctimonious government has funded this mess for as long as you’ve been alive. And as long as the drug companies and their friends the insurance companies and politicians have their way you’ll keep me here in this pool of shit hoping for a medication that will work, something that will make my pain go away without causing me to be so damn sick. Excuse me, I’m going to barf again, I’ll be back… if I remember to, did I tell you that turkey screws up memory?

Alone

I am alone, always, even when I am here, alone.
All of my life has been spent without others, ever moving and transient.
As I dream of you, I am alone.
When I think of you, I am alone.
As I was raised by my families, I was alone.
In the fields, gleaning, alone.
Never close, always moving.
I sleep and eat alone.
In public amongst others, in crowds, festivals, orgies.
I am alone.
Except for you.
And the cats…..

You left your drag on the hook

I cannot write now, of stilled pain and lost you. Soft purple satin hooded memory hangs on my door, waiting, untouched, for your return. Last promise time passed while it hung quiet, undisturbed, hard hooked, empty spirit akimbo inside, another reminder heart sometimes errs. Your hooks ride me still, holding sharp heart rendered moments of dally, pieces of time yet displayed as coup de cur. Past moves beyond mind into thoughts to come, less real for fabric’s gathered wonders. Hope’s dripping beauty gone, a tricked eye-closing thought of love’s past dreams. What comes of soft suspended satin hung still on my door?

The Burners

Wolves ‘n Red Hats
08/04/01

You renege on your rich man’s promises as fast as a junkie on a Friday night payday. Spewing false hope out your ass to the poor folk you entertain at your shiny table, you gather sanctimony guarded by golden green clouds of money – gathered on your horde, a new dragon facing enlightenment always looking over your shoulder, to see who wants some of your stuff hung around your neck, a shit butt albatross. Gathered together in one place you push your condo to the desert in search of artists – hands full of $. Knowing if you decorate your body better you can look like you are one of them. At 300 sheckles per (+RV & drugs) you hoi polloi yourself in quest for enlightenment. When you return to the new world those same shit butt hopes are wolves in red hats awaiting you return.