Just a cup of tea

The tea sits hot, sweet, fragrant next to the bed on the edge of the old oak secretary. I can smell the leafish scent enticing, full of waking promise. My hand reaches to the cup and pain strikes thru my gut in severe warning of physical limit. Just out of reach I try to roll or edge close and unable to get past the knife in my side begin to cry from my need to be able to move in a simple get the cuppa way that nearly everyone can do. I grab the headboard using my arms to drag my torso toward the cup and stop defeated by the aching hot hole cut in me. I lie still waiting again for pain to please go away now and in a few minutes it fades. Again and again I try for the cup, persistent and hopeful despite my limit I drip frustration from my eyes and become triumphant. Balancing my screaming belly I bring the now cold cup of tea to my lips and drink the whole thing in one long cool satisfying gulp.

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?

God forgot to give you your wings

God forgot to give you your wings, I know this because you carry me everywhere you go. Your hands nourish me and wash me. Your eyes and voice salve me. Your very breath gives me hope that the next day will be somehow better. I live in the valley of lost ability, unable and in pain. Your warmth keeps me wanting to help. Your arm balances me when I stand. You bring food for my soul and joy for my heart and there is no compensation, no money for you for this thing that you do. The corporations tremble at your selfless lack of regard for the message of their profit. The very soul of the universe shows its glimmer as you live an example of truth unsullied by lies and fear. Strength is your name, knowledge is your trade. Angels bow in awe at such determination to care for others. The Gods know your name and they’ve been wondering, when will you visit?

Got Change

Wandering wounds of senses, hollow found breath waits as darkness bleeds into sudden color of skin. Tingles arise, wondering where the numbness will take me today. Staggering in the store as you look away – reminded of your own mortal rot I slowly melt down in your public space. Invisible, my loss is not yours and I’m guilty too, my eyes have looked away as often. Constant hope that something will renew me, my spirit rising to joyous wonder as a fitful moment of good health passes, keeps me alive. Numbness, uneven spotting and spattered loss of touch of things, my dalmationed hide is leaving the planet ahead of this slack heart. Lung filled lazy sick fatigue holds me in arms of spiraling stupid torpor, like sleep but skimming, always skimming awake from leaky wet spots. They say I’m disabled, I’m not able, what they didn’t tell you is that I’m already dead. Your eyes tell me that every time you look through my quiet invisible flesh. There is no paradise for us – wretched sidewalk revenants – lost in public view. There is only you, passing legs on the concrete. No one may know what is really in my head or what I see, but I know – as deeply as any professed faith has ever known – that for me there is only pain and an always stirred cool dust of disregarding strangers as I sit and catch your guilty coin. Forest abounds, soft sun warmed fields and fogged cliffs lay in wait, beauty is but around this corner, opinion passes with the shiny shoes of strangers. Glittering granite grit anoints my stone-faced pain. Heels of fate stride by, feeling the wash of mindless fear I watch the clean disregarding shoes of strangers walk away.