Medication

I roam the acid-fried streets of this 
drugged out city, passing citizens 
with mouths' stuffed full of 
Physician's Candy, 
So sedating or energizing 
that one can never truly function 
again, 
& I, of course, would be lying 
if I said my own cabinet (or bloodstream) 
were empty, 

& we've all got reasons, millions 
of reasons, as to why our chemicals, 
chemistry, sanity, is so far-fucking-off 
that we consume fist-sized gulps of 
pills in a frenzied, angry crunching
between our teeth - so hard, sometimes, 
that I am amazed that our teeth and 
mandibles don't shatter in our pill-whitened 
faces, 

One woman - she inhales her amphetamines 
and three pots of black coffee - no sugar or 
cream - for breakfast, slips her lithe body 
into the hottest shower she can manage
for she never eats enough to produce her own 
body heat anymore & heads off to a 12 hour 
long work shift before retiring to the gym, 
where she will run for 3 hours before going home 
to an empty house...

The man in his suit - he takes more Prozac 
than is even healthy, or legally prescribed, 
but his Dr. said that it was alright - because 
he has tried everything else except for ECT 
to jolt him from his soul-crushing depression, 
that wheedles at him daily to jump from his office 
window - or take the rest of the goddamned Prozac, 
so that he can just relax...

& My friend, the housewife, lives for 
her morning, afternoon, & evening doses of 
Valium, 
She swears they keep her sane with her 
five perfectly groomed children and her 
workaholic husband who works late 
at the office with his fabulously blonde 
secretary, 
Of course, I would never tell her 
that most afternoons whilst walking 
by the river I see them drive by, laughing 
as lovers do, in his cherry red convertible 
that matches her cherry red lipstick... 

& myself, personally, I sit most 
days with a bloodstream addled with booze 
and Klonopin, or if I am feeling feisty, 
maybe an amphetamine, 
& I write maniacally in my notebook 
of the people I see, things I know, truths I 
would never tell - to anyone else, 
& rant my Bipolar rants - appreciating 
the fact that I am also drugged so far 
into the sky that I may never have to 
come back down, 

& we all stay up here - like 
angels that have forgotten 
how to fly - so we stay suspended 
in mid-air, the Dr. is God - & we 
pray to him at every appointment that he will 
not cast us out of heaven & return us to the 
bitter, horrendousness of demonic 
humanity...for that would be sheer hell...