Tag: addiction

This Barren City


This barren city

These roads slick with tears

These sidewalks cracked

And mountains in every direction.

Here in the valley

Everything settles

The rain filling the fields

Running down from frosty peaks

To overflow my ditches,

The clouds fall on my head

Every morning making everything dewy.

In this barren city

Where anything can grow

Except good will towards

The hopeless, the shattered

The broken and tattered.

To the many who call these streets

Their home tonight,

No bed to rest your weary bones

No place to wash off bad decisions

Hoping tomorrow you are able

Tomorrow you’d have more strength

And someone in your corner.

To them and others

I say unto you

The city might be barren

But you don’t have to be,

The streets might be cold

But your heart isn’t.

The hope that rises with the sun

Will lift you from the pavement

And raise the dead in you.

– Vagabond Prophet

@josy57 thanks for prompting me with “This Barren City.” This issue is dear to me.

Habits

josy57:

We are funny creatures, us humans
We seek always to protect ourselves from pain
We look for love and for safety in the oddest of places
And once we have been burnt, or bitten, or stricken
We search for comfort in other forms of harm

We all rely on the same coping mechanisms
Trenches etched in our brains since the dawn of times
Idealize, dissociate, deny
The old machinery runs smoothly as ever
But it takes us down some strange and winding paths
What we want is shelter but we settle for distraction
And what shields in the end also destroys us

We stubborn, headstrong human beings
We think we know better
We hang on to the poison of our choosing
And I am no different
I do with thought and memory
What others do with cigarettes and a bottle
With a razor or a needle
I take a blade to the very fabric of my soul
To fray the thread which tie me to myself
Not cut them, no, not all the way through
I could never sever the cord, nor turn it to a noose
After all, it is not a death wish but a misguided attempt at survival

I lick my wounds and kiss them dearly
Those burning lips talk slowly and always listen
I suck the venom from the flesh and swallow it back
Feeding feverishly off my own illusions
Intoxicated and sickened in self-sufficiency
Drunkened in a sadness that softens every blow
I withdraw in myself
My habit has no substance, but it sure is abuse
Yet I should know better
You can never evade the issue forever
You cannot fully keep it out
It only works a time
Until the cure itself becomes another illness
Until your old refuge is an abyss staring back

Thank you @vagabondprophet for prompting me with “Habits of harm”

Having a hard time describing how much I love this poem. The issues of addiction and addicted people are something that is close to me, I work at a youth shelter and this is so poignant and true. Everybody is addicted to something and we ought not judge.

Need and Needles


Driving downtown seeing all kinds of people,

Walking everywhere in haphazard zigs and zags

Unshaven, unwashed, mind reeling from life.

Existing is a heavy weight

Sometimes too much to bare,

It wrinkles the straight creases in the mind

Making things appear that weren’t

Or taking away what you’d known.

It’s not just bums who chose this life,

It’s Ricky who’d been raped as a boy,

It’s Vicki who’s children

Don’t speak to her anymore.

When there’s this much need

And needles,

It’s everyone’s problem

And there’s no fencing it in.

– Vagabond Prophet