addiction
You sit there
inert, lifeless;
needing my attention
to bring you alive.
I hesitate,
though it’s quiet now
with the children asleep
and the traffic
just the mild, sporadic
sigh of a solitary car,
instead of the earthquake rumble
of the heavy equipment and
daytime’s bustling progress.
Silence,
or what passes for it
in the twenty-first century,
invites introspection;
that deep soul-searching
which is a true poet’s life’s blood.
Yet I am new to this calling
and diving deeply is
still frightening.
So I stick to the shallows
of my descriptions,
and all the while
you sit there
inert, lifeless,
yet still somehow singing your
Siren song.
The way the cigarette whispers
or alcohol taunts,
the way the drug promises,
you call to me.
There are ‘things’ to do,
productive ‘things’,
but they are delayed
and some will remain undone,
as I answer your call
and bring you brilliantly to life.
And in return
you fill my eyes,
my ears with you,
and inject me
with electronic Demerol
until the test pattern
of sleep finally takes me.
KWF