(addiction observed)

(Addiction Observed) 
The Story of the Serpent’s Aisle

[…]

Addiction can be so insidious … a muted snake in the grass…
without a hiss or rattler, one can easily become bitten...

And depending on the snake in question – 
because of the local anesthetic of a devious snake
one can doubt if they’ve even been taken; 
and only the widest-aware, can recognize a ‘minor’ sting of irritation, 
for the spreading disease of the venom’s deconstruction.]

[–1–]

This courtship begins…

I was lead into the tall brush by people who we were all told to trust,
White coats that I came to revere, in a unquestionable, priestly, veneer,
who –upon the moment of finding traces of venom from snakes they well knew,
drew me an arbitrary line – like drawing perfect circles in the Sahara sand,
that gave them the power (or divination) to plot a  schedule to work with their appointments]

     ‘Physical Dependence’ –which is now part of most medical jargon,
     and ‘Psychological Addiction’ – a weighty term that’s cropping up more often… 
 

[These words are always defined in referenced books; but never taken as seriously
as anyone who from anyone has felt the dehydration, the delusions, from the weeks, 
the years, of confusion; when one’s delirious decisions making more hills for the all inclusive desolation of their desert resort. their regrettable conclusion.]

White coats, with allegorical colored collars, 
gave me the venom I readily desired, 
and explained it all away as an, ‘increased physical dependence’, 
and, vehemently sold that anything else was rarely ‘physical addiction’.

                      “Because, based off what we have here in your chart – you have every good 
                       reason to hop a long our pres   cription branded ponies…
                      You may not see it…but your body’s failing at its internal-repairings.”

So, under the threat of breaking down in the middle of hell’s nowhere, 
I billed my repairmen by the hour,
and in return they gave me everything,
all of their super-synthetic everything,
…in increasingly, unaffordable, increments.

And always…”psychological addiction” was the word next on their lips.
…they warned me of a desert of addiction, 
yet they’d mentioned it first, in its lowest  key…
so that by the time I found myself in the desert,
I was already over so many sandy hills – that this mind’s desire to thrive 
created mirages out of things I knew to be an ongoing desert’s divide…

But then! 

White-collar-coats swoop in as soon as I give the signal;
and rescue me to another prescription…maybe, now, an anti-venom.

And, now, their saying it is my mind that’s malfunctioning too, 
and as my only  repairmen, I bill them by the hour,
for their super-synthetic rewiring,
of incredible, damageable, redefining.

[–II–]

Now, this courtship is finally revealed…

Although one is called “dependence”, and another is called “addiction”,
They’re two sides of the same, unbalanced, coin. 
That can only balance when I decide to say, “I do”. 
     …with words that taste of sand, and sound of broken acoustics…
     …with a taste that thrashes the throat, and a tone that irritates the ears… 

But when it reaches this heart…
when it reaches this heart,
it hits upon a well of buried wishes, 
it gushes up promises of a shooting star,
that if I honor it at all,
till death do I, and only I, depart…

[–III–]

Finally, this courtship is threatened…

When I can snap out fast enough from the delusion,
and fight back for my life, my freedom of choice;
to become that lovable lion, 
and fight for my courage to make all right.
To defeat my beat of being so snake entangled,
and come out with my life stronger - via that divorce…

06/17/11
M. L. Michael

---

About…