The Cycle (of Pain Pills) // So the cycle goes… You’re hurting more, so you take more pain medicine. “Surely, I’ll be hurting less in the future.” Is your reasonig. Or – “That’s a problem for future me!” is your answer. Really, it doesn’t matter what you tell yourself. All that matters is an end to the pain. And then there you are, a week before you medicine is to be refilled, either almost out or completely out. So you ration. You go thru withdrawal. Cold sweats. Unescapable aches, Jesus Christ, give me a bullet or give me a pill. You make it thru (you always do), you get your medicine refilled. And you hold it together long enough until the next time you break down and take an extra. Because surely, you’ll be hurting less in the future… or – that’s a problem for future me. …So the cycle goes. 05/16/2021 M. L. Michael
Tag: chronicpain
6 months later…
You know something is wrong when the pain medicine begins to take on weight in your palm.
When despite the screech of ache and ache, up your spine, through your mind, you find yourself hesitating at the sight of this medicine – your pain medication, your discomfort dispeller, this neural novocain, this sunday solicitor. […]
You know something is wrong when the pain medicine begins to take on weight in your palm. When despite the screech of ache and ache, up your spine, through your mind, you find yourself hesitating at the sight of this medicine – your pain medication, your discomfort dispeller, this neural novocain, this sunday solicitor. You eye the pills with a fluctuating mix of shame and acceptance. You juggle them around to buy some bullshit time before you concede to a relative truth and toss them down. Your gut is uneasy. Not just because this synthetic opium is a molotov-cocktail thrown at a combustible problem, but because this bottle of pills that you have refilled every month is a mere hop, a skip, a jump away from poorly lit alleyways with guttered dreams and phantom candles flickering out. You’re sick at the sight and you don’t need a mirror to see what’s under your nose; the stench of desperation gives it away every time you find yourself in a panic, because the ache is rising, unchecked, demanding, and your finding yourself lost without your pain medicine, without that be all, end all, answer all. That’s where the line between what you will do to stop the rising wave of discomfort, and what you wont do to raise a barrier of numbness, is easily blurred into insignificance – just like scratching a line in the sand, you make a distinction, knowing the coming wave will wipe it away. You no longer know who calls the shots. You are almost certain it is no longer yourself, but a question remains, a scenario, a picture in your mind, the all encompassing ache controlling your strings, guiding your hands to the pills, the pills controlling the ache’s strings, controlling you, controlling it, and on and on, a programmer’s loop into oblivion. You find yourself in the absurd play of one being control—one being consoled by doctors convincing you that you are not an addict. Everything is legit, the stacks of reports from past surgeries and prior hospitalizations are all reasons for taking their junk. You are not like the yucks on the streets, because they don’t have a reason like you, they don’t have an excuse that’s been documented, they’ve never been diagnosed, and if they have, they certainly aren’t under any medical help, not anymore… For years you argue with them like a kid trying to grasp a simple truth against an adult’s abstractions. You fight even as you wonder why. You fight because you instinctively know that is who you are, what you do. You fight them, you fight the medicine, because you owe it all to the fight. Life, in one sweeping motion, is a fight to survive. Survival is a chance to love. And a chance to love is a chance to be free. The pills they give you are nothing more than medicinal apathetics –extended release pacifiers. The ‘sweet release’ from the ache that you so desperately seek is more like the ‘letting go’ of all that’s cherished and known. You know you are stronger than waving a white flag and then swallowing it down. Your very life is a monument to countless battles won. Times you will never know, times you tried to forget, times you continue to brag about. You owe your all to the fight, to the push, that persistent, so close to nagging, drive that whispers, keep on keeping on, don’t stop driving you tenacious fool, burn like the furious flame that gives your spirit warmth. You know something is wrong. Now fight, now right that wrong. -10-11-12- -m.m-
About…
this is medicine (go for gold)
since I got off all the pain medicine, I have begun experiencing new pains, pains that possibly might have always existed before. Although undesirable, these pains are nothing to cause me much worry because they aren’t anything new.. but one pain, one that comes and goes with a fearful intensity, is this pain in my brain, in the back of my skull. […]
this is medicine (go for gold) since I got off all the pain medicine, I have begun experiencing new pains, pains that possibly might have always existed before. Although undesirable, these pains are nothing to cause me much worry because they aren’t anything new.. but one pain, one that comes and goes with a fearful intensity, is this pain in my brain, in the back of my skull. rather it happens and I become depressed, or I become depressed and it happens, I do not know, but suddenly my head and my thoughts ache, all I can think about is a pervasive gloom stretching out across the horizon a feeling that was born in my spine, one that spread to my hips, to my knees and hands, this is a pain of indeterminable ache – a sensation that cries for cessation, I have the inane desire to wish these bones stretched or ripped out. but with this pain of brain, I feel something disturbingly darker, I react to the ache in the back of my head, at the top of my spine, in the permeations of my thoughts, with ideas of blowing it all out. such a thought is vitriol in my veins and I whip myself for such desolate desires. in these moments I _must_ seek out the pleasure songs of my special being, to replace the dissonant noise of pain I must seek out anything that gives my spirit reason to sing along.. …in light of all of this, in the dark of all of this, I question my sanity. When one bounces around so wildly from mania to despairia, one questions the role of their subjectivity over gauging reality. If all this pain is imagined – then how does one un-imagine? Once something is created, can it be truly destroyed? If this all undeniably fixed, then is fighting it as sad to see as a funeral? Or is this our epic marathon, and it is as exhilarating as the Olympics? 07/03/12 M. L. Michael
About…
(addiction observed)
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.] […]
(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…
the monster behind the eyes
In this waking nightmare called chronic pain,
I am afraid of a Monster that lurks within me
that I wish I could gamble away.
Let’s call him Firo, and let’s call me Kindle.
Firo spends his every waking hour terrorizing
the villages along my spine,[…]
The Monster Behind The Eyes (Trying to Poetize My Chronic Pain) In this waking nightmare called chronic pain, I am afraid of a Monster that lurks within me that I wish I could gamble away. Let’s call him Firo, and let’s call me Kindle. Firo spends his every waking hour terrorizing the villages along my spine, but his home is somewhere in my mind – a place I can never quite seem to find. When Firo is in his mere, normal, foul-fever, I only have a tiring time of quieting every scared and hurt villager that comes to me crying. All that energy and stress is gobbled up and processed… but it is never anything I’ve ever fought against and lost… But there are times…sometimes only once or twice a week, sometimes every, wretched, handful of every hour in a day, when Firo becomes this frothing-flame-flinging-fury, the hellfire-demon who attacks my villagers with all the pent-up rage of an imprisoned Devil, frozen up to the waist in a lake of ice; …his beating wings – only solidifying his prison. These poor villagers, they cannot bear to stand it, they cry, and they scream, and they beg in my ears, for every second that Firo rages, and roars, and rips at their heels. …These are the times that I am at my worst. …It is during these times I am afraid the most. Because it is the clamor from my spine that drowns out the baritone of Reason from my mind. …and I just can’t seem to think solid, straight, or right. All I can seem to muster are crooked thoughts of the any ways of appeasing my poor-vilified villagers, wishing to silence Firo, and his never-ending violence, for once and for all, so they can have their goodnight… …. Now, suddenly, I’m the Monster. I’m doing things I would never do in a quieter mind. Like, Being capable of the slight of hand slipping of pain medicine, similar to vein-slapping, dragon-chasing, addiction-based-actions. Of waking up wasted, and going to sleep shit-faced. Of disregarding taking more than I am prescribed, to shut that fucking Firo up, to give those constantly-complaining villagers, their good-god-damn and good-god-given peace. Of praying to some Super-Hero-God, to grant me my magical-reprieve, to grant me my mystical pie in the sky. and, ,worst of all, Of debating taking a bottle full of what-the-fuck-ever, and drowning it down with a bottle full of what-the-hell-ever, to chance sweet oblivion for a ticket to the pain-free, forever-and-never-after show. … ….but it’s only that there’s this brave little voice that can still be heard, now, only barely…over the din of this diseased, pissed, Monster… Which is the weakened voice of Reason passionately begging of me, that I know I cannot gamble on the only thing I ultimately own – my life, that what I know to be so breathlessly beautiful, and so wordlessly wonderful, is not a gamble worthy of losing anything as awe-inspiring, such as the southern sunset. Ignore Pascal. This is My Wager: There’s the gamble of the nonexistence of the eternal, of the internal loss of all pain and/or pleasure, and of some unknowable deal of any(kind of)every(kind of)thing, possibly (un)imaginable… ….Against the gamble of an esoteric Creator, who [I can hope upon faith], understands just how torturous his Creation can cruelly become, and [I can hope upon faith] will welcome me, with [what I can hope upon faith are] eternally forgiving arms… So, you see, I’m the Monster, with the chip not worthy of such a large gamble… I’m the Monster, the only real Monster, there is to fear in this nightmare. M. L. Michael 03/07/11
About…
you begin with a beat…
There are times I come home,
after a long day of being out, dealing with the unreasonable,
dealing with the twitchy, the glitchy, the software-screwed society,
There are these times that I come home –
and it’s all I can do but turn up the music,
…and dance like some damned fool
[…whose clothes apparently appear to be invisibly on fire…] […]
You Begin With A Beat… You Dance[Live] For Yourself… There are times I come home, after a long day of being out, dealing with the unreasonable, dealing with the twitchy, the glitchy, the software-screwed society, There are these times that I come home – and it’s all I can do but turn up the music, …and dance like some damned fool […whose clothes apparently appear to be invisibly on fire…] There’s never an audience. (it never matters if there is an audience.) Dancing is an exercise mimicking the art of living, the art of loving, of shaping your body to sync with another beat… a beat we’re all lovingly familiar with - it’s the first beat we ever recognize, the beat of our mother’s heart… …. And although I had my performance bug bitten from the most ridiculous-circus act-break dances during a talent-show of my grade-school peers and their parents - I, gratefully, never made the, seemingly inevitable connection and conclusion. That there was this: the exhilaration that comes from my dancing and feeling alive, And there was that: these groups of eyes examining me and my every jesterous jive… I am thankful there was no clique of raving-hipsters leaning against the walls, mocking my spasmodic interpretations as a type of iconic, ironic, joke.. And I am grateful there was no panel of “Reality Show Judges”, shaking their heads at this hopeless kid, flipping and wriggling, like a little worm hopped up on Ritalin, (…he’s just thrilled to be off the hook…) I am indebted to all the people never judging what they knew was all for fun, Because they could have killed, via a slow drip of self fulfilling self destruction, at my love for one of life’s greatest interactions… ….. …There are times I come home, after an almost endless day of computers, customers, and chaos, when I can feel the tension of my wired back, winding ever tighter. These are the times that I turn out all but the strobing neon lights and turn the music up to a soothing pounding, …I give the music a moment to recharge my batteries… Then I start my dancing, and I begin my unwinding… I dance, and I unwind… I dance, and I unwind… …and there is never any applause… (…unless you count my rapidly beating heart, exclaiming: “bravo! bravo! encore! encore!”) M. L. Michael /02/28/11
About…
listen for the life-beat
When Firo crackles in the ears,
it’s time for a change in tune…
Eyes closed, I’s one
Between Left…and…Right Speaker
In the middle somewhere I’ll hover…[…]
Listen for the Life-Beat When Firo crackles in the ears, it’s time for a change in tune… Eyes closed, I’s one Between Left…and…Right Speaker In the middle somewhere I’ll hover… I’ll glide, and I’ll ride… I’ll swim in the space/in the sea of this blissful world–ringing melody… Eyes closed, I’s disconnected from all that, all that but this…this singularity of the mind meld music, of the thought and sound; of the joy in the beat: …the heart-beat… the celebration of our life-beat. M. L. Michael 01/27/2011
About…
chronic pain (A character study…)
Mr. Hyde comes out when Dr. Jekyll can no longer stand it.
When the nuances of pain can no longer be procrastinated,
The good doctor ingests the serum of surrender
and leaves the back door open to his susceptible subconscious,
where his alter-ego, the maniac Mr. Hyde, slinks in like a black cat,
and there from the shadows, Mr. Hyde calls the shots… […]
Chronic Pain: (A Character Study of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) Mr. Hyde comes out when Dr. Jekyll can no longer stand it. When the nuances of pain can no longer be procrastinated, The good doctor ingests the serum of surrender and leaves the back door open to his susceptible subconscious, where his alter-ego, the maniac Mr. Hyde, slinks in like a black cat, and there from the shadows, Mr. Hyde calls the shots… Whereas Jekyll is a man of science – passionate with postulation, romantic with reason… Hyde is a monster by treason, a pessimist of the human condition, a tyrant obsessed with zero-sum fixes… …. The good Dr. Jekyll’s objections be damned What crazed Mr. Hyde will get what he wants, Whenever pain drives the good Dr. to the serum The monster Hyde takes over, and find everything justifiable. M. L. Michael 11/30/10
About…
my rickety-crickety (broken) back
Racked by the racket
of my rickety-crickety (broken) back
I’ll…blind-baby-grab… for anything transportive,
That is, I’ll see your Crown and Coke, and raise you
a midnight toke, I’ll see your Seagram and Seven,
and call it with these two little pills prescribing heaven.[…]
my rickety-crickety (broken) back Racked by the racket of my rickety-crickety (broken) back I’ll…blind-baby-grab… for anything transportive, That is, I’ll see your Crown and Coke, and raise you a midnight toke, I’ll see your Seagram and Seven, and call it with these two little pills prescribing heaven. Wrecked by the wreckage of my worn-torn (broken) back I’ll… come-humbling on my knees, and in your arms, Meaning, I’ll sing your song, if you’ll right my wrong, I’ll swear your good-god name, if you can take away my god-damn pain. Heckled by the hell of my helter-skelter (broken) back I’ll… cry-scribbling some heart-soaked words. What I mean is, I’ll try-fiddling some poetry-steeped meaning from a blood-soaked world. Racked by the racket of my rickety-crickety (broken) back I’ll… blind-baby-seek for anything transcendent, That is, I’ll see your chanting mantra, and raise you to bodhisattva, I’ll see your hours of nirvana seeking mediation, and call it with a day of Woodstock likened celebration. M. L. Michael 05-03-08- <---> 05-10-10-
About…
monkey on back syndrome
if you are silent, then you can see it,
beneath the din of reality
there’s the subtle screeching
of this pervasive pain situation.
what doctors dub as a ‘chronic pain condition’,
I illustrate as ‘monkey on back syndrome’ […]
monkey on back syndrome
if you are silent, then you can see it,
beneath the din of reality
there’s the subtle screeching
of this pervasive pain situation.
what doctors dub as a ‘chronic pain condition’,
I illustrate as ‘monkey on back syndrome’,
(…there being this cliché of a monkey on my back,
…all too real, the monkey has become my back.)
See, this simian is my spine,
it’s imbued with fire,
the breath of blisters,
and the scratches of scars;
… it burns with all the
wrong kinds of warmth…
so, my doctors repeat: chronic pain is chronic,
and some kind of pill will always be necessary
to quiet this monkey’s riot,
to slow this monkey’s roll…
like some kind of pill
my doctors are ready to prescribe.
(…a shout out to all those poppy seed plants,
…here’s a little pill capable of belittling a lot.)
oh! some kind of pill!
that has me battling an everyday absurdity,
that in order to circumvent my monkey’s will,
I must fall under the pain pill’s authority.
oh! some kind of life!
spent with either the long racket of the monkey,
or the short leash of the prescription pain pill,
no! it is no kind of life!
when you are unable to reflect on beauty
without the tyranny of those wretched two…
05-19-10
M. L. Michael
Every Breath Poetic 