Those were the lost years
when my days were bathed in
the hazy, soft glow of fentanyl
and tomorrow never came.
Those were the stacked hours
of feeling nothing
and floating lazily
down the opium river.
I neither belonged there,
or here,
for more than one lucid moment
between applied patches –
On with the new and hungrily
chewing the old.
I was then a woken mummy,
wrapped in dirty layers of
chemical indifference,
stepping haltingly from
light into shadow.
In those years,
my world spun on a shaky spindle,
my North, my South, my East
and West tossed into a
dark, bottomless hole.
Saturdays were spent in
sweat stained sheets,
clothed in smoke and asphalt
as the withdrawals descended;
counting the seconds and praying
Death would gather me in its
dark bosom.
Every four weeks, the pharmacist
would call my name and I would
lather, rinse, repeat.