Four week losing war (poem)

Four week losing war;

four drops,

two many sighs, signs,

psychodelically infused

and then identified.

I scribbled the name into

My arm, split the skin

And rubbed saliva in as the

Black ink ran.

It was a number, a time limit

For ingesting detol-

Faces flashed past me as I tried

To remember why it began,

Responsibilities to another,

Another me and other standards.

I floundered under the implications

And eventually drowned

in their eyes.

Fuss, fuss, fuss-

No care, no bother.

I didn’t have the capacity yet

To care for myself,

A reason there?

Four week losing war,

Which war? So many.

I stared down at the concrete pavement,

Contemplating broken arms and backs,

The sun scared me for a month

And so I preferred to look down,

I couldn’t look up, I couldn’t or

Wouldn’t, the air was still breathable.

Bad karma, bad love virgin,

Bad woman, bad soldier,

Bad revolutionary.

Personal becomes political with detol,

Imagination gives the whole

Experience a tone, a crescendo,

A fall, a clamber, an end-

Wrapped around the toilet seat,

Wretching up bile and Beechams,

Staring past death with one eye

On the TV set,

Nothing’s real anyway,

I could never set my attention straight,

Always looked too far,

Saw too far.

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