fix

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Fix



It is waking in the night

after the theatres and before the milkman,

alerted by some signal from the golden drug tapeworm

that eats your flesh and drinks your peace;

you reach for the needle and busy yourself

preparing the utopia substance in a blackened spoon

held in candle flame

by now your thumb and finger are leathery

being so often burned this way ...

it hurts much less than withdrawal

and the hand is needed for little else now anyway.

Then cordon off the arm with a belt, probe for a vein,

send the dream-transfusion out on a voyage

among your body machinery.

Hits you like sleep - sweet, illusory, fast,

with a semblance of forever.

For a while the fires die down in you

until you die down in the fires.

Once you have become a drug addict

You will never want to be anything else.


Michael Dransfield

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