Winter

The first of December sneaks in like a shadow. A wintry melancholy settles all around me. Must be the clouds or the rain or the time that has passed. After a while you start to miss the sun. I haunt this tiny room typing empty words, waiting for the muse to strike. Elusive inspiration dances at the fringes of my consciousness, taunting me…teasing. Holding out hope that this is still mine I stand here staring at my hands over the keys. My nails are bitten shorter than ever. A few key strokes are actually painful. Never before have I felt so lost to myself. What will I do if this gift never returns? I am frightened…

Ghosts

Mindless. Unsure what voice will arise from the dark, eternal self. Enraptured by the vision that stole my sanity. Fumbling around on my knees for grace. If only I had thought to sleep. Fool! The briefest terrifying glimpse into hell. My secret world displayed. How many prescriptions has it been? It wasn't beside a lake at all, you know? Movie clips in my head. I closed my eyes, but sleep would not come. Lyrical warnings and old premonitions exorcised with this new dosage. Rain again some other day, I say with a shrug. Bleeding this hiding artist. Milking him dry. Hide and seek myself back to this inky oblivion. Novelist? Wandering prophet wrestled to the floor and stapled to the carpet. Praying still to stay the storm whistling from that rabbit's hole. Keep up. Keep smiling. Chase whatever dream you will, but run damn you! Time is running out...

Suffocation

The words aren't flowing. I feel stifled and tired; Like I'm sitting in a locked car in July with the windows barely cracked. The breeze whistles at the opening, but does little to cool the air. I feel faint. My vision blurs and I start to slip away...I take in a lung full of hot, stale air. Here I sit, staring at the hateful screen, challenged by its emptiness as well as my own. I exhale. What now? What is there to say? All my creativity is held in check by a tiny orange pill. Forced to the ground and shackled like some maniac. Nothing to see here. A phantom whisper of cleverness, now silenced. No, the words don't come today. And why should they? Have I not brayed enough over my lost summer? A pink-eyed sage now muted and melancholy-sits in a stuffy car with nowhere to go and no one to see. Isolation is not as taxing as the butterflies might lead you to believe. Serenity and solitude can be a haven or a grave. This cage is gilded and latched with my own hand. Who would dare to rattle at this dusty prison now? With my feathers molted and enthusiasm extinguished. I haunt these halls waiting for my day of resurrection. When the pills have all been taken and my mind is clear again. When my muse, my phoenix will soar freely in the open air. Careful of its second flight, not to touch the sun...or God or hell. Whatever. The veil is thin my friends and the trip much too frightening. I will fly where I may and dream of where I dare not flap my wings at all anymore. These words do not flow today...but here they are.

Any October day

The autumn leaves are shy this year. Browns and yellows are just beginning. Where are the plumb and crimson? Where are the shimmering salmons mixed with almost florescent green? Hiding. Waiting? Today, like any other, I stare balefully at the empty page. Stringing words together hoping...praying, in my way-I suppose...to say something true. Something new and not cliche. And though the words come easily enough the expression hides. It waits for something...like these leaves. You know when they turn it will be beautiful, but not unique. Only different from the greens of summer. Why do we so easily tire of our surroundings? What is this persistent complaint with time. Some day. One day. Maybe when the leaves turn. Maybe when the trees are bare. But not now. Not yet. Wait.

Maybe I'm crazy

Despite the dazzling technicolor world at the bottom of the rabbit hole, I am here to tell you that "Wonderland" can be exquisitely terrifying. "Eat me" "Drink me" the labels said...and I did. Oh, I did! A summer lost and now the pills. My random fantasy made concrete with pharmaceuticals. And thank heaven for them, for out on that dark cloud what horrors tormented me. A barbecue. Prison rape scenarios. The entire world whispering against me. Nature herself as the white queen- with a house of cards all set in motion to my gruesome undoing. And yet I am returned to this side of the looking glass with none of my psychotic horrors having claimed me. Whew! How very real those threats appeared through the eyes of insanity.
Long had I smoked without ever falling into the mouth of madness. Joyfully I explored those fringe ideas that great thinkers before me must have stumbled across. "Eat me." "Drink me." That print is too fine now to read and lost on warning labels too lengthy to bother with. Anxiety. Muscle spasms. Restlessness. $700 for a pill that I assure you made more crazy than it resolved.
But Cannabis, my beloved cannabis. The paranoia and the munchies were her only failings and I had mastered them both. But no. "They" tell me it was she that did me in. That marijuana laced with some other substance caused schizophrenia. Of course that was later refuted-balked at, even. 2 mental wards. She said this and he said that and 4 doctors and, I don't know, 6 other prescriptions later, I am returned to "normalcy" with no real explanation of anything. I am grateful and yet...Dare I smoke again? That fall was great, indeed. I do not deny it. The terror surreal and crippling. The damaged relationships never to be repaired. But was it marijuana or simply my time to snap? Who knows? Lord knows the world we are handed is enough to make anyone who is paying attention have some sort of melt down- given the right circumstances,of course. The answer is easy. Ask anyone. Don't risk it. I know. I know. Nevermore. Nevermore. Damn raven.