The opium effect was lost on me.
Codeine calmed hacking coughs,
paregoric soothed baby gums.
Neither could rival spinning
on a stool, nursing sweet things
or reading comics
until the druggist lost his temper.
The only drug I craved
in my vanilla or strawberry Coke
was one to make me invisible.
My fix was merely to imagine
hiding in the phone booth
under the seat one stood on
to halt the rubber fan
as if grabbing a giant fly.
After closing, I'd emerge,
gather a stack of comics
as thick as The Yellow Pages
like a sawed-off Marvel
or Dell salesman!
Reading by flashlight into dawn,
empty Whitman Sampler cups
carpeting the floor would crinkle
as I sneaked up on the rack
where Playboy lived.
No druggist mitts to throttle me,
no cops nabbing me suspecting
junkie thief whose lungs and gums
codeine and paregoric had shrunk up
like used Bazooka or Double Bubble.
Escaping into the sunrise as red
as the face of the druggist shouting
"GET OUT, the library's downtown."
I imagined him wondering
what quack of a God prescribed me.
An O. Henry
Awards Anthology
found its way to
the reference section,
Maybe the store
was a library
for an independent
quirky soul and the book
had been purposely
misplaced so
it wouldn't be sold.
A syringe fell out
as I pulled the volume
from the shelf.
It was the first one
out of a doctor's hand
I'd seen
I recalled the funeral
of a guy in college
who'd overdosed
on heroin and the man
who'd last copped for him
kneeling next to me
lost in a Bible.
I pictured the erstwhile
librarian finding peace
skimming a story a day
once losing his bookmark
and so lost or high
or scared or inspired
he'd left his spike.
Feeling as if I'd slipped too
from the pages of a story,
I held that syringe the way
films and novels told me
addicts do before tossing
it into the trash
for someone real to find.
Thomas Michael McDade lives in Monroe, Connecticut. He's a computer programmer working in Meriden, Connecticut on software used in the wholesale / retail plumbing house industry. McDade is married, no kids or pets. He's a U.S. Navy Vet. His fiction has most recently appeared in Trnsfr, poetry in Nerve Cowboy.
Comments (closed)
Judith Wysnewski
2011-05-03 04:45:16
Terrific writing. Enjoyed these poem by Thomas McDade very much. Excellent insight on drugs.
Moe-Joe
2011-05-16 07:30:00
Tom writes about what he knows, and does it very well.
Good writer and story teller.
Dave Baldwin
2011-05-20 00:47:39
Tom is a prolific poet who deals with the barbs and cavities of the difficult parts of life. He does it very well.