On Addiction

When the movie star talks addiction, she talks to those who should know;
they mainline the junk she sells, the life she leads, the wannabe lies
that fill a hunger no drug can sate. Disease that the times adore,
sweet addiction, heroine in a land of lotus eaters and vicarious charms,
bring home to me the honeyed amulet, the phantasmal allure,
for I need to inter the nightmare that haunts my sleep,
dreamland where I chase myself and wake to find only me.
Sweet addiction, needle in the brain, suffuse my fear.

I know addiction, the cannibal kind, the rage in the bowels
that brings a person to their knees; the ire in the eye that seethes
with revenge, the ache to rip from someone a lung and feed
that gargoyle’s gullet on the shoulder, envy that gloats at what
you never did and never will. Addiction, make me the victim of your bed,
expose the intoxicant that neaps in the spine and threads the nerves
to creation’s buzz. Addiction, enchantress, pull the veil
across my eyes before I extinguish myself or another in your desire.

(c) copyright 2011 Charles David Miller. All rights reserved.