Half Life

Waking up in the morning with your mind already spinning.

 

                         The windows

                       still, quiet, black

                   before morning breaks

                 before sunlight shrieks through glass

                onto the scuffed-up hardwood floors

                            of my life.

            Wind outside rasping grains of snow and ice

                                salt

             through the empty rafters of my soul.

            Somewhere inside, my mind stirs

            My hand prickles through dumb thick skin

                               NUMB

                 little pinpricks through a heavy palm

                   scored, blistered, and calloused

                 from handling frozen boards, plywood, and cold nails

                     NUMB elephant hand NUMB

                 from cradling the weight of my head.

       feeling a cold alkaline cell

                 Somewhere deep down in my Center

                  once a warm copper slug

                  that charged my mornings.

                        feeling my heart

                         )))))contract(((((

                       (((a slimy muscle)))

                 the meat of a red grapefruit

       feeling muted dreams recede through the pitch black

                 outside my bedroom window.

       feeling

                 The stalk of stiff skin below my sheets subside,

                 disappointed by an Apocalypse of cold and empty,

                          white and wrinkled

                                 sheets

       feeling

                 Methadone saturated blood, saturated receptor sites honeycomb within my head,

                                  saturated! the gel of my eyes. saturated! sweat-matted hair

                                  saturated! the big monsters that crawl through the back of my dreams.

                                  saturated! the netting of pores across the whole of my skin.

                                  saturated! somewhere out there, you are being baptized

                                       in the clean waters of love.

                     and I am saturated! saturated! saturated!

              I rise

        my blood drains

             back down to my fingertips

                           down to my toes

             prickling, tickling

Neurons in little electric trickles rivulet through the channels of my head

I feel my cold, bony legs together

   (your legs are too skinny, your kneecaps too knobby, you shouldn't wake up alone

    past 30 my Uncle told me once, or else there's something flawed in U )

The alarm continues blinking

its thick green meaningless numbers

cackling static, now and again a voice cuts in

               and condemns.

The cell phone vibrates on my nightstand

The dull glow of the television against polished living room floor

    (heaven is a spare lazy hour propped against a couch, without thoughts,

     watching faces float across the screen)

          and its afterglow aura bathes my living room.

The coffee pot is stuck saluting me with its broken top

   from the corner table

   venting frustration through its gurgling throat.

The appliances too will drain their juice some day

The bathroom faucet sputters and chokes

ice-cold water

revives my hand some

but doesn't free the dirt

stuck between the lines of flesh.

My soul goes clattering up a staircase in my forehead

   while I peer through the mirror

   that shields my medicine cabinet.

My reflection is imprisoned in that mirror all day

   while I'm away at work, while I'm in the car, while I'm at play.

I can't be expected to keep going and going and going

                       and going

                       away from that reflection.

Author's Note

Half life, like the type that a battery has, like the type that a narcotic has in the body, like how you feel when half your life is probably over and none of that Big Fat Equation in your soul has been solved. Hope the formatting carried over.

Reviews

[Becca Bishop]

You know, I've always been jealous of your formatting. It's insanely wonderful. I know...I know...you're wondering how formatting can be insanely wonderful. WELL IT CAN SO HA!!!!
The only thing really wrong is...everything I've read by you so far makes me :(. So sad that I have to use a :( in place of the word "sad". :( :( :(
Write something happy for me so I'll stop worrying about you!!!!
:D not :(
:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D
:(
Die frowny face!!!!!

[James William Dyer]

lol! thx. Some like the formatting, some it seems to confuse. I call this method Visualism, it is heavily based on e e cummings word manipulations, but where with cummings it went so far as to become a garbled math erquation at times, I try to keep it concise and legible and make the syntactical handles clear enough to comprehend. The style is also bound heavily to images, so that you should see the poem and hear it, feel it, sense it, so that the words are alive. I don't know that I've actually accomplished anything with this, but I like it. As for the happiness ratio, yeah, it is out of proportion, but I feeel a lot of people have been nailed to the Cross of Poverty, and that Trinity to which they're bound needs to be written: Poverty, Addiction, Hope (love). Thanks again for reading.

[victoria]

''...(your legs are too skinny, your kneecaps too knobby, you shouldn't wake up alone
past 30 my Uncle told me once, or else there's something flawed in U )'' fine line here. Half life for me feels like another one of those opportunity realisations we have along this journey, grasped or not.....wonderfully crafted James

[Frieda P]

Cowabunga, this is truly amazing, and I feel as if you've captured my day. This is a phenomenal write...I have to read it again, and again probably. Great job.

[strangebrain]

Wow. Just wow. I am speechless. Everything about this is perfect. I felt so connected with the narrator, like I could feel his numbness and the pains of his withdrawal, psychologically. It isn't easy to portray apathy or numbness in a way that can be so gut wrenching. Amazing job, man.