escape – Fiction & Ideas

Real Pain (a poem)

drugs alleviate pain

from terrible torment

but that’s before craving

sets in, like an ogre

dragging at my brain

making me feel shame

Abandon all hope

at the gates of hell, as you

will never escape

There’s been trauma in this house

we thought it’d be our forever home

instead, ghosts lurk here

ghosts of murders, suicides

they followed us long after we

left cob-webbed hallways –

the trauma here makes us see things

hallucinations, delusions of despair

we can’t escape it.

Thank you for helping me escape from the nightmare –

I thought I’d never be free from the cold cell in my mind,

where the warden stood silent outside – where yellow-eyed

rats scurried from dark corners and ate my supper – where

every day was a dark winter’s afternoon, and drifts of cold air

blew through barred windows, and I shivered in rags on the

dirt floor. Thank you: I have my freedom now, and I will march

the city streets, demanding freedom for the others, the ones

also imprisoned by the nightmare.