I lock myself in

my solitary medicated confinement,

grieving Jekyll, erudite and calm Hyde,

and allow the room to close

around me, swirling like thunder

clouds, blackened and angry

but with the tinge of optimism

that the confinement will not last,

it will not allow the meekness of surrender

to bitter my experience,

for after all, the prison, the bonded jail,

is my own to suffer and nobody else

paid with their lives to see me sweat

out the pain of individual isolation.

 

Hollow incarceration,

I crave it with part allure, part necessity,

the medication stripping down the

pain of choice brick by brick

and I know what Pink meant,

but I prefer the buzz

of beating pain with its own

fucked up baseball bat

and I smile as I shake

for in taking on pain

I allow a key to form,

If just for a short while

and the beat of my heart

reminds me that in some dark corner,

where the moss and the mildew collide

I have won the daily battle,

I wake up still alive.

 

Ian D. Hall 2015