A Beat As A Drug Poem by Emily Trense

The rhythmic drum beat begins,
All else is silent.
My heart stops.

A piano softly begins to play,
A bass begins it’s lonely melody.
When all the instruments begin their song
My heart begins its new beat.

Reverberation after reverberation, my heart and the bass line are one.
The melody reveals itself,
At the same time revealing the new pattern my heart is to follow for the next few moments.
A cloud of calm sweeps over me
As I close my eyes. My body instinctively sways to the beat,
I cannot help myself.

Nothing can reach me where I am taken too.

No hurtful words can get to me.

A voice starts to express its journey through a song.
A voice of sweet honey and flowing brooks,
The only thing that can penetrate my oblivion.

All else is silent.

With a single song I am fully exposed,
There is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide from its truth.
Yet, there is nowhere I would rather be.

The lyrics progress,
the beat gets heavier.

The chorus marks the climax of the song.
Some days I am silent when it happens,
other says all I want to do is yell, run, jump, sing-
All at the same time.
I am at the mercy of the beat.


By the time the bridge comes I am fully engrossed in the music.
I would love to stay on that bridge,
With the lyrics tousle my hair
and the melody rushing swiftly underneath me.
But I know I will not be long on it.

A verse comes, then a final chorus.

The last chord hits me hard.
For some reason it holds power, feeling, and truth.
Maybe because I know it is the last,
Or maybe it is magic.

The lyrics end, the beat slows down, the bass subsides.

It all halts.
I know it is over.
I feel as if a best friend has left me.
As it ends my mind unwraps itself from a cocoon it has been in.
The fog slowly lifts from my life and I remember who I really am.

The reality hits.
The mistakes hits.
The pain hits.
The end rushes in on me with such force that I contemplate if I should go back
and do it again.

The answer is obvious.

I push “play”.