When The Drugs Work Poem by chris dawson

I lay in my bed day after day,
my life of clouds and warm feelings,
Sometimes I couldn’t even feel my hands,
and yet I was so in touch with myself.
People floated by, nice people,
people who helped me, were nice to me,
lifted me and washed me.
I felt so clean, the whiteness was beautiful,
everywhere was white, except on the window cill,
the colour of the flowers there was so vivid,
it filled my mind.
They were always there, those same vibrant hues,
though so small in that big wide, white window.
They blocked out all beyond, the white/grey distance,
even the large pine was a haze.
I would drift and drift as the brilliance filled my mind,
that rainbow wafting though my imagination,
caressing, soothing, calming.
Sometimes I would focus on the vase,
a stain, a hairline crack so small that no one else in that world could see it,
I told them, but they would not listen, not even nice people can always hear you.
That soiled vessel would hurt, would wrack me with pain,
then when my hands would not move, my jaw frozen, lips numb,
that frustration would envelop not just my body,
but my whole being.
Although then, just as suddenly, I would see the flowers again,
and the warmth would return, the pastel life revisit.
That was then and now is now,
and now is living outside of that calm, that purity, that sanctuary,
no more white world, no more pastel living.
But I can control the flowers,
cleanse the vase.
I have to power to choose, and every day I can feel my body
and choose to loose touch with my mind.
I will always return to the asylum to replace those flowers,
not for the man in my bed,
but for me.