the DEA is killing me

a unpoetic rant about the end of oxycontin...

the DEA* is taking away my life

the little life i was left with 15 years ago

when pain ascended from hell

and took over my brain and body

like some great martyrdom

i have born it all

with the help of oxycontin

the most sensitive core of me

is light on its feet

it cannot support opioid medications

they put me to sleep

and render me helpless

with no ability to concentrate

nauseated nodding slumbering

with dreams like strange movies

but one was different: oxycontin

it took away my pain and

woke me up to a new reality

enabled me to have a life

to sit and write or watch a movie

without falling asleep at the denouement

or struggling to finish what i started

but now the DEA has declared

that doctors are under the gun

and all the states are pressuring doctors

to relinquish that one narcotic

that has given me life with less pain

without half-wittedness

and they are all falling in line

like doctors did before the fascists

and with about as much compassion

first my doctor said there were "side effects"

and i never was sure what she meant

and then others followed with "we understand

but we can no longer prescribe it"

so how about trying methadone

that highly addictive poison from which

one in a thousand die in the first five days

it's only $30 per month and though we haven't

studied it much "if i were a gamblin' man

in a casino i'd put my money on it"

well doctor i've tried it

and for a month i did not wake up

well there's long-acting morphine

puts you right into the arms of morphée

and you can stay there for a thousand days

dream away pain wake up in nightmares

and sweat feel like vomiting

then stumble around like a drunken cow

looking for a toilet to throw up in

doctor i've tried it and for a month

i never woke or sat up

and when i did i was sick as a dog

fentanyl patches perhaps

of course you do have tachycardia

which will put you at risk for

a heart attack from hell

and even though two of your friends

with the same illness as you

had anaphylactic shock from it

and another one's heart went to 190

we can prescribe that one

no doctor i refuse a medication

that i know will bring my heart

to the breaking point

poison poison poison

well there is the new opana

based on oxymorphone like oxycontin

but two times stronger

so if you are sensitive to opioids

it's guaranteed to make you sleep

plus there's no "high" like oxycontin

(whatever that means)

oh yeah i see

the end of pain that i experience

the rush of relief ist jetzt verboten

the DEA is killing me

by denying this pain patient of 15 years

the one medication that offered her

a life without narcolepsy and nightmares

without nausea and disenfranchisement

they told doctors to give up prescribing it

because they didn't adhere to the rules

didn't take it seriously enough

and now everyone wants it

and some are dying from abusing it

i always took it seriously

i adhered to the rules for over 10 years

but that counts for nothing

nothing at all i'm doomed

sick as i am on my little couch bed

i could still have a small life

stay in touch with friends and family

write a letter listen to music read an article

no it wasn't perfect it's been damn lonely

but oxycontin relieved the pain

left me awake and alive

and now they are denying me it

there are no alternatives

i cannot live with this pain

untreated or undertreated

i will die from it quickly

for i refuse to live in unending pain

or over-drugged and unconscious

the DEA is killing me

and not only me but many pain patients

who were given back their lives

in small but important ways

thanks to oxycontin

*DEA - the federal Drug Enforcement Agency

Merry Christmas and a Compassionate New Year 2012!

Merci mille fois pour m'avoir lue cette année. Je vous souhaite tous un bon et 
paisible 2012! Amitié toujours ~Laura, ton petit moineau poète xoxoxooxox

Thank you so much for having read me this year. I wish you all a good and 
peaceful 2012! Friendship always ~Laura, your little sparrow poet xoxoxo

The B-52's "Roam"

A beautiful memory: roller skating and dancing along the paved-over train track 

in San Juan Capistrano, Christmas 1989. xoxoxoxooxox

 

pain that doesn't end

there's no metaphor in me

no irony or pathos

no poetry

just a stark pain

running down my arm

into my rib cage

there's no singing

no christmas

no holiday cheer

just a wish that my

heart would stop

knocking at my breast bone

it's simple:

when pain does not end

and you know it never will

what reasons can be given

for pushing through the heartbreak

of life on earth?

i've gone through them all

over and over in my head

but i'm still left hopeless

for sickness and pain

do not have an up side

beyond the cliché

and nobody knows

what it takes to keep doing it

alone in your room

shiny toys

Shiny Toys Festival 2010  - http://creative.arte.tv/fr/space/SHINY_TOYS/messages/

how sad we are

grasping at these straws

that divert us from

ourselves and one another

we're wired for consumption

hardwired to be bottomless

yet all our goods

do not unite us

we're estranged from

the very thing we want

communion with others

and unconditional love

we become

slaves to desire

for there will always be

something newer and shinier

the raw materials alone

will require brutal wars

we're standing on the graves

of starving children

Beautiful Girls

Frantz Charlet, A Morrocan Beauty Holding a Parrot

Girls, your beauty will not save you

the more beautiful you are

the more the hounds will follow you

wanting that beauty for themselves

and once they are done

you will find yourself alone

because some hounds have nothing

beyond what lies between

their legs, it is insatiable

and no one beauty will satisfy it

I've seen the most beautiful girls

whom artists would praise as goddesses

throw themselves at the first hound

that follows them because

to be wanted is everything

to be desired is the highest honor

for a beautiful girl who has

no sense of her own value

You are not this body even if

today it appears dazzling

tomorrow anything can happen

and will happen and

it will take all your endeavor

to maintain that beauty that

men once found so desirable

Girls, you will suffer

girls, you will be forgotten

girls, live for knowledge

throw yourself into your life

and forget the hounds that follow you

clean out your closets and

learn to sing a song that has

nothing to do with belonging

for you belong even if

no one acknowledges you

There are worse things

besides loneliness

and the wounds you get today

a lifetime later may not heal

love and protect yourself today

for there is but one life and

one beauty that does not fade

the beauty of self-honor

Mysogyny

for radical feminists everywhere and those who want to be...

Cut off my head

hands and feet

I won't grow a penis

but I've got one tucked

away if i need it

I didn't need

Bettelheim to tell me

about refrigerator moms

or Lacan to warn me

about absent fathers

I've wrapped myself

in yards of sackcloth

since I was girl

yet I still had to hide

in too many closets

Nature or nuture

philosophy or psy-ops

religion or culture

each one is founded

on Mysogyny

Throw off the masculine
ideological shackles

Women will never be free

until we're ready to

start from zero

Little creation, big message

mars and venus

Mars and Venus by Di Cosimo Piero (Renaissance)

come jupiter

come mars

come venus

night after night

until egos fold

and we realize

how small how fragile

how enduring

when mars was setting

over the house next door

blinking blue then red

it brought up your memory

because mars fought with

venus in you

and i had to run across

the icy street to find

venus rising

just to complete

your life cycle

if only you had not

needed to fight so hard

for every bread crumb

if only you had been able

to follow your nature

and succomb to romance

the toro that was you

still rides the skies

and now that i see you

rising and falling

in these crystal nights

i know a little more about

how strong you were

how strong your love was

and it breaks my heart

love never dies

it just rises and falls

every night with

mars and venus

red mars

humbug

cartoon by Chris Sims

yeah they're coming around again

all my friends

with spiced wine hot toddies

and all the myriad problems of

early christmas shopping

i told them christmas is dead

and god too for that matter

they've got telephones dripping

from their greazy fingers

they love to make calls to

their loved ones back home

and talk for hours

i told them i don't have the infrastructure

to talk long on the phone

i'm too weak to maintain

a two-way conversation

that's okay they love me as

i am broken at the kneecaps

they can manage the call

all by themselves if necessary

ho ho ho they stammer

ringing my bells

as if the messiah of hope came

and lit a 26-hr candle

and when i'm quiet for a couple of days

it all fades back into the woodwork

where it came from

that's okay with me

because i have nothing left to say

no christmas presents

no wishful thinking

no thinking at all to be honest

Mano Solo - Janvier

désolée que ce blog est si silencieux... j'ai une pneumonie, paiement pour paris. bisous. xooxoxooxoxox

habitude

i took the latch from off my door

and woe is me could write no more

i danced a holiday in france

drank with friends and spun romance

climbed up to sacré cœur at dawn

smoked cigarettes in the light of the moon

visited my buried love in the père

wept with the shattered dreams we share

then i came home again to rain

my little couch bed, my muted brain
the gray skies reflect a very sad song
but even then with anticipation

the floodgates are broken yet nary a word

there's no music in joy for this broken bird

kestral with broken wing

"We are legion"

Packing for Paris (Tales of Moineau)

I can't see straight in the morning light
I'm blindly far-sighted and dry at the mouth
and sleep will come if I would just lie down
but the miles I have driven hover and pound
'til I'm black and blue and deep crunchy fried

Yes! I'm hypo but hazy listening to the rain
The traffic is heavy for a Saturday
It was four thirty-five and now it's eight am
I'm still compiling the list of my alibis
plotting my excuses, summoning some lies

Dear God, I'm human! How much more
bodily pain am I supposed to ignore? "All!"
Select the suitcases, then pack up the pills
as the clock in the kitchen goes tick tick tick
and another day goes by and I still sit

My mask of preparedness begins to slip
My do-or-die mouthpiece is starting to drip
and I'm scared to walk because I might slip
back into the kingdom of the fearmonger
back far enough to feel my infantile anger

Oh Mama! Paris is at my feet
if i just stay awake and complete my list
Two shirts, two pants and one umbrella
insulin, eye shadow, this list is Orwellian!
'Cause the world is gonna end the ninth of November!

Look it up! You can see an asteroid is coming
or a planet or a comet, they aren't sure what
and I'll be in the air on my way to France
but so what so what so what so what
if the world is crushed to ashes and dust

For then I'll use my sparrow wings
to navigate another blue morning
A foghorn blasts near the Columbian bar
as boats launch into a tipsy blue ocean
and Moineau sets off for another adventure

LA VIDEO en avance de la sortie de "L'homme à tête de chou" de Bashung!!

One week before I take off for Paris... They are using my subtitles! Hurray!

Extrait de l'album « L'homme à tête de chou » à sortir le 7 novembre

http://www.alainbashung.fr

Production Company : ChezEddy

Director : Maxime Bruneel

Producer : Nicolas de Rosanbo

Line Producer : Coline Six

Production Manager : Anne-Lise Mallard

Animation : Antoine Ettori - Emmanuelle Walker - Matthieu Gaillard - Vincent Verniers - Gaëtan Louet - Hélène Marchal

Editing : Manuel Coutan - Olivier Guedj

Subtitles: Laura Tattoo

Fragile - Sting

Lest we forget how fragile we are

If blood will flow when flesh and steel are one

Drying in the colour of the evening sun

Tomorrow's rain will wash the stains away

But something in our minds will always stay

Perhaps this final act was meant

To clinch a lifetime's argument

That nothing comes from violence and nothing ever could

For all those born beneath an angry star

Lest we forget how fragile we are

On and on the rain will fall

Like tears from a star like tears from a star

On and on the rain will say

How fragile we are how fragile we are

On and on the rain will fall

Like tears from a star like tears from a star

On and on the rain will say

How fragile we are how fragile we are

How fragile we are how fragile we are

truth what truth

do you really want to know the truth
really really really
the brutal truth of a killing
at the 11th hour
far from the madding crowd
or where the madding crowd was found
with fisticuffs and daggers and guns
who descended like crazed crow to carrion
who drug a mad king out of his tunnel
then pummeled his head so hard
his blood fed the desert floor
all the while laughing and shouting
allah akbar allah akbar 
and who knows what else since
most of us don't understand the language
yes sodomized punched and stabbed him
in some kind of righteous victory
psychopathic glee
then decided to shoot him
this chieftain clown king
this magnate of 40 despotic years
snuffing out the lies and the truth
boasting about it on video
how i shot him in the head and chest
when they came to bring him to justice
justice shall be mine sayeth the lord
and believing himself to be righteous
even as the clown king did before
he shot him dead but not until
the rebellion boys had had their fill
all they had raped killed and died for
to prove beyond a shadow of doubt
to record and distribute
their manhood oh yes
and the war's triumpant end
are you ready to watch it
are you ready to ask questions
to be caught in a sandtrap
to see it all through the eye of a camera
to hold back your nausea
and withhold your humanity
and afterward to ask
why men are such barbarians
why the rule of law has no more merit
and how far away from truth
we will have to get before 
it's you you you you you and you
sliced up on the hood of a truck
or thunderstruck by an aerial drone
or put in solitary for years unknown
because you are vanished
stripped bare and humiliated
tortured until you'll say anything
to stop these crazed headhunters
these masters of video war
and its main stream press surrogates
and its agent provocateurs
who have stoked your anger until
they put in your hands a gun 
in the name of your father
in the name of jesus or allah
and tell you you can't fail
they've got your back
it's the perfect plan hallelujah
are you ready really really really ready
to plunge into this illusory world
or shall you have a cigarette first
change the channel and exclaim
that they all had it coming
the truth so veiled that if you heard it
you'd declare all nations insane
i won't go there angel
i'll just leave you with these images
and believing that you are freer now
than before we killed them
as these same mocking madmen
sell you and me further down the river
all of us the 99%
like herds of cattle to slaughter
but none the wiser

Song for an Occupation

Marcos Santos for NY Daily News, Rainy Day at the Occupy Wall Street protest

I'm shuffling through a street

filled with brown fallen leaves

I'm whistling Dylan songs

and slugging eau de vie

I've got nothing but goodwill

for myself and others

And then a crowd gathers

like birds of many feathers

each with a song and then

a chorus and then

a harmonic consensus

It's late October and

the night air is chill

We will fly in spite of it

My sisters, brothers, cousins

unfurl flags like wings

to honor the birth of another

Occupy Wall Street

our little hope and change corner

where justice and peace

confront terror and greed

and every bird shall be free

"Rise up oh ye phoenix hallelujah

Our hope has never died"

Cohen - First We Take Manhattan...

...Then We Take Berlin! My vote for occupy theme song!

Dylan - Like a Rolling Stone (Welcome to the 99%...

no matter where you've fallen from...)

a woman song

Laura Nyro

time, i've almost forgotten thee

as if you or i never existed

the listless hours spent

scanning row after row

of movie covers on the roku

while my limbs are ricocheting

off the couch cushions

kicking away the blankets

then lying very still so as

not to awaken more demons

it's a time of teacups and pain meds

and i find that i'm addicted

to coffee again

just to have something warm and

flowing to fill the deep hole

the steam swirling about me now

a white fog that reminds me

that my brain is dying

and how time dies away

when the dignity of unique thought

and my passion for words has fled

as readily as i was born with it

grief knows no time

it ridicules all escape clauses

like trying to read a book

when i can't remember

the last paragraph i just read

or picking up the book

only to realize i'm reading the

same chapter for the fourth time

and i don't realize it

until i'm halfway done

and then i can't remember

what will happen next

i'm watching gods and monsters

as passionately as a child

watches her favorite movie

over and over learning

and relearning the songs

do adults do this too i wonder

as i slip into a wormhole

i'll wake up like arthur c. clarke

on a strange new planet

or rip van winkle with 20 years gone

knowing no one

time is forgetting all about me

and everything i accomplished

i think about laura nyro

and that "one child born in a

world to carry on to carry on"

like her, i only wanted freedom

i too drove away demons

and hit refresh but it's never any use

i'm left with my own woman song

and a little bit of time to forget

the treason of chronic illness

even as i will be forgotten

Deathwatch (from 1977)

C. R. W. Nevinson. A Taube. (1916-17)

Silence, amigo, men are dying.

Once a fiery cannonball, blazing missile,

now the perfect arrangement of strewn youth.

Who's today's hero?

Lenin is dead

and so are the children of this dark place.

This impermance suffices to say,

well, maybe in the next loophole,

that we all gotta go.

Saturated in the emotional counterplay, wait!

Who's dying? Not I.

Who's arguing the cause of existence?

Or its annihilation? Or its subterfuge?

The rights of these generals and undergraduate

innocents, the rights of the children and

what was once playtime...

Once a lovely view through Chicago,

now ghetto mania, ripped apart by city planners

and big rats.

Look, when you live this far out into space,

the whole scenario unfolds slowly

quietly violently until the entire population is

blinded by syphilis or controlled by

machine gun or worse:

When is the final Judgment?

Overwhelmed by hostility and a protective instinct,

the war could be won by pregnant flies.

Does God mind? Is he sinking into an old skin

or rummaging through letters we've sent him?

Does he save our prayers like birthday cars?

Mi amigo, I look at the stars

blasted in my imagination and they break apart

as real as I am sitting here,

letting the tape type and erase all this

deathwatching.

Tired, tired, tired of your slender view,

I swim to the backroom, open the window,

call your name, "Omega!"

and then reform.

Audience is not necessary for my anger,

eating leaves is natural.

Friend, friend, at best

we can move to the suburbs

or buy a condominium in Miami and

learn to speak Spanish.

I march from living room to

kitchen in search of Russian refugees, I want to

feed them and breed with them and

perhaps hear their stories.

Is anger hereditary?

If so, we'd have a wild race of

democrats.

You and me, amigo,

standing over these deceased,

we've got a long way to go.

The feeling is living in the skin, dormant

and yet,

at best we can heat ourselves on the death

fires escaping from the bloody nostrils,

and I won't cry through

the gates anymore or open my view any

wider than theirs and we may be safe

a few more years if the rats

don't find us first or God

decides to make a kind of emergency landing.

As long as he sleeps and the flag

keeps on flying, we'll be fine.

(May 30, 1977)

prophesyin'

a pinch of this
a pinch of that
and we'll all die happy
lulled to sleep with
valerian and poppy
unoxygenated
crushed between rock
and joblessness
outfoxed by a media giant
who told us
once and for all
that there was a magic bullet
called demogoguery
yet all along
it was a siren call
for sleeping pulpits
and upraised goblets
from which we drank the blood
of christiandom's nipples
but were never satisfied
no, not good to the last drop
no, not nourishing but
a sexed up huffa
huffa huffa doll
going down faster
than it ever went up

they call me the c team
curmudgeon, corpuscle
join me on the mattress
and let's get it over with
and when it's done, brother
sister, when it's done
we'll wrap ourselves up
in our magic dragon
and fall asleep
listening for a starship:
there ain't nothing
that matters here no more
nothing another puff won't cure
or riding that huffa doll
into maximum vinyl
ain't nothing nothing
NOTHING more important than
how i love you
now get on over here
to the c-side, baby
we'll put on our
crash helmets
and ride into the sunset
just nickle 'n dimin'
huffin' 'n puffin' 'til
the big one comes

♭♫ and we won't give a damn
no more ♩♪♩

Tu mourras moins bête

mais tu mourras quand même! (You'll die less stupid, but you'll die all the same!)

Part bd, part science, the book is out Sept 22, 2011. But there is also a delicious science blog by Marion Montaigne (click her name to visit!)

Two Sonnets

                          I.

I spied a girl in deep concentration
Whose very heart the stone she sat upon
Kept 'til daybreak her own fascination
And followed where a mirror could be drawn.
Her life was hidden in a bloody vessel
The rim of which its contents could not hold
And which the age of leisure could not lessen
Entrance of death in the night of her soul.
Her body fades away of clear distinction,
And sight and sound and light they all converge:
For light's sake the memory extinction;
For light's sake the power and the purge.
     Her body and her heritage have flown;
     She sailed over the valley on a stone.

                         II.

When all is said and done we sit
Like stoic pictures on the wall,
When every line is carefully writ
Lest we lose our course and fall,
Digest we fragments of the truth,
We, the dark-encountering clan
Spew our matters toward the sooth,
The celebrated birth of man.
We do not fear the awful cost,
(Like fools we hold a beggar's cup)
And covet thus the minor loss
Of time and words and death's triumph.
      Of darker poets still ye see
      They do infect the air we breathe!

                      (1980)

Paintings by Edvard Munch: A Nude and Moonlight on the Shore

New Bashung! L'homme à tête de chou

Nobody's positive that this is the cover of the new cd that finally (finally!) is coming out from Barclay/Universal but it's making the rounds. // Rien n'est certain sur la pochette mais cette image vogue sur les sites... Nov 7, 2011!
 
Oh ça me coûte le goutte-goutte/ Goûte goûte!

rain song

Crow in the Rain by Rea N. Radifer

in the rain crows go quiet

they rest on wires

ruffling first one wing

wringing the next

then sit as still as statues

until a sudden urge to float

throws them down to

eek out worms

rain has much the same

effect upon this poet

who sits non compos mentis

on her little couch-throne

eyes barely open

in a rain-soaked dumbness

the will to live gone

yet eeking out poems

postscript.

after i wrote this, i watched a little tribe of soaking wet

sparrows pecking at seeds on my patio. it was such a 

pathetic sight. it seems the heavy oregon rains are back,

along with the struggles of all us birds and bird lovers.

~lt              

winter song

Melancoly Laura by Edvard Munch (1899)

a winter song is springing

to my alerted ears

the soft roar of rain

that replenishes my tears

soaks open my heart

and takes in the winter songs

of dead and the dying poets

i wash and dress their bodies

gather the last autumn roses

then lay them on a boat
for the long journey home
standing on the shore as rain
falls down upon my head
i hope someone will care for me
as i have cared for them

i wish (but it's all in vain)

i wish (i wish i wish i wish)

i wish (i wish i wish)

but it's all in vain (it's all it's all in vain in vain)

~Chumbawamba

Morning by Edvard Munch

i wish i could see troy davis

sitting at the right hand of the father

encompassed in a hallowed light

while angels at his shoulders

sing the hallelujah chorus

and all the little beasts of burden

throng at his sandaled feet

i wish i could see jews and arabs from

all the great lands of the middle east

hand each other olive branches

and call each other auntie cousin niece

as tears stream down their cheeks
in a moment of great reconciliation
with acts of heroic forgiveness

i wish (in vain perhaps)
that western powers would donate
one meal a day from each of its citizens
and that such a simple act would lessen
the body fat of overweight americans
and end the hunger pangs of
continental africa and everyone else

i wish someone would tell us

what those planes crisscrossing
the blue skies are spraying and why
i wish i could stop thinking about it
and watch the old cloud forms roll by
as sweet winds cool the summer heat
and rains fall down to cleanse the earth

i wish they would discover
the cause of my disease
and i could experience a day again
without this pain and misery
may no one else live 15 years 
with perpetual pain and zero care
and the disbelief of ignorant doctors

i wish we would destroy
every weapon in our arsenals
all the guns of china and russia
pakistan israel columbia
india libya united states france
every weapon yes the end of wmd
talk to everyone and live in peace

this fragile peace does not exist

not peace but cold wars
cold wars turned to hot wars
violated women innocent children
begging dinars at car doors
and at the end of the fumes
an iraqi sunset and the bitter dregs of war

i wish i wish i wish
but it's all in vain but it's all in vain
i wish i wish i wish
but it's all but it's all but it's all
in vain in vain ...

Video by moineau