In memory of a special friend who saw the needle, and all those who survived the damage done. This is a POV piece written from the perspective of people I know and people I’ve known. Addiction is too often viewed as a habit acquired from weak willed people who are low life’s but few addicts set out to get strung out. There are many types of addictions but one of the meanest and hardest to break is heroin.
(In Stream Of Consciousness beat/street rhyme)
I sold my soul
In a dark back alley
Somewhere over there
The city of despair
Where running water
Remains constant
As the despondent
Hiding in dark corners
Amongst the unwanted
Individual and habitual
Cat and mouse ritual
Looking for release
From a world of strife
A way to erase
An unforgiving life
We just want peace
How I wish this shit would cease
Now everyday I need my fix
Started out just for kicks
Basement window transactions
3AM without distractions
We thought we were Kings of the night
But we were just kids on the run
Looking for fun until we got strung
And now we just can’t seem to get right
Enslaved to the world of dope
Trying to understand the dream
Of promise minus the hope
I was a glassine dope fiend hooked on powder self esteem
Popping tons of Benzedrine smoking and toking green weed
Ripping off a limousine hiding from the blue machine
Be quarantined and unredeemed if I don’t get my doped blood clean
Needed someone to intervene so please find that dopamine
Help me flee this fucking scene
Someone please
Save me from myself
I’m a ghost
A blank eyed phantom
Stagnant and abandoned
Searching for good times
Coping dimes
Scoring bundles
Committing crimes
Shootout in the jungle
It’s a asphalt rumble
This concrete struggle
Galleries full of users nodding
Where rigs boot blood
Poking and prodding
Trying to help me hide myself
Make me into someone else
For at least a few blissful hours

Dirty needles carbon spoon candle wax is melting soon
Arm tied off, red balloon mainline skag, shoot the moon
Milking blood in my harpoon hoping to remain immune
caught in a poppy typhoon getting sick but fixing soon
Someone better hear my tune before I drown in the black lagoon
Or am I doomed
How did I get here? Am I repulsive or simply compulsive?
It started recreational galloping the horse inspirational
Then authority became confrontational
Yet it seemed educational…. Sensational
Shooting the avenue recreational Lower Eastside invitational
Where drugs are inescapable and school was plain incapable
Of teaching even vocational or being motivational
Its reprehensible indefensible and dispensable
Yet there I was insensible
China White incomprehensible
It isn’t easy to break free
The entire culture had a hold on me
The vice no longer remains
Rid myself of the chains
Stopped the pains
Of hating the person I’d become
Desperate and always glum
What ever happened to
That boy in grade school
Who got along well with others
Loved by neighborhood mothers
Followed instruction
Why the destruction
Why the seduction
I was a well behaved child
What set me so wild?
Why was it me who survived
Why am I alive
But Randy took the dive
Why did he get the shot
That ripped through his veins
And stopped his heart
Life’s no fucking fair
Until you care
Live and Love in Peace