The Prescription

The Prescription #555

Did she have the right dosage in these jars?
Elixir of life from lifelessness
Would it solve her loneliness?

She’d find a man scared of killer bunnies
He didn’t need to have any cash
To prove he’s real, his nose must be runny
He’d hand her his soul in a flash

Does he have to pretend to possess a beating heart?
She’d never heard him utter a fart
She must escape from her studio box
Her job of setting endless cuckoo clocks

It was never the right time to end her strife.
She’d flip out at the wrong toss of a dime
Think about committing a heinous crime
Why did her alarms chime, control life?

She set out to burn her cubicle a toasty ash
Slapping lighters from hand at sorely needed cash
Accidentally, she scalded her fingertips
And timidly placed them on her chapped lips

She had the thirst for a draught of something strong
While she filed some papers, she sang a mourning song
She had to deliver a report to her new boss
On the relative benefits of flavored floss

She always felt at a loss to explain
The holographic coffins running through her brain
A sleeping man was smiling, remembering her refrain
What was true but her disdain?

Now, she was trying to be her own woman and her parents no longer persisted.
She would run her own time-sharing company as if they never existed.
But, there was this one quiet man who glimpsed at her like he had a plan
She would build her own flames if there were not any to fan

She could walk outside and feel safe in the night of all returns
And go to bed as if she had never been shaken and spurned to self-immolation
She would no longer go by herself on vacation or regret her chosen vocation
She would draw herself a future, paint herself a sprite, be born again and burn

What she required was a court jester
Not a work of modern sculpture
He could be nothing like her Aunt Hester
Only ever appreciating the best mess of her

If by chance, he plummeted from the sky
She’d ask him the meaning of his endless cries
He’d have genuine innocence and grace
To end her sighs and retire her mace

She dreamed she was drowning in a bowl of whipped cream
While manhandling a department store mannequin
She’d driven her train through the office to blow off some steam
She’d told her therapist it was not another of his Freudian harlequins.

In the basement of her parents house, she’s discovered her sexual mouse
Then, how would you explain these shaking cars?
Clouded spells of chemical hypnosis,
Would it help her find a prognosis?

by Micah Zevin 2007

Do you need a Prescription...You probably do...tell me about it!

Weapon of Choice?!!...

Weapon of Choice

I understand the need for naps
The mind can’t swim without sleep
Hibernate in caves with the bears
What is left of me in winter?

The mind can’t swim without sleep
It can only hold on like tadpoles
What is left of me in winter?
Plodding showers of congestion

It can only hold on like tadpoles
Plaster face to television sets
You will wake up all grown-up
There is no time for reflection

Plaster face to television sets
Everyone has their choice weapon
There is no time for reflection
All covet something unattainable

Everyone has their choice weapon
Use cake, tea, pills, peace or bullets
They might pay for a brief respite

Use cake, tea, pills, peace or bullets
Hibernate in caves with bears
All covet something unattainable
I understand the need for naps

By Micah Zevin 2007

Editors Note: If you want send me your own "Weapon of Choice" poems...What do you consider your own weapons of choice...?

Poe on Crack...?!!

“Poe on Crack”

Why is there no safe haven?
For a Neanderthal spaceman like me?
I’d prefer not to smoke with defeatist ravens
Who act so stubborn and so phony moaning
Until they get to act like such cruel bores
They poke your shoulder until it bleeds more
Then, you grab them by their brittle wings
And throw them out the door
Or they are struck by pendulum swings
Never, never, Nevermore
I won’t kill you. I won’t eat your metaphors
I’ll just make you a part of my stark folklore.

The Neanderthal man tried to lumber far
From the raven perched on that jam jar
Yet all he could was grunt hungers wail
And try to capture it with a garbage pail
He was trapped in the raven’s basement
Painting his dreams on the caves wall
Even in his head the bird knew how to stall
The clock was ringing the rats were ready to brawl
The raven was chanting oh! Cave man soon you will bawl
The spirits will prance upon your brain’s pavement
Anointing him with the claw of his sacrament
His eyes were cracked. Paranoia would call.

Annabel Lee, Annabel Lee, where’s the apothecary?
I’ll conquer like a worm in my haunted palace
No! Don’t make jokes about my tiny phallus
Like yours is one powerful mercenary
You realize the spirits in my head
Have been shivering in kaleidoscopic dread?
At the prospect of falling in that black pit
Wait! I’m alone, I’m gullible, I’ll have a fit
Do you believe in abnormal psychology?
Because I just named my black cat Pathology
I saw my other half licking a bloody axe in the mirror
Why doesn’t anything seem to be coming clearer?

by Micah Zevin (2007 )