Mark

[Delta40]

When he was tripping
in his flat in Leeds
climbing heights was his love
scaling fast to the top
so he could beat his chest
and roar out his inner soul
across the rooftops
One day, he overshot
and travelled the world
lying on his back
A flash memory of being there,
then here till finally,
he fell from a tree in nepal
where the outcrop below
battered his head
He lay in the Himalayas
like a broken action man
amongst donkeys and foreign tongues
He lived without knowledge
of his own existence
dark, sweet peace enveloped his mind
while his body was entombed in
crisp white sheets
next to a machine
that went 'ping!'
tubes and drains
stuck in his brain
scabbing caking blood
he looked like a puppet
from a freak side show
When he arrived back in his head
the smell of disinfectant
made him thirsty for a beer
strange fuzzy faces stared
back down at him
a pair of needle worn arms
embraced him
she coughed in his face
wiped snot on his cheek
and mumbled it was great
he made it through the trip ok
his paralysis prevented him
from contorting in abject horror
when somebody told him
she was his girlfriend
his arms strapped firmly
like a wrapped package
ready to be posted
He could only remember
an orange shagpile
which he so loved to pass out on
He told a doctor
he had a ginger birthmark
shaped like the UK
on the side of his thigh
It would prove who he was
perhaps when he closed his eyes
after a nurse helped sedate him
they would send him home
from La Hacienda to Leeds

[dafydd manton]

How on earth do you do it at this time of the morning? it's another dark one, another tale of suffering, of the daft kind of things we humans can do to ourselves. I have no idea what might have inspired this, I'd love to know, but it is a great narrative.

[hillwalker]

I took 'tripping' to mean partaking of drugs; if so it's quite a coincidence as I've just finished writing a poem about a drug trip gone wrong.....

Anyway, your poem..... this has a very nightmarish, hallucinatory feel to it - we are never sure how much of it is real and how much is delusion. The short sentences almost suggest an addled brain, suffering such a short attention span that details can only be handled in bite-sized chunks.
It's a very gripping read - one senses the helplessness in hospital, being mummified in those sheets.....

I hope this is not biographical - or if so that the outcome was slightly happier than one might aniticipate.

H

[PrinceMyshkin]

It's an amazing poem and one of its chief assets is what Hillwalker noted about the uncertainty over which details might be actual & which might be delusional. Clearly the subject can't be trusted to know.

[Delta40]

Thanks Daffy, Hill and Prince. I'm glad you got that uncertain effect.