Addiction's Whisper

It whispers...

The constant tension, bound

in crackling, gradient whiteness

the fast fragmenting sound

of barely camouflaged crisis

the colorless hymn of stasis

singing in each last ear

the rhythmless hum, a basis

for every background fear.

And I listen.

It whispers...

Like coiling spring or serpent,

it's a long-impeded flow

all made of breath, unspent,

with nowhere good to go;

a hungering voice without vent -

charged, and waiting to blow.

And I listen.

It whispers...

Torn 'twixt fight and flight,

this body opts for freeze,

quaking, cracking, cast alight

upon the venomous breeze;

clinging to numb marcescence

while captured is all of time

by this atrophying presence:

drone chorus without a rhyme.
And I listen.

It whispers:

who, and where, and why you are

never shall they change

your light is lost, a stillborn star

in resting place most strange -

a flickering screen, a dim-lit bar -

anywhere in this addiction's range.

And I listen.

It whispers...

and I think to myself

it is about time

that I said something back.

before lost am I forever

in whispering fields

of white, and gray, and black.