Tramadol Blues

Pain comes from a dark place

Like jackboots black as night
   at the bottom of the Gestapo lost property bin
Like a panther convention
   at the London Planetarium
Like a teenage goth's bedroom


Pain dwells in a darkened room

Where shadowy figures in tinfoil fedoras mutter
and Hunter S. bats and wingèd things flutter
Where faded pop stars keep their secrets
   and their sex slaves well hidden
disguised as chairs or chained to radiators
   in their lockup downtown middens

Where in disused Dictionary Corner
   rats scrabble and squabble
      over the last few tiles in the bag
while Miss Havisham brushes away
   her veil of cobwebs to smoke
      an Asbestos Number 1 fag

Where I lay back on my bed
going slightly off my head
in a shuttered attic room
in the glowering gloom
watching the carlights
   crisscrossing the ceiling
taking all sorts of drugs
to numb all sorts of feelings
quite afraid to move
   to either left or right

then an unseen paw
   draws back the curtains
and starts to let in the light


All things must pass
All flesh is grass
and pain is a storm
in a Styrofoam cup

B.R. 23/01/2016

Cat with a Cigar by Louis Wain