Right?

Powerful pain killers
Surge my bloodstream
Numbing me
Rescinding the intense burn
Searing every extremity.

I am a castaway
A fugitive
A survivor
A man doomed and destined.

Chambers of horror
Vivid in detail
Slam shut in my brain
And I achieve cruising altitude
That rare place
Where nothing matters.

That knife blade before my eyes
Was never there.
Those bullets inches from my brain
Never sang their tenor song.
Her nightly screams
Her incantations of
Go to hell
Never scalded me.
That gaping maw of the shotgun
Never centered on my heart.
The tip of that iron in my shoulder
Never felled me.
That Crown Vic never crushed my ribs.

Three Oxycontin
And everything lethal melts away
Like April snow.
Three little white pills
And life settles into cruising speed.
Then three more
To maintain altitude.

I am not an addict.
I have a prescription.
That makes it all legal.
All okay.
Right?

Besides
The pain is real.
The emotional release
Is just an incidental benefit.
Isn’t it?

Aw, hell.
It doesn’t matter.
That was another life
When I was a younger man.
Maybe it never
Really
Happened.

Right?

A bullet is a few grams weight.
A knife is silent and passive.
A shotgun shell is simply bird shot.
A Crown Vic is just a car.
An iron is merely a household instrument.
Go to hell is just an epitaph.

Nothing means nothing.
Right?

Not even little white pills.