The Lives of the Deceased by Jersey Campbell

I've abandoned my consistent essays on shit no one cares about (but me) for the time being because I'm exploring other writing styles, namely poetry. Don't worry though, I won't dedicate all my time to writing this mushy, abstract nonsense people love so much. 

This poem is for an anthology friend of VERGE Chosen Lyric is whipping up that speaks on addiction... thought it would be nice to share it with the five fans of VW. 

She woke up

Before her feet hit the floor she picks up the grinder and opens it up, takes a generous pinch, transfers it to the pipe

Time to toke up!

If she didn’t toke she would have never woke up

Sleep walking in the day only anticipating the time when she could get away with herself and create pleasurable sensations that made her so hot she was cold and she chilled in the furnace of the desire, putting the love of God inside her

They say the sensation is past the explanation but let her slurred speech and lifeless eyes explain the ostensible pain this young woman would go through

Lying waste to her mind the most precious of assets for “my precious” pills and syringes she would go through

The herbal essences were not her only guilty pleasure

She wrestled pleasure from the drugs only for the drugs to eventually wrestle the pleasure back away from her

At the end of the day she was never the same for the pleasure she received from these drugs means the only love she found was in substances banned and criminalized

Eyes shut wide when she reaches for the weapons of personal destruction

How could she see when she was so blind by these substances?

Nothing else mattered but the next hit

We all run outta time, she was hoping hers came before yours or mine

They say marijuana opens the gates of hell to let loose the untamable beast of dependence and addiction

How quickly we rely on meaningless opinion masquerading as undeniable screaming life’s contradictions

Don’t gotta touch a spliff to get hooked on needles shooting in your veins penetrating your body and scrambling your psyche

Feels… it feels

Don’t care of the why, the how, the what, the who- if it makes her feel good right now who cares of the future?

It started one day when one friend and another friend said, “hey, I can get some opiates, you down to try it and see what the hoopla is about?”

She said no, but the other friend thought "if not now then when?" and she was down to go so she thought for a second and said, “YOLO!”

Two to one the tyranny of the majority wins out and the minority is left subjugated by these people she called friends

She knew they had little to do with it, her peers forcing pressing made her feel like a herb who hung on the balance of the authority’s word

With will power that weak she was bound to break and break she did

Those damn feelings

The whole journey never revealed in the first step

How could she know this first experiment she tried would set forth a series of unfortunate events that led to her ultimate death?

Of course she didn’t know; she only wanted to be down with movement

This movement influenced her future movements every time she woke up

Because she would have never woke up if she didn’t toke up

Still alive and breathing but her appearance was not deceiving at all

Battered and beaten by the slow and steady toll of the bowls and heroine hits that kept her alive

But she could never be alive after that first time

If not high she was dying

A life of inconsistency, to be alive she had to actively kill herself

What is the purpose of life, if it is only a tool of death?