grapes

drink it up, its good for you.
cool medicine runs down your throat like the water down Niagara falls,
but this time the liquid burns
like the tears running down your cheeks.

cherry flavor can't drown out the
misshapen tattoos that are left on your thoughts.
and a spoonful of sugar won't mask the taste.

sleep aids only delay the inevitable.
because popping pill after pill habituates the pill after pill
until the only reality you posses is the one you find in your dreams.

and grape flavor is the worst.

I am afraid.
because there is no medicine to heal an aching mind.
because frankly there is no medicine to remedy love, either.

and medicine doesn't stop the alarm.

so I hit the clock over and over and over
until the noise stops
and I drift back to sleep.

prescriptions tend to pile themselves like the cinder blocks lining a jail cell
locked in by dosage and directions,
only to be let out by side effects and liver failure.
but I've been on my best behavior,
so I get parole.

life outside the barbed wire fences is a life we are all too afraid to live.
outside the plastic casing and twistable lids,
we don't even know how to.

and grape breath is almost worse than the flavor.

I've got battle scars and scars that tell me I loved once.
but just like the rest of vanity that surrounds,
you tell me that I should just cover those up too.

-

medicine has a difficult time healing broken guitar strings.
they were bent by more than two calloused fingers.
they split over passion and emotions that I don't even know yet.

and I'm pretty sure that if I poured NyQuil over the fretboard, than my guitar would taste like grape too.

-

I guess fried eggs could technically count as medicine.
I sure like them more than sertraline.
same with girls and and mandolins and star wars and huntsville.

but girls don't go with star wars,
and mandolins stay out of tune,
and eggs in huntsville aren't all that good.

-

I'm pretty sure my heart still beats,
but I can't find where it says that on the prescription.
the directions don't say how to deal with trauma
and the side effects didn't mention mental numbness

but somewhere I remember reading that overdosing on normality couldn't hurt you.
unless of course your kidneys stop.