Wake Up



Wake up
Eat

Coffee,
drink it quickly,
before it’s 8:30am
and it’s to late

Qi Gong till it’s time for more medication

Qi Gong is your medication

Medication makes you come down
Take it at 10am
Take before you go up
Before you notice you’re awake

Noon
Don’t forget your medication
Take it on an empty stomach,

Has it been at least four hours since you’ve eaten

2pm
eat

 but eat nothing with calcium

maybe something small
peanut butter and honey?

4pm
 eat
 maybe something with calcium?
something large?

7pm
medication
it’s time to come down again

dinner perhaps?

your not hungry!

vitamins ?
don’t take them on an empty stomach

don’t forget the magnesium?

Did you take your medication?

Sleep comes more often now
but that’s too easy ,
when all you want to do is sleep.

Comments

M said…
This is very good… It’s personal, but also something that a lot of people can relate to! The frustration involved with medication on a daily basis, constantly having to monitor times of the day and eating schedules and proper diet and doses etc, really comes through; and you paint such a stark picture of the daily grind that reading the poem takes on the form of an invitation to the reader to try to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes – to get an idea of what it’s like to feel how medication can play a big role in someone’s (or feel like it’s taking over your life!). I like how there’s some humor, such as the very beginning where it goes: “Wake up / Eat / Coffee, / drink it quickly, / before it’s 8:30am / and it’s too late.” I like the rapid-fire approach you take, one thing to another throughout the day, always having to be vigilant watching the clock. I know from experience that sometimes medication can be really maddening, sort of like your life starts to revolve around it; or in a worst case scenario that it begins to control too much of your life. The poem is a great commentary on the sometimes strange paradox of medication: how it’s something that we genuinely need to help us live healthier and at the same time it can be a big annoyance simply because we know that we need it! The last stanza is a great finish, where it begins “Sleep comes more often now…..” because it’s a somber reflection on how it can become so tiresome that sleeping feels like the only “safe” time (or time to yourself), but like you wrote “that’s too easy…” It fits perfectly, and makes sense because when you're sound asleep you're not thinking about trying to juggle doses nor thinking about life and what's going on the same way you do as when you're wide awake. On the surface, the poem has a light-hearted quality, but it speaks very deeply about the nature of prescription drugs and how for better or worse we become tied to them because we genuinely need them for our health. Very nicely done!
March 14, 2012 at 9:36 PM
BT said…
Thanks, I was just venting a bit of my frustration, so I thought I may as well do it here in type.
Thanks for reading it, it's a bit tedious and boring subject matter, I've been quite boring lately as well as writing really boring things lately, nothing seems to flow, must be all the medication, i guess. Wishing you well.
March 14, 2012 at 9:49 PM
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