5.14.22 — 8.23.22

This is a poem about the night my best friend died. The night where I was taken to the emergency room by friends who love me. The night where the pain in my body was so great and the doctor so terrible, that I resorted to inappropriate humor to cope. But that was after I started hearing this Ramones song in my head as I waited for the sweet relief of medication. Yesterday, I realized why this song clawed its way out of my psyche that night. It was the perfectly morbid soundtrack.

When you died
they carried me to the emergency room,
where I waited in agony
for some relief.

It took so long.
The impatience turned to anger
and the anger into nothing.

“Play me that song,”
I begged my beloved.
“I Wanna Be Sedated.”
Nothing else came to mind.

“Twenty four hours to go,
nothing to do,
nowhere to go home.”

I didn’t know then,
didn’t know why,
but now I do.

To the airport, on a plane.
I was going insane.
You were gone.
A portion of my home
disappeared.

Couldn’t control more than my fingers,
much less my brain.

This song, this song.
I knew the words,
but oh my God.

There was a show waiting for me,
a wheelchair, a plane.
I was insane.
One phone call and you were gone.
Sedate me! Sedate me!

The bams lulled me.
The words comforted me.
Insane in an emergency room bed,
waiting for drugs
to ease every kind of pain.
I still want to be sedated.