Intravenous Love:
A Sonnet Sequence
I
I take my drug in doses that must last
For months—or years. Your distance now restrains
Me from continuous supply. In veins
Scarred caution punctures steady highs, but vast
Effects on mind and soul make stimulants
Worthwhile, and luckily the heart retains
A residue which slowly melts like grains
Of sugar soaked in mescaline and grants
Occasional epiphanies through strong
Recurrences (at least in memory)
Of what infrequent fixes do to me.
This makes these brief exposures last quite long.
Yet I recall my habit, in its prime,
Was harmlessly indulged at any time.
II
(But what if chemistry reacts against
The regions of the brain where air becomes
Too rare, where pleasure gathers too condensed
To bear? And what if this doped state benumbs
A frank appreciation of male facts,
Bald data, sinews of the pitiless—
“The Real”; or stuns intuition, subtracts
“Ideal” from all equations, makes a mess
Where words meet constellations? What if
The place where blood is pumped to warm my lips
Corrodes away in acid dreams? But if,
By wonder blinded, my crippled self trips,
I’ll follow through my fall as leaves that hate
Their deaths must do, and learn to like such fate.)
III
My habit takes me where I could not go
Alone. It floats me up to tree-top heights
Where winged affections soar from nests to flights
Like eaglets’ hovering thoughts, where currents glow
In skies above the gravid realm of green
That forest roofs invent to underpin
Ethereal blue and white (this genuine
Devotion) lying poised there in between
The humid lusts of earth and sterile spheres
Through which the stars take pathways by strict laws
And where God preens His changeless, conscious flaws—
Perfection and straight robes—beyond our fears.
Within this drug-induced domain of air
I drift on wings fledged out with your dark hair.
IV
(Should I give up addiction to my drug
Since it waylays my sober pulse and life
And sometimes shoots me down, or like a thug
Attacks me with a blow, or stabs a knife
So near the heart that not just blood, but God
Himself, must dribble from the wound? Should I
Accept some substitute, some methadone, and plod
Through days like comas, nights that calcify,
And worst, let twilight living set a pace
Distorted by the humdrum until time
Slows down, bloats up, obliterates your face—
Let withdrawal perpetrate this crime?
No. Never can I nullify my need.
My needle stabs ascetism’s greed.)
V
I take my drug in numerous painless ways:
My eyes absorb the essence at a glance
If necessary, or, when given the chance,
Drink deeply with the addict’s trance-like gaze.
I do not have to hurt my flesh to give
My heart and mind a numinous supply
Of reveries surrounding us, or tie
A tourniquet to make love live:
A casual hand on curls shoots up bliss;
Our shoulders touching as we make a turn,
And smiles which cross your mouth and make me burn
Approach the fix I get from farewell kiss.
Your presence makes it easy to renew
My sometime habit—since my drug is you.