Calm the mind down.

Calm the heart beat.

Calm the shaking fingers.

Calm the energy.

I take a deep breath. I sit down with my scepter.
I am the jester in a world of whatever.
I make them laugh, and my fingers shake a bit.
My fingernails bitten down to the skin.
It’s a little bit
too much energy in existence.
Too much caffeine laced in my fingerprints.
My hands shake while my heart thumps, thumps, thumps.
the blood pulses through my thumbs.
My fingers shake one by one.

A little bit of adrenaline, a little bit of energy.
Water in my engine. I am sitting in my section.
Need to change my energy level, time for meditation.
Time for deep breaths. My hands shake while I tap the keys.
The music comes from the heart beat, the stomping stampede.
The shake, shake, shake, shake.
The earth quake, quakes ,quakes.

I have a mountain in me,
and I only need to be a hill,
I need to take a chill pill,
maybe some Benadryl.
Theanine might calm the blood stream.
My fingers pulsate, like something,
like a shuddering child in a corner,
Like I’m scared you might leave me, abandon me,
or destroy me. You’re my songbird.
Don’t leave me. I sit and I am conscious.
I sit and rest my stomach,
and I breathe in the nothingness.

I am not nothing, I am someone.
My trembling fingers,
nothing less than momentum.
Nothing less than a syndrome,
nothing less than an addiction.
I am an energy monster, caffeine, taurine,
theanine, prescriptions.
I want to focus up, and sit with my selections.
I want to rewrite this addition
to address this tabulation,
To resist this subtle affliction.

I got prescriptions
and medicines, and I am
a naturopathic madman.
I sit in solidarity
with every addict in the trashcan.
But my hands shake, I realize I overdid it.
I focus up a bit and my hands,
they’re still twitching.

I could write a book if I wanted to,
but I don’t like this feeling.
I just want to be a mogul,
a modest Mussorgsky, an energy in the universe,
not another person seeking.

But I see this is a bridge I am crossing
into a habit I am adopting.
Take the clarity down a bit,
maybe take a break from that pill.
I don’t need to read a book an evening.
I drink nothing, no alcohol, that causes my depression.
If I drink for a bit, it messes with my medication.
I do a little medicine ingestion.
It doesn’t make it a bad thing.
I am a prescription magician.
Watch my cage bird sing.
A little hope from something,
when all I want is
everything.
A calm silence, a meditative mindset.
A cure for mental illness.
A confidence I am holding on
to.
A sign in the solitude.
I have vinyl to listen to,
Pages to write,
Songs to analyze,
sleep to rest my eyes,
a little bit of life left
to read and write.

I read two books in the morning,
I write two poems at night.
I write two poems before I write two poems.
It makes my writing tight.
I read two books, two poems of peace,
two soliloquies of war.
I write two poems, before I write two poems,
then I write two more.

Wrote sonnets till the day he died.
Peace, Bradley Nowell.
I borrowed your lines
to add to my rhyme scheme,
to enrich their lives,
to give them feel something
like what Sublime added to mine.

 

Jason Wright is the editor and founder of Oddball Magazine. His column appears weekly. His third book, Train of Thought 2: Almost Home will be available soon.