Poems -- I Was Once Like You

Drove a pick up truck, had a wife,
two kids, a job, a house on the lake. Paid my taxes, coached
hockey, went fishing, cut the grass, I had
an ordinary life, goals, dreams, I had
a future

Must have snagged some cosmic thread
stopped enjoying my wife, my kids, my job
began to dread those summer nights
slowly up the driveway
the shuttered house, the heat
mosquitoes keened my discontent

my boys, eight and ten, they wondered
what they’d done wrong, why dad wouldn’t take them fishing
why their mother cried

Couldn’t stand to hear about their day
I stayed away, I worked late
while they canoed on the lake
I swam refreshing laps in bars
my wife got mad and I got even
I got a room, some coke, some girls and it
all made sense
at the time

then I couldn’t pay the bills
the dealers wouldn’t take my calls
three days on the murky bottom
sanity at last, I went home
my wife was crying, I remembered love

the doctor said he couldn’t help,
blah, blah, it was up to me
I got clean but it didn’t help
I lay in bed, I couldn’t cut the grass

Couldn’t drink the lemonade
my son was selling from our driveway
couldn’t smile and tell him it was good
something had changed

There was work out of town
I made myself go
the fresh start helped at first
but I was lonely and I started to drink
and I did crazy things

things that weren’t me,
that I can’t bear to tell you
oh, use your imagination

eight years, how fast it goes
so low that death seemed best
the honourable thing,
a speedball exit

the dealers must have sensed
my desperation, they cut in talc
I couldn’t get dead, I cried

finally, a psychiatrist
I was manic-depressive
that made sense, why didn’t I see it before
we embarked on a new galaxy of drugs
still, the one I liked best was coke
it’s like air-conditioning, you don’t hear mosquitoes

my kids wouldn’t talk to me, my wife got remarried
my mother didn’t give up on me
she just had me committed

dual diagnosis now in fashion
I was their poster boy, could stay on the ward
taking their shiny pills, letting them test my urine
until I got into a halfway house
why not, nowhere else to go

those nurses,
I’d pissed them off
so many previous stays
they don’t put “loser” in the chart
but I could read it in their eyes

hey, I stayed clean,
at first just to annoy them
to prove them wrong
then I got to like it
the stability was new

they relented on my diagnosis
month by month
not Axis II, not an addict
maybe he is manic depressive after all
I’m grateful but I’m angry
eight damn years of my life

leaving on Tuesday
there’s a bed
I got it because somebody died
ironic when I finally want to live

if you see me
walking slowly
down your manicured street
one summer afternoon

a man in a daze, who smiles
at the scent of fresh-cut grass
don’t be scared, please understand

I was once like you