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| Congress has historically treated drug abuse as a malady afflicting mostly poor, minority communities, best dealt with by locking people up for long periods of time. The epidemic of drug overdose deaths currently ravaging white populations in cities and towns across the country has altered this line of thinking, and forced lawmakers to acknowledge that addiction is a problem that knows no racial barriers and can be best addressed with treatment. —NY Times Editorial, Jan. 25, 2016. Photo: A 20-year-old heroin addict agreed to go to detox through the Gloucester [MA] Police Department Angel program in January after he overdosed. Credit: Katherine Taylor for NY Times, Jan. 24, 2016 |
blue nails ashen skin
pin size pupils
barely a breath
another flat line looms
his savior if found
a narcan syringe
white brown or black
a teen or thirty something
or an aging boomer
who went from prescriptions
pushed by physicians
to bags of scag
he might collapse
on a city street
or in a country lane
be clad in a suit
or laborer's boots
be an absent father
or live in lover
once a dreamer
or a pragmatist
now possessed
he rides a demon horse
over a cliff
will it be a hospital
or the morgue
for the man
with the opioid eyes
for years jeered
as a crackhead
or junkie
he was left to die
or tossed into a cell
but when the disease
infected the suburbs
the country lanes
the club house
and the gated estate
it was rehab for the addict
progress no doubt
but too late for the poor
who had no care or aid
who filled a grave
or crawled around
a prison cave
Bill Sullivan is from Rhode Island where in the past five years over a thousand residents have overdosed on opioids, mainly heroin. He is the co-author two books on twentieth century poetry, co-producer of two films and his poems have appeared in a number of on line and print publications. His latest publication is Loon Lore in Prose and Poetry.