My dear, you have no ethical dealer –
if you must make him a lover, be honest:
your heart will simply whore you,
short changing your dignity.
But you’re a soma seeker
addicted to utopium,
and death by overdose
provides deluded orgasm
more pleasant
and more vivid than living itself,
or withdrawal
and a shivery capitulation,
yet to find a remedy.
You’re better sleeping,
and sleeping on to nurture
the extant dream,
than to be awoken
by the company you keep
and to suddenly discover,
dear sweetheart, that
amid an uncut passion
your reality is a fragile habit.
Ben Hession is a Wollongong based writer, with poetry published in Eureka Street, the International Chinese Language Forum, the Can I Tell You A Secret? anthology from Live Poets at Don Bank Museum, and Cordite. He has a poem upcoming in the next issue of Mascara Literary Review. Ben is also a music journalist, and a broadcaster on community radio.