What’s Your Poison, Eena, Meena, Deeka?
I wrote & performed this piece for Unerase Against Drugs on International Day Against Drugs. I didn’t want to take the cliched tack of ‘say no to drugs’. And I had been reading about addiction and thinking about the journeys that lead people there. Which of us is immune? So what is your poison?
(Listen to me perform this poem)
This is an evening of many passions
Three girls share a table
And a friendship of transient fashions
Let’s look around and calculate
The coolest kind of obsessions
Eena, Meena, Deeka, what’s your poison?
Eena, Meena, Deeka, they compare notes
Dunk those sorrows, drown them all, Eena goes
Meena disagrees
You’re just pouring pain down parched throats
Obvious to all, on a cloud of sweet smoke, Deeka floats
Eena, Meena, Deeka, we don’t like surprises
Give us champagne breakfasts and tequila sunrises
Meena sniffs, a disapproving sneer
Snort a piece of sky
Say the whispers in her ear
This white pristine, this white psychedelic
It paints over all her fear
Eena, Meena, Deeka, life is poison, got an antidote?
I need a friend, I need a trend, I need a known enemy
Are you in control, Eena asks
Though she already knows
If it saves you, if it floats your boat, no one’s keeping score
What you want will also hurt
That’s just the way the story goes
Eena, Meena, Deeka, said it once, I’ll say it again
I just need a friend, don’t call this poison
Swapping confessions
Mutual desperation they feed
Deeka looks to the back of the room
Dark corners, darker deeds
They remind her of her love
Nostalgia is a hit Deeka desperately needs
Eena, Meena, Deeka,
He goes back to her and Deeka goes back to exhale
When the glass came knocking, Eena answered its call
Then it handcuffed her and said, darling, it’s love, that’s all
Eena, now captive to the romance of this thing
No, it doesn’t hurt, this broken feeling
Eena, Meena, Deeka,
Dancing to remember, dancing to forget
This glass is owed my life as debt
I want it now is reason – not poison not regret
Meena’s diamond eyes sparkle
Without a flaw
They burn, they see it all
But she can’t withdraw
The kaleidoscope is crystal, not ice
It won’t thaw
Eena, Meena, Deeka, find the flavour of your poison in this haze
but the girl with kaleidoscope eyes shows me a hundred ways
Around them, we are all finding ways
to escape realities we can’t bear
Building escape over days, this is the world we share
We bond with food, sex, gaming, fitness
Chronicled on social media
toxic relationships are always there
Eena, Meena, Deeka, watch me burn because I love the way you poison me
I’m lost, I’m lost but the poison, it loves me
Between freedom and captivity
Lies remembering how to get out
But that’s a key that got thrown away
In the fog and chaos all about
We are so far into want, need and obsession
There’s no room for a new word called addiction
So we’re nursing individual joints, pegs, tears
Lines, puffs and loving fears
Eena, Meena, Deeka, what is your poison?
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