Snakebite

Bitten by the snake in the fragility of youth

Twisting in agony, the instability of truth

Immense toxic pain started shooting up through

Spinal chord travelling its final journey up to

My brain, my mind, where the venom still manifests

Remaining under-surface, unnoticed and unaddressed

Circulating, perforating, percolating inside of me

Forming the persona of the person it would make of me

Mortal resistance of the venom’s lethality

Innate anti-poison that saved me physically

But the damage laid waste to my fragile mentality

Seeped through the recesses of my fragile psychology

Too young to realise, too young to repair

18 years imprisoned in the Cobra’s lair

Like prey tangled up in the snake’s twisted snare

No fight, nor flight to save on the wing of a prayer

Too young to fight fire or light the fuse

Too young to sight higher or sight the abuse

The abuse transformed after those 18 years

It turned itself inward with the hating and the fears

I sawed through my ankle to find release from the snare

And scrambled on knees to flee the serpent’s lair

With a keen sense of smell the Cobra followed my scent

As I crawled into adulthood from an adolescent

Years and years spent trying to fix and amend

For the damage done to me from the serpent’s venom

Somehow thinking it was all through self-affliction

Learnt new ways of survival, new wounds needing stitching

Self harm coming in the form of narcotic addiction

The abuse done to me transgressed, self infliction

First turning to speed, weed, LSD trying to fit in

But I found heaven in heroin, cue the instant itching

For more and more honey till it all had sunk in

To my body, to my mind, till my soul was rich in

The contents of the Holy Grail, the Chalice Jesus had drank from

Soon to be the Devil’s blood leading me to dance to the Devil’s song

Seemingly never ending vessel that levitated me above the lows

A path through the clouds, free of pain, free of woes

Opiate kingdom, my heavenly, humble abode

A familiar place to which I’d travel, down that same old road

Addiction kept unnoticed as I’d struggle withdrawal 

In my 9 to 5, when my office job fed opiate survival

In the real world see where I still felt liable

To my family, to myself always praying for revival

And so it continued as I write these very words

A new form of therapy to dispel the Cobra’s curse

Always looking for ways to avoid following the opiate herds

On that inevitable path of sorrow into the funeral hearse

Realisation has led me to realise the bite can’t be unbitten

Idealisation has led me to idealise that you can not be smitten

All through your life thinking you will always fit in

With the ideals of others realising that quitting

Is the cowards way out and it’s not quite fitting

With my way of life, these words that I’ve been spitting

See I can’t change the past, the fact that I’ve been bitten

But I can change my stance, till I’m no longer riddled

With this venom, this poison, that resides inside of me

Creates this music, demonic fiddle, that often takes hold of me

I learn the guitar, sound record, to keep voices at bay

I write these words, forged deep, from the thoughts I need to say

To my mind, inside, where the venom resides

An attempt to change direction of the winds and the tides

So hear me when I say that I forgive that instinctual snake

For all the carnage, constant leaves that I have had to rake

For all the self harming, my personality that I have had to forsake

For all the soundless alarms, the relationships that I had to break

For all the charming aspects of my personality left in the wake

Of the destructive force of the path I was forced/chose to take

I still see the positives, the fact that I am no fake

For without this journey, I wouldn’t be able to write, nor create

A purer mind, free of resentment, free of all this hate

Will the real Phil Briggs stand up, it’s now your turn to take

Now that this poem is ending, all that remains to say

Things are looking brighter Phil, focus, stay on top of your game

Turn your back on the past, all that pain, all that shame