In between bouts of pain I clutch at straws

Well I’ve got news for you foul beast
Not another day will I feed your greed
I’m getting off your medication
Your bowl will be empty
Your greed unfed. And you will die
That I may live.

In between bouts of pain I clutch at straws.
Many conditions keep the straw market buoyant
But migraines are up there with ME, depression
and non specific abdominal cramps.

Sadly most straws are expensive
And the condition not just painful but greedy

Migraines eat my life in gobfuls
There’s never a week when they don’t
Gnaw a day sometimes two
More often they stuff in three

How fat they grow on medication
slurping it down like snouts in a trough
and then they squat in the shadows
burping, farting vomiting
waiting for the next meal.

And this is one straw I shall clutch until death us do part.

September 2008

Filed Under: Migraine, Poetry

Tags: ergotamine, expensive condition, foul beast, greedy, imigran, medication, migraine, straw market

Have you got a gun?

Homecoming 2009

At St Mary’s College in Wellington, in addition to spending hours practising the piano, I entered a national poetry competition. “Nothing is,” I wrote, “what is cannot be and not be”. That’s nailed it, I thought, on the tram going to school. Unfortunately Sister M refused to enter my poem. Both I and the poem were a disgrace. We were shocked. She never displayed passion but, that day, she had an important message. She thought I had dumped God. I hadn’t then. I was blatantly and badly channeling Gerard Manley Hopkins. I continued to write, and you can read my poems (so far) in chronological order or you can browse the list of poems A-Z.

In between bouts of pain I clutch at straws