Time to purge
All the pent-up anger,
frustration and angst boiling over
and running down my lanky frame.

Every release has run my psychological gauntlet,
clutching at the coattails of liberation.
I chase the elevation with everything I can, never finding quite what I want in the euphoria
or the inundation of a dream-state.
It is extremes I crave: nothing, and everything together;
I find it in bags, and at them.

It’s profound, the change
that the chemicals bring,
the intense rushes, the gently passing lows
and most rewardingly, the numb nothingness
of overexertion and a clouded mind.

The hits reverberate from knuckle to chest
Familiar and warm, then hot, and then too hot
then coughing and gasping for air
As they progress, the heat and ache builds in my chest
And yet I crave the ferocity, and the chaos and the struggle

Oxygen starvation sinks in as my legs break way
Finally, the hits are done, none left to take,
My bag and I drained, to be replenished in time.
It now stands, a hollow monument to my flight
My escape from the reality, the vivid lies

The public pretense that I’ll repress this purge
that I’ll bottle it up like a noxious gas,
but it must be released.
Better here, in my private sanctuary
than there, where its fumes will extinguish things of beauty.