A poem by Oliver Kilgour

Last night I increased the pace
In my constant race
To efface my own existence.
Drunk but flat and craving escalation
Fiending fingers called friends
Always amazed at the ease to attain escape, an altered state
Before I could even buy a beer in a pub, a cub
Climbing my way up the alphabet
Starting with C lingering at B
Before dancing on to A and addiction
Living out a story that was divorced from my own
One of impenetrable and imperishable images of dead men and when I danced I was with them, disconnected.
No longer was I lonely and scared but feeling the strength of a swan song singing, pinging, wired and wonderful.
When really I was just the empty echo of sad lives only redeemed by an audience.
A cliche convinced it’s a chronicle.
And calling I was cut down by those who cut me lines and shown what exists off camera.
And what sounds after the song is sung.
And suddenly my sick and screams, my coughs and nosebleeds didn’t seem so distant.
Following the white rabbit down into holes didn’t seen like a story and I was stripped of its strength.
And what I was left with was just
Silence and a dial tone.

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