Heroin discussion – extended.

[zygote]

Today was Thursday, his payday, Christmas day was just three days away,
After he finished work the first thing he did was buy a jar of mayonnaise.
He thought about buying that new Fischer price toy for the baby,
Or maybe the silver necklace his wife had admired in the jewellery store lately.
He only thought about it for a moment, it was his bonus to spend on his own,
He wants to buy the things he wants, and then he wants to get some time alone.
He makes a left on Clinton and sees a parking space is free and open,
He thinks the Parking-gods are with him, and this must be a good omen.
There seems to be a calmness in the neighborhood tonight,
The hard edges feel softer in this place where wariness is a way of life.
At the end of the street he spots people gathered near the familiar park,
No one speaks to one another, the waiting is the hardest part.
The cold December air goes through his coat, his lucky coat,
He waits outside the back of the building and then the bouncer spoke.
“Have your money ready, no singles.” A man comes out of the building complex,
One by one the people in line buy heroin, then the man says “Next.”
He hands over his money and tells the man “Best holiday wishes,”
The man gives him a strange look and says “Yeah you too, Merry Christmas.”
He drives to his next dealers apartment block to buy cocaine,
He anticipates the future feelings, feeling thumps in his brain.
Taking the stairs two at time, he makes his way to the third floor,
He catches his breath and knocks out the code on the door.
He’s let inside, “What can I do for you?” this man always gets straight to business,
The man weighs the cocaine out on a small scale in the kitchen.
The man quickly wraps the cocaine and hands him the foil package,
“Can I use the bathroom?” he asks as he puts the package into his jacket.
“Sure.” He turns down the hall and passes a bedroom, its door is open,
He sees a young woman stretched across a bed, he stops for the moment.
He sees she is lying on her stomach and sipping from a can of soda,
As she moves her robe opens just enough for him to see she wears no bra.
She smiles a sad dreamy smile at him and brushes the hair out her eyes,
He smiles back and turns away, as he begins to walk he hears that she sighs.
He walks down the narrow hallway towards the bathroom stall,
He enters the room and sees the dark grey bulb half screwed into the wall.
He looks into the clouded mirror that rests above the sink,
He screws in the bulb to light the room, the bulb flickers and blinks.
Then he closes and latches the door, locking it behind him,
He works his arms out of his coat, takes out his syringe and places it beside him.
He takes out the mayonnaise that he bought and removes the lid from the jar,
It seems warm in the room, he can feel the wetness under his arms.
He empties the heroin into the lid and then picks up the syringe,
He turns on the faucet to draw water into the lid, but the pipes shudder and flinch.
He bends down to check under the sink and then tries it once more,
Nothing. No water. The water must have been turned off just before.
He tries the other faucet, no hot or cold water, not even a drip,
He stomach rises up. He curses to himself. Now what he thinks.
He can’t ask in the kitchen for water, he was warned about this last time,
He knows he will get away with it if he is careful not to leave anything behind.
The toilet. He lifts the heavy enamel top from the toilets water tank,
And places it slowly down because the room is still dark and dank.
The hell with it. He draws a syringe full of water from the water tank tray,
He holds up the syringe to the light and inspects the water. It looks okay.
He pushes the plunger on the syringe, he can feel the pressure give,
Water touches powder then he waves his lighter under the metal lid.
The liquid bubbles and the heroin quickly dissolves with very little heat required,
That’s good. Sometimes the dope is so good it hardly needs a fire.
Next he shakes a couple of small cocaine rocks as their foil wrapper loosens,
And is impressed that they vanish immediately into the solution.
He swirls the liquid around, rips open the filter from a cigarette and uses it as a strainer,
He uses the white fibres to draw the liquid cocaine into his syringe container.
He carefully places the loaded syringe between his teeth,
He rolls up his sleeve, removes his belt with one hand and takes a seat.
He wraps the belt around his arm and hopes he can get a clean hit on one of the veins,
There, I’ll go there. The needle point feels sharp going in, which means it’s unused and safe.
When he pulls back on the plunger a little stream of blood slithers up,
Discolouring the slightly yellow liquid and giving it a reddish touch.
He loosens the belt, careful not to dislodge the needle and to move calm,
Takes a breath, and slowly pushes the liquid into his arm.
He holds it in there concentrating with his restless mind,
Then he pulls the needle out and dabs at the drop of blood left behind.
As he does this, he feels the freeze in his arm from the cocaine,
His arm feels numb and his heart races as the first wave is meeting his brain.
His stomach heaves, his scalp tingles and he gets a little scared at first,
The wave of sensation is stronger than how it usually works.
He fights the urge to vomit, the heroin kicks in and the nausea retreats,
The heart-thumping freeze of cocaine replaced by the warm heroin heat.
His heart starts to slow down, or so it seems,
A quiet hollow siren rages in his head, release of dopamine.
Flowing beads of perspiration crowd each other across his brow,
One drops onto his arm when he begins cleaning everything up off the ground,
He puts away his things threads his belt into his pants, and sits back down,
Good stuff, very good, he thinks as he sits there with an open mouth.
Later now and back outside, he decides to have a cup of espresso in a little place he knows,
Sitting back with a view of the street he savors the coffee, lights a cigarette and smokes.
Nothing hurts. The lousy job that he needs to hold onto, the flak he catches from his wife,
The fact he is turning 40 and doesn’t have anything to show for his life.
None of it fazes him, but he still thinks about it as he puts the coffee down,
A spotty work history, no college, and rent that is three weeks late don’t matter right now.
He feels warm, relaxed, and good. Was the waitress’s smile a flirt?
Or was she smiling because she caught him nodding? Or did he smile first?
Doesn’t matter. He thinks about buying his wife a fake necklace instead of the real one,
Maybe something cheap, like a gold-plated stainless-steel one.
It will look just like the one she pointed out for him to give,
And later on that day that was exactly what he did.

[Wise Wiggles]

hah this was dope as hell..

[IamBenT]

Wow fantastic verse.

So moving so sad, really Hemingway-esque in its plain and blunt fashion. I enjoyed this
as much and even more than some of your pieces in the AOWL. Some places where things might have been reworded for flow, but your use helped with the clarity which I felt was very important in this piece.

So straightforward, real, and just a great piece man

[Natural]

Sup. The positive:
I like the fact you don't obcess on using such a unreasonably wide vocabulary to where it makes me have to look up every other word. As a reader thats simply just not fun. As a writer your aim should be to capture a wide variety audience wise i believe you did. Perfect balance between complexity and simplicity imo. The topic is attention grabing imo. I can see great effort was taken too be descriptive and that lead to me playing this story out Like a movie in my head. Its difficult to do that consistently with a piece this long without getting lost along the way, or at least it would be for me. Your rhyming ability is and always has been superb but alot of your drops conceptually go over my head. This one didn't, props.
The negative: The only negative(for a lack of a better term) would be that you repeatedly used "he". He did, he said, he looked etc. I thought you could have been a tad bit more creative on that part and used better wording. However that is minor and in no way ruins the place, just my two cents no hate intended.

Overall a pretty solid piece dude. Deserves more feed tbh.

My favorite section was the opener. Dope scheming.

If you could spair the time to feed my collab with genocide and endsane itd be appreciated dude. Title is "the art of confessions".

Keep spittin.
1

[Zen]

I gotta say this is probably one of my favorite pieces of yours. Just wow. I can't go too in depth on the feed on this piece, but at least this post will up this back to the top of the OM. Fuckin dope zy. You ain't from this planet.

[EndSane]

Wow this was pretty dope...Very descriptive man and was very amazed how u held it all together...Character progression along with climaxing the story...

It was well written and the rhymes weren't dull like they were at rap royalty when people tried to do these stories...It stayed on point and flowed well...Altho I thought there were a little hiccups with it but nothing horrid...Ur gonna get that no matter what in pieces like this...

I have seen a lot of work from u and this is prolly the dopest...Just because it stayed on topic and was completely consistent throughout the piece which is hard to do sometimes...It was schemed so well which was nice too see...Didnt use crazy Multies which I know u like doing as well...Just very thought out concepts in each line...

The best part about this is the transitions were so smooth and every line connected together...A great fucking story with a great message man...

Now my only problem and what I wanted...Was some type of twist, u had like a subtle close which wasnt bad...Like hey I'm a heroine addict and I will be the next day as well...I get it but I would of liked to see some creative little twist...Maybe it's me being picky but even with what u wrote which was long...I still desired more lol even tho it was a book...

Nonetheless this was a great read bro...thanks for the feed

[Dove Dozer]

He
He
He
He
He.


Does He have a name?

[Just Write]

this was ridiculously dope, I had a friend od last week at 21 so this kinda hit a soft spot on me, i'm uppin because this definitely deserves more feed. nice job man @zygote

[Certain]

I liked the nameless narration. The repetition of "he" both accentuated the everyman qualities of the subject and avoided distracting from more important details.

There were times the imagery felt too familiar, too similar to every other description of heroin use in every song and book and movie and TV show. But there were a few nice, unique details, like using toilet water because the dealer's house didn't have running water (though, how did the toilet get full?). And as a whole, the straightforward style definitely accentuated the desperation of the details. I loved the mayonnaise device, presenting us this completely random thing at the beginning of the verse before finally getting around to explaining after everything about the story has changed.

I did wish there was a bit more work put into the rhyme scheme. Some lines were too long. Some rhymes were too simple. You can put together this style of story without forgoing the rap format quite as much.

But the effort and the uniqueness was very appreciated.

[dead man]

thought i already commented on this, pretty sure i have an in-depth critique in another thread you made for this one

but just in case, this was clearly really great writing and one of the first verses in awhile i actually had a physical reaction to reading. just solid as hell. brutally stellar.

thanks.

[zygote]

Yes you made a good comment on the original site. As for 'originality' of this, well not entirely, it is based on a book by Fernandez, H. (1998) "Heroin: Pharmacology, Treatment & History." That book is part non-fiction, part-fiction many of the descriptions here in this rhyming verse are drawn from scenes in that material.

[PancakeBrah]

"He feels warm, relaxed, and good. Was the waitress’s smile a flirt?
Or was she smiling because she caught him nodding? Or did he smile first? "

Probably my favorite line, although there are a handful. The confused optimism. Well done.

This was something entirely different. The lack of an actual name for the 'protagonist' if you can even call him that is perfect and I'm not sure why anyone would complain about it. If you named him John or some shit it'd lose most of it's punch and flow in my opinion. Someone could complain about the simplicity of the rhymes and scheme but that in and of itself is bold and purposeful. The fact you never try to switch up the scheme or become too complex throughout the entire length of the piece (which is quite lengthy, obv.) creates this matter of fact tone and harshness to it. As in, he does this, then this, then this, then this, then this, etc. This type of writing can be absolutely horrible when handled incorrectly but here is an example where it's executed by a professional. There's no big twist, it's just a retelling of facts in the life of a broken human being. The disappointment he brings isn't the death of someone or anything of unrealistic magnitude, and it only exists off-screen after the piece's timeline. It's something almost insignificant, but acts as a microcosm and it's real. And the main decrepit act isn't the junky doing blow on his kids tricycle while he has AIDS and the dog dies, it's just him using toilet water. The reality and grounded nature of the piece makes it much more visceral than the grandiose adventures most writers take in the forum. I was riveted the entire time through, and that's a worthy accolade for such a long piece. You have shown in the past your a user of many styles, and this style matched the effect for which you were aiming.

wouldreadagain/10

[Split]

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