.
Shackled
I crave a morning hit when I rise up,
A trifle touch to take the edge away
To spur me on to get my coffee cup.
Don’t talk while I eat breakfast. Go away.
I want a bitty bit of my sweet drug.
I do my chores and have a morsel more.
Don’t tell me I’m addicted. Please don’t judge.
I’m functioning you see—I’ve mopped the floor.
I’m feeling nervous; I’ll imbibe a bit—
It’s natural to need help round this rough
Patch. My child awakes. He’s in a fit.
I’ll give him a wee sip. It won’t be much.
We go outside to play but it’s too hot
So come back in to chill and have a fix.
I’m told that I’m in bondage but I’m not.
Why do you criticize? We all do it.
After napping he’s cranky once again—
A quick sniff first, then we’ll make dinner fast.
He is so hyperactive and insane.
To pacify him I’ll give him a taste.
It will not hurt his appetite or mind.
Tomorrow we will try partaking less.
Assistance is required to unwind.
Maybe it’s a problem I confess.
The evening finds us bored. We only need
Something to relax us before bed.
So let’s consume some of our favorite feeds.
There’s nothing else to do right now instead.
Goodnight my child, goodnight my precious phone.
Let’s recharge. Tomorrow we’ll repeat
Today. I doubt we’d manage on our own.
I may as well acknowledge my defeat.
.
.
All Is in Your Hands
—a villanelle
Lord, all is in your hands and not in mine
I cannot see forever as You can;
The future will by promise always shine.
I am prone to worry and repine
When upended are my perfect plans.
Lord, all is in Your hands and not in mine.
The days of darkness cause me to remind
Myself that You are God and I am man.
The future will by promise always shine.
Your touch healed sinners bleeding, broken, blind;
I need to trust and not to understand.
Lord all is in your hands and not in mine.
Your open hands gave blood to be my wine
And made for me a mansion on Your land,
The future will by promise always shine.
If I but let my fingers intertwine
With Yours Your strength enables me to stand.
Lord all is in your hands and not in mine
The future will by promise always shine.
.
.
Gigi Ryan is a wife, mother, grandmother, and home educator. She lives in rural Tennessee.
I view coffee as a blessing, as I believe you must as well. Placing all in the hands of the Lord is the panacea. From a conclusion of possibly acknowledging defeat to the promise of a shining future shows the importance of two poems working in tandem. Well done, as always, Gigi.
Dear Roy,
Thank you, as always, for your encouragement. Yes, I am glad that Evan put the second poem second; I like to end with hope! (And, I do love coffee!)
Gigi
This is a dramatic monologue in the voice of a female addict.
There is a deliberate and maintained ambiguity in this poem, starting with the first quatrain. The thing the speaker is “shackled” to isn’t coffee, since the speaker needs “a morning hit” before having the energy to get a cup of coffee. A “hit” always means an individual act of drug usage.
The second quatrain speaks of “my sweet drug,” and having “a morsel more.” That suggests a solid substance — maybe hashish, or some pill. But the third quatrain mentions the need to “imbibe a bit,” and giving the child “a wee sip.”
That means a liquid — perhaps wine or whiskey or some other addictive drink.
The fourth quatrain mentions “a fix,” which in drug parlance almost always means an intravenous injection, as with heroin or morphine. Then the fifth quatrain mentions “a quick sniff,” which must be a powder like cocaine, or an inhalation of crack-cocaine or the aerosol solvents that some addicts prefer.
The sixth quatrain mentions that the substance will be shared with the speaker’s child, to calm him down. That could be a number of things, but I’m reminded of laudanum, the opium mixture that Victorian mothers used to rub on the gums of their teething babies to soothe them to sleep. (It would be damned hard to find laudanum today, but after all one has poetic license in verse.) The seventh quatrain shows that the speaker has been talking about several addictive things, when she talks of consuming “some of our favorite feeds” — that is, both she and the child are hooked.
The last quatrain brings in “my precious phone,” which certainly alludes to her i-phone or whatever hand-held device she is addicted to. But the sentence is ambiguous:
“Goodnight my child, goodnight my precious phone…”
Is that addressed to two things — her child, and her i-phone? Or are the child and the phone one thing? People can be addicted to their little phones, but the idea of sharing various addictive substances with the phone doesn’t make sense, unless the speaker is delusional. The sentence “Let’s recharge” is deliberately ambiguous — does the i-phone need recharging, or does the addicted speaker need a metaphorical “recharge” by sleeping? Or is the speaker talking about all three — herself, the child, and the phone?
It’s an extremely ambitious poem. There is enough verbal evidence that the speaker is a mother, that she has a very young child, that she has a phone, and that she is addicted to a variety of substances. But the fog of the speaker’s addiction seems to blend all of these things together. The poet has captured the mental haze in which many addicts live.
My purpose in writing this poem is for readers to be shocked that a mother would share her dangerous drugs with her child, not only for the damage they do in the short term, but for the long term consequences that are inevitable. I hope that parents who would never consider allowing their children to participate in recreational drug use will be sobered to consider that by teaching children to turn to screens to cope with daily life they are causing short and long term damage to their precious children by robbing them of many opportunities for learning a host of necessary life skills in addition to actually causing physical harm to their brains.
I pity a generation that is growing up using devices like drugs. Far too often when children are grumpy, “in the way,” having a tantrum, bored, etc, they are plugged into a device. Parents and children both reach for them upon waking, before sleeping, whenever sitting still, to “check out” when life is stressful, etc.
Children are increasingly not allowed to be bored (a portal for creativity), learn to cope with emotions, relate to others, participate in tactile learning activities and so on.
My grandson broke his leg recently on a trampoline. At the emergency room, they told his father that they don’t see this type of injury nearly so often because children don’t play outside much anymore since they are on screens.
Thank you very much for your thoughtful comment. I do think that a mental haze is created by phone use, just as drug use does, blinding parents to the danger screens are for their children.
Clearly this is a soapbox issue for me. Since I was an early teen I have been greatly concerned about things that influence and shape. As a freshman in high school, when I needed a topic for a persuasive essay, I chose to write about the dangers of cartoons for children. It was 1981. Clearly I could never have imagined what would push my buttons in 2025.
Gigi
OK, I see your points. But your prose reply above is much clearer than the poem itself. You have used so much of the actual language of substance-abuse addiction that the mention of the phone in the final quatrain just gets lost in the mix.
Your comment about cartoons brought back a memory. When Disney created the Mickey Mouse character back in the late 1920s, it was a big hit in America, and he naturally tried to sell its use in foreign countries. In Sweden, the government allowed the decision on this matter to be made by a group of teachers, doctors, and parents. This group voted against permission for such cartoons to be shown in Sweden, because (they argued) such moving pictures would be too frightening for little children.
Both poems are very moving.
Is the mother addicted to her phone? So many children are addicted to screens. It usually begins with just a peep that gradually takes over as they get older. Sad that many parents don’t see this as a real addiction until it is too late.
T he second poem that is rooted in faith , is a direct contrast to the lack of purpose of the first.
A great combination. Thank you.
Yes – the mother is addicted to her phone and teaching her child to be the same. I agree that it is very sad that parents do not realize that screen use is a real addiction. Just as side effects of pharmaceuticals are often not realized for many years, I fear that we will continue to uncover dangers of screen use for humans, especially small ones, in the future.
Gigi
I really enjoyed the villanelle: a most sincere prayer – all is in Your hands indeed. Thanks.
Yes, it is a prayer of my heart. And that it is in His hands is my greatest comfort.
your villanelle spoke to me. It is a wonderful expression of strong faith and, in its repetitive ways, like a well known prayer that could be repeated each day with trust in The Lord.
“I need to trust and not to understand”….a powerful statement.
I am glad this spoke to you. The repetition in Villanelles is so useful for prayers. The Psalms, too, use repetition – like Psalm 136.
Excellent punch to that poem. The Holy Spirit directed me to read this as I struggle against tobacco. And thanks for including the phone/screen addiction. I should think active shooters must rejoice about people walking around with their heads in their phones.