Rollins Street, Orlando, after the Hunger Strike Against Poor Food in the Academy Cafeteria

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

“And deep-asleep he seem’d, yet all awake,
And music in his ears . . . .

“There is no joy but calm!”

~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “The Lotus-eaters”

His lungs lie slightly lost inside his chest

Or so it seems in moments when he slips

From sleep to consciousness in drugged up rest

That tastes delicious since his hungry lips

Have not been opened up for food for days

And nights between the too clean sheets of white

And cotton.  Hovering within the haze

Of honey-likened heaviness of slight

Sleep, bursts of dreamless breathing he does not

Acknowledge, he can almost die to life.

The vagueness of his veins in lungs is brought

To edges where he wants to leave blood’s strife.

  He does not try to think.  He, lolling, lies

    Beneath the penicillin sheets and skies.

©  Phillip Whidden