| ZYGOTE IN MY COFFEE.COM |
| ***BIO*** Tony Oneill is 26 years old and used to be a musician until it all fell apart and he found himself with no viable life skills and a voracious heroin and cocaine habit he could no longer afford. lost years in los angeles seedier neighbourhoods followed but now he has crawled out of the gutter and lives in new york with his wife and child where he writes. his first novel "Digging The Vein" is due to be published at the end of the year on contemporary press in the US and canada. a short story / poetry collection is in the works for a UK release on Social Disease, entitled "Songs From The Shooting Gallery". you can find more by him on laura hirds showcase
(www.laurahird.com) and 3am magazine (www.3ammagazine.com) as well as literary vision magazine (www.litvision.org) |
 |
 |
| © 2005 zygoteinmycoffee Ink. |
| Home |
| Submit |
| THE CURE IS THE CURSE |
| by Tony Oneill |
| the cure is the curse
in the methadone clinics of L.A. generations of misery a mountain of abscesses armies of hurt pent between dirty fluorescent lit institutional walls the old Chinese points to his down-turned mouth and you say ahhhhh after swallowing: they own your balls they own your soul and now they own your spit. in the parking lot out back only those able to regurgitate at will into label-less brown medicine bottles can make enough for a quarter of a bag of dope isn’t it beautiful making out in the land of the free? life on methadone at first is like walking through a sea of ink like your brain has been pulled out and replaced by pond scum: you can’t think, your prick doesn’t work and you can’t even get high anymore. then they cut your dose and the trouble really begins: on the outpatient reduction cure no-one ever gets clean. many don’t come back but no-one gets clean. the sign out front says “Here to Help!” but 2 weeks in, when 12 dollars doesn’t get you enough methadone to stay well and a bag of heroin is 7 dollars downtown... (Well, you do the math) in the methadone clinics of L.A. and anyplace – anywhere the cure is the curse because when the anesthesia wears off life buries you under a kinetic landslide of images, emotions, fear, pain, futility your fighting arm has withered and died through non-use and each blow resounds like a thousand atomic bombs |
 |
| July 2005 |
| 43 |