This Monday’s Poem of the Week highlights the Faustian bargain of our most potent opioid drugs – assuaging pain at the price of obliterating consciousness and memory.
LUCID
You turn the knob of the old radio
looking for a signal in the static
they say is the noise of the stars.
Move too quickly and you find
only a whine whistle
gone as soon as heard.
Titrate me, nurse,
between pain and drowsiness
that I might hear myself think.
Jonathan H. Marks
Medico Musings 