Opioid overdoses are now the leading cause of death for people under 40; and in the US last year, more people died from opioid overdoses than from car accidents. At DESK we’ve lost several people over the years, as recently as this past weekend. Below are a few poems that we selected to honor those we’ve lost during the opioid epidemic. Please feel free to leave a comment in memory of someone you lost. If any of these poems resonate with you, please share your thoughts.
93, 331 by Alicia Cook
In some other timeline
I find you in time,
turn you on your side.
In some other timeline,
I beat the sirens home
and you don’t die alone.
In some other timeline,
you recover— and no one needs to call your mother.
Poem by Peter Jones
Could you walk in our shoes?
Live the lives we do?
No longer here to tell you
The things we have to do.
Everybody judged us
They gave us all a name
When we were out just walking
We’d hang our heads in shame.
So now we’re just a memory
One some choose to forget
But one thing to remember
There will be some more yet.
Not one of us are perfect
May not choose what we do
So please, please remember!
One day this could be you.
So would you like to take a step?
Walk just where we do
If you think it’s easy
Please come and take my shoe.
Fentanyl by Brian Wells Kamloops
Remember, no such thing as safe drugs in the streets.
Dealers cutting product with fentanyl ‘cause it’s cheap.
A hundred times stronger than morphine.
One dose could put you to sleep.
Not talking counting sheep.
Real power, six ODs in an hour.
Being found in weed, pills, and powder.
New fad. Coroner coming to zip you up in a body bag.
Four deaths in a month really sad.
Kids left with no mom or dad, all because the dope they got was bad.
Addiction, an epidemic the black market is glad to have.
Streets not a game, chew you up, spit you out if you’re lucky.
Many people die getting high, just trying to feel normal.
Prison not the answer, a need for more rehab centres.
So, I looked at my own situation I was facing.
Waking every day like I was in the movie Groundhog Day.
Always the same, mentally drained, suffering chronic pain.
Let me be the first to say, I’m an addict.
Understand the hesitation in prescribing narcotics.
So, forced to go see the street doctor. No degree but has what I need.
I plead, Dear God, please don’t be fentanyl in these pills I receive.
No labels or warning, mixed wrong could be fatal.
Talking two extra grains, the size of salt at your kitchen table.
Call of a OD. Coroner records another fatality.
A young girl, age 16, solutions needed.
Funerals continuously being repeated.
Takes one line, one innocent looking line.
Another family left behind, crying a river of pain, drowning in regret.
Death’s never had no respect.
Someone’s Child
Behind every addiction, there is a family that is suffering.
Remembering those who have lost their battle with addiction,
and those who are still suffering.
A poem and a short story.
I walk along the road of addiction
the streets paved with the bodies of all our children.
My brothers and sisters scorned by you all
but oh how the mighty suffer when one day they fall.
So easy to judge but what they don’t get
is the pain that brought us here, we wish to forget.
We never thought it would be like this, quite not the life we wanted,
and when we close our eyes, chased by our ghosts haunted.
So when you point your fingers and scorn us from your castles,
and when you kick us out of your house, another mothers hassles…
I know that you would never believe that I once was you,
and you won’t even bother to think of what you would do.
But I tell you this, it only takes a split second to change a life,
a car crash or pedestrian or some other need to go under the knife
and the doctor prescribes and prescribes some more because the pain you suffer,
and before you can open your eyes, you also I will call brother.
That quick, that easy, that opioid takes control
and it will never ever let you free…
BULL**** you scream THEY ARE LAZY AND WORTHLESS THEY COULD CHANGE IF THEY WANTED.
Man, there is nothing on this big blue world I wouldn’t give or do to break myself free.
So, I’ll go back and I’ll try again but for every time I disappoint my counselor, my friends, my family… the very worst disappointment is my own.
But i won’t give up and I won’t stop trying and I won’t stop struggling and I hope and pray that when I die and I face my creator I will be able to boldly say “Go ahead and U.A. me God, I’m clean and sober”
-Donnie
God bless you all. I believe 2025 is where humanity stands at a crossroads,we can save our lives by choosing to unite orr end the world and devide.i believe the devil is in jail and we’re off to a good start put God back in our hearts he will help reveal the truth.you guys are doing a wonderful job let’s keep up the love and compassion of our people in need that is our job on earth no matter the reason it’s time to forgive and start loving our neighbors.
In another life I will speak up sooner, I will write, call or even drive to you so that you shall not die alone again.
In another life you will not use and die at seventeen.
In another life you will live your life to the fullest and die at eighty when you have seen the whole world.
Oh darling, if only we had seen it earlier… if only you hadn’t needed to die so we saw your pain.
We are not angry or upset,
Only in pain we are.
And relieve, that you have finally found peace,
one that we were unable to give you.