Jeet Thayil: THE HEROIN SESTINA
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What was the point of it? The stoned life, the chased, snorted, shot life. Some low comedy with a cast of strangers. Time squashed flat. The 1001 names of heroin chewed like language. Nothing now to know or remember but the dirty taste of it, and the names: snuff, Death, a little taste, H-pronounce it etch-, sugar, brownstone, scag, the SHIT, ghoda gaadi, #4 china, You-Know, garad, god, the gear, junk, monkey blow, the law, the habit, material, cheez, heroin. The point? It was the wasted time, which comes back lovely sometimes, a ghost sense say, say that hard ache taste back in your throat, the warm heroin drip, the hit, the rush, the whack, the stone. You want it now, the way it lays you low, flattens everything you know to a thin white line. I'm saying, I know the pull of it: the skull rings time so beautiful, so low you barely hear it. Itch this blind toad taste. When you said, "I mean it, we live like stones," you broke something in me only heroin could fix. The thick sweet amaze of heroin, helpless its love, its know- ledge of the infinite. Why push the stone back up the hill? Why not leave it with the time- keep, asleep at the bar? Try a little taste of something sweet that a sweet child will adore, low in the hips where the aches all go. Allow me in this one time and I'll give you heroin, just a taste to replace the useless stuff you know. Some say it comes back, the time, to punish you with the time you killed, leave you stone sober, unknowing, the happiness chemical blown from your system, unable to taste the word heroin without wanting its stone one last time. |
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© 2008, Jeet Thayil From: These Errors Are Correct Publisher: Tranquebar (EastWest and Westland), Delhi, 2008 |
