Well Bottom Blues

I am Captain Cortisol, The Amazingly Electric Man

I start my day with the Heebie Jeebees and coffee.

Imagine the visible veins in your skin as wiring
now run an unpleasant current through yourself
as if your whole body was an extension of your tongue
and you’ve just put that nine volt battery on.

It’s that edgy creep you feel when cheap acid is coming on

It’s not the coffee.

This starts before the first sip.
Maybe coffee makes it worse but
I am barely human before the first cup.

I am strapped into roller coaster America hustling down arms in the air screaming into the dark clown mouth at the bottom.
Down here everything floats.

It’s not the coffee.

I roller coasted through years of BiPolar before I got a correct diagnosis from the suave Latin doctor in his $300-an-hour suit with years of Poetry on shelves in his waiting room. I am in remission only because the DSM doesn’t recognize cyclothymia as BiPolar III. I’ve been on afterburner for weeks, writing like mad but frequently waking in the night (sometimes to write) when cycling hypomanical. I am not going back on the meds that erased my ability to write.

It’s not the coffee

Home. I remember telling my children when we lived in North Dakota that their mother’s family was by Ibsen. my side by Tennessee Williams.
I’m home in New Orleans living with my partner and my 80 year old sister. Sister Woman is descending in the rattly brass elevator. My partner and I are wondering what happens next this time.

It’s not the coffee.

There are medical impediments in the bedroom and I’m falling into a frustrated second adolescence, the hot for teacher and cheerleaders part. Not my best subject at school.

It’s not the coffee.

I’m a pharmaceutical prisoner, the Ideal Citizen. Every time I try to jettison a med something comes up. I forget how much I paid the suave psychiatrist in the $300-an-hour suit with years of Poetry on shelves to get off of benzos. They’re nasty shit.

I developed REM sleep disorder. I once smacked my partner hard trying to catch a baseball. I rolled out of bed once thinking I was escaping kidnappers on a boat. I’m a hazard.

The only effective drug for this is—clonazepam. And after three months on that the entire country ran dry of it and I rediscovered the withdrawal symptoms Undiscovered getting off this shit 20 years ago.

It’s not the coffee.

Everyone is losing their mind. My news feeds are filled with ads for cortisol 3 a.m. wakeup remedies. We are counting out our pills in a house on fire in a tornado earthquake hurricane. We are calm but withdrawn, showing up for work and getting the kids to soccer.. We switch to store brand  coffee and don’t complain to the harried checkout clerk about the prices. Chronic voters who don’t complain about the choices. Ideal Citizens. Poster children for a collapsing late capitalist alienation.

It’s not the coffee.

It’s America. Get Out or Rise Up, the only binary political choice left.