Migraine Poetry

By now, I hope you've had a chance to read some of the wonderful poetry at the 2008 Putting Our Heads Together Migraine and Headache Poetry Contest.  Congratulations again to all the winners.  There were an enormous number of excellent entries - I don't envy the judges!

My own entry was way down the list.  With your indulgence, I reprint it here.

Never Get Used to It

We never got used to the drunk next door
who broke bottles on the stoop past midnight, cussed all night,
staggered into us as we left the apartment.
He was a feature of the landscape we were glad to leave
when we moved away.

Along with the upstairs landlords
whose children jumped off the couch above my head, all day,
while I napped with my newborn,
who thought 3 a.m. was a good time to install carpeting, KaChunk KaChunk all night,
who coated the back yard in weed killer, fumes rolling into our ground floor apartment – they were a feature of the landscape we never got used to.
So we moved away.

We never got used to the dirty old busybody next door with his nasty comments.
We never pulled up the blinds or trimmed the hedge on his side of the house.
We just moved away. Again.

You’d think you’d get used to the pain – it’s a bore. There’s no excitement in pain.
Just the startled moment when it comes again, crashing like the bottles on the stoop.
Just the deadly hours of enduring, KaChunk, KaChunk,
don’t pull up the blinds and let it look in. 
Never get used to the scraping, boring, searing, pounding.
Pain management?
I thought pain could recede, a feature of the landscape to ignore, like the cracks in the pavement.
I never thought this was a landscape I could not move away from.

No moving van. No packing boxes.
No new home without the pain.
Open your boxes and find the drunken, staggering, inconsiderate,
dirty old busybody pain.

No ear plugs. No gas masks. No prisoners taken. No quarter given. 
Never get used to it.

Respectfully submitted,

Megan Oltman

 

                                   Broken Bottles image courtesy of Vertigogen                                                                            Window Blinds image courtesy of Matt Callahan                                                                                     Packing Box image courtesy of Tim Herrick 

Comments

[Suzie of Carmelite's Habit]

Wonderful piece! You captured apartment living quite well. Good description of apartment living triggers too.

I'm inspired. I wrote a poem but FORGOT to submit it! I did!

Maybe soon I'll post mine. *hugs*

[MaxJerz]

Thanks for sharing your poem, Megs! I haven't had as much time as I would like to read through the other entries, so thanks for reprinting yours here.

[Sandy Rees]

Very cool poem Meg! I think it's a winner!

[deborah]

love it