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Migraine Poetry

May 7th, 2008

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

Tags: migraine, pain, pain management, poetry
Posted in Communicating, Weblogs | Comments (4)

4 Responses to “Migraine Poetry”

1. Suzie of Carmelite's Habit Says:
   May 7th, 2008 at 5:47 pm

   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*

2. MaxJerz Says:
   May 7th, 2008 at 9:58 pm

   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.

3. Sandy Rees Says:
   May 7th, 2008 at 11:08 pm

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

4. deborah Says:
   May 13th, 2008 at 8:40 am

   love it

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