Free Heroin

by Eric Forsbergh

The Swiss provide it.

Civil servants measure out
powder in a glassine pack.

A clean shooting gallery.  A chaise.
A nurse to check the riddled pulse.
Not cut with talc, glass dust,
or powdered rust.

Vomit, and the high intensifies.

The state’s the dealer now, so
fewer are coerced to start the trip.
Fewer far.

Yet once exposed, pleasure genes erupt
in crimson yellow purple blossoms
along tight stalks, hollyhocks of DNA,
then a slow wilt
into brownish pulps
at rehab intake:
assist you not to nod at lunch,
set a time for bed,
give you a TV, a toilet,
two tablets of an anti-drug.

Emptier now, treatment centers
erect fewer Babels of billable hours,
investors taking note.
Hieronymus Bosch was right.
Voyeurs eagerly seek the naked, pierced.

Without fresh flesh, Zurich gargoyles
scratch their famished guts,
thumb-lock their Glocks, scrape
their claws along the chapel gutters,
wolfing down their young.