anti-venom

Speak to me of poisons,
that's something I understand.
Blue eyes get under skin,
burn lesions into unsuspecting thighs,
corrode fingers once functional.
Slow-acting and dangerous,
dizzy with an onset of invisible vertigo
and this is how I am going to die.
My heart shot through with it,
makes me clumsy, makes me sick
pumping it faster and faster through
my body from vein to vein to vein.

Jellysting - spiderbite -
slick flesh of little jungle frog -
none can be as deadly as this, can they?
I'm breathless, falling fast, it's all
going dim.
Dead to everything in the world that
isn't you, coursing through my
blood. black streaks on my brain.

Quick! Pour me another.
shot to the arm.
Direct injection of this deadly concoction.
Ask when I'm conscious:
am I an addict? or am I my own personal savior? or am I a goner?
always falling, always dying, always another victim
of someone's potion.

I survived again, though, so speak to me of poisons.
That's a subject
I know well.