Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Diary of Doses
    Diary of Doses
    Diary of Doses
    Ebook206 pages1 hour

    Diary of Doses

    By Rob Dickenson

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Brutal, filthy, no-holds-barred imagist poems that use sarcastic honesty, existential tension, and occasional humor to paint stark portraits of the hypocrisy, desperation, loneliness, delusion, and squalor of the substance abuse world.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGegensatz Press
    Release dateNov 10, 2012
    ISBN9781933237787
    Diary of Doses
    Author

    Rob Dickenson

    Robert M. Dickenson is a writer/musician from the Brandywine Valley in eastern Pennsylvania. His craft began by writing songs for his bands as they performed up and down the east coast. From Annie Crow Road in the folk era, to Get Right and Life After Elvis in the 80s and 90s rebel-rock era, to the current Rob Dickenson Band, he has provided each band with poetic songs. He has been published in several poetry publications and his lyrics have been praised as standalone art.

    Related to Diary of Doses

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Ben Okri

      Apr 25, 2022

      Ben Okri
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Living Days

      Nov 4, 2019

      The Living Days
      9 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems by Rohan Chhetri

      Sep 8, 2020

      All summer the half voice lurked behind me & I played deaf for days for to live To not write about it to use my body Part the river’s flesh to operate Machinery is human too to love & for once stay awake through it all. Now it comes like the deer sle

      3 min read

    • Article

      A Priest Walks Into a Bar

      Jan 18, 2019

      I READ A LOT about junkies. I read a lot about drunks and tweakers and stoners and cokeheads. It’s part of my job because I teach creative writing in jails, prisons, and drug treatment centers. The writers I work with often want to document their liv

      11 min read

    • Article

      Men I Hate: The Stasi Men

      Mar 2, 2021

      Men I Hate: The Stasi Men
      12 min read

    • Article

      Life In All Its Highs And Lows

      Jun 9, 2022

      Life In All Its Highs And Lows
      3 min read

    • Article

      Looking for Lorraine

      Sep 20, 2018

      Looking for Lorraine
      8 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Jan 1, 2020

      In class, I stared because of the blood going blue.The chalk that coated our fingerly teeth.The way we lapped each other (on the shorewhere the flowering). I gave away our location. Smacked my lips in the coat closet.Sucked at her teeth. We, on all e

      4 min read

    • Article

      Mavi

      Aug 3, 2020

      Mavi
      5 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Jason R Jimenez

      Dec 10, 2019

      Can you imagine a world without frogs? Or even less of them? What is the night without a symphony of croaks? I want to ask that to everyone. The post A Year in Reading: Jason R Jimenez appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • Article

      Cycles

      Nov 10, 2022

      His online profile was promising: good hair, straight teeth, college degree. And he was nice-looking too, in his photo anyway, standing on a clifftop with the sun rising over his welldefined, muscular shoulder. He was attractive enough, the kind of u

      18 min read

    • Article

      What Would the Buddha Watch?

      Sep 18, 2018

      What Would the Buddha Watch?
      12 min read

    • Article

      What I Saw When I Really Looked: My Late Brother, Heroin, and Grief

      Oct 22, 2018

      1. When the tomatoes were ripe, when my closet was eager with crisp shirts and clean sneakers, when I had jumped off of a high swing and was lying in the grass listening to mourning doves and lawn mowers—that’s when the hot air balloons came. One of

      12 min read

    • Article

      Letter to My Son

      Jul 4, 2015

      Letter to My Son
      30 min read

    • Article

      The 31 GREATEST BOOKS FOR MEN

      May 1, 2019

      Meet Rob. He’s the manager of a London record shop in which he and his sad friends make top-five lists, talk about mix tapes and obsess over albums by dead blues musicians. Then Rob decides to get in touch with five of his ex-girlfriends to find out

      8 min read

    • Article

      What We’re Reading This Summer

      Jun 28, 2019

      Atlantic staffers pick 14 books to spend time with this season, including Freshwater, Republic of Spin, Killing and Dying, and more.

      10 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Claire Cameron

      Dec 12, 2020

      This is one tiny slice of what the pandemic has taken, a bet, a glance, working from intuition, spontaneous laughter with a stranger, feeling close to someone I’ll never see again. I miss the chance to navigate other people and places in the old worl

      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Diary of Doses

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Diary of Doses - Rob Dickenson

      Diary of Doses

      Poems by

      Rob Dickenson

      Published by Gegensatz Press at Smashwords

      ISBN 978-1-933237-78-7

      Copyright © 2012 by Robert M. Dickenson

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or if it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this poet.

      All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in book reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, or by any means, without the prior written permission of the copyright holder.

      2012

      Preface

      1. Rainbow Hitler

      2. True Genius

      3. Beautiful Disaster

      4. A Million Dead Presidents

      5. The Poacher

      6. Christian Men Rejoice

      7. Just Say No

      8. Kulture

      9. X Vegas

      10. Cobwebs

      11. Talk On

      12. Vitamin V

      13. Open Heart Surgery

      14. The Glue Guru

      15. The Greatest Urge

      16. Aunt Mabe

      17. One in a Million

      18. Partying with Brittany

      19. Red's Place

      20. Red's II

      21. Red's III

      22. Red's IV

      23. Red's V

      24. Medicine Chest

      25. The Man on the Floor

      26. By the Nose

      27. Joe

      28. Love the One You Whiff

      29. Café Society

      30. Death Loves a Junkie

      31. Love Connection

      32. The Jimmy Dance

      33. Spit is It

      34. Possum

      35. Degrading Positions at Work

      36. Blue Lou

      37. William Henry

      38. Backroom Etiquette

      39. The Meth Dance

      40. The Last Night of Piggy

      41. Doctor's Orders

      42. What Kind of Bird Don't Fly

      43. Ride

      44. Dust

      45. Upstairs and to the Rear

      46. The Flats

      47. Man Beneath the Sidewalk

      48. Chatty Cathy

      49. Artie's Dead

      50. State of Mind

      51. Graduation Day

      52. Strike Another Match Amigo

      53. Self-Affliction

      54. The Road to the Heart

      55. The Doc

      56. Opening Day

      57. Lost and Found and Lost

      58. Unexplained Love

      59. The 13th Step

      60. The Drifter and the Chambermaid

      61. Keep Your Nose Clean (A Song in C)

      62. Whiskey and Eggs

      63. The Smell of Crackling Synapse

      64. A Higher Prayer

      65. Hotel High Hopes

      About the Poet

      PREFACE

      A Diary of Doses is a true portrait of the intoxicated. It is certainly an adult entertainment, not meant for children. It was not written as a condemnation, a self-help book, or even an exposé directed at the prurient. It contains both the pathos and the humor that resides in the world of inebriation. I have been a musician all my life and therefore have been a witness to the behavior of the human being when under the influence of nearly every substance known. Whatever reaction these poems elicit from the the reader is shaped by the reader's own experience.

      I believe that the act of getting high, whether from alcohol or drugs, either legal or illegal, is a chosen act of the individual. Some take intoxicants for the entertainment, some to alter their mental states, others to escape emotional tidal waves, or just to appear socially adept. Not all people who do this are drunks or addicts. I cannot and will not either denounce or encourage the act of getting high. I simply wish to shine light on the human ritual of altering the everyday experience.

      All the poems in this book are based on reality. I am only a painter trying to capture a constantly changing landscape. Modern people change their perceptions with pills, potions, powders, and plants procured from physicians, street corner vendors, bartenders, and friends. A Diary of Doses is their story.

      I believe that the drug war is wrong. It is unenforceable. I have never noticed a lack of desire or product since the war was begun. Laws made to stop what people do to themselves are wrong in the democratic sense and useless to solve any so-called problem. Individuals have the right to do to themselves what they wish. Any law should only strive to prevent unwarranted or detrimental actions that are inflicted from one person to another. Any drug-related use of public funds should be directed toward those trapped in habitual activity that they wish to end.

      So, dear reader, please read these poems without disdain or invective. I have had many of these characters pass through my life and they always remembered their pleases and thank-yous.

      - RD

      1.

      RAINBOW HITLER

      call him rainbow hitler

      a mix of california goo

      and finely powdered nose dreams

      his words are spilled milk

      the king of babble

      a wailing chemical banshee

      years of practice

      have honed the skills

      late nights and empty thoughts

      he burns holes in the language

      until nothing makes sense

      his words are as light as lead

      they construct invisible walls

      around the listening audience

      they are working the program

      he taps puny jolts of sneak

      from a tiny vial

      then comes the sales pitch

      a gray boy's hubba hubba

      this is snake medicine

      at its classic best

      call him rainbow hitler

      a sprinkling of pixie dust

      and a slam bang ending

      gets them each and every time

      blather for the ear

      glad hands for the back

      candy for the nose

      and you walk away

      with a nasty all night grin

      and a ringing in your ears

      call him rainbow hitler

      the last i heard

      he was in a self-help cult

      clean as a whistle

      his boots still shiny

      with a sermon in his mouth

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1