In ancient Greece,
Healers used to keep snakes.
They let them live beneath the beds of the sick,
Because they believed that snakes represented change,
Renewal and healing.
Now,
In Greek the word for poison is φαρμακύ,
But the word for medicine is φαρμακύ,
Like pharmacy,
Because inside the poison is where you find the antidote.
And they say live by the sword,
Die by the sword,
But the word sword has the word word in it because our words can be the antidote.
So much so that we can retell history.
I retell my past in any way I choose to.
I even called my last terrible breakup the best thing that ever happened to me.
Sometimes I rewrite proverbs just to prove a point.
Like it's not the bigger they are the harder they fall,
It's actually the smaller they are the harder they brawl.
And it's not behind every great man is an even greater woman,
It's actually in front of every great woman is a mediocre man who just gets all the credit.
And you can lead a horse to water,
But they're very hard to drown.
And you should keep your friends close and your enemies as far away as possible.
Unless you want their poison to teach you how to cure yourself,
You see this poem is for the snakes,
Cause every time they bite they leave a drop of the antidote inside me.
I extract the medicine hanging around my neck in a vial the shape of survival.
Carved out of the time I broke that redneck kid's nose in Musgrave Park when I was 15.
I broke my pinky knuckle when I did it though.
I guess that was his antidote to my poison.
See this life is a snake eating its own tail in a cycle,
Constantly shedding its skin,
Dying and reinventing,
Killing and giving life and unlocking its jaw every now and then to eat something bigger than itself.
We all need to learn how to eat something bigger than ourselves sometimes.
My friend went into chemotherapy this week.
The sun shaved her head.
I took her beanie shopping.
We bought two.
One was green and the other survival.
Afterwards we had dinner and she asked me all about my problems.
I spoke so much about myself the cancer almost disappeared.
Jack,
She calls it,
Is a blind date with a parasite who couldn't finish his own meal.
It's not her time.
The poison the doctors give her will kill her just enough to keep her alive.
And she'll live long enough to make it look like it was medicine the whole time.
And the whole time she'll keep telling herself,
I am surviving.
I will survive this.
I am surviving.
I will survive this.
Cause she knows that while they say live by the sword,
Die by the sword,
It also means live by the word,
Die by the word.
Which also means live by the sword,
Die by the sword.
Cause little did you know that your tongue is the Excalibur stuck in the rock of your mouth.
Most of us spend our whole lives trying to pull it out,
Learn how to use it properly,
Try not to swallow it by mistake but still carve a name for ourselves inside of ourselves.
That's why we need to keep speaking our truths like,
Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day.
Teach a man a fish and he'll build a billion dollar industry that will cause thousands of aquatic species to become extinct.
Or,
To have and to hold,
In sickness and in health,
Until divorce do us part.
Or my headstone when it reads,
Resting in peace but resurrected in poetry.
