I Almost Died Today

UNIMPORTANT:I almost died today. My blood pressure was 169 over 77 and it felt like my heart or chest was being ripped apart. Once I got to the hospital I was told for the thousandth time about my heart murmur. I was also told that that was not what almost killed me. What almost killed me was stress. My mother refuses to believe that a 17 year old boy could ever be stressed out but nevertheless what shocked me is that I felt no urge to change my life. I did not even feel that I should tell anyone that i care about them. I felt nothing... I want to see how you think you would feel.


IMPORTANT: write about how you think you would feel after almost dying. Any form of writing and unlimited entries and length is acceptable. I will read everything posted.

this poem i wrote 5 years ago based on exactly that.


title: and see what you find

I wake up today in a body
too big to fit,
and things adjust differently
to my sight now,
there are clothes that are no longer
familiar to taste
and the lines on my hand are glowing.

I wake up to a clock
spun 24 hours for what
feels like ten years
already, and I am drained;
my eyes are hidden from
nights of pain
and one night running from it.

I wake up today and am I
who I was before - ?

I wake up today to
a house of secrets, a chest
of silence with my legs
cold and
numb from clenching my toes tight as I
scream awake from nightmares
conjured by myself
and the lines on my hand are showing.

I wake up today to pretense
and uncertainty, I can only
figure out why I am
weak; my hair is torn from
my wrenching fingers and my heart
is drowned with the
overflowing tears that spill like
words I cannot utter.

I feel like the sheets are of
a hue unlike yesterday's,
wrapping me now in
a darker shade of
blur,
I wake up today in a
world I have ruined
because the lines on my hand are real.

----

i have written many more around that subject but that is one i wrote based on the exact moment waking up the next day.

here is another, extracted from my rather lengthy prose "Nail Bitten Black III": http://deepundergroundpoetry.com/poems/125362-nails-bitten-black-iii/


"the walls speak to me like they understand me. i shivered in the velvet blue of the night and my toes tingled. i admired the art of dying and how I went about piecing it together; the 4/4 heartbeat dissonant to chaos on my mind, pink echoes of parquet flooring beneath the stretch of my body, drawn curtains over an open window where I dangled my feet five storeys above ground level many a times with my back to mirrors that glared down on me. I can still remember the smell of an overheating computer, of iron and the colour of wine. it is here, where i stopped to stare into another world, numb and completely accepting. It is the mindset of somebody sitting on death's worn and bent couch but somehow i have carried it with life because i took it back. but unlike the chinese childhood legends i grew up so eagerly on, i did not meet the blind woman, i did not drink the soup. i did not forget the past when i was reborn. i was, instead, spared this naivety by learning to embrace that mortality was as solid as the wall i stare at for long intervals on days when i am dazed and separate to my body.

what can i say? i adapt. "

I was working in a electrical Power plant once, we were relocating some current switches and associated meters to the control console.The panel where I was to remove this stuff was energized. We had followed all safety precautions in the process of isolating the equipment to be moved. As I was removing the wire connections, I came across an extra wire that did not belong, it was not on the wiring diagram. My little voice in the back of my head was screaming; "stop and check this out!". But I did not, after all we had followed all precautions. Now one characteristic of a current(amps) circuit is that it WILL find a ground. If the circuit is broken, FIRE will fly (like an ark welder)and it will build voltage until it finds a ground or it will continue to burn.
Well, I decided to ignore that little voice, BIG mistake. when I removed that little wire, the current entered my left hand, up my left arm, across my body and out my my right hand where I was holding the panel frame. I felt as if I was holding onto the bit of an air hammer while someone was running it. That little voice came back and told me goodbye dumb ass, I told you so. To make a long story longer, in the process of seeking it's ground right across my heart the current had built up over a thousand volts before I became unconscious and fell, breaking the circuit.
Thank God my coworkers were close by and began CPR. I don't know how long it took them to get my heart going. But I remember every thing was totally black and I was so comfortable I wanted to be left alone so I could go back to sleep. I spent three days in the hospital while they worked to get my heart back into rhythm.
You did want me to write a book didn't you?

My father, who was an electrician at the steel mill where we both worked, took quite a jolt.  So I have to ask you, like him, did it leave a taste of peanut butter in your mouth?

Great comp idea Pathospassion,  I'll be back if I can find
the words, still loving the concept!!!

Based on a true story

For DU contest:)>


Since seeing the light?
I have been living right


more or less

i used to ignor the stress


and self medicate


each anniversity of that date



i always reflect



and give life its respect

Cancer around my heart
Wrapped like a boa constrictor
Stage 4, University of Minnesota Cancer Ward
The Grim Creeper had invaded me

Chemo and radiation
It took my muscle
It roasted my teeth

But I'm still here
For now
Though he sleeps
I fear the return of that ugly creep

A poem I wrote after running from a domestic violence situation, until I couldn't run anymore and subsequently collapsed.

Timber thickets

Coffin laid
and gazing starward,
the branches were brittle fingers
scarring the sky
with charcoal shards

the clouds bowed back
with regal standpoint
and I listened to the cables
hum with the secrets
of mundane affairs.

The moist leaves
seeped beneath the cloth
mottling claggy skin,
my faint eyes drifting west
watching the dead wood sleep.

In college, I was in a dorm apartment and I was eating a steak. And I bit off a big piece, it was hard to chew so I swallowed it, and it got stuck in my throat and wouldn't go down. I tried drinking water and it still wouldn't go down. And I couldn't breathe. So I laid down on the floor, ready to die. But then something inside of my Told me NO! It's not my time. Get up and LIVE. So I got up and barged in on my roommates room, he was just laying on his bed looking up at the ceiling. And he was startled to see me. As I motioned to my neck, he immediately became aware that I was choking to death, and he sat up. At that moment, as he said "You're choking!!??" The piece of meat went down, and I lived. But what bothers me the most was the fact that I accepted my death and laid down to die so easily. Life is precious, I'll never go down without a fight. I hope you guys live with courage. Thank you.

One out of many!
Basic training I was repelling off the 100 foot repelling tower and as I went over the edge to secure my feet on the side of the repelling tower, my hands slipped off the rope and I started falling. The instructor held the rope and kept yelling at me to grab for it while the other one standing right next to him kept telling him to let go of the rope that I was done for. I heard it as I was going down and it has stuck in my head ever since. I felt the rushing wind in my face as I was falling to my death. I somehow reached up over my head and grabbed on to stop the freefall. I regained my stance and composure and repelled down the rest of the way on my own. My harness helped keep the rope near me that's why I was able to do that. My instructor not giving up on me also saved my life. I sat down for about fifteen minutes and was thankful to be alive then I asked to do it again. It was debated and I was allowed to continue. I was 18 years old.

Thanks for everyone's comments

(written about a year ago after a 5 year battle with what seemed to be randomly occurring seizures.)

Seizing Time

once; (that's a lie)
butterflies soldiered
up my windpipe
to pluck reality from sight
wide eyes beyond sleep
abstain from deafening time
 
echos of urgency  
from the droning abyss
pupils fade in; confusion cues
a horizon of unkempt carpet
solidly grounds my cheek
 
his worry bastes my brow
in even more cold sweat
the Question is an energy vacuum
to soothing his fears;
where did I go, and how do I return?
there are only vacancies here

(untitled)

I'm a used condom,

Trying not to be random,

Death once fascinated me,

I wanted to lie down cold somewhere without a breath,

I wanted to watch everyone cry and regret over my death,

I wanted them to feel what I feel each day,

I may appear to be a sadistic bastard to you,

But believe me ladies and gents I'm no different then the guy you just pass by,

I always though of death as a way out,

But now I think I should stay,

Only a bit longer to see,

I carried a whole bag of hate on my shoulders,

But now I don't have any to waste upon these delusional souls,

It funny how a glimpse of pure death changed me,

I wasn't any less then dead,

But I needed the actual to be alive again,

I don't go out and party like an animal and I never did,

I enjoy the cold,wet corner and play with my head,

Sometimes she comes along,

Her breath fills me with something I can't express in words,

But It makes me fly,

It makes me glide through all these stoned faces,

I don't regret anything,

I know I was numb,

But now I feel,

And as long as living is concerned,

I hope I'll just do fine for another day.

Thanks so much for everyone's submissions...

A few more minutes longer, a few more feet further
down, down, down...
away from the surface, the lies, the pain.
Just another insignificant day, an insignificant life, an insignificant girl
no one left to care, to worry, to wonder, to remember, or to forget...
she's already been forgotten.
almost gone, almost faded, lungs screaming out but no sound
no voice, no whisper, no hope...
but a door squeaks open, she jerks back to reality, convulses back into the conscious world
shower still running, almost overflowing, and the tears won't stop streaming
"why? why me? why couldn't i do it? why not? why did i try? but why live on?"
unsure of what she really needs now, unsure of anything...
broke, empty, lifeless but breathing.
for now, for now....
almost dead but not quite. almost home but still on the journey.
ask her what she was feeling,
the question is, what wasn't she feeling?