Placebo: if resolutions are like insights

I must make them only to lose them.

Do I lose more than can be made?

If things gained are better felt

when lost: their shadow falls

as the proof of things

worsening.
Placebo-fear is the strangest seduction.

Cold corners reach out just for you.

The cold wooden floor creaking

in the middle of the night. It

could be someone leaving

or entering. Inner winter

has its fever.
It’s all the other things that are not

the thing itself. Placebos as twins

of Ariel, Caliban. White as our

pills the white placebo will

duel our mind against

our body – invoking

the ghost of drugs

makes us well.
But dark placebo: hair rises on your neck

the dead the ghost as white as a pill

in the dark. And the dark placebo

makes your mind hallucinate

your body. So its taking

real drugs for nothing

makes you worse.
Nocebo stands giant as the blades of a wind farm

whirling dead eagles down into paddocks

inside us. Worsely better for its darkness…

It is the patron saint of masochists.

It’s the endless bad luck at cards.

Oh pity you, it insists, this is

the dark placebo’s

ghost.