They had put violets in my room<\/p>\n
When I returned from the hospital<\/p>\n
And mistakenly took six tablets in one dose<\/p>\n
Having discharged myself far too soon<\/p>\n
Fearful of missing my flight<\/p>\n
And mindful of my mother’s fright<\/p>\n
And while I didn’t die<\/p>\n
I came exceptionally close<\/p>\n
Even after having out-run the ghost<\/p>\n
Who has chased me, unseen, through the tunnels of Derinkuyu –<\/p>\n
Underground city – hell – both<\/p>\n
Running at break-neck speeds I had never known<\/p>\n
I had the capacity for<\/p>\n
Defying the guide<\/p>\n
Who told me under no circumstances must I deviate<\/p>\n
From the course<\/p>\n
Divined by himself and his expert team –<\/p>\n
He’d lied<\/p>\n
It became a necessity<\/p>\n
And though I did not know the maze of chambers deep underground<\/p>\n
It is my belief that I was found<\/p>\n
By a far more powerful guide<\/p>\n
And brought back to the light<\/p>\n
While it would have made sense for me to have been irretrievably lost<\/p>\n
I knew I had to escape whatever the cost<\/p>\n
And together – me and my spirit guide –<\/p>\n
This is what we achieved.<\/p>\n
.<\/p>\n
Furious at my survival they had tried next<\/p>\n
To conquer me with thunder and poison<\/p>\n
Issued via a venomous bite<\/p>\n
And blue lipped I had been placed in an ambulance<\/p>\n
Blood pressure dragging me down with it into a trance<\/p>\n
Back down to a level under the surface<\/p>\n
Inches from Hell without having earned it.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
(The violet, I learned later, is a mediator between Heaven and Earth –<\/p>\n
A symbol known to bring balance)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
They had put violets in my room When I returned from the hospital And mistakenly took six tablets in one dose Having discharged myself far too soon Fearful of missing my flight And mindful of my mother’s fright And while I didn’t die I came…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":252,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[3919],"class_list":["post-74819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem","tag-prompt18-hour18"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/252"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74819"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75088,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74819\/revisions\/75088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}