drugs

when I became a teenager it was nicotine
not that I knew it or anything (who did)
or that id still be craving it decades later
but at the time it was the only drug available…
sneaking viceroys from unguarded packs
meeting in american legion dugouts at dusk
taking turns choking the damn things down
getting dizzy and coughing the foul things up
but besides that no visible side effects
other than a stunted sense of growing up.

soon after that is when we started to drink
back then a quart of pabst blue ribbon
was enough to get you through the night
but we drank what we could get our hands on
muscatel pink pussy cat malt liquor
raiding the old mans liquor cabinet of
equal parts scotch bourbon vodka gin
hanging from trees like drunken monkeys
stumbling helplessly down small town streets
and sometimes waking up in teenage puke.

then in the year called the summer of love
my big brother freaked out in madison
and when he came back he turned me on
now there were visions and color and music
and most of all this soundtrack of laughter
because everything was so endlessly funny…
scored ten sticks for five bucks from hippie ted
for all night graduation parties and got loaded
with my childhood friends but blew their minds
when i left the midwest for good the next morning.

i went to college in texas and discovered
amazingly all my new friends smoked pot too
so we twisted up and toked chocolate bombers
we fired up hookahs on third floor wings
some of us got busted and it fell to others
to seek the proper ounce of flesh even if it
did mean using the bastards ear for an ashtray…
we took road trips and smoked our brains out
we cranked up the rock and roll even louder
and rolled joint after joint after countless joint.

and in the middle of all that comes acid
clear-light blue-microdot orange barrel sunshine…
hallucinating sgt peppers in the hall of the crimson king
tripping in downtown bookstores where
e e cummings keeps sliding off the page
yellowbrick roads wizard of oz flying monkeys
and up to our assholes in chattering munchkins
fantasia yellow submarine and m c escher
taking hit after hit and finding the meaning of life
in the simple form of a crawling caterpillar.

someone once scored an ounce of psilocybin
a lilac lavender purple powder in a baggie
and of course we had to cap it all up didnt we
which was fun because we got to lick our fingers
and get truly spaced out in the process…
going to six flags floating through the park
burning doobies on skyride gondolas
wandering from ride to ride happy as babies…
ending up sprinkling it like powdered sugar
on our psychedelic psilocybin cornflakes.

and jan brought peyote buttons from big bend
so we lay around her pool all day and dug the sun…
we smoked opium and hashish when we could
we went cosmic cowboy and dug the country scene
with willie and waylon and jerry jeff
we caught a buzz and saw the moody blues
grateful dead pink floyd rolling stones and others
raised hell in galveston san marcos nacogdoches
loved austin oat willie armadillo world headquarters
and tripping out on lake travis at hippie hollow.

and in college there was always speed
wired all night and fried in the mornings
white cross black molly crystal meth…
once drove straight through to denver
with colorado bob sixteen hours glued to the wheel
and babbling our brains out nonstop
pushing it to the limit grinding it out
gear after gnashing gear unable to stop until
standing wasted as ghosts on some distant ridge
as the wind blew through our transparent selves.

but i didnt like speed i preferred downers
seconal reds and tuinol blues and quaaludes
combined with alcohol until numb as a nail
then stupid and reckless enough to drive
although walking was out of the question…
bouncing off walls and constantly falling down
holding on to each other for support
as off we slipped into the night to dig the blues
amazing that we never crashed and burned
must have been blind luck i suppose.

i spent a summer in south america
snorting cocaine for five dollars a gram
so much white snow all over caracas
you just dumped it in a pile on your hand
and wiped off the excess on your pants…
and pure too not like the stateside shit
thats stepped on and cut by who knows what…
paste squeezed through the used stockings of
whores in clandestine columbian drug labs
faster than you can shove it up your nose.

i never tried heroin but it was around
especially that brown sugar smack from mexico
a cadillac high the granddaddy of them all…
spaced out cowboy junkies on buda farms
nodding out on lazy summer country porches
needles jammed indiscreetly into skinny arms
probing the collapsed veins for passage
and left immobilized and glued to the chair
not caring what happens just as long as
it doesnt interrupt the contemplation of your boot.

we were young we were strong we didnt care
methadone codeine darvon angel dust
ingesting whatever we could get our hands on
and there were casualties make no mistake
people committed to hospitals and institutions
and some that never made it back out alive
drinking eating snorting shooting smoking
i suppose it took its toll and we all paid a price
but it also seemed like we had the most fun
and the only thing id change is maybe cigarettes.