It was on the walk home,
from school.
A path I always took,
with slow deliberation.
That Frank sidled up to me.
"Hey man, you ever smoked bud?"
Reaching into his sock,
he produced a small bag.
"You wanna?"
That Cheshire grin.
We slipped off the road into a small pine thicket.
He shoved what I'd now refer to as,
"Bricked out Mexican grown *******,"
Into a little metal pipe.
This was no,
"I didn't get high the first time" event.
No,
I got ******* ******.
I wandered my neighborhood after,
for quite some time.
Everything was beautiful.
The colors of the trees and the houses
all burst forth!
Brilliantly vivid.
I journeyed home and came to find;
the beratement, the hate,
it rolled off
like so many drops of water.
I fell asleep listening to "No Quarter,"
for the thousandth,
but the first time.
Life never was the same,
after that.