I write best at two a.m, or whatever time is less convenient.
Irksome really, why only these hours my words become brilliant.

It could be the hour, or just the bottle I've picked.
Or on one of those nights, maybe the **** I ripped.

Whatever it was that sirred up my thoughts
Whether it was the drugs or the tequila shots,
It's always two a.m when the process starts.

we took turns toking,
holding the tent pole up
while the rain battered
the canvas

dawn crawled
over the great rocks;
a synovial silence
after the storm

still ******
we finally succumbed  
to sleep, for an eternal
minute  

until awakened by Huns
on horses, hoof beats ricocheting  
off the hard stones, echoing
in the canyons

worse than that thunder,
the eerie emanations riding
the backs of the staccato waves
from the beasts’ shod feet    

words flung from the riders’ tongues
slapping our ears, bedeviling our weary wits,
these time traveling tricksters, transporting    
us to a world at war

Hueco Tanks, Texas, July, 1969

I get lost in my reveries
The biscuits are all ruined
Burned to a blackened crisp
I keep forgetting what I’m doing.
I don’t scold myself that much
I have gotten used to this state.
I’ve been this way ever since
I discover *** was so great.

Too soon ******
Too late wise.
It seems like I can’t
Believe my own eyes.
Living in a fantasy
I avoid using a knife.
It can mean catastrophe
When up against real life.

It shuts up all the voices in me
That tell me what a ****** I am.
It makes a wonderful movie of
What used to be a lifelong scam,
Where I once had not been worthy
Suddenly I was a loquacious stud.
Cannabis took me to the mountain
And out of the ordinary mud.

Too soon ******
Too late wise.
It seems like I can’t
Believe my own eyes.
Living in a fantasy
I avoid using a knife.
It can mean catastrophe
When up against real life.

But somebody should have warned
That soon it takes over your life.
It makes you forget work and bills
The chores and even the wife.
A forty something thirteen year-old
Is mostly what I have now become.
Parts of what I knew as my mind
Have become deaf, blind and dumb.

Too soon ******
Too late wise.
It seems like I can’t
Believe my own eyes.
Living in a fantasy
I avoid using a knife.
It can mean catastrophe
When up against real life.

I begged the marijuana to get me as high as heroine
Puffy pink clouds surround my head again
Peeling like paint your face fades from the walls of my brain
Down a rusted melting ladder and passed a white rabbit
who rushes like your heart in the midst of a panic

puff, puff, pass it

Reaching into my chest and opening
up my rib cage like a gate,
I fed the thick smoke to my lungs like iced lemonade
Snaking in and out of each broken rib
The townsmen drank the resin and black blood
before it dried up

sip sip, cough cough

Ghost, they’ll call you once you’ve drowned
under your own saliva screaming for help
No existence was the interest in a dress of rescue
Index flipping south with eyes forward north
scoffing down the brick road they built bare handed
within the same amount of time the mother
held her belly frantic

Flatten, fold, tuck the edge of the napkin
Place it on your lap and look presentable, please
The children won’t know if you don’t tell them
(about the alcohol problem)

shhh

Risky lips find their spot lights
with silly scouring mouths and proud egos
I’m chilly
But he won’t feed into her, since recently
discovering bruises blue as berries behind her knees
Cherry smooch on each
Get better soon, Honey, please

Honey, please
Honey, please

Her juicy heart’s held up with garden stalks
Ripe love threatening to fall off
Ripe love telling me to *******