My Name is Orange Juice

[poe]

I never did acid in the '60s,
I hadn't been born;
but what became of the '60s generation
let me see
that
drugs were NOW a form of Control.

The CIA set them up,
excited Revolutions, that spun in circles,
the same circles, then back again:
or to nowhere.
We are ALL one.

In prison,
born into drug culture, born into drugs
without ever having to take them.
The persons that own this country are high,
the cool ones,
we accept, we respect, the cool ones as we are ALL one.

Born into drugs without ever having to take them,
I sneeze lysergide colored mucous,
staring into the sun is a laxative,
while in the first and second grade we'd go to the sink in the back of the class
and swish green fluoride out of the tiny paper cups,
and our school had neighbors that made little flowers, butterflies and birds
out of paper.

All our teachers were underpaid,
the principals were crippled or of the minorities or both,
and one of the janitors was young and was in love with the youngest teacher
and he died.
He'd bring her students candy in the mornings just to talk to her.

In middle school I brought rock cassette tapes to school in a lunchbox
just to feel them with me;
in high school I wrote this poem on the board:

                Skies are tanks where the moon sinks fat
                and tiny stars tremble like parasitic fish
                as they turn and twist in twinkling knots.
                The whole world is a prison, and freedom doesn't exist.

                Stars are also fleas—bouncing on a dog's
                flat head,
                trying to lift it.

                Who hunts emptiness?
                Dogcatchers and astronomers,
                hard men, maybe, swallowing tears
                the size of keys.

                Swallowing lies to belch out the truth.

I wrote quotes from the journals of dead rock stars,
because you can relate to someone dead and feel alone at the same time.
I realized the only way to use drugs was to use them wrong.
And I wrote:
"Withdrawal is a distinction, give it to your brother."
My friends lost control of their bowels,
we couldn't relate to each other as much anymore.
Each of us had too much personal baggage to move into each other's consciousness like that.

Hey Rowens,
I really like this piece. So much so that I started mouthing out the lines in a low murmur while reading. Subject matter is, how we say, boss! And the piece just flows with this curious but undeniable rhythm. Thanks.
TS