Rhyme Of A Not-So-Ancient Psychonaught

Wild Honey

I sucked on honeycombs
‘til my head reeled
and my eyes rolled back
‘til my tongue spieled
and my mind cracked
I forced my way
Through the wild ways
In between the worlds

Still it was never enough
“Give me more of that good stuff”
Was ever my refrain

(Could it be I couldn’t take the pain?)
Whatever be the case, man, this was my cry:
“Give me visions, brothers, let’s get high!”

In due time I said to the sun (with Donne)
“Why should I rise with thee?”
Then the hours of my waking
were determined utterly by me

I formed my world
Round my rejection of it
And the road I set out along
Passed in time (through Vegas)
down the barrel of a gun

Yes, I sat with my pipe and my oblivion
(Like a toddler with a toy)
My world was one of skunk-smoke and cider-spit
I fashioned of myself a pit
A pit in which to sinking sit
In a mire that was only me

Sometimes I roused myself
And tried to flail away my pain
I sought some ecstatic dance
Some rolling pulsing dancing trance
Some fusion of foot and rhythm
Some blazing kaleidoscopic fission

Some dawning of some
final bright implosive light
in which the mind might end
so I might thus have come to life

Mad as I was I sought sanctuary in the play of spinning disks
Yes I wished to wash my soul clean
In the surging stream
of rapid whip-snap beats

Brothers, you were there –
Can any of us claim it worked?

Or rather can you still see me where
I lay sprawled
All twitch and eyeball
Heaving at the heart’s wall
Haunted through those hinterlands
by shades of long narcotic night?

Let’s admit it:
Wailing with the world’s pain
I was not a pretty sight

What happened then?

Well, my source dried up
And my world became a desert
And I lived for a time
Amidst the whip and whine
Of a fire sky – of an end-is-nigh
Apocalyptic vision

And then even that sky faded black
And I clattered blind amidst the bones

And I cowered in a world like death
Amidst the ravens’ screeching tones

What happened then?

Well I was struck by a sudden surging tide

- And - in the half-light of an unexpected time
I washed up on golden sands
(In the bays of unfamiliar lands)

I had been so sure I was shorn of myself –
Can you imagine myself surprised
when I awoke and stirred to see
a night-cloaked figure handing me
a ‘comb that leaked like gold?
(It was wonderful to behold!)

And though the bees stung
I drew on it
(And I draw on it still)

And for as long as I draw as hard as I can
It transforms my pit
and makes of my mire a man

Brothers, this good stuff tastes like honey
though in truth it burns like flame

And who’s my source?

Well, for fear of the (fashion) Feds
I’d better not name the Name