First, I prepare the needle: slim,
paper-sharp,
easy on the skin
from first prick to withdrawal.

Then I raise a fire under God:
smack, coke, or meth, it could be any of
these whitest of deities but I will not tell you
the secret name of my Lord.

When I pull the precious
up from the spoon and
hold it ready,
I do not consider

how Kandahar, Cali, or rural Missouri
may figure into my love.
It’s only later, next day, next week,
nodding before the news, that I have a dim inkling:

when I see the coffins coming home as a leader
wraps his arm around a man who kills for him
while farming the deaths of others and the oil
swelling up from the sand waiting for the line to fill;

when I see the boy saluting, his parents
fraught with pride as he leans into the march,
the countryside near his East Prairie home green with old habits,
the empty barns filling with new poisons;

when I hear the streets of a city ringing with Spanish laughter
even as the doors are barred against a bullet,
even as the dark cars zoom toward destinations
hidden in plain sight;

every turn of my every slow hour
seems to show me the pieces of some stellar judgment
that’s not clear enough yet
to be avoided.

This is the substance of choice for me:
not the needle or the spoon, not the joy
that bubbles above the fire below:
it’s that yearning for connection, no matter how hellish.

At night when the longing
catches me again, I tell myself
I’m the savior who will break the
circle. I tell myself:

give me a moment with the men
who make the world their spoon. I will embrace them
the way I embrace the high. World leaders
and shadow priests will come to me

and we’ll kick together. We’ll kick together.
That’s the hymn for this service, the one we cannot seem to sing.
You would think we’d be smart enough by now to see where we’re headed.
You would think that wherever we find ourselves, we could stop nodding.

I don’t think of this as a first draft exactly; more of a poem I have to write to get it out of the way so I can do a better job with the topic. People seem to like these better sometimes…I don’t get it, really. Anyway…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

kiss my ass
if you don’t like it —
i’m all in favor
of performance enhancing drugs.

those bodies on the field
are already sculpted just for us
and our desires. if a cream or a shot
of the clear gets them over the lip
of the bowl of the common gene pool
then i say why not?
no one expects the artist
to go without absinthe, no one imagines
the guitarist without his joint, the heroin
sponge saxophone player is practically iconic
and an MC without Cristal is like a day without night —

so, my dope fearing
blunderbuss moralists, stop kidding yourselves,
not much in this world gets done without recourse
to higher powers, outside forces, help from friends —

for example, imagine your world
without the black fig flavor of crude oil,
or your war without the taste of cordite;
could you have a foreign policy without the fix
of raw blood spilled in a Beirut market —
copper on the tongue,
seasoned with oxygen from the open air
and more than a dash of the families’ tears,
sweeter than blonde hashish?

would you have your pleasant life
without mainlining the sewage and rot
of a Ninth Ward street? you inhale
the dust from crumbling bridges —
does the rush come from the secret thrill of knowing
your taxpayer dollars misapplied
made this batch just for you,

or is it the deaths that get you off?

how is it exactly
that you can take a boy from Detroit
and kill him in Kandhuhar,
stand there glassy eyed at his funeral
praising
the way the Army saved him from the drugs and the street,
and one week later pat the shoulder
of the man who grew
the poppies you claim
you saved him from
just because he kills more selectively
when he’s at home?

you have to be high on something.

addicts, junkies,
athletes, artists,
captains of industry,
lords of creation,
all of us
need a little help.
we can’t do it alone.

so kiss my ass
if you think that steroids are cheating, that
weed’s a gateway drug,
that there will ever be a drug-free performance
on the scale you demand for your pleasure.
toke, suck, snort, boot, lick and drink up,
there’s a world out there for the crushing.
we need a little something
to give us strength.

rock,
i’ve spent years
trying to talk to you.

rain,
it’s been a while
since we had anything
to say to each other.

wind,
you ought to write
more often.

i don’t bother
even trying
with the trees and anything else
alive, really.

fire,
at least you tell me the truth.
in return
i let you lick me
until i’m ignorant, crazy
from the heat.
i let you eat my home
and busy yourself with your crying joy.

fire,
over and over you’ve taken the very clothes
you made me shed
each time i stopped, dropped, and rolled.
every conversation with you ends up with me
babbling naked in a corner
while you dance.

fire,
i’m a boy and you’re a man
i could grow up to be.
scorch rock, burn trees, outrun
wind and rain. i’m listening, fire.
i’m all fuel and ears.