Stone Cold
I can’t get stoned anymore
without getting paranoid.
It’s not the plant.
It’s New Jersey.
It’s having kids.
It’s my crooked aching skeletal catastrophe.
I remember when it all started.
Many years ago.
I was homeless for the night.
It was winter.
I crawled onto my old landlords porch
at about 2 in the morning.
I curled up into my ratty jacket
on an old rocking chair and froze there.
Stoned from before.
From 20 minutes before at a friends house
that apparently wasn’t friendly enough
to let me stay there for the night.
And as I froze there,
a seed of paranoia was planted in my mind.
By god or something like it.
It grew in layers as if it was growing blankets
around itself until it was solid and fully filling
my skull like a big pillow stuffed into a smaller pillow case.
It has never quite left.
The paranoia, that is.
I think Paranoia and Anxiety
are the wretched goddesses of Eternity
that lay in the cut and wait for minds like mine.
I’ll escape their clutches in my next new life.
For a while at least.
At least until I’m homeless and stoned again in the cold.
I don’t blame the plant though.
Never.
I blame New Jersey
and the kids
and my crooked aching skeletal catastrophe.
(2013)
