1960s
I took acid 3 times, cocaine twice, pot about 3 times a week for
6 years, vodka/beer/tequila just about every day.
I smoked too. A pack a day. A pack was about 25 cents when I
started. Sometimes when I ran out of cigarettes I smoked a pipe.
I also drank about 10
cups of coffee a day. In the morning and in the evening and at 3 in the
morning.
I don't think I ever slept. Maybe once or twice. I remember one
time being awake for 3 days and waking up behind a gas station in Moline, Illinois.
But most of the time I didn't sleep. At night I lay in bed,
drunk and stoned and coffeed up, listening to the Doors.
Sometimes there was a girl with me. Stoned or sober. It didn’t matter.
Either way, Jim Morrison would be singing.
"This is the end, my friend. This is the end."
I believed it and didn't care.
________
I'm finishing up a book of autobiographical poems called True Confessions. It covers my life from about 1965 to about yesterday. Each section begins with a short prose prologue. This is the one for the 60s.
Here's one of the 60s poems:
Here's one of the 60s poems:
Talking Drunk to a Drunk Woman I don’t Know
The party’s in another room
but the hallway is safe for silence
and she tells me there is something in winters
that keeps them coming back again and again
and I laugh because I think she said sinners
so again I ask where she comes from
and she tells me there are moons
that never see sunlight, books that never
see rain, and I try to shake my head clear
but it doesn’t help because she starts again:
telling me about the windows in the attic
the basement in her dreams, the cost
of friction when friction means dreaming
I try to stand to go to the bathroom
but she pulls me down into a puddle of bones
and finally I know her words make sense.
The party’s in another room
but the hallway is safe for silence
and she tells me there is something in winters
that keeps them coming back again and again
and I laugh because I think she said sinners
so again I ask where she comes from
and she tells me there are moons
that never see sunlight, books that never
see rain, and I try to shake my head clear
but it doesn’t help because she starts again:
telling me about the windows in the attic
the basement in her dreams, the cost
of friction when friction means dreaming
I try to stand to go to the bathroom
but she pulls me down into a puddle of bones
and finally I know her words make sense.
As you do, John. As you do.
ReplyDeleteNo wonder you seemed so sagacious by the time I met you in the 70's...
ReplyDeleteI was just trying to stay sober long enough to finish the next paper I had to write. Thanks for stopping by, Bruce. Hope all is well.
ReplyDeleteLove this whole project of yours. The 'prose' is pure poetry!
ReplyDeleteAnother face of John, which one is the true ???
ReplyDeleteIn my experience, I've found that people are often multi-sided, complex.
ReplyDeleteYou are one thing one day and something else the next.
Are you telling me that in your experience you haven't experienced that? When I was growing up, I knew good hard working Polish Catholic displaced persons who were also alcoholics, abusive fathers and mothers, gamblers, lovers of people they shouldn't have loved.
I saw them drunk and sober, living and dead.
What was the truth about them?
You know.
Even though I looked the part of the sex, drugs, and rock and roll era, there are three things I missed during the '60s: sex, drugs, and rock and roll. I watched from the sidelines, and what I saw is very well represented in this work of yours, John. In my old age, I look back on those times with regret that drugs, and consequently addiction, became such a part of the scene.
ReplyDelete