Acid Tales

A selection from my latest chapbook: Sex, Drugs, and Rock n' Roll

 

The first time I did acid was outside the ProvidenceCivicCenter

 while waiting to sneak into a Grateful Dead concert.

I was on gel, one of the purest forms of LSD and some idiot

Threw a trashcan threw a window

hippies shuffled through the shattered window

like a scene out of Dawn of the Dead

chaos on one side of the street

peace and zen on the other and we were caught in the middle

only to wind up at the front of the crowd

to rush off before we could be thrown in jail

 

Another time I dropped acid before a WASP concert

and when we arrived the concert was cancelled

so we went to see Star Trek 4, the one with the whales, instead

word to the wise, never see a Star Trek movie while trippin’ on acid

much less one involving whales

whale songs f**k your head up

 

I was dosed for my 20^th birthday by a friend

I couldn’t grasp why everyone I knew was showing up at my house

My mom had a cake made for me that had I cut off bloody hand on top

I kept trying to eat the rubber glove that made up the hand

while some of my friends went out the front door

and came in the back door just to f**k with me

it was great and horrible all at the same time

 

I tripped at a friend’s party

we had been indoors for most of the party

but one of my friends had to go home

and when we went outside everything was alive

grass was moving, trees had spinning fallout shelter symbols in their leaves

the clouds were skulls and this kids face was amongst the clouds

when we got to my place, my mom wasn’t home and the phone was ringing

it was the kid’s mother that had to go home

we lied and told her he was at the airport with my mom

then forgot to tell my mom

when she got home she was taken by surprise by a phone call from this kid’s mother

she sent my friend home and I lied in bed

watching the skeleton in a Blues for Allah poster play the violin

 

The last time I did acid I candyflipped, Which is mixing E with acid

and it was the best trip I ever had

someone wanted to watch Magnolia, I had never seen it

word to the wise, never see an extremely long intense movie while tripping on acid

with or without whales but definitely without raining frogs

 

I’ve seen cigarette pack signs that the packs spilled out and on to the ground

had supermarket isles suddenly narrow to a point of no return

watched the roses of a Skeletons in the Closet poster swirl around for hours

and if you tripped from morning to night or vice versa

you felt like you were never going to stop tripping

 

I’ve had highs and lows, but mostly

I hated doing acid

I felt like I was going insane most of the time

I felt unsafe and insecure

but I was never so glad as to when I came down

you got a sense of what real reality was like

and you were so happy to be sane again