Why I Have Never Done Drugs

Why I never elected the path of experimentation

Marijuana, cocaine, heroin, ecstasy, acid, shrooms, nicotine

None of it

I was born with a teacher

My older brother was two years elder

Parental attention and his lack of affection for me

Dictated to be his opposite

At thirteen he took the grass road

Blanketed depression, aggression and with it a codependency

On the social nuances David Foster Wallace places in Infinite Jest

A relationship formed, which in my peripheral view

Knew the boy in me at six absent of playmates was cognizant

Older brother was unlikely to embrace a teenage version of me

Based on a difference we each saw between us which would not shake out

Until we were each out in our late twenties post Dr. John’s Gris Gris

I knew on a fundamental level drugs required some kind of social network

A threshold of people this introvert had to meet or interface outside

The silent understandings of monotonous civil commerce

A minimal level of social decorum was involved to acquire said criminalized substances

Which it was not legality which deterred my acquisition, but rather the social legwork

Isolated and never entering into arrangements I could not handle entirely under my control

Drugs represented a monster behind a wall, even if I could somehow fake being social enough

To arrange a distributor the nuance of what to snort or smoke or imbibe

at what increments of the Decimal system

Was entirely problematic without at least one other to keep watch on what my body

Would inevitably fuck up and over indulge

I knew as a writer I had a problem with addiction

The veil is very thin with me between what the universe is and where I rest my thoughts

Withering that like oiled time on a condom was asking to become an indentured vagabond

To waste into the oblivion of a fully absorbed self restriction in a labyrinth of mania

I would require habits of adaptation that in all ways I could not see gorging on the insular

Other drug users would have friends to smoke out with; share the moment to fuck into debauchery

I knew it was me and a keyboard, a bottomless pit of a bedroom floor writing and clawing

Into the universe like a mole blind and the drugs were only going to numb my hearing, my taste,

My smell of everything I had tried to hold to avoid falling off the ledge and doing something stupid

As a sophomore from high school upward of taking the bait of suicide and sleeping long

I knew I could never keep a gun in the house for the same reason

I will never trust myself; I have seen the demons prowling empowering me and fetching

Like Aids cunts drooling to bed me in lusty rampage

I know what is on the other side of the door with drugs

I have seen a parallel life where I choose different and festered as a junkie

Milking the moments of sobriety like polar ice caps melting into the inevitable extinction

Sometimes I feel like I already lived it in here clunking around tripping over paraphernalia in my dreams

Stepping on syringes, tying arms, and licking spoons

I have seen what simple pot can do to a man’s mind

The stairwells and the street jaunts of reactions to a being completely gone

Not knowing the day, the gender, the events, just lost grabbing in repetitive motions with fingers

As loved ones watch hoping the person that normally inhabits that body returns

That these drugs can counteract those drugs in time before organs laugh

The financial drain, the having to meet new people, the carcinogens screwing with my down-dogs

The loss of hope that the whole damn thing might change me for the better

That I might enjoy it, might leap out the falling airplane

And an untested false parachute is still better than no parachute

When it comes to bargaining for outs when you have lost faith in change, in growth

In the stasis of the worst of all predicaments: a man forgetting his life is his for living

Like drugs could be a kick-starter jumping the engine lottery ticket Chinese democracy of one

Sensible in the mind at that time falling from the sky eyeing the ground

Like a gapping maw ready to be eaten and a body just wants to be numb first

Go out in the stardust from which one came blazing so that the bastard has nothing to chew

No body left in the shell; he sucked out all the taste for himself

The body stripped like a mortgage traded for a Lamborghini left unlocked in the ghetto

Uselessly destroyed in the excavation of a bank account for a thrill ride

Because the impending smash is inevitable, the crush, the hopelessness to do a fucking thing about it

I saw that mouth in the ground from eight years old

What the bits in the teeth gnashed of what it would do to me if I slipped

What I wasn’t strong enough to resist without absolute principles of declination

The former Catholic in me gets an erection at the denial

Always did like god might pay attention for five minutes in the old days

Denial felt comfortable like the never made me special, like I had a power

Like a M to an S to take pain, to take isolation, to make my own drugs in here

In the factory of veins and whisper nerves barking at all hours

To wrangle those monsters like a warden and keep the prison riots to a minimum

Maybe a few burned mattresses got to the typewriter

Maybe a few people looked at me like Quasimodo

Fuck ‘em I had my own drugs; I didn’t need theirs; I could survive like this

Never knew if I could survive like them; their crutches looked like pikes to me

My head would be up there and severed before too long their way

I’d do it myself just give the words as payment; no Hunter S. Thompson day trips

My art would be a tip to the dealer gone just sunk because all I had was an authenticity

That what was in me was a pure strain, unadulterated universe pumping

The fear in me kept the waters flowing; the fear of the monster I could be

Aware of how disappointed I would be as a moderate sensible junkie

I did not want to be a functional drug user; I wanted a train wreck

The saddest act would be faking it; sitting there able to say no

And doing it anyway; giving into the hoard out of boredom

Because I thought the art was gone; there was nothing left to write, to make, to find,

To meet and play with in the silence

If I ever got there and had that powder, that vial I know I’d go; I’d just go

Like a know-nothing idiot I wouldn’t ask for help; no one would notice

I’d be a opossum mashed on the interstate waiting for the buzzards to meh

The next poem is what keeps me alive

So I have never taken the lighter or the wander to see if I could be social enough

To meet a proper proprietor knowing my kin could get me in that door in a second if I had asked

Now he’d probably be like don’t fucking dare; don’t start, just try another path

The kindness would win; back then I don’t know the kindness would probably have had a different answer; to bond in the deep end

Now it’s all about the next poem baby, that’s all I need for now