Deep Diver

A poem about cannabis inspired by 19th century hasheesh-eaters:

Deep Diver

I’m a deep diver,

Inhaling my shadows

And plumbing the depths

Of my darkest fears on the daily

Courtesy of cannabis

My leafy guide,

Dragging me down, down, down,

Lifting me up, up, up,

Forcing me to see

The tensions that pluck my nerves,

Make me tick tock and tremble

With taut truths pulled

From the low-down

On my unconscious.

*

Beware, the naysayers warn,

Don’t trifle with unnatural

Forces we scant understand.

Don’t let the idols in your heart

Seduce you, they say,

Deriding my guide,

Their speak pinched and littered with

Cannabis fallacies.

Ha! I bark back, spare me

Your lies and spun-dry tricks.

I’m busy, diving down, down, down,

Unafraid of what I’ll find,

Sure the smoky path I follow

Leads up, up, up, to the Most High.

*

To the doubtful, I say:

Science can’t give you the answers

You seek. But do you have the courage

To look in the places you most fear?

You mock my story, past

And professionalism

With your natural world nihilism,

While patrolling cannabis with an army

of tech-bots hopped up on dogma.

Do you know anything

Of my fellow deep divers?

De Quincey, Coleridge and Ludlow?

Know this. We are one. We are Legion. 

We are chasing something higher.

© Natasha Kerry Smith September 2021