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