The InditeCircle

To Be 16 And Drunk Again

Stepping from one
stone to another
across the shallow
of the river

Nearly loosing
my balance
close to the
middle where
it was deepest

I am 16 and drunk again
and it is another
dark night

Steadying myself
walking on stones
across the Wabash river

From Indiana to Illinois
in the hazy, chilled midnight

No stars or light tonight,
feeling out the stones with
my bare feet

Sensing the never ending
of me like an
anchor in my mind

To be 16 and drunk again
on the dark side of the moon

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Coming Down From The Mountain Unenlightened

We trudged down the mountain path
to the water
like warriors beaten.
Our whiskey bottles empty,
all of our mescaline eaten.
Five days without bathing, we threw
ourselves, filthy
and stinking, clothes and all,
into the ocean.
The two girls stripping down to
their panties and bras.

Thomas claimed he saw
a flying saucer.
Lucy swore she had
a brush with Big Foot
on a rocky ridge above the jade cliffs.
But the rest of us
knew that mescaline
was the cause.
And we mixed our trips
with a few cold beers
to level them out a little.

I laid in a foot of water
staring up at the mountain,
thinking how normal everything appeared.
After five days of
psychedelic musings
and discussions of
astral projection, change shifting and time
travel, nothing in the world
looked any different
We dried ourselves in the sun and
headed down 101 for home, still unenlightened