Smell of patchouli pot old socks wet dogs a mumbled joke at ma or pa’s expense these tips from the p-t-a will keep yer babbies safe as chicks in a hen’s shadow and always the know-it-alls for whom color or provenance evocative name dung-dark lebanese jade-blue yucatan would pare their enjoyment when all that really needed to be said was this is some good shit voices dropping to the chestful octave and then the spluttery spray and save the politics for the drum solo I don’t want to talk through clapton’s eighty-second brilliance at the twelfth minute of spoonful speaking of which and one imagines a swinging gate hinged with ivy and some scruffy bottle-specked chemist holding up a blotter sheet to the artificial light as though it were a map of the new world and over here the grade school kids bum’s rush hobbits racing downhill their wheelbarrows of pills uppers downers billys mollys china droopers and you flew with the humble and the ignorant who preferred ye olde sweet shoppe approach give me a fistful of the piggy pinks and a couple of snowflakes and toss in a jaundiced stygian for the dropdown afterblow and through the haze and the smoke wispy as guenevere see-thru as marianne faithfull never quite so innocent is she was she will she and a bit of recorder dulcimer tabla and one’s skin is twitching and oily and sweat runs its stinging sunset over your eyes where o where is that blue ali baba breeze why just there through that stand of trees no not trees but a pleasant grove of humming hypodermics and hard-ons and here we are come near and settle your sweet thirteen-year old ass on the persian rug spread out in the middle of a strawberry nowhere and suck the wet end of the pipe like you’ve been waiting for it your whole short life and that’s it for the other one they sang nothing ever quite be the same again and if there was dharma for one there was karma for two and the weave of that hippie girl’s hair down her golden tattooed back the ripple of a stone in a pool going further and further away until you dip your fingers in the water and it comes back to you makes you wish you could keep it tucked like crystal in your mouth which you shut when asked but open like a cuckoo and say yeah I’m talkin’ bout you yeah I gotta get away before blue turns to grey and the wizard who doesn’t really look all that much like captain trips but who has spent four years imitating dylan’s subterranean speech patterns leans your head back against the noddy nodding tree o birch o beech o larch o dogwood tree and breathes a blessing on your head which he carried all the way from tibet by way of the fillmore dirty fingernails like a holy man’s playing with your blouse buttons whispers open wide and lays a shiny black pill glistery as a slug on your airstrip tongue caressing your throat like you’re a cat until you swallow and by now all your friends have gone off and left you crying she’s a rainbow and the wizard takes off his robe turns into a giant talking fish I’m a saltlick moonbeam momma turns into a long black limousine to drive you round the world or round the block turns into a prancing white horse covered with blue hand prints tells you whatever you do don’t leave the bathroom until you see mister eel mister who oh don’t you worry none now pretty baby you’ll know him by his slide by his venom by his electricity and guenevere comes and lays her head in your lap and says I had to cry today and then I vomited forth a great worm and a clot of blood the size of a ruby penguin’s egg because that’s what happens when you let the wizard in next thing you know he’s tracked dirt through every window and door you are indeed speeding baby oh speeeeeding girl and use my eyes as mirrors and you have absolutely no pupils left and your bones are starting to push through the skin on your face and the lake’s got a nasty sheen to it like it wants to eat you alive to do to you what’s been done to it and you can clean this entire bathroom with your tongue and hair and that makes perfect sense so I’m telling you stop stop stop one joint two joints and one glass of red red wine I can feel your heart in your breast beating too fast way faster than chuck berry gotta bring it down and guenevere makes the wizard unlock the bathroom door and give us our clothes back and says come with me and we’ll ride into the sun while over her shoulder the wizard stamps his feet like rumplestiltskin his hard dick trembling like a thorn bush in a high sierra storm o go on says quenevere go fuck yourself silly she and I have got a magic carpet ride to catch and if you behave and find a hole your own age we’ll let you watch us make love on the beach tonight and you can hear him yelling on a long fade and whirling like a leslie just remember that everything you see around you is free until it isn’t and quick as fotheringay the surf rolls in and rolls back out and quenevere says make a sand angel while I put our bodies back together then she sticks her fingers all federal and personal and says how would you like it in your arm maybe or under your tongue or between your toes and her thumb goes up and then down on the plunger and blood shoots up the dropper’s neck and you go oh and grab the whole moon-round world between your legs and fall into a deep deep sleep and wake up wanting more and wanting it all over again.
In the summer between ninth and tenth grade Mary said yes to everything one could smoke, shoot, snort, and swallow and if she often looked back puzzlestruck through the haze of burning pyres she didn’t let anyone catch her doing so. Everyone said her guitar sang in her arms with new authority, new wisdom and it was up to them to conclude whether she’d sold her soul or merely rented it out on a floating renegotiable lease.