Psychedelics in Memoriam

At first you need an excuse...

  You say
      You're looking for yourself,
        or someone who looks like you
      but is so much cooler than you..
    or god, or euphoria...
  Yes, a mystic search for truth,
 the Maharishi Owsley...The grand guru
 Mr. Leary and Kerouac and Ginsberg...
  and cosmic love and total
   understanding...
    but your mind is so small
     and wrinkled
       and closed
        surely you 
         will never be enlightened...
         not even enough to find
         your ass
        with both hands
      and a flashlight...

   So here...
  take this freakin' tiny ass-pill...
 expand your suburban consciousness
and unite with the Day-Glo cosmos
finding true harmony
 and her sister melody
   and with their mother nature
     and the slowly spinning
       slowly flushing
         oneness of the
          universe 
         go forth and trip your
       damn brains out...

    Six years I colorfully crawled
  and stumbled and ached while waiting
for that glorious day...
 that spiritual pinnacle
  in the life of the acid eater
  when all would be explained...
 all would be love...
incense and flowers
 free love...

   Bullshit..
     Sweating vibratory stinky paranoia 
   was the end result...
Six lost and blurry neon years...
through mescaline and acid hallucination
mushrooms, stp, and mda...
glassy dilated eyes wide and staring...
 spinning from one dazed adventure
  into another...
   Some of the most exquisite beauty...
     others of nightmarish morbidity...
       Yet in the end, for what?...
      Understanding I would have gained
    without all the buzzed out insanity
  by simply growing up...

  Time moves on...
   I enjoyed it lost in Wonderland
     with Peter and the Lost Boys
      for awhile, a great escape...
        but I had to come down...
         to come home...
       hopefully as sane as I'd left...
      For my mind is much to vivid
    on it's own
  for the surreal world
 of psychedelics

I encourage no one...
but to each his own


        R. C. Arquette
                    5/12/71