What Medicine Tonight

What medicine
Would you choose
Tonight

A brew of Ayahuasca
Lying on the floor —
Alone
Or with someone beside you
Mapacho smoke rising
Icaros guiding your visions

Or perhaps
Alone with LSD
In the back garden
Experiencing your entrance into this world
With eyes open

Some ketamine
On the bathroom floor
To lose your name for a while

Psilocybin —
In your bedroom
Or deep in the forest —
Tasting death
While alive

Marijuana
On the balcony
Watching the world drift by
Untying the mind’s knots

A line or two
Of cocaine
In the toilet
Before work —
To keep pace
To push through
To hold on

Or perhaps
None of these at all
Maybe other paths instead —

Antidepressants
To lighten the mind
Yet dulling your heart

Anticonvulsants
To steady the tides —
At some cost to the flow

Antipsychotics
To calm the storm
But dimming your spark

Antihypertensives
To lower your pressure
And sap your strength

But wait—
You can’t choose these
You’re not trusted to choose
Your mind’s not your own

You don’t know
What you’re putting
In your mouth —
Like a child
Who might swallow poison
Needing endless watching
Protection from yourself

So they decide for you

You can’t choose
You can’t think or decide
Too foolish
Too dangerous to trust

Sure —
You can buy a litre of whiskey
Choke on it
Kill your liver, wreck your sleep
And risk lifetime addiction

Or choose cheap cider —
A litre for less than £5
Drink it sitting in a park
Pair it with tobacco
Destroy your lungs, teeth, gums
Puffing on street corners
Littering during breaks

Next morning
You can choose again —
Coffee to wake you up
Vitamins to help the liver
St John’s wort for a bit of calm
Cheesecake and sugar
Until you are sick —
Antidiabetics will follow

But you can’t choose
Marijuana for pain or to unwind
Psilocybin to heal
Ayahuasca to learn
Ketamine to understand your mind
LSD to see beyond

You can’t choose your path
To being whole
To help you evolve
To know your body
Your mind

Because —
It’s not your body
Did you not know that
Others have claim on it

So, here’s more choice
If you don’t have enough —
From those who own
Your body and mind

You can get any drug you want
From your doctor —
The legally sanctioned drug pusher
The elite, acceptable distributor
Dispensing your fate

For any disease or disorder —
You can have drugs for life
For free

And if yet unhealed
Feeling empty, impotent
With no self esteem —
Choose Botox or surgery
Or Viagra to perform

But no —
You can’t have MDMA
That’ll make you
Too intimate
Too loving
Too dangerous to trust

You can still choose —

Break free to heal
Or
Stay safely broken