Perhaps I'm Stupid
Perhaps I really am
stupid, but it seems
obvious to me.
We are all stuck on
a rock, hurtling through
space.
Wouldn't it make more
sense to try to look after
each other ?
The animals, and the Earth, too.
Instead of trying to destroy
everything we find ?
This is the only chance
we will get.
How fucking dumb are we ?
I Remember Kneeling
I've just remembered
a really fucking crazy, and funny
thing that happened
back in the day.
Back when I was a proper junkie.
My mate was homeless,
and as I'd known him for
most of my life,
I felt for him.
So, Nick, and I went
to my mum's house.
I reckoned she'd cough up
enough for us to score.
For perhaps the first time,
she was stern and unbending.
Unfortunately,
I remember kneeling
in front of her in the kitchen.
Begging.
Please, Mum.
I'm in really bad pain.
Have a couple of
paracetamol, and
get in bed.
That was her response,
I couldn't believe it.
The next morning,
after a pain-filled,
sleepless night,
my mum said she'd
take us both to the
local doctors to make
appointments to get help.
It was also the day
that my monthly supply
of sleeping pills was
dispensed.
I begged my mum for
money that morning,
but still nothing was
happening.
I got 28 sleepers , and Nicky,
and I ate them between us
in seconds.
Anything to stop the pain.
A couple of hours later,
another mate turned up,
looking to score.
We were fucking thrilled.
But, by then the pills.
had really kicked in.
We made it to the nearest
phone box.
This was years pre-mobile.
I was so out of it
on downers, and being on
the second day of a really
bad withdrawal .
I couldn't remember a
single phone number,
these were people we called
several times a day, every day.
But 14 sleeping pills
are bound to take effect.
Also neither of my friends
were any help.
Anyway, me, and Nicky
went back to my house
to find where I had written
the numbers down.
We couldn't even walk.
We stumbled, and fell
down the street.
As soon as my poor mum
laid eyes upon us,
she locked us in.
" You pair are in
no fit state to go out. "
She was right.
We lay there,
going through real
bad withdrawals,
unable to move,
but at least
half asleep.
It's these things that cement a friendship.
The Beatnik Cowboy 
We will literally go extinct if we can’t wake up to what is truly stated in “Perhaps I’m Stupid.”
If you then apply, this concept of the first poem to the second, it demonstrates a way bonds are formed through suffering, and the need to help ourselves survive. Perhaps I’m stupid, but I’ve grown to understand addiction like a kind of hijacking of the basic survival mechanism in which one must devote survival levels of physical exertion to a repetitive behavior which is paradoxically, deleterious to health. To get to the point, why has it taken so long to understand addiction as a health issue, and also that it is as collective, if not more so, than an individual problem?
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Again, you describe my work better than I ever could
Thought I ought to add that I’ve been clean for a very long time.
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Funny you might feel that should be added, because how I look at consumerism is that it has us as a nation of addicts. Some addictions are judged much harsher than others however, like some people in society often seem to be judged much harsher than others.
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When the addiction is at it’s worst, it becomes almost like a death wish.
Not suicide, but you know you are destroying yourself, and you don’t care.
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I see that more as the fault of a society incapable of giving people a reason to live. When you take an objective look at how hellish society is—and we might point to those who experience the full hell of the constant streets as the emblematic example—how not to lean on the mere one moment of bliss one needs as a coping mechanism from all the horror? Thus truly it seems bizarre to blame people for getting addicted and wanting to escape when society gives them nothing but an intolerable hell.
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If you don’t realise that the whole war against drugs is a lie, and a joke, then you are crazy.
It’s just another product.
The War On Drugs could easily be won.
Legalise everything, cut out the gangsters, and provide care, and advice.
Let the money go back into the country via taxes.
I’ve seen uniformed police, in a marked car pick up shitloads of crack, smack, and cash from a dealer for prior knowledge of when his door was going to be kicked in.
That’s the bottom of the pile.
Just imagine what backhanders the people at the top must be getting.
I’m sorry, I’m sure you know all of this, but I get angry about some things.
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Get angry, and let the poetic expressions flow!
I wish more people would speak out as you do here.
It’s not that I already know these things (I do, and I’m sure many others do as well), it’s that in knowing these things, how do we not go around singing our songs like the one you’ve put out here, constantly in a militant protest until these words aren’t only heard, but acted on?!
Though it is often propagandized against as the raving of some loon, it strikes me that prohibition and drug prohibition and the hard war approach, makes the entire operation that much more lucrative! Where it can be shown where drugs penalties are at their harshest, the risk goes up as does the market price.
Corruption is rampant where indeed the enforcement agencies can profit by arresting the little guys and getting kick backs from the top gangsters who are in so many ways at the tops of hierarchies which place them in some sense as sovereigns equal in the domain of politicians, agents of the law.
Addiction should be treated as a mental health problem, and everyone should be treated as worthy of having good mental health. Mental health and physical health can’t be separated.
Anger on, my friend!
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I intend to.
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