Chief Existence (my funny little name for enlightenment)

Five thousand five hundred and six days after birth

or maybe it was seven

I found myself discussing politics with my feet

in that same patch of sunny trees in which we all met Mary Jane

for the first time

the next day I scribbled

my first poem

the door opened ajar and mothers cried

At sixteen I dropped acid and had a powwow with Chief Existence,

the funny little name I gave to discovering the sun

the ruins of the old world

my marvelous anti-truth the tragic rainbow

in my breakfast bowl

I saw the universe expand outward from pupils

and molecules and other sub-atomic particles diving from my eyelashes

into the birth of tragedy

Like the infant smiling I knew joy without contamination or categories

Like the child waking from sleep to a waking dream as arbitrary and unknowable

I understood life without words in the way,

the aphoristic pollution of the older mind