I loved the word ganja by Liz Snader

I was reborn when I first hit

A bong.

I loved the word chronic.

A retired LSD cook once

Taught me how to live.

He showed me what life meant-

He helped me to realize that life

Is not to live and to die-living is the

Process of spreading one’s love

And knowledge of abstract thought.

That must have been 1973.

On the piece we always used,

The bowl had been changed

About four times in six years.

The downstem had broke twice

And reluctantly we replaced them.

But I’m told not to remember

That last September, as we

Watched birds strung out on wine,

That we were all witnessing

Ourselves in 12 short months.

Back to the topic now-

The retired drug chef –that

Believer in all things real and not-

He made me remember the best

Things in life.

That retired LSD cook told me

“Even in smoking the herb,

We see that the brain is more

Powerful than we know;”

“When peers share LSD or

Marijuana, that is when the greatest minds

Come to play and rejoice

In what we see as the human experience.”

___________________________________________

I grew up bent over

a chessboard.

I loved the word endgame.

All my cousins looked worried.

It was a small house

near a Roman graveyard.

Planes and tanks

shook its windowpanes.

A retired professor of astronomy

taught me how to play.

That must have been in 1944.

In the set we were using,

the paint had almost chipped off

the black pieces.

The white King was missing

and had to be substituted for.

I’m told but do not believe

that that summer I witnessed

men hung from telephone poles.

I remember my mother

blindfolding me a lot.

She had a way of tucking my head

suddenly under her overcoat.

In chess, too, the professor told me,

the masters play blindfolded,

the great ones on several boards

at the same time.