(This poet harbors no guilty, unconsidered pleasures. If she participates in a practice, it is because both experimentation and research have indicated its constructive advisability.

The two substances she inhales medicinally, spiritually and creatively are chemical free. The average factory-produced cigarette containing several thousand of them, the poet has never touched one, nor does she plan to.

Reflex reaction to her practices being too often so knee-jerk as to preclude any hope of explanation regarding the above differences and considerations, the poet runs the following offering about every six months, for the edification of anyone who’s truly more interested in understanding than in condemnation)

*****

Recorded Reading (3:53): https://www.dropbox.com/s/gvow60okulkeekg/The%20Sacred%20Smoke.mp3?dl=0

*****

The Sacred Smoke

Many spiritual disciplines on Earth
Share a conviction of redeeming grace
Assisted by the free release of smoke
In its sacred and its proper space

For people ‘cross this planet, going back
Far into dim human prehistory
From those all across the Americas
To medieval Scotland, sage it be

When burnt makes shadow beings sudden feel
As there were someplace other they might be;
Perceptions universal merit our
Examination openheartedly

Then let us not stop there — if pagan folk
The scent of aromatics not abhor
Well, then our world religions certain should
Have us abstaining its stimulus more?…

But no! Panplanetarily we find again
That, most, our mosques, churches and temples in
Doth lovely herbal incense rise in clouds
Before the incantations e’er begin!

Observe picture of meditating monk
Quite clearly in a thorough state of grace
Holding a stick of incense in clasped hands
Directly in front of his smiling face

Each earliest home documentary
Traveling teenage hippie video
Doth with the holy men of India
They rolling and they smoking ganja show

From South America to Africa
Certain strains clean tobacco of
Are medicine which sometimes saves a life
Of someone someone else doth deeply love

Having had very sick lungs myself
This research and conclusion are borne out
By twenty years’ physicians’ testament
Of health we cannot reasonably doubt

America pollutes tobacco smoke
With seven thousand unnecessary
Chemicals, then seeks to castigate
All sources of all smoke that ever be

Except the lethal fumes which hover o’er
Me as I writing sit beside this road
Go outside now — sit on the ground — and breathe:
This quality doth no good future bode!

Proven medical fact it long hath been
That smokers who have dwelt the country in
Have cleaner lungs at death than any who
Nonsmoker, life in inner city win

This too: Of all the thousand studies done
On tobacco’s advisability
Not one of them has so far ever been
Done on that substance when chemical free

Forgive me, but to me, almost, perhaps,
Just theoretic’lly, it sometimes seems
That we are being distracted, so to keep
Us from an agent of religious dreams

Perhaps, as well, away from some other
Pervasive influence ourselves among
Which rather than the smoke of veg’tables
Be author of good many of our wrongs

Though do not mean in any smallest wise
My readers’ righteous anger to provoke
I deem it both spiritual and wise
Continue to inhale the sacred smoke

*****

This poet is physically disabled. Public housing being insufficient to her medical and creative needs, she is presently living, in order to continue working, in her minivan, publishing all of her works using one thumb on the touch screen of her smartphone, surviving at an income of a fraction of her nation’s poverty level. She would treasure any donation you might care to offer ~ http://www.UgiftABLE.com ● #72D-31S.

Please be aware that it takes several days for the poet to be notified of contributions. International contributors please contact the poet via email or post comment for necessary numbers.

*****