Temporary Eternity

On a warm night

in July in

Nineteen Seventy Two,

five teenagers

and a dog went

down to Lake Ontario,

caught a taxi

to the Island

from Toronto’s harbourfront.

I was with them

and the others

were Dave, Jim, Max & Mark.

and all

of us

were temporary, yet precious ornaments,

in style for just one dirty summer on those bright

Toronto streets.

Half an hour

just before that,

after all night panhandling,

we’d all managed

to buy ten hits of

“Green Frog” blotter acid.

We dropped two each,

And walked down Yonge street

to begin our adventure.

 

and all

of them

were only visiting their minds, but I was on a mission of experience, and I may have hoped, but I didn’t know that I would never be the same again.

As we stepped from

the floating taxi

onto Center Island’s dock,

paid the driver,

and faced the greenery,

we were starting to get off.

and it started

when everything seemed

to be made out of microdots,

and as I watched them

they started moving

around each other in orbits.

First there were two each

in simple circles

until more and more joined in

and the orbits

became more complex,

like mandalas in motion,

then turned to objects

I recognized like

trucks, animals and people

rising out of

that central whirlpool

of dancing electric shapes

to the center

of my vision,

or was my perceiving eye

being drawn out

into the traffic

of these shapes outside my body

through the tunnel

from which they came on

a conveyor belt of dreams?

And all

of us

stumbled like children onto their first playground,

that had been waiting through the silent and empty ages

just for the five of us.

Me and the others

wandered into

a maze made out of hedges

that had been used by

many millions

but we knew it had been built for us.

Mark and I pushed

one another

back and forth through the foam thick air,

both of us laughing

hysterically,

our backs cushioned by the hedge.

But then suddenly

a push sent me

deep inside of the hedge.

I let yourself pour

into the mold of

a long delicious descent,

and ended up stretched

on my back between

the hedge and the metal fence.

and all

of me

stared like a boy up from a summer hilltop,

but this sky shivered that nervous crimson that illuminates one’s dreams.

With a softness

excruciating

that sky unfolded back,

and behind it

was one more sky

even truer than the last.

and its zenith

was a crown like

a pulsating breathing gill

(Since I was virgin

 I didn’t recognize

that it was something more vaginal)

and it opened to let my perceiver through to the next sky, the next and the next and the next until I knew that all of existence was made out of worlds in worlds in worlds in worlds in worlds in worlds in worlds...

and all

my mind

was clear and my heart felt flutteringly pregnant with a caterpillar fetus that held a butterfly within.

and all

my Mind

fell through one last sky that was calling your name like it knew me and I felt so recognized. It called      Christian!

Christian!

Christian!

I heard

my name

like a bell that was ringing from the core of reality,

but the calling became more desperate

and the voices more familiar.

Then all

the voices

became the shouts of Dave, Jim, Max and Mark as they searched the rapids of paranoia in panic for my body.

So I got up

out of the bush

that had burned with so much calm,

yet also frantic

as a beehive

made from swarming electrons.

All my friends were

on the outside

running around and shouting,

calling my name

like they were hawkers

with only my absence to sell.

I felt Christlike,

very peaceful

on emerging to greet my friends.

Mark approached me

and my arms reached out

to receive his fond embrace.

But both

his hands

came lunging angrily to grab my throat, I fell back with him on top,  his hands were tightening around my neck.

Cause he

had been

the most emotional about my absence,

and when we get that concerned our egos get addicted and start to use that emotion to define ourselves,

so when

the one

who inspired concern shows up unscathed we feel cheated,

this source of energy melts before our eyes like that witch in Oz and for the sake of survival all we know sometimes is that its time for us to attack.

But this trip was

so much larger

than the elements it contained,

every moment

a steamroller,

a massive, snorting machine

with yellow body

and flashing strobelights

shushing around the bend.

It was monstrous,

otherworldly,

like nothing we had ever seen.

So all

of us

panicked and scattered into separate directions, and I ended up standing in a tulip garden whose painted lips had beckoned to me.

On electric cords

they were waving.

I stood over one of them.

Coloured energies

ascended in waves

that were bleeding up through the air.

Petals opened,

a tongue was revealed,

though not a human tongue,

but the real tongue

of a flower,

I got down on my knees.

  

I stared

inside

down a ridged stairway to a sugared cavern,

and there was bleeding sex in its open mouth that pivoted above gravity.

I placed

my eye

to its luminous mouth like a telescope and saw the boneless chasm to orgasm that were its vaginal insides,

then I felt

my nipples

turn to petals, then from my cock there sprouted a tulip, red that opened to spill its seed and the cycle went on and on, and now that I was thoroughly part of it I had the right to leave

Walking onto

a tiny bridge that

crossed a swan sailing stream

I stood there watching

the lazy water

while the bridge was swaying in the breeze.

But thought: “Wait

a minute!

The bridge is moving!”, I grabbed the railing and hung on for my life as the bridge began flapping as if it were a flag in a storm!

  

I was terrified

that it would throw me in the water below,

forgetting that the water was probably only less than five feet down.

Beyond panic

it came back to me this was just an acid trip,

and I was only hallucinating because bridges don’t flap in the wind.

It subsided,

I walked off the bridge

and rejoined all of my mates

who said they’d just watched

all of Toronto

sink down into the lake,

except that Max claimed

it had gone up

like a hat on a mushroom cloud.

We all wandered

to the harbour

to wait for the first ferry.

When it came we

took the top deck,

but they sat further away.

On the way back

they started playing

those goofy acid freak out games.

They were sitting

at an angle

and Dave was pointing at me,

nudging the others,

wagging red eyebrows

and that’s when I started laughing.

 It

 possessed me!

I laughed and laughed while they poked their fun at me

by simply just looking at each other and then mugging back at me.

I couldn’t stop

As the ferry kept floating from island to island,

 it was starting to hurt my stomach and yet I couldn’t hold it in.

I tumbled down

an endless spiraling stairway of laughter.

The conductor came and you kept on laughing as he kicked us all off of the ship.

He told

us all

that we’d been riding from city to island maybe three or four times back and forth and it was time that we got off.

Just behind them

I was following

with both hands on my belly,

but couldn’t hold

in the laughter

all the way up Yonge street

as I walked on

a mosaic

of interconnected frogs

I was laughing

up to Wellesley

and over to Queen’s Park

to the lawn where

all the tents were

pitched in front of Hart House

I collapsed then

on the grass and

went to sleep for twenty hours.