"I height Don Quixote, I live on Peyote,
marihuana, morphine and cocaine.
I never knew sadness but only a madness
that burns at the heart and the brain,
I see each charwoman ecstatic, inhuman,
angelic, demonic, divine,
Each wagon a dragon, each beer mug a flagon
that brims with ambrosial wine.
I went to the city and found it a pity
the devil was playing at hell,
And ten million mortals had entered hell’s portals
and thought they were all doing well.
I said: “See, dear people, on every church steeple
an imp of the devil at play,
See ghouls cut their capers in daily newspapers
and fiends in police courts hold sway;
The mountains are palaces, women are chalices
meant to be supped and not sold,
The desert a banquet hall set for a festival,
ripe for the free and the bold;
The wind and the sky are ours, heaven and all its stars,
waken, and do what you will;
Break with this demon spawn’d hel-inspired nightmare
bond—Magick lies over the hill.”
* * *
They said I was crazy, ambiguous, lazy,
disgusting, fantastic, obscene;
So I hied for my sagebrush and cactus and corn mush,
To see if the air was still clean.
Oh, I height Don Quixote, I live on peyote,
marihuana, morphine and cocaine,
And may I be twice damned for a bank-clerk or store hand
if I visit the city again."
