Once, in an undreaming vision through a fuzzy weave of drug-fumes,
I glimpsed a past which lay before us,
ready to be replayed
like an Edison cylinder,
scratched and old,
and full of the dark genius
which stole Tesla’s life,
and I don’t even know who Tesla is;
it’s 1704, and some madman just sold me
a healing potion that worked.
“Tea” was the name
of the delivery system,
and “caffeine” the drug,
and neither one is
sinister
because all caffeine does
is send the precious engine of your heart
screaming and pounding like
a doomed chariot,
shaving little bits
off your lifespan,
and “tea” is the best way
to take it in,
because it also provides
tannin,
whose bitter
numbing qualities
help you forget
that tea’s no safer
than coffee;
but come now,
why worry?
coffee exists
in forms too peculiar
for even you,
my dreamed, strange, future-cousins
to understand,
and besides,
I have this bedrock faith:
would the Dutch East India Company
do us harm
to make a few shillings?
So it was to a “Tea party” I went,
though Gods help me if I went to an
“opium party” or an “LSD party”; I don’t know
what those things are,
but this was worse;
SO MUCH SMALL TALK
AND TOO MUCH STIMULATION.
and yet,
even poppies have had relatively little effect
(comparatively) with tea and its devilish
companion, tea–
those monsters gave me BOILED LEAVES and GROUND UP BEANS and said
I should
DRINK
them.
And I did,
rivers,
lakes,
oceans,
melted comets’ worth,
and then I stayed awake
until
the invention
of Tequila,
and
things
went
rapidly
downhill
from
there.
My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities, put on events, and make stories come into being. I also tweet a lot over @darklordjournal.
