"A Bad Trip"

A Bad Trip
it is not lsd that causes the bad trip– it was your mother, your President, the little girl next door, the icecream man with dirty hands, a course in algebra or Spanish superimposed, it was the stench of a crapper in 1926, it was a man with a nose too long when you were told long noses were ugly; it was laxative, it was the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, it was tootsie rolls and Toots and Casper, it was the face of FDR, it was lemon drops, it was working in a factory for ten years and getting fired because you were five minutes late, it was that old bag who taught you American history in the 6th grade, it was your dog run over and nobody to properly draw you the map afterwards, it was a list 30 pages long and 3 miles tall. a bad trip? this whole country, this whole world is on a bad trip, friend. but they’ll arrest you for swallowing a tablet.

~ Charles Bukowski