How Cannabis Could Save Your Life

The U.S. government has spent millions of tax dollars
to ban and prosecute and jurisdict an herb that
grows in the dirt. Meanwhile street folk have
empty bellies and my father's pension's being raided
by a broken state.

It's enough so make you want to spark a bowl.

Next thing you know you'll tell me there's a war on,
or two wars, or the banks'll collapse, or all three.

Load me another.

In the summer of my nineteeth year on this oval
the unhigh think is a circle I worked at a steakhouse.
I served steaks and shots to cowboys and trail riders,
fire crews and foundation layers, and the stray asshole.
You know, the ones who stride in on Free Line Dance Night
from San Francisco or Los Angeles or wherever the fuck
and waste a pocketful of quarters on the song
that epitomizes country for them, the song that proves
Payola and Radio are dry humping somewhere,
on a blanket of money out under the stars.
That summer, before Perry ripped it out of the jukebox,
"Achy Breaky Heart" was that song.

And in my nineteeth summer Perry's mother, the owner,
my boss, got sick. The fleet hooves of cancer ran her down
and it was all she could do to pick herself up.
after the chemo sessions in Reno for the first week
of each month. In fact, she couldn't. Cannabis did.
It did so well that Perry's mother walked in that bar
on the eighth, slowly, steadily, smiled, and said:

"I never want to hear that song again."

That's proof enough for me.