I was once asked
if I used drugs
in the Sixties.
No, my mind
is weird enough
without chemical complications.

The mind is like an endless cavern
most of which we never visit
by choice, most of which remains
unknowable, by design.

Pricking my finger every day
to check the sweetness of my blood
I think about a friend
who put a .38 to her head
and pulled the trigger.

To draw blood that way you need
an instant of resolve, (less with scotch)
and slight physical effort,
be it a lancet, or a Colt.

I sometimes look at
pinprick scars on my fingers
and know the Colt-yanker’s
scars are retained by others,
passed on to them to fester
in the process mind-benders
call grief.

Some people think they are choosing
when choices are made for them
beyond their control,
the engine mixed in genes and life
somewhere down in that cavern
only pathologists can see
and then only superficially.