Timothy Leary Is Dead

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Timothy Leary is Dead

“Think for yourselves, & always question authority.”

--Timothy Leary. 

It was 1968,

           San Diego, CA.       I was in the Navy, struggling

                                      to keep myself from being shipped

to Viet Nam.

Timothy Francis Leary was

coming to town;            a one night “Lecture Performance”

at a local theater. I felt that I had go to see him,

                                     this man that a few months later

President Nixon would call, The most dangerous man in America.

Leary,

a Harvard Psychologist & Professor,

                 used hallucinogenic drugs

                 like Lycergic Acid Diethylamide,

                       peyote/mescaline &

                       psilocylin mushrooms,

                 claiming that they all had therapeutic potentials

for incredible breakthroughs in Psychiatry.

“Turn on, tune in, & drop out.”

were the tagline on the posters downtown.

Leary, I thought could walk the walk,

having spent time behind bars in 29 different jails

as testament to his principles.

I had done my research on non-drug induced

                        states of consciousness;    meditation,

                                                                   trance,

                                                                   yoga,

                                                                   religious ecstasy,

                                                                   dreams &

                                                                   out-of-body experiences;

that to have a psychedelic experience, one needed

to understand that it was not the drug

                       that produced the transcendent event--

                       it merely was the key

that unlocked & opened the mind; freeing

                       the central nervous system

                                                       of its ordinary patterns.

Sure, when I arrived at the Theater,

                   I was offered those LSD sugar cubes,

                                         the dried magic mushrooms

                                         & the green chunks of peyote--

but I passed on all of them.

The place was packed, & the overwhelming

stench of unwashed hippy bodies

& marijuana smoke nearly choked me, spiced up

                    by two Buddhist monks in yellow robes

                    swinging their incense burners, while

three sitar players set the mood.

Leary entered to cheers,

walked regally to center stage

all dressed in Nehru-white,

and plopped down into the Lotus position,

                     which he maintained for two hours.

                     Ram Dass sat on his right, while

                     Allen Ginsberg sat on his left.

Between musical interludes, he spoke wonderfully

about metaphysical postulates, 

          scientific principles,

          Fascist politics & Life.             When at last he stood up,

                                      I leaped to my feet,

                                      fascinated, intrigued, entranced,

                                      ready to go AWOL,

                                      ready to drop out,

                                      ready to become a disciple.

But he turned & strolled off stage with his entourage 

not noticing me or my enthusiasm,

                                      my voice lost

                     in the middle of that great stoned throbbing throng.

He walked off stage into

the welcoming arms

of the the San Diego PD--

                & I had to reconstruct & reconfigure

                my soaring synapsis’ before

returning to NAS Miramar. 

               

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on dVerse Poets Poetics

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