I hight Don Quixote, I live on peyote

Agape Lodge's Oriflamme, Vol I, No I, Feb 21, 1943

I height Don Quixote, I live on Peyote,

marihuana, morphine and cocaine.

I never knew sadness but only a madness

that burns at the heart and the brain,

I see each charwoman ecstatic, inhuman,

angelic, demonic, divine,

Each wagon a dragon, each beer mug a flagon

that brims with ambrosial wine.

I went to the city and found it a pity

the devil was playing at hell,

And ten million mortals had entered hell’s portals

and thought they were all doing well.

I said: “See, dear people, on every church steeple

an imp of the devil at play,

See ghouls cut their capers in daily newspapers

and fiends in police courts hold sway;

The mountains are palaces, women are chalices

meant to be supped and not sold,

The desert a banquet hall set for a festival,

ripe for the free and the bold;

The wind and the sky are ours, heaven and all its stars,

waken, and do what you will;

Break with this demon spawn’d hel-inspired nightmare

bond—Magick lies over the hill.”

* * *

They said I was crazy, ambiguous, lazy,

disgusting, fantastic, obscene;

So I hied for my sagebrush and cactus and corn mush,

To see if the air was still clean.

Oh, I height Don Quixote, I live on peyote,

marihuana, morphine and cocaine,

And may I be twice damned for a bank-clerk or store hand

if I visit the city again.