those good gettin’ high days

it’s not that i suffered any special malaise
back in what i call my good gettin’ high days
no, things were fine, with no special anguish
i just liked to get high, kick back and languish

i liked to forget the cares the day
don’t bogart that joint " pass it this way
we’d dig ‘purple haze’ or ‘a love supreme’
take a whiff or a sniff … for a good
pipe dream

see, the movement was dead and had left a bad taste
with those whose commitment had gone to waste
who’d thought black was beautiful, that we’d overcome
we awoke from this dream and got high, and were numb

like a jealous cuckold who hates what he finds
too smart for our own good we’d blown our own minds
we turned on, and tuned out, and thought that was fine
‘cause now we didn’t care if a six became nine

and all king’s lost marchers and ho chi ming’s men
couldn’t bring our focus upon them again
we started out shaft, then superfly had led
to where he’d left Freddie, and we all know he’s dead

on came the seventies, in a big cloud of smoke
we had chiba, gold, red, some nam weed to toke
speed, orange sunshine, or mescali for flying
white girl on brown horse .… ‘tween livin’ and dyin’

that’s how it was when i came of age
better than sex, a high’s sensual rampage
we snorted and smoked and slowly submitted
to an age of nonchalance, to being uncommitted

if you weren’t there you won’t really realize
we were caught up in changes, never-ending surprise
kent state, watergate, the lies blowing by
we got hip and said  ‘know what?  ’i’m just gonna get high’

the permissive age that we ushered in
let the bottom fall out, to our later chagrin
we had pulled back the covers, revealed the hate
but then let go the reins of our nation’s fate

we had new ways to live but more ways to die
and ‘we’ had turned to ‘me’ in the blink of an eye
man, it made some of us just want to get high
i mean some of us,  yeah,  we just stayed high.

Reviews

[Neva Flores Smith - Cha..]

Fantastic revelation of how young people viewed the use of drugs and what it did to their lives..........an age of nonchalance and being uncommitted.......Bravo!