I’m a fairly active charter member
of Connecticut’s Medical Marijuana Program,
qualifying because I’m also one of the oldest HIV+ survivors in the U.S.

In fact,
not a single cell within my entire organism
would have been brought to you today
without the miracles of chemistry.

So blame Big Pharma,
you would not be the first
but perhaps could become the last.
You never know

We might recreate a cooperative bottom-line
engaging an international profiting me corporation
prepared to listen to prophetic angry people
as if we might become wealthier prescribers
for healthier climates
and cultures,
rather than mere consumers of contentious therapies.

Anyway, I’ve been sick off and on,
mostly on,
since the beginning of November
so I’ve also been pretty much stoned.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, I’m not sure
Probably both.
I’m also may be the oldest HIV+ Taoist survivor
and Taoists annoyingly need to pretend both sides of the mirror
might have worthwhile reflective potential.

WuWei quasi-fortunately,
rather than being too sick to get stoned,
I’m too stoned to imagine I’m sick.

Despite being retired,
and increasingly tired,
I don’t have time to be sick anyway,
in large part because my youngest of four kids
is a girl with wicked Oppositional Defiant disorders;
a label she defies

Not because she’s opposed to orderly labels,
but because she thinks she is perfectly ordered
when the rest of us losers get with her program.

She likes President Trump’s redness
and orangeness
and the whole MAGA culture
because he looks and sounds familiar enough to eat

Like red meat
grabby economic sinners
and prehensile political leaders
make the greatest bottom feeders.

For my young teenage daughter,
defiance is not a disorder,
it is a counter-cultural religion
(practiced at Make America White Again rallies
by evangelical nationalists)
into which she was baptized
by Fetal Alcohol full immersion
at a first trimester young embryonic age.

From her I have learned
there fortunately is no wimpy God,
but we do have one hell of a fire-breathing feminist Goddess
when we refuse to help her clean her nightmare
she calls her imperial White House,
but I call what’s left of her bedroom.

I tried to point out the inconsistency
of supporting a President
who refuses to help us clean our planet,
or even avoid mutually terrorizing civility destruction,
but this, apparently, is like the voice of a wimpy God
who does not,
and should not,
keep on defying the Fire Goddess
right might hand
of your life doesn’t matter
much.

This morning I was helping her get ready for school,
combing out her spiky hair.
She’s part dark porcupine.
We were standing in front of a large wood-framed, beveled mirror
that looks, perhaps only because I’m stoned,
like something out of Snow White,
associated with her StepMom,
the witchy queen with
Make Me Great Again
oppositional defiant disorder.

My daughter appreciates Snow White,
probably because she bossed around the seven dwarfs
in their own domestically peaceful home,
(a politically incorrect position
we might best not even think of trying to get away with)
and forced them to listen to her own crappy music preferences
at a full amphitheater range of ear-splitting volume.

Be that as it too loudly may,
I asked her if she ever talks to her mirror,
asking, Who is the fairest of them all?

Yes.

And, does the mirror talk back?

Yes. It says,
You need to fix them!

That’s strange.
My mirror has been saying the same thing
ever since the last
oppositionally defiant election.