Eight Miles High

Eight Miles High And When You Touch Down You’ll Find That It’s Stranger Than Known


Abandoned Beach Car
Padre Island
Oct. 27, `70

Jim and Collin left for Nova Scotia after I became sick (probably
from swimming in the freezing cold). They wanted me to go with them
and I was tempted, but that would have put me right where I did not
want to be--back in civilization. I felt so miserable I didn't want
to be around anybody. Instead, I crawled into an abandoned beach
car. I resolved to lie in the rat-eaten backseat until I got better –
or died. While there, I managed to finish the poem that I started a
few days ago:

Eight Miles High And If You Touch Down

Searching for high ideals
I have reshaped society's success
into blue jeans, drugs, and sex.
Finding this culture bankrupt too,
I now prefer my own company above all I chance to choose.
But wait, what's this?

Ah, oh marvelous drug,
in rhapsody I take my repast.
No longer will rival purposes
expose my sight of black and white.
With glee I unleash this sensing, feeling device,
to bore past reason's gate where joy and sorrow motivate.

Vision now swelling bright
my thoughts extol in a different light.
Does not old man Nietzsche know
that words are lost on those for whom
gain is the ledger and greed is the toll!
Within rainbow vision symmetry, words
of any degree are mere dots on paper
collecting dust and debris.


Full of fever, and my stomach cramped, it got so bad that I wanted
to throw myself on the hospital steps, but I had a problem getting
out of the car. I just laid there, listening to the wind howl. On
the night of the big storm, I lay sweating in the wind-buffeted
backseat wondering if I would see tomorrow, while the sky lit up,
and the ocean roared. In the morning, after the Gale, the sunshine
returned, and the worst of my sickness had passed, but I was still
very weak.

In the days that followed, things got back to normal. On one
occasion, I was invited to play football by some Navy dudes on the
beach. It was fun until I tackled the ball carrier and his shoulder
separated. After that, the boys left the beach and never returned.
As the days faded into one another, I read books, mostly Nietzsche.
On one of those days, however, a chick came out to the beach and we
became friends. She came to visit on a regular basis after that.