BULLET PROOF GRASS

I smoked weed once in Greece
and listened to the ocean.
The Acropolis was nothing up close
but from far away
down below in Plaka
it transmitted words:
it spoke in the ruined voice
of those who made it.

The spliff was held low in the car
for fear of the police
as we sped out of Athens.
It was the age of Goa Trance
the music stung me with a new pressure -
the pressure of never having listened before.

That night I glimpsed the possibilities
but was too stoned to respond.
I tried to hold them till morning
remember over coffee
but none of them were things
you could say or write.

I sense them now through
heavy filter of amnesiacs
whole districts of memory
erased by trips to Centrum.

A black beggar grasping at my coat
the game of pinball that lasted all afternoon
the tired skies and slender shelter
of sodium lights in a hundred balconies.