Of course all poetry is guff. But it's guff you can make a comfortable living from if you learn to do it right, and I find it slightly more respectable than developing new extra-destructive explosives or some strain of supercholera or predicting stock futures or buying bankrupt people's houses for massively profitable resale - all of which are also guff to the max. And literature (and the requirement that it be taught to children) has a net liberalizing effect on the world, which I think is supremely useful and non-guff. -10-

You may not think drugs = naughty, but that's no reason to tell a young, innocent poete to take a crack. Besides, why should anyone write about their own 'ill-conceived notions' as opposed a naughty drug user's 'ill-conceived notions'? Do you think it's naughty to criticise the wither'd prawne in another man's eye before crushing the bulging lobster in your own? Bow'ls, I say. The truth is that there is only one ill-conceived notion any poete should write about. And that is the notion that your poetry isn't a complete load of absolute guff -10-

I'm not trying to imply that I'm supremely knowledgeable in all things drug- or drinking-related. But I do have enough experience with the subject to know not to categorize and typify it in some bullshit tidy moralized dross. I can almost guarantee you that at least a half of your teachers or co-workers smoke/smoked marijuana - and probably not the rat-like ones, either. Does this poem frown upon them all with 'that same knowing stare' of unknowing sanctimony? YES! At least, inasmuch as it's about drug-users, which I still doubt, then, yes, it does. In the meantime, considering that you're a human being living in America/Europe, you likely have dozens of bad habits and ill-conceived notions of your own that are worth looking at, many of them more dangerous than occasional drug use. Why don't you take a crack at one of those next time you post? Does it make you feel better that at least you're not a junkie? Screw that. We all get our various fixes in our own ways.

You're in the special drugs club because you once smoked a marijuana and are therefore qualified to talk about the roaming jesters in lace. Congratulations!!!!111

If you weren't, how could you possibly consider yourself qualified to talk about them like this? As it happens, the dope (ie, the drugs or the marijuana) isn't mostly consumed by blank-staring uncommunicative drones in dark rat-holes, meaning that this entire poem is a humungous nothing. What's more, if I were to ask you here whether poetry should veil or disguise its subject/meaning with ambiguous images and wordplay, you would undoubtedly say yes, which is a triple-word-scoring 'dunce' with an extra, ungrammatical 'Qu'.

Excuse me, but I have had some experience. I never said I was the one doing the drugs, did I?

No'm.

Oh yeah...I give it an -8-. Nicely crafted..although the concept is not original, the story is cute and well told.

Fine. This poem is a failure on several different levels. I recommend that you write about things you actually have some experience with in a straightforward and relatively unambiguous way. You're welcome.