Features

Journey of the OG

Published on December 15, 2023 by David Wylie

Photo: Adobe Firefly/the oz.

Since our satirical adaptation of A Visit from St. Cannabis in 2020, we’ve been wanting to try our hand at cannabis poetry by shifting another holiday classic to a cannabis theme. This year, T.S. Eliot’s Journey of the Magi got the oz.’s poetic treatment, with a reimagining from the perspective of an old-school dealer gone legal.

—

Journey of the OG

“With cannabis as a crime we had it,

Just the worst time of fear

From prohibition to bumpy legalization:

Through ways civil and disobedient,

The very dead of winter.”

Our delivery car had bald tires, running on empty

Broken down in the snow bank.

Sometimes we still miss the ‘good’ old days,

Risking the law, living free of tax and regs

And so high at wild parties.

Then the government came, wanting its cut

And breaking promises, demanding more for less

And public interest waned, lack of money,

And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly

And people angry over high prices:

A hard time we had of it.

At the end some had to limit hours.

Operating at a loss,

With critics singing in our ears, saying

That this was all folly.

Then as we wore on we came to temperate times,

Fresh and sticky, direct to us, smelling up the place;

With a steady stream of new treats and drinks to try,

And free trees to sample,

And our joints burned slow with white ash.

Then came chain stores with deep pockets,

Playing limbo with margins, selling old jars,

And stocking mainly corporate brands.

But we knew we could do better, and fought on

And some closed, not a moment too soon

Finding a little peace; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

Prohibition wasn’t that long ago, you’ll remember,

And some would go back again, for their reasons

But consider

This time after cannabis legalization

Are we worse? We are better off, certainly,

We have evidence and no doubt. I’ve seen before and after,

Now it feels different; the beginning was

Hard and bitter agony for us, financial stress—distress.

We returned to our shops, these stores,

But no longer yearning for the old dispensaries,

With police breaking down doors.

I should be glad of legalization.

—

(With gratitude to T.S. Eliot for his beautiful poem, Journey of the Magi.)