Ode on the Facelifting of the "statue" of Liberty

By Edward Dorn 1929–1999 Edward Dorn

A B H O R R E N C E S
4 July, 1986

America is inconceivable without drugs

and always has been. One of the first acts

was to dump the tea. The drug that furnished

the mansions of Virginia was tobacco,

a drug now in much disrepute.

Sassafras, a cure-all, is what they came for

and they dealt it by the bale altho it

was only a diaphoretic to make you perspire—

people were so simple in those days.

The Civil War saw the isolation of morphine

making amputation a pleasure and making

the block of wood between the teeth,

which was no drug, obsolete. Morphinism

was soon widespread among doctors and patients.

At this date interns, the reports tell us,

are among the premier drug ab/users

of said moralistic nation. “Rock” stars

(who notoriously “have” doctors)

consume drugs by the metric ton

even as they urge teenagers to Say No.

The undercurrent of American history

has been the running aches and pains

of the worn path to the door of the apothecary

to fetch cannabis and cocaine elixirs

by the gallon. It has been all prone

all seeking Florida, Ponce de León

was just the beginning of a statistical curve

whose only satisfaction would be total vertigo.

His eager search for youth has become our

frantic tilt with death and boredom,

in fact we are farming death in Florida

with far greater profit than we are

farming food in Iowa—elixirs are as multiform

as the life-style frauds we implore,

a cultural patchwork fit for a fool

in the only country in the world

with a shop called the Drug Store.

Edward Dorn, "Ode on the Facelifting of the ‘Statue’ of Liberty" from Abhorrences, published by Black Sparrow Books. Copyright © 1990 by Edward Dorn. Reprinted by permission of the Edward Dorn Estate.

Source: Abhorrences (Bloodaxe Books, 1990)

Biography

Edward Dorn spent several years at Black Mountain College, a North Carolina school founded in 1933 as a liberal alternative for teachers and students seeking a creative educational environment. Breaking away from tradition, those affiliated with the school created art and literature that had a profound effect on American culture even after the college closed in 1956. Over the years numerous noteworthy artists and writers, . . .

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