🎩 "The Farmer, The Corps, and the Law"
(after the affidavit of John Jones, Missouri)
I’m thirty-six.
Divorced. One kid.
I live on land, where dreams once hid.
A farm in Missouri—quiet, wide—
Where I shape things with my hands and pride.
I served the Corps, proud and bold,
But came back young, already old.
A fractured skull, a wounded brain—
Left me with this cloudy pain.
Glaucoma crept behind my eye,
A thief that creeps, a blur, a sigh.
They gave me fifty percent, you see—
The VA said, “You stay with me.”
Eight years with Black & Decker passed.
Then I walked the mail, through rain and blast.
Till one day, boom—my back gave out.
That ended that. Of that, no doubt.
So now I carve, I hammer, glue—
An artisan, in skies of blue.
But back in '73 or so,
I found a thing you ought to know:
Marijuana.
(Yes, that one.)
It helped my eye when nothing done.
The pressure dropped, the pain went still,
The headaches gone—no bitter pill.
Epinephrine helped me too—
But made me hurt, and made me stew.
Cut the dose in half with weed.
That’s the kind of help I need.
But legal? Ha. I tried. I swear.
I wrote to FDA with care.
Got a note from Doctor Focus—
(That name alone would make you poke us.)
He said, “It’s banned. But there’s a path—
Find a doctor. Do the math.”
So I asked the VA crew—
“Could you get a license too?”
They said “Nope. Not here, not now.”
No one there knew when or how.
Told me, “Try the Georgia scene—
Ask that fella, Dr. Greene.”
But Greene said, “Sorry, rats not men.”
So I turned to Hepler’s pen.
But UCLA, it shut its doors—
Another “no” among the scores.
I called my Senators, wrote real fine,
Hoped they’d toss me some kind line.
But silence came, or nothing good.
So I did just what I could.
I bought it cheap. I grew it fast.
I took a risk. I made it last.
Five to seven joints a day—
To keep the cloudy blur at bay.
And no—no harm has come to me.
No madness. No delinquency.
Just clearer sight and calmer breath—
A stubborn stand against slow death.
I’m not a crook. I’m not a thug.
I’m not some kid who hides a drug.
I’m a dad, a vet, a man who cares—
Whose country’s stuck in legal snares.
I served. I worked. I paid my dues.
Now tell me why I have to choose—
Between my sight and some old rule
That calls me outlaw, makes me fool?
If that’s the law...
Then law’s gone blind.
And I must see.
So I won’t mind.
