._. What does "rastafari" suppose to mean?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rastafari_movement
Otherwise, I'll actually have to agree with you. While there's such a thing as stream of consciousness (and it's perfectly okay to abuse it once in awhile for the sake of art or poetic license), there's a difference between that and, well... not really making any sense whatsoever. It just feels like the poem's not going in any particular direction to capture any particular image or message.
Given, though, that you're (meaning the poet) mentioning the Rastafari movement and end with the lines about an entirely different reality, I get the feeling I know exactly why this seems so disjointed. If the poem
is going with that particular message, then it actually ends up going in the
opposite direction of the above judgment. To be a bit clearer, if you didn't want to capture the idea of an alternate state of mind, the poem is disjointed and lacks any direction. If you
did, you're actually going for a stereotypical description of drug use, combined with a potentially offensive portrayal of an actually serious movement. Or, in shorter terms, if you're trying to say this is what it's like to be high, it's not particularly subtle (and, beyond that, not particularly accurate because weed doesn't make you
that out-of-your-head -- but that's an entirely different rant), and, really, the Rastafari movement is about more than just smoking weed.
But to be a bit more constructive, there's two pieces of advice I'd like to offer about poetry. First off, when trying to capture an image in a poem, your best bet is to figure out what it is you want a poem to say. Even
some of the most stream-of-consciousness poetry out there has underlying meanings to them. A good poem chooses one message and builds upon it with metaphors that a reader doesn't exactly have to bend over backwards to get. (As in, it's okay to have subtle meaning. It's not okay to say that you're fighting a fish with a baseball bat when you're trying to say you hate high school.)
Second, if you write about something that's supposed to be serious (religion, politics, drugs especially), it's usually a good idea to experience those things for yourself -- especially in poetry, where all of your power lies in conveying your experiences in ways that would make the reader feel like they're going through them too. For example, weed. A lot of people think being high just makes you crazy, but each drug has a different effect on a person. Weed's more of a light drug compared to other stuff out there. It might make you lucid and calm, or it might just make you cough a lot. It doesn't really make you taste purple unless you happen to be taking something along with it. If you do want to write about those kinds of things but don't want to try them yourself,
no one's going to fault you for doing a bit of research. b)'')b
