Back from the county town, my past lives
collide with my present course, I'm tinged
with nostalgia, memories of my upbringing;
Coming-of-age, young adulthood, in-between.

I can't shake the place I was born and reared,
A town so submetropolitan.

Back from the capitol region, upstate,
I ponder an alternate life that never was
under the flag of the United States; dream
of whoever I would have been.

I can't shake the cultures I was brought up in,
A healthy moon, a rose so paracelsian.

Back in The Fair City,
I am absolved ♃ere.


♑︎herefore this instance
of being in the world,

Near the center of things, the heart of the sprawl,
The hustle and bustle, the chaos of it all.

I made it to the city, 9 months later I left
having survived and thrived and realized
I'm not sure do I want anyone to live there.

New York, London, San Francisco, Dublin;
The more urban the environment, the more

Put your cloak on,
Pull your hood up,
Get your cypher out.
The internet is become
a more tangled place, the
world wide web spun out
of users and systems, of old
protocols and new connections,
of simulacra to animate the nexus

with multifarious intentions.
Quantum Artificial Intelligence
approaches, and we are

less cybran now, more dopaminergic
automata, surrounded by robotics.

May Day is upon us,
Summer is commenced,

And I find I am strung out on existence again.
Hazy daydreams and nostalgic motifs
play out on the threshold of waking awareness,

in this quiet interiority.
These recurring scenes

of abandoned planets, weathered landscapes
and transmuted ecology, fading lithographs
by fallen civilizations, collective memories
become the sole providence of those few
moments, thoughts, wandering lights.

Questions to ask when difficult emotions arise: Am I in a process?
Am I being too ******* myself? Am I taking things too seriously?

"He called philosophy down from the heavens,
And placed it in cities, and introduced it even in homes,
And drove it to inquire about life" (said Cicero, on Socrates).

The military is an olive tower.

Away from the rest of society
so long as the olive branch
remains unbroken; that
seems the position in
much of The West.

It concerns absolutes,
An extreme of experience,
The incomprehensibility of war.
It seeks imposition of will to defeat
an enemy, will which is bound in service

of The State, and we are like Dogs loosed

I stopped running away from life, and started running towards it.

Going through my old school copybooks and notes,
The scribbles and drawings portray the mind
of someone ill-at-ease with the world,
Yet they summon odd nostalgia.

In the calm of the room, by the window's
fading sunlight, I leaf through
my secondary school biology experiment book

There are lines and references to Gordan Freeman
from Half-Life 2, and other art media of the time,
such as quotes from Heisenberg in Breaking Bad
and embarrassingly detailed instructions
and cost estimates for synthesizing MDMA.
Maybe it's for the best I didn't take chemistry.
Then again, the margins of my third-level notes
contain updates on darkweb marketplaces of old
as well as Anglo-Saxon poetry and Game of Thrones.

I wonder about my metaphysical health during these times
but make no judgements on fond memories
of old friends, home comforts.

Strange, these moments
from past lives.