Hear me shatter and dissolve
like a pane of ice dropped on a warm floor.
Barefoot, I stumble home
and wonder whether sensation is egoless

and why cognition is not; but of course
serius est quam cogitas.
I find myself in memories so distant
they are like past lives,
I am so changed, mutation, smoldering;
I remind myself

I am awash with this stuff, day-dreams
and stupor, imaginings, and visions.

The life I lived when I had those dreams
I only catch glimpses of in my sleep.
So strange, with Eternal September over

and everything in flux, the world is
full of potential, possibilities, panta rhei
and thence everything flows

'All the mod cons' they say, as if a few appliances
make up for an extortionate cage.

Despite my loathsome tech salary
I struggle to find a place
I could live out

a healthy and dignified existence
from in our capital city.

Bureaucratic. Timocratic.
Stratocracy is not something
I was ever interested in. Is that
why I enlisted? Put these notions
to the test, challenge my philosophy,
And perhaps even change my worldview
which I had assumed was in opposition to this.
The institution, a cult of the state before which
I am canine.
The use of drill
to temper a group
in dynamism, to meld the pack
in subordination, to suppress reactions
and perhaps even tame critical thinking.
We are dogs of the state
and I should not be able to question so well.
My philosophical training may prove
troublesome.

It is oft' discipline without clear intention,
Values that lack coherent articulation,
The inheritance of a moral order
which is antiquated at best
or at worst entirely ill-suited
to the modern world.

If this is the soil from which
the crop of leaders are chosen
it's no surprise what's to follow.

What truly strikes me is the humor,
Which sometimes is incomprehensibly forced,
but as they say: hurry up and wait.

During our struggle to attain peace
the heavens open,
You can only smile in the soaking rain.

Practices must be underscored
by a narrative they can be subsumed by
if they are to elicit change

in the person, fashion personality or craft persona.
"But I am straitened between two:

Having a desire to be dissolved
and to be with Christ, a thing by far the better.

But to abide still in the flesh, is needful for you".
[Pulvis et] umbra sumus.

.Tuam Videbis Vitam.

Strange jealousy
for a past held by another
in painful regard.

I should like to be honest
about our fears, aspirations,
Our dreams, desires.

What we feel and need.
It is hard to accept I am safe,
To accept sanctuary. I built such
walls, became a prisoner to my own
configurations, then escaped and found
I had become a fugitive from heaven,

A cognitive dissident without a cause,
A philosopher who had lost their cogs.
So I tried some O-desmethyltramadol
and was reminded I don't like opioids,
They distort one's self in a most craven way.
My recent use of apotheogens makes it clear

I need some new practices
to sooth the sacred alter
betwixt my temples.

,Look at my shadow,

Sometimes the clouds crowd
my mind, they cast shadows
in which my fires seem more

intense, and sometimes I find
myself uneasy, it is difficult to
sit with the abstract headiness.

I take N-desalkylfluarazepam.
I take 3-Fluoroamphetamine.
I might even take ketamine.

It loosens me up, a sense
of otherness is familiar
and perhaps it is the

possibility of escape
rather than escaping
that give me comfort,

To know the tools are
there, to feel as a ward
of their potential lore.