Chatting with Friday in The Blue Note,
She mentioned leaving for Scotland.
A friend commented on your body
language, I could not shake that.

Thought I saw Monday walking The Promenade,
I turned my head only to see you also looking
back. We waved, and it struck me

how we were kids once
and how much time has passed.
Passin’ Me By,

Not for lack of knowledge, I languish.
Not for lack of wisdom, I'd indulge.
Would lusting after apotheogens
make it any less anything? I can

administer those transhuman
Cybran stimulants, posthuman
Aeon dissociatives, and atavistic
psychedelic trips, but my longing
for harmony and synchrony might
bid alchemy and witchcraft farewell.
Ambivalence, comfort, a perfect static
in which the Anemoi are bottled, swirling.

This auld warlock does continue to ponder
the mysteries of quantum metaphysics:
The study of the smallest constituents
identifiable in an act of cognition,
An effort to identify the process
of quality and likeness.

Oh, to be Anonymous
in that sweet darkness.

Ah, to be Philalethes
in the pursuit of truth.

Joy, to be with Pasithea
enveloped by relaxation.

Sorrow, to be a **** Lord
that never to comes-down.

At the end of Nimmo's Pier
on a mid-week evening in July,
I gaze across the bay
with the city to my back.

To my left a heron potters about
in orange lamplight, from my right
two lads' conversation drifts
across the harbor docks,

Behind me the city thrums
with its mid-summer's nightlife.
My over-stimulation from three days
of intense work fades, my solemn thoughts

I am apprehensive about dating,
It's something I feel I should pursue
while I'm still young; part of me wishes
to come closer, yearning for someone other,
To stand outside oneself and be with another.

Another part of me takes comfort in solitude,
My old soul is content, the sun goes down.
There are times when I reject warmth
and feel the cold universe
run through me;

Eternity is always just a few moments away,
Seeking the edge of chaos, searching for someone

Months ago I awoke
to an almighty hypnopompic brain-zap
provoked by dreams of lisdexamphetamine-laced cereal.
Forceful, shocking, agonizing; strange to have felt this
when I lack any acquaintance with Vyvanse, and
when I am clean of residuals. That a dream
should cause real pain, such reaction
in my being, I wonder how
my brain contoured
the experience.

Weeks ago I grappled
with a prolonged tension headache
so I administered paracetamol, ibuprofen/codeine,
And buprenorphine/naloxone. Those opioids
provoked strange daydreams, to countenance the many idioms
I've grokked over.

I used to think my superpower was depression,
I'd go around seeking pain
because nothing else would sooth me; and with each pang
I came a little closer, chasing it
like a true addict, savoring my damage,

Exalting in my lonely conscience.

When I awoke the opiates were leaving my body
so I lay in their dark waves of intemperate sensation
among what thoughts etch onto the inside of my skull
and found myself driving with a concussion
towards a home for misanthropes.

Apotheogen
n.
A psychoactive substance that induces alterations in perception, mood, consciousness, cognition, or behavior for the purposes of subduing personal drives in a profane context.
The functional opposite of an entheogen.

From the root, apotheo- (apotheosis, to deify) and the suffix -gen (genesis, to come into being).

Apotheogenesis can be understood as
the act of concealing or obscuring the self
through the singular focus of one's will onto a pattern or substance,
Raising it to a god-like position within their ideology.
The individual is thus subsumed by it, distracting from
dissonant parts of the self which are incongruent
with the whole. Such parts become hidden
though their drives remain in conflict.