Why was I so enamored as a young person
by the world I had found in addiction
and everything it encompassed;

The search, the climb
and the view from up high.
It was as a balm to my longing,
A salve to that infinite homesickness.

Why was I so enchanted as a young adult
by the moments we experienced
as companions of substance;

A breeze caught my sails
and I escaped the doldrums
of mundane existence, I knew
"Today is Yesterday's Tomorrow"

We had to grow up and pretend
like there aren't any of these problems
burning onto one's soul, eating at us

like fire around a coal;
Judgement and disbelief
are among my greatest fears

yet are the subtle expressions
of this fickle palimpsest, composite
of our longest years.

Thought I was creating something,
Detailing feeling and knowing,
Dedicating experience and growing,
Thinking of something better than me
in the hopes that it would better me.
I am not ashamed of myself-consoling poetry,
I had to try, that's all I ever meant by it.
If anyone should notice, and gods forbid they do
actually read this, then I'll admit it: I am Mydriasis

They say, "it's always safer not to take drugs".
What of medicine, what of utility?
There's certainly need for antidotes,
and pain relief and even wakefulness.

They'd amend, "It's safer not to take drugs recreationally",
What of therapy and wholesomeness,
The spiritual aspect or communal element
of mind-expanding or pair- and group-bonding.

I ask, is there a healthy amount of recreational drug use?
Can we perform a hedonic calculus to determine
this amount, per person, per substance?
How do we treat with the ethics
of recreational drug use?
What do we owe
the virtues we have inherited,
How do we reckon with the vices identified?

Is substance exceptionalism ever warranted?
Do we deserve cognitive liberty?
Is such a thing coherent
given I may have become biased

in partaking or abstaining
from those drugs
I endeavor to study.
How do we determine what is pleasurable and right?

Spring to Summer;
Degrees went by
as he remembered
how we lay there
some hazy days
ago, down by the Shire
in a place in the Wesht
near a canal,
A cathedral's
oxygenated copper dome
poking out, rising above
trees taller than streetlamps.

Winter from Fall;
Degrees went by
in memoriam of
a park, occluded by mist
breathed in to form the fog of
Aetherius, patron of our territory.

Other gods fought for these lands
we'd otherwise have forgotten
but for they were sacred

and us, abandoned.


Degrees went by
Degrees of memory/days,
Degrees of amnesia/haze;

That feeling like
you've been
meandering through
this whole life.

Know in yourself what ain't true,
Yet can't help but feel it
as black turns to blue.

The Warp rumbles
as the young gods stew,
The Necrontyr slumber
whilst the C'tan renew.

A swan cruised down Lough Atalia
as midnight struck this brisk November
a second followed in its wake.
Sparse weeknight traffic sews by,
Woven into the quiet breeze of a new Wednesday.

I listen to a few tunes as I cycled down The Line,
Pausing to note this moment
and gaze upon G-twn.

I've never been so clean
and always I crave opia.

The rain is so frail, beatific
moment, dim precipitate on my bare arms
and wondrous half-light washing across the city sky.

Do I trust myself with CNS depressants, or am I just deterred
by the thought of those more eclectic GABA aftereffects.

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.

Perhaps I wondered too much

in the past
and now I must
let my mind be silent.

Or perhaps it is that series of events

which molded my mind.
What I grasped from experience
is dulled in comparison to what's past.

I wish that by chance I would come across some new

experience as vivid as the past.
Though we only remember what strikes us,
I wonder why these days I often wait outside striking range.

How many of us are there, out there:
Wherever are those poets in all their
graces? Whose life story might they
find, trial by fire to test the will and
condition the mind. Who'd outshine
even the most illustrious noble man?

Above lies an awful brick of a verse
if I do say so myself, I 'ave not yet
mastered the art of grace my-lord.

The supplicant whose life story shone
might yet demand attention but
"I'd prefer not to".

Such inarticulations of thought
as I meander, sometimes
lonely, longing for
company yet

content in emotion.
For when I quiet myself
I hear the world's rhythms
and their harmony;

I see dim summer's twilight
through heavy-quilted rain-clouds.
It is something to cycle through

after dusk, a time like no other,
About the town
ever-dear to me

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.

I became unsure as to the correlation of knowledge with meaning,
And happiness.

“There’s always a lighthouse.
There’s always a man.
There’s always a city.”
There’s always a question,
There’s ever a quest,
There may be an answer
but never an end.

Experience everything,
Be anything,
Forget nothing,
Become something;
This is existence.
There’s no turning back.
The unexamined life is not worth living,

But the over-examined life loses meaning.
All we can do is grant each other equal significance

Part of me is gone, stolen
from my psyché. I lost my tribe

and with them, my raison d'etre.
I lost my anthem
when I settled for normalcy,
When I stopped believing I was special.
When I ceased questing for ventures curious, and

considered sated my cravings most fiendish.
I lost my anthem
when my writing diminished,
When my exercise withered,
When my drug use slipped
and my demons pleaded.
I lost my anthem

and it's left me
plenty of memories
I can no longer pronounce
without a tone of condescension.
Those misarticulated metaphysics have
timbres' as junkiesque.
That'll suffice for a sentence in G-twn. Heaven.

During the holidays we'd spend some time
on our university campus
tripping.
I'm sure the total amount of time spent there
under the influence of psychedelics
would surprise
a few of my lecturers, but I know that
places of learning benefit from
the open-minded.

Eyestrain my dull mind
as I wander through the village.
Wandering through memory, listening.

I pause and feel gravity, feeling it
as a loss of control
and for a moment this thrills me
as I lean back
and fall into it; I return home

and fall asleep, to dream
of simple human connection.

I enter a house, brought there by
a friend to make new acquaintances.
The ambience is party-like, lighthearted
but quite excitable. A mash of bootleg pop
pipes out the walls, I recall
elements of Diving Faces by Liquid Child
interspersed with strange rāga leads.
My friend and I relax, lying side-by-side
as if resting. Tentative kiss, and I kiss back
before waking to that

fading sensation. I lay there for a time, hoping
this vivid hypnopompia
would just go on.

I see the reflection
of this world
and a reflection of myself,
Thy dilated pupil
sealed its glass envelope;
We consume and produce everything
that ever is, was and will be
simply by perceiving,
It exists regardless
but we give it meaning.

The city is quiet
on this stoney
Sunday evening.

Some students are hungover,
Some carry on the ReSession.

Dusk; and the streets are zen,
Clear-skies and lamplight
shining down as night sets in.

Who's on the recovery buzz,
Who's keeping it going?

In my city,
                 All I know is,
                                      All I want is;
I love you.
                 Sunrise over stone.

He had sunk into mediocrity, the inward facing tone of his poetry over the more recent years was proof enough to convince him there was nothing great about his purported foray into post-modernism.

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.

I find myself dreaming of strange tides
and awesome shores. I mix some ***
and ginger, in my headphones I hear
a storm. Now everything goes dim

and I feel it. Drink is a writer's drug,
It allows one to lose their poise and swim.
Remember when we cared less and felt more.
I lost this when I yearned for a normal life, but

it is in my nature to seek this thing.
It is within me, it will rise again.
I tried to forget about a world
but the world remembered

and said:
We are lost,
We are lonely,
We are forgotten,

We are ephemeral,
We are the next gen,
We are the algorithm,
We are the new ****.

Consciousness is a projection
existing in another's projection
which we presume exists inside
an ultimate projection, the universe.
Why stop there? When there's no context
there can be only infinite regress.

A more convoluted box you'll not
find than those pandoran trips
that the psyché left behind.


"All these infinite universes  . . .

There's only one of me out there
but there's a few of me in here.

I need to sort some **** out
and I might be a while.

The pace of life quickens, recognition
dawns in the dark corners of my mind,
To come alive, it's been so long, too long
to feel some; embrace these sways, to seek
eternity. Town
was such a remnant today. I could sense that
buzz hanging on the dusk: electric, ecstatic, but
I did not give chase.
Is it anhedonia when one's pleasures become mere
intellectual pursuits: my love of pharmacy, of music?

That recognition flickers
like a candle in the dark,
It was lit for you.

but I'm bone dry:

Saw that pain smolder in my eyes, I kept it burning
until the scene could switch
and sand morphed into tiles
as a burst of sunlight filtered
from the surface to illuminate the words on

these old pages;

Flicking through a book in the deepest end
of a swimming pool, it is so tranquil
down here but now it's time
to come up for air.

I break the surface
and there are storm clouds
above me, it starts to rain as I get out
of the pool and walk away into the garden

soaked to the skin.

The things that tumble out
may ring true, but
in uttering them become a reality.
"Whatever my reasons,
Were they strange or I the stranger, I feel"

how my mind misled me
and misplaced my will
to discern my desire.

Mindlessness empty me
into the environment.
What is this heaven
where I rest easy?

Unconsciousness dissolve him
into a solution. Were he to bathe
in delta waves then perhaps
we would be cleansed.

Dreamlessness obscure us,
Our mind is hidden
from the 'I'; how
does self cease?

Emergence, order
from chaos, resumption
of the gestalt. Why do I continue
as a process that runs wild when I am lost

to those enthalpic thoughts.
Though part of me remains
connected to the Entheon

What was it I endured for three tears throughout
these years. I hate being a man, a man so Othered

by virtue of who I am. Took a holiday from reality
sponsored by a thienodiazepine, the rebound anxiety
may have got to me but I wanted to be ou'r it, to

be outta my mind, just like the first time. I felt
like I deserved it because it granted me such relief
and that felt so perfect; to remember I'm just a human

trying to escape her human plans.

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.

Took half a milligram of bromazolam
after a long week, thoroughly enjoyed
the anxiolysis. Fifteen hours later
I can still feel its metabolites
at work, yet that feeling
when the world became a friendlier place
is unyielding.
I wonder how long I have before the rebound hits.

Odd to crave the lightness of something so apotheogenic,
Knowing full well
it's darkness.

"i'm ok" in the lower case
conjures such an image
of intensely fragile
emotional states.

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 took some suboxone
and wandered down to Dead Man's Beach,
Drifting over the sands, blown out, floating away
in the Atlantic wind,

I forget what troubles me.

Today was so quiet

and by the end of
tonight, tomorrow
will shine; even
though the most
azure of feelings
fade, given time,
Into their home
within memory.

Tomorrow is silent

Meaning in Perpetual Threads
Definition in Purposeful Thoughts.

Each of us is holding back the heavens
and thus we stand accomplished.

The things of earth will grow strangely dim
as we account for those times.

I'd forgotten the plural of anecdote is not 'data';
There are things for which no quantity will satisfy.

Trying to Get to Heaven
Before They Close the Door.

To make it, focus on an intention
and follow it as your guide star.

My head's ringing, that serotonin itch.
Everyone's doing things; all I wanted
was to be forgotten, some dreams do
come true. Now I stare up at the sky,
Face-up in the middle of my street,

I may be a loser, I may be ****, I may be a fool and I may be wrong.

A short time ago, in a city far west
there were a few tribes
of women and men
who sessioned together
regularly, until the crack of dawn;
And when that healthy detachment
from reality faded you'd walk home.
Sneak up to your bed, quietly, lest ye
be caught in such a state, the state you
were in. Those heroes
who had a gaff of their own
could session endlessly, so long
as they had the energy, they pushed
those bodies as far as they'd go, lit by the fires of their bright souls.

The whiff of peat briquettes
and glow of sodium-vapor
carry echoes
of this evening's Angelus,
It peals across satellite estates.

December's early darkness
dispelled by old streetlamps,
And the draught of winter
yet to solstice
held back by dreams of escape.

We swept through an altered town,
Familiar faces, I met someone I knew
but cannot remember; what would it mean
to experience a moment
without prior?

Ever fantasise about dissolving oneself in a vat of acid?
Took so many psychedelics I very nearly lost it; it being
ego, ergo, myself. Found a solution, and don't give a ****!

Flaws don't absolve us of responsibility, yet they erode our agency
by compromising one's decision-making ability.

Feeling somewhat high-strung, I decided to try pagoclone
thinking it might soften things. I assumed was a mere anxiolytic
and ate 10mg on a full stomach
so it was late before it really came on.

A few hours later the early anxiolysis shifted,
I noticed some color enhancement, slight loss of
motor coordination and of interest in complex tasks.
It is less amnesic than zopiclone, even so 5am appeared
seemingly out of nowhere
as did the hallucinations.
This was unexpected
albeit not entirely unwelcome.

At first there were occasional, drifting 2D patterns
which rolled across the surface of things.
These became 3D enhancements, the surface of an object
would bulge, contort, and follow my head-turns
or sway with my disposition. The kitchen chandelier's arms
followed my eyes as they cradled their little light-bulbs,
When I smiled or grimaced they made faces back.

Later I mistook some crawling patterns on my desk
for an insect invasion, but knowing my mind could not be trusted
I made a video to see would it fail to capture my hallucination.
Sure enough, this video reproduced what I saw:
A tide of glitches flowing along the beech veneer,
Sweeping over the grain
like bit-crushed waves along a rotoscoped coast.
Satisfied by my evidence, I decided to deal with it in the morning.

At this point I had recognized a few hallucinations.
I thought it possible this was delusion, but what is remarkable
is how I was unable to see past my empirical conviction
that this was indeed happening; such confusion.

As I lay in bed I saw a gnome (of the garden variety)
and his angel-mate perched on the rail of my curtains.
He smiled menacingly, and held her close as if to dance,
A waltz with the fabric. Eventually I fell asleep

In the morning I watched a video of my desk,
Filmed haphazardly, punctuated by a desperate wince.
Now I ran my hand over it's inanimate surface
and scratched at the grain in disbelief.
There is a vague feeling of dread,
A negative afterglow
left after acute delusion
and temporal dysfunction.
I supposed I must integrate this brush with unreality.

The pines' silhouette a dusk sky.
Suburban streetlight glows in silence.

I cycle 15km to a rave in a quarry, take MXPr
and dance for several hours before cycling home.
I like dissos but they make me feel afar from people.

I want to be close with them, but a poison wellspring can
no thirst quench. At 28 I question if I'm borderline,
And some of it makes sense. I take my eyes
off the ground, and see clouds;

There's a moment in the adult
as it's grown, where the wonder
that was felt as a child
has been supplanted
by a routine knowledge of the world;
World as structure
rather than as process.
When curiosity is replaced

with expectations and patterns
for us to retrace
into the tender night.
"Literary or scientific, liberal or specialist,

All our education is predominantly verbal
and therefore fails to accomplish
what it is supposed to do.

Instead of transforming children
into fully developed adults,
It turns out students of the natural sciences
who are completely unaware of Nature as the primary fact of experience,
It inflicts upon the world  students of the humanities who know nothing of humanity,
Their own or anyone else's."

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.

A dream of three parts the more significant.

On campus but I felt lost, deceived, confused;
Visible to many people, few of whom I knew.

In a fantasy, we searched littoral gates, scrub-land
and trekked across frozen mountains. I argued
with my old master in Isengard, and lost.

Transported underground to an oracular room,
Colorful shadows on the wall show visions of
the far corners of this middle-world. I turned
away from those portentous scenes, to a staircase
that towered before me. Half-a-dozen chests perched
upon its odd steps, tragicomedic faces enameled into them.
Atop sat a grand piano, two saplings sprouting from its strings
and reaching up toward an attic skylight. From this lofty window
a voice uttered a strange, soft dialectic incantation, and a light shone
bright enough that I could climb out
through a ladder wrought of sunbeams.

Sometimes I feel so stricken by choice,
Yet constrained by an apathy
I wasn't born with.

In the quiet I keep watch under all the stars.

As they cradled each other
Rue and Jules turned the world 'round their scars.