The questionable house-shares, cramped studios,
Dilapidated granny flats, with bedrooms anywhere
a bed could conceivably fit. There is no dignity
to be found here, nor a notion of feng shui.

Countless hours trawling through ads,
Listings and social media pages,
Innumerable miles traveled to view
places too small, expensive, uninhabitable

or just plain inhospitable.
After a viewing I'd drive back, south
towards the Wicklow mountains, to Bree where

I could rest my head awhile, before my landlord
sells. I will find a place here, oh yes,
This city has it's charms.

I put on some Boards of Canada
and begin searching
the dark web.

I forgot how much time I spent here,
Perusing boards and forums,
Running the shadows,

Turning over dark corners.
I put on some Carbon Based Lifeforms
and continue researching.

For those in society who have been displaced,
For whom no bell tolls,
For ware no refuge is safe.

Hackers. Dealers. Journalists.
Dissidents. Whistleblowers. Anarchists.
It's all very strange. I put on some drift-wave

to study them, their stories.

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

That weekend something softened in me,
I felt a wholesomeness I'd almost forgotten.

During the car journey we spoke of things so
relaxed yet deeply. During a communal dinner
I noticed us reciprocally glancing away from one
and other, sharing a mischievous, concealed smile.
The next morning those juicy 90's tracks
blared from your car stereo along the back roads of K-town.

After that we messaged occasionally. I took up some old practices
and found myself believing strongly.
This month I felt the ground beneath me, to stoke the fires of my soul.

The clay of my body softens, I am malleable
in these desires for our health, to be with them,

Old money gone bad,
New money gone wrong,

Last month I started a course of Zyban,
This month I remembered
the days of theater;

Our familial failings, stage right.
An escape offered by friends, stage left.
To center, torn by whatever it is the world says.

On the apron, resplendent in lurid hues,
Illuminated by neon bisexual lighting,
I find I am comfortable here, at last;

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 cannot fault your etiquette,
"Fate had you by the heel".
I state that Europe has committed to democracy;
Achilles might personify this at present
given the silence in Rome, Madrid, and Paris.
I hope our solidarity endures afterward, for
another great recession is coming, and thereafter
another counter-culture will rise from the discontent
and be fated to excess.

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.

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

'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.

Felt quite low last weekend. Took 12.5mg of amitryptaline.
I'd been meaning to  assess its effect on sleep/dreaming
as part of a long-running personal experiment.
Experienced hypogogia as I drifted off that night
but the content of dreaming itself was unclear.
The sedate feeling lingered into the next day.

Forty-eight hours after initial administration
I noticed an offset/aftereffect. I dreamed that night
and remembered enough nonsense to be bored/perturbed.
I experienced a vivid hypnopompic state, whereby
parts of my dream clung to waking thought for long enough
to remember some narrative (some sort of teen-drama mash-up
but the lovable main characters were missing, and I was earnestly
trying to convince myself it [the dream?] was worth continuing.

I wander through town by day,
Stopping at Sparch to chat.

I meander about town in the eve,
Chasing the hues of dusk.

I tear up in misplaced anxiety but,
Keeping my eyes on the sky

I am transfixed by what is above us,
Spacing out into that golden indigo fade

I know I am lost, yet I am with the horizon.
Lost in the sauce,

I dream of escape, albeit to an unknown destination.
Bathing in this, 1⁄f

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.

We made a choice
to fall like stars,

We fell so low
it was never too far.

We let go our cynicism,
Our disenchantment,

Forget the world,
Remember our planet.

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 ****!

I dreamed a pair of desert cobras
were wrapped around my torso
running up to my left shoulder.

I felt their movement across me
and their weight, I did not flinch
but staggered, wary. I've been told

there's no malice in me, of this I'm certain.
Why then do I carry these walterinnesia aegyptia as a burden?

In Ancient Greece the toxotai were held in contempt,
They never placed themselves in physical danger
and so were not seen to be courageous. I've
indulged in dissociation, been captive
in a town of "nothing but snakes".
I ask you to blow out the three poisons
of my soul, three unwholesome roots. I ask:

If I inhale the clouds,
Will you exhale for me?

I have value.
    I am courageous.
    I am worthy of love.​
    I give myself permission to be myself.
    ​I am enough.​​

I care for myself.
    I am mindful.
    I am strong-willed
    I have clear intention.
    I share in the good life with others.

Hone in on those genuine desires.
    Health.
    Prosperity.
    Passion.
    Trust.

Trust in the world.

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.

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."

Walking thru my new old suburbia
on this quiet June eve, it's in the air and
I'm at ease. Its chill frisson has me so captive;
A sunset vespers some comfortable views,
I feel it fade as peaceful night sets in.
I am wandering the streets again.
I scope about these estates.
That indigo hue
in the sky

The knot in my stomach
tightens, this awareness
will fade if I do not take
care of myself. I can't live
like this, mind seeks to cut
itself off from my body and

its emotion.
We are two; mind
and body, man and woman,
Darkness and light. I am one; a human
on her journey, trying hard to remember his old

life. Forgotten hopes of learning
meditation, yoga, and tantra
as a means to better my health.
What wishful dreaming, a notion
of adventure, looking back it seems
like momentary longing was satisfied
in its instance of being.
I remember

the existential amazement of a child
and the loss of that is haunting me.
I also remember a willingness to
play the villain and I wonder
whether a carefree attitude
is the thing I'm missing.

I think often about the
Inheritance Of Loss
and of innocence.

I thought I was ready
to find someone and relate
to them, that I was ready to rejoin

I toss and turn, lost,
Holding to darkness
as a comfort. Shut my eyes
as if sleep has me, but I don't rest.

These mornings I am sober but
out of my mind, for

I feel an old craving

to change what I am.
Stumble through,
Hesitate upon

These festive weekends
cause such thoughts to stir in me, longing to understand
the person, our being here, these notions.

I find it difficult to feel pleasure, I am too concerned
with aponia.

Substance should be used with intention,
We must intend authentically.
I feel I could do so among them,

That I could trust
and be vulnerable.

On Sunday I took 350 micrograms
of dimethoxybromoamphetamine,

In the afternoon I prayed

to the drives which animate us,
beseeching them:

To be mindful,
To clear intentions,
To care for myself, and
share in the good life.

The clever craft emerges from
intelligence, willpower. It allows
for healing, or human enhancement,
Provides a means to catalyze inspiration,
Or indeed proffers mere modes of recreation,
And of course a dark side which is unwholesome.

All the same I turn to those fabled schools of Alteration,
Of Conjuration, Destruction, Illusion,
Of Mysticism, and Restoration;
Its immanent applications

and its transcendent source:
Metaphysics. Knowledge, experience.
It is worth acknowledging recreation, playfulness.

I dreamed of 839 last night,
I dreamed the gang was back together
and it really messed me up.

Here comes the last festival
of this lost summer,
*"Safe as ****."

Such power runs thru
cascading technology,

So driven is the word
spread thru comms networks
and uttered by multifarious devices;

Soon consumed
by feedback and
amplified until it

subsides for lack of dopamine, and then:
Soothed by new content a cascade begins again.
Socials can feel like a perpetual, unstructured interview
but think what a novel form of interrogation it is
and what a humane place this is become;

Yet some still hold to their crypt
over this brave new world
and the people in it.

Yesterday's analog echoes,
Today's digital samples,
Tomorrow's quantum timbre

will change how we hear ourselves
or determine our fantasies.

Thus passes a lifetime.

As one ages it can become difficult to see
that beauty in the world, I try
to remember to look for it,
To enjoy simple aesthesis when possible.

Listening to Ocean Eyes
and I feel older inside.

Realized how alone I am, wondered
whether I haven't been clean for too long.
I keep forgetting
I don't have a substance use disorder, I keep forgetting
I'm not currently a drug user.
I gave up that life, and
can't remember why.

Take enough benzodiazepine and you can time travel,
But only forward;
Was never really too bothered with benzos, 'cause I just
wanna go back

Feeling that division
(Vivere Memento)
between the world of techne (these abstractions
of data) and the world of virtue (those intuitions
and stories). Those more meaningful, self-fashioned
but unscripted, a-textual. These to quantify
what is authentic, original, genuine.

It strikes me as near sacrilegious,
Intention mining,
Sentiment analysis,
Would it disenchant us, and profane
our living narratives. They would strip us of those
vestiges, and even belief: cognitive liberty
is the freedom to believe
in your story,

I'm trying
so hard
to be human
and that
is where I
keep falling
down. It hurts.

Strange that I missed those gray skies
and places I've hated in shallow moments
and glacial moods. I suffered such confusion.
My shadow told me: I wouldn't know what to do
with someone. I realize I am splitting, these runaway
valuations have me reckless and lost, out on the borders
my lines are crossed.

"When I was younger I could not concentrate", she said.
That really stuck with me, because I'd been there
and found it happening to me once again.

My consciousness locks up, its parts bristle in anarchic chaos,
Incoherent, indominant. I am bedridden into the afternoon,
Indecisive, fetal. I muse on possible chemical motivation:

The unsubtle euphoria of dexamphetamine,
The warm excitement of a phenidate,
The cold focus of an adrafinal,
The brutish pyrovalerone,
And my prescription
NDRI cathinone.

I get up, disconcerted, apathetic, yet I write this
just to prove that darkness can be a source of strength
when more wholesome platitudes fail.
I know those feelings of power are founded on something
unstable, unsustainable, cruel; yet here I am, in this moment with you.

There came a point where the learning ceased
and when recreation became its sole purpose
I had to desist, this is why
you don't see
me anymore;

I gave up everything that
I had to reach
where

I am.

I have been quiet these passing months,

Reflecting on my desires
amid this summer's solitude;
Their difference, and appearance,
These attitudes towards my future.
Odd to consider what changes in a year.

In May I moved back in with a few friends,
But after a month I move back out again.
As June comes to a close I find myself
at odds again, I assess 2C-T-21 but
it is unremarkable with effects
resembling a subdued 2C-E.
Given its toxic metabolites
I have no interest going
any further into it.
I guess they can't all be winners.

I attend the 2nd conference in
Philosophy and Psychedelics Studies
hosted by the University of Exeter. I applaud
the commitment and passion of this disparate group
of drug-addled academics, but still I am wary of our efforts.
It is a hard to study a thing
which alters the very faculties
of those who partake of it. As for
my own contribution, an old concept,
Apotheogenic.

With strange things at my back
I tread softly, wandering
to find déjà vu waiting patiently,
But you already knew that.

I wonder will I escape this view:
"...the viewpoint of absolute truth, [where] what we feel and experience in our ordinary daily life is all delusion";
But you already knew that.

I wander through memory,
Against a dark background.

I wanna feel your heart soak
in lake control,

Unreadable with
beautiful abandon.

Been real before,
Now we're otherwise
or elsewhere.
Do you remember
all the time we spent
waiting to score?
Evening simmers
so sweet dusk
could hear her.

Yeah we knew what we were,
The world had nothing over us,
With less stress we were better for it.
We breathed in and I could feel how close
we were. It was real
and we were the best,
What was it that left us breathless?

Feeling that burnout
but I got the remedy.

Ran several kilometers
with a weighted backpack
on 3-MethylEticyclidine

but I only felt something when
Love Inc. by Booka Shade
played, it reminds me of that feeling,
Freed me up.

**** the gender thing, no one asked to be
born, just wanna live
without abject judgement
for something you never signed up for;
I never really felt I belonged too.

Alas,
una
dabit
quod
negat
altera.

.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,

I query the belief
that I do not use drugs
for the traditional reasons.
This belief entails crafting a morality
and there is nothing as perilous; good, bad
and evil. I hold that psychoactive substances are
inanimate. I'm not sure I can distinguish my use from
another, but now I'll write otherwise.
I realized in the shower
my reason for continuing down
this path. Clearly no longer recreational
or spiritual (even though its origins are there).
Neither therapeutic notions nor addictive patterns motivate
my wanderings anymore. No,
My interpretation seeks to push the limits
of what I feel as human.
I am willing to test the conditions
of our humanity.
I sought the threshold
at which we are animal, and
in this willingness to lose my mind
I'd found something
Else;

The human cannot return to nature,
There is too much beyond us which we cannot return.
Signs, tools, and above all, promise.
To promise is to prescribe a duty, and offer one's reputation
as collateral. It implies trust, it assures
that one will act in accordance with their word.

What should make this anything other
than an elaborate set of signs
used to measure
the value of other humans?
An intricate social tool, as it were.

In promise there is a prescription of duty
towards another, and an invocation of hope.
In promise there is subordination, implied trust.

Let us focus on what matters,
Let other things fall to the side,

Let there be a wholesome truth
and an honest reconciliation,

Let our best selves manifest,
And let us encourage the best

in each other. I write this
'cause I reckon we're in it

for the long haul
surely as I know

I rarely feel anything
anymore, think I'm in
a lot of pain but I can't

tell, been playing with
this numbness for too
long, hide and seek.

Somebody
answer me,

Why are we
human?

Conditions and connections are all
that minds must unify.

We go about the world
in search of patterns, seeking shapes, supposing connections; we are this process. It is all there is
but something's missing.

What ingredient is it
that makes our souls

I still yearn
for those seeping rays
of zodiacal light

that creep into the horizon
as the long sesh comes to an end.
5-MAPB reminds me

of where it all began: youthful escapism.
A conviction that we were part of something,
Our transcendension rituals.

Do I still believe? I am so tempted
by flualprazolam, that it could lift me
away from anxiety, to feel the back-scatter

of thoughts adrift
in blissful weightlessness; but
it is only an apotheogen, whereas I long

Any Anything‽
Played that first gig.
For the first time in several years
the remnants of Blackmail House were
under one roof again, and it was not painless.

Though sometimes I feel I reject every chance
the world gives me to lead a better life, today
I know I've turned a new leaf and ushered in
new tides. Thought I was cursed, for whenever
I put my feelings into words they become untrue
but I overturn it now to speak with you
authentically. World is not a thing,
World is a process, a process
of exchange, truths are
the most valuable
things we can
ever trade.

My history is between
me, my mental health
and this messy poetry.

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

The way I live, to be forgotten, but I'm still here
living all my low effort heroes.

Sometimes I get low but it's alright,
I have my heroes.

It's OK to let go. Release,
Regrow/move,

Replant your soul;