when i think of you
it's always christmas in my heart.
it's always icy cold and brisk -
not the kind of cold that you bristle at,
but the cold that makes you gasp for a breath,
like you've just realized you're alive.

the feeling swells from my heart,
up the sides of my neck,
warming everything it touches,
enflaming muscles it has no business brushing,
until i can barely get any air down my windpipe.
my lungs seize up, just as they are,
and i can't remember ever taking a deep breath in my life.
are you buried down there in my solar plexus still?

i know i've gotta be out of my mind -
that's one thing i'm sure of these days.
but i can't shake that excitement from my heart,
like i might see you this time,
you might be around just for a few days
and we might sneak off together to talk,
dreaming dreams bigger than each of us,
bigger than both of us,
or just sit somewhere and be silent.
i'll make up and excuse about seeing an old friend,
not a lie, really. no, not a lie at all. simply understated.

god i'm thankful for these memories.
i'm so grateful, through and through,
for the blaze that flames on in my heart,
a feeling i could never forget, never replace.
God bless the freezing air, the frost on the windows,
the leafless trees, stiff and cold on the side streets,
the brick buildings and all their contained heat,
a hot tea, and you forgetting all the words to all the songs,
the fireplace in the downstairs den that I'll never see again.

God bless the early mornings and late nights,
the trading of songs back and forth,
the wrapping of emotional gifts and
the excitement of opening them in front of each other,
the beanies and layers of coats and sweaters,
the dressing up, doing of hair, & sweet smelling perfume.
God bless the light beers and sweet wines,
antique shopping and long cash-wrap lines,
lattes and americanos, hot in your little hand,
the smell of coffee beans wafting through my nostrils
early in the morning when mom is the only one awake.

but most of all god bless the music.
the sound of church bells drawing out
a year's worth of love and hope from my heart,
eternal, transcendent and completely dissociated from personality,
the electric guitars playing "o holy night",
my mom on the piano, a text from you on the screen.

i'd be nothing without that music, different without you.
i don't miss the arguments and the fights, the awkwardness,
but i miss the rosy edges of everything,
all of my experiences at Christmas are tainted by you -
i miss focusing on what i'm doing,
while always half-focusing on you.
"sure, i'm helping cook dinner - but did my phone just buzz?!"
it did. it always did. whenever i checked, it was buzzing.

my brain can't understand this
or plan what needs to be done,
so i will leave the matter to my heart,
the ***** of deepening, infiltrating
penetrating and incorporating all of the love it feels
into every moment of every day of my life.

out here, a glass is raised,  always waiting for your cheers.

Some people get all dressed up
when they go out.
We don't have to try too hard,
It's who we are, but
we have our fun all the same.
Desperation always
is in fashion. For a while there
I thought I could change.

A man of strange substance
that knows not why he does
this to himself. The chance
that he might be someone
who'd experience something,
But without the drugs that
give him a grand illusion
of power
over chance,
Over a bundle
of drives that rule
fate. "Whoever fights
monsters should see to it
that in the process he does not
become a monster. And if you gaze
long enough into an abyss, the abyss
will gaze back into you." Grand so.

Some hexen and a few cans? Grand.
Some 2C-T-2 and DCK? Grand.
Some more 4-MEC? Grand.
What'll we have today?
Will it make any difference?
Who is this person at the reigns?
This alchemical dabbling, these habits
of mine, there's something right about this
curiosity
among all the despair and wrong decisions
that surround it. Of course, I've made mistakes
in the past, let slip this and that;
My composure recovered
but my self-esteem's
been beat down
by others, and that's
why I first turned to these
things. It is a pity drug use is
not so well-respected as a practice
when it extends beyond the jurisdiction
of medicine, there's more to psychoactivity
than poison, remedy or scapegoat.

This passion of mine spans from sacred to academic.
Please extend me the courtesy of recognizing intellect.
We are, all of us, thinking beings. I am merely trying to make my thoughts more apparent, to clarify this thing we term experience.
We are the interesting animal, creatures of language and game.
Where does all this fit in, those things we may choose to do?
That's all I ask. That's why I do this. I wonder where it is
I am headed, but the only thing I spend too much time
questioning are my instincts. I must trust in myself,
How else does one succeed?

These refractions of character
are a tiresome habit, but necessary.

Nomadic motivation moves the masses at midnight;
Meandering, shambling souls moaning for innovation with
neanderthal persuasion. Keep the pace past paleolithic,
and gift the gifted with a wicked sickness. Instilled hatred,
From decades of desecration. The profound **** and violation
of the womb that holds all creation, our embryo of imagination
Decaying with elation while I shift my shells to match the constellations.

-SLuR

The Oran rain patters against my home,
The wind breaks upon the house
and I lie in bed
feeling comfortably alone.

I need to sort my life, move on from this town,
Need to stop being on my own, want to give myself
away, want someone to take me
far away. I'd willingly lose myself
to another, a city or a person; the other,
Me. Is this narcissism? Can I just be happy,
Or must I change so radically
in order to escape?

The real work must begin,
This aimlessness must end before it becomes
ceaseless in its expansion. All I have are words
and melodies, moments in experience that will be lost to all
time. I might as well craft an album, and nod to all I've felt
and've left to feel. Music keeps me alive, 's the only thing
sometimes.

There's pain in me still
and I don't know how to
feel it. I don't blame anyone
except myself. I tend towards
sadness over anger, default to it.
Every morning I wake up and feel
my own judgement swallow me,
Only to spit out my dreams
and tantalize me with
undischarged tears.

Another sleepless night spent
messing with synthesizers, drum
machines and groove-boxes. Music
may have stalled my flow of words
but I dream of joining them together
and spinning songs out into the world.
I wonder when this penchant for insomnia
will create something worthy.
The storm outside is howling
and my mind drifts towards
philosophy, a thought of
pharmacophenomenology.

What of a philosophy
of psychoactivity?
What does a philosophy of drugs entail
if we are to do it justice?
Will it help us better assess the cognitive
component of substances, their suitability
for patients? Is there more to psychology
than cognition? Will it help us appraise
those supposedly ineffable qualities
of mind? Will it help us understand
the patterns humans engage themselves in?
Will it help one follow the string, the thread,
The knots and narratives that we are composed of.
These are valuable enough questions for me to justify
developing the pharmacophenomenological method.