I buried
my roots
in new-age
spirituality.

It nourished me
with words
like water,
soil
sunshine
and promised
a harvest.

They say
the hand
that points
to the moon,
is not
the moon
and I was thirsty.

My entitlement
told me
I should not
be humbled
by a glass
of water
when what
I desire
is a
spring.

Well the spring
never came
and my
cup became
just another
empty glass.

Now I've
stepped off
my hedonic
treadmill.

My frail
body was
not designed
to withstand
the aches
of running.

I'm a
tall woman,
albeit small.

I was built
to see
the little things
from great heights.

And so it became
my glass of water
turned to wine.

There is the latent hum of some probably-industrial sumthin-or-another in the distance. Sounds like a ferry at dock, or the Townsite mills characteristic hum of eternity as it once acted as the forever-whitenoise of my past life in Powell River.

Sasha has gone to see her friend a floor down. I sit candidly at her desk typing these words on her MacBook Pro.. her dorm is an ambient water of a place, but with every passing night I spend in it, it becomes harder and harder to fall asleep. The bed feels like wood board or padded cement now. Sasha rolls around in her sleep, occasionally choking on her tonsils and gagging a prolonged operatic note of snores. It's not like she can help it.. often, she talks about removing her tonsils as if it's something she can do with a spare moment between classes.

The dorm was easier for me to inhabit when I imagined her living quaintly and quietly without my constant everywhereness.. on her first night alone in bed, she slept like a baby and the overheating, I'm sure, was less to bear in my absence as there wasn't a ******* furnace spurning mammalian blood to every antipode of my body for the sake of staying alive.. just her capillaries attending to the night-shift and leaving no feedback loop between our ***-drenched thermostats. There was a feeling of otherness to it that I could warm my soul with as if I were people-watching at a mall filled with everyone I've ever encountered in the matrix.

She's beautiful. Sasha, I mean. Superstitious despite her attempts to claim otherwise, but of a massive intelligence often unspoken and endowed with a linguistic nature that can speak regardless of words. Highly suspicious of some perceived bond between Anya and I that can't seem to be severed, and playfully dousing suspicions of general infidelity into many of our brink-night conversations.. I can't say I do much to remedy her paranoia as I always kick it back with consistent jokes of having '30 girlfriends' or 'that was what the girl I ****** the other night said as well! Trippy.'

These are obvious jokes. I would never cheat on her and it's a pain to have her imagine I would.

Christ be honest, I can never find the time to write anymore because I keep pretending I'm busy. I keep glassing my eyes apart with coffee and **** and feeling the inner sting to write and write and write until my fingers are bruised and my entire demeanour is nothing more than an existence in pure, floating consciousness of sleet-covered panic attack self-immoliating itself in a Wal-Mart parking lot just to say hiya, Good God, how's the cloud of idolatry today? Fleeting? Empty? Shat? I'm starting to think you have the shorter end of the stick cuz I'm pretty sure I've found the Kingdom of Heaven and it's all a bunch of beautiful panic remedy exacterbated by SSRI psychedelic depersonalization with a life-wish disguised as a death-wish to push the envelope for mails sake, cuz I've got a message for the human race and all it says is 'humanity is not a RACE chill the **** OUT and become the human pace for the sake of nil planet without a plan you aren't a ******* poster-boy you're a poser' all very stone-cold thoughts in a volcano.. all very valid but pointless semantic gestures towards Finnegans Wake and the sequel I'd like to write called Finnegans Nap.

The other day, I stole a book from the university library.

I had a freelance article I had to start and preferably finish that same day, and Sasha had decided to skip psychology for Charles Bukowski so we scouted a quiet space on the windowsill overlooking the perpetual busk of student body.. I plugged my laptop in and sourly gazed at the flakey subjects I had to choose from until I noticed we were right next to a giant section entirely dedicated to the study of the Beat Generation. I picked out the closest book, and dove up on some academic diatribe about the implementation of Timex making watches an affordable commodity during the post-war boom, causing economy to become totalitarian in its accuracy and thus mental hegemony. It worked its way into stating that Jack Kerouac's On the Road was a blatant and concise rebellion against this form of timekeeping in its hedonic, careless flow that was not marked by 6 o'clock or on-the-dot redundancy.. the subject matter being so dense and alluring, I turned to Sasha and said, 'I have to steal this book.'

She chuckled a little, being a chronic kleptomaniac herself, and retorted, 'are you sure you can do that? They have these sensor things that go off when you leave.. they'd catch you probably.' In my mind, I was needing to exorcise myself of Judaeo-Christian morality so as to guarantee a survival and thriving intellectual feed regardless of red-tape or monetary symbolism.. I saw myself adapting to a hedonic habit of robbery for the sake of food and freedom or some such half-witted excuse like that, and took Sasha's warning as a challenge to transcend my typical moral comfort zone.

Glassy-eyed, I asked Google how I'd go about bypassing the security scanners and, lo and behold, within 5 minutes I had my answer and was already digging through the books binding with my house-key to remove the magnetic strip hidden in the spine. After 10 minutes of exhilaration and anxiety at potentially being caught, the strip was out and jammed between two loose wood-boards in the window sill. I told Sasha we should try to leave.

As I neared the scanner, I let go of consequence in remembrance of my mortality, the blank expressions on our faces probably hinting at some form of degenerate nervousness had someone decided to analyze us aaaaaand yet.. we made it through as safe as a bird through an open window then out the other side.

Soothing, sensational,
elegant as the harp,
Semblance, integument,
covering of the tarp,
Ebullient, vivacious,
precision of the mind,
Vehement, appetent,
keen & one of a kind,
Perfervid, chocolate katydid,
desirable & luscious taste,
Delectable, ambrosial,
palatable & consumed with haste,
Sybaritic, voluptuous,
enticing to the senses,
Libidinous, hedonic,
enriched untightened hinges,
Efficacious, puissant,
robust delight to the eye,
Potent, consequential,
immeasurable symbol of the sky,
Pulchritudinous, gorgeous,
magnificent as the autumn sun,
Resplendent, vivid, lustrous
as a diamond-lithographed gun,
Sympathetic, affectionate,
condoling soul of a angel,
Altruistic, benignant,
warmhearted with no mangle,
Serenity, tranquility,
composure of divine peace,
Harmonious, amicable,
placid as the slow moving creek...

The tension is mounting, standing in line
Bass reverberates, the sound of things to come
Manic conversation and body language animation
Staying awake until we see the sun.

Enter the venue greeted by sticky collective body heat
The treble of the onslaught of noise now palpable
Without thinking, i begin to move my feet
Becoming one with the masses of bodies moving in unison.

The milk of the night, one in my hand from a mate
I drink it down as I become expectant
Excitedly waiting for my body to be seized
And exited by a juggernaut of positive emotions.

Every stranger is a one minute friend
Micro moments of love become my guide for the night
The music sounds like the songs of the gods
The rhythm and percussion of an underground ritual.

Every touch and taste and sound is heightened
An emanating aura of love surrounds the crowd
Smiles, laughs, hugs and high-fives
Throwing shapes and boogieing down.

As the party creator closes down the night
Masses pour outside drowned by early sunlight
All in search of a beach or after-hours haunt
To continue on their hedonic treadmill.

hedonic adaptation
living, breathing an
idealized state

transparent powers
an aesthete with an
affinity for anarchy

shamelessly insinuating
fatal errors in identification
extraterrestrial *******
at the core of our unity
probing at a molecular level
damning the will to connect

a creative protest against
the artificial
daydreams bleach
inferiority complexes
and insight breaks through

dark and damaging
sacrificial secrets
thrusting toward the deep end
forgoing progress through
flawed perception

the bright light shining through
your self inflicted wounds
cannot be ignored

The epicurean experiment is over.
The absence of pain is not happiness.
The consumption of ******* need not be
inherently bad, but for the present state of affairs.
If the condition brought about by a chemical could be
held in mind, its mindset prolonged, then redosing need not
be so gratuitous. Indeed, pharmacological determinism is false.

Indeed, all one wants is the good
(and would presume to better).

Indeed, there are faults in theories
and flaws in character.

Indeed, we are here
and by virtue of our similarities

the social pace manic in its self-absortion, possession facing possession and what if
the world risks collapsing under the weight of its own irony:
a hedonic frame of mind so devoid of the ******* of life
the tyranny of desire is teaching **** to the naked eyes
a culture stops breathing if it can't let go of its desires to find them again
nothing to be destroyed cause everything is dismantling slowly

going right or left it's the same but not in any corner of the world
the leftovers of God, tautologies in a straightjacket,
cause one has meetings all day but no sleep all night
He/She/They colonize you with the scripture of profit
everything has its price on the expence of being enlivened
some don't have water, others too much of an illusion
some don't have peace, others have haute couture
some haven't eaten, others have molecular cuisine
some have the shelter of the sky, others listen to the echo of Big Bang
this logic of contrast is dreaming of the creativity of decay and
what if politics has become a narcosis, a  drunkenness of words,
while the wisdom of trauma is hidden in billboards,
the text says Politics of Happiness or Diserotica

the depressive society fools itself with the financial ****** of disconnected bodies in search of the last noise of the day
the space of the mind  broken by narrow horizons
the flesh and bone might turn into a virtual dimension

yet
the soul of the world flickers, it covers its solar plexus until we meet again as brothers and sisters of the trees
just because you feel good doesn't mean that
the world feels good too

the busses I've been on could fill up a football stadium
if each given merit per ride
per rattle-shake snake through countryside

each in its own little protected purpose
cute journeys of love, sturdy journeys of response-ability
hedonic riddle and rides to the end of the road river

like a musical interlude;
run the metal inner-tube;
comfort-context-cannot-climb

all my attitude is altitude
so I almost don't care to be grounded.
Greyhounded, maybe.

I remember the old reservoir.

The one we used to take to
walking around in the hedonic
aeon that was our youth.

I’m still young.

I’m young but the years have
aged the path that took us back to there,
grown over in thistle, thicket and thorn.

It’s cracked, with infant pools
of rainwater filling the potholes;
man-made, still habitats.

A mimicry of their mother,
water-filled basin of breadth
and no brine.

Only on those blue-moon occasions,
with cynical tongues and carved faces
do we still cross those few paths
that remain.

I’ve learnt now to accept my loss.

Dear Draycote, pool of life,
circular route and void of time,
I can dream of your return

into my days, but awake
to the sight of my long-gone friends
and all they once were.

I cannot hope to cross your path
in the way that we once did.
For we used to walk in circles,
and now that circle is complete.

So we shall live our separate lives,
pin badges, names, onto our *******,
thin ribbons to bind our fates.

But what, my life, do I call my friends
that now only frequent my mind?
Oh how do I catch up with them,
after falling so far behind?

Pagoda, Pagoda,
My humble terrace by the sea.
Wayshrine for the hopeless
and the seekers of eternal ecstasy.
Why do they mistreat you so?
Ever accepting of our whimsical, hedonic presence,
you gave us shelter from the slobbering pigs and their execution sentence.
And still they ripped your gleaming limbs from you.
Those who claimed to love you.

Pagoda, Pagoda
so far from the corporate machine
living in an emerald midsummer dream
we must have lost our way along the chemical shores.
When the harsh confines of reality glared at my salt stained face
you treated me to warm freedom and a welcoming embrace
despite my turning a blind eye to your pain
and the savages who left you discarded.

Pagoda, Pagoda,
you were left hastily deserted
once summers tender muscles were exerted
and the liches stretched their frigid claws once again.
Now just an  ashen memory
while we count the hours in this glacial penitentiary
and wait for the beacon to bless us with its lazy gaze
and the return of our boardwalk paradise.

I still can't clearly comprehend who my father was. The only way I can find him is by thinking of everything I refuse to be. I still have memories of my father that have never been extremely clear. I guess you could say it's as clear as the muddy glasses I put on every time I want to forget the loss. I lost the man I wanted him to be. A role model, someone to love my mother in every direction you could imagine, I wanted him to be a man. When I think of who you are I can't form solidified answers because to be honest I don't think we've ever met. Name's Jon. We share DNA but this isn't something I take pride in saying. The story maps of our denials are wonderful depictions of why we could never really talk about things. Things we can't fully understand. Like how I would deny things like how bad the weather is, that my tummy is a little to jiggly, or that I honestly can't say no to a good beer. Your denials are slightly different. You have denied leaving two boys for one wonder woman to raise. You still won't tell me you are sorry, because in your eyes it's the world against you and your disposition. You deny eye contact with those around you because we all know your soul is unorthodox and burns if you look into it for too long. You remind me of the inconsiderate ******* who leave their brights on driving down the highway, they leave me ******* and hard to see my future. As I reached deeper into the bucket of something inside me that feels, I realize we have a few similarities. We both don't know hot wot act in public situations. Running has always been our initial response when our hedonic treadmill starts. I don't want to start. So I cut out the pieces of my life that resemble the ***** smell of your presence. I use those moments for encouragement and to find power in the unforgettable.

Summer’s silence sent your whispers up my spine
Lightning flashed, in fluorescent twists
The night you made me unwind
Our pretentious walls and our secret codes—
The ones we’d crafted with time
Washed away that night in the storm
When your eyes burned into mine

And with the bed as my frame
I painted you a picture
Of my diaphanous figure
An arousing compunction that caused you no shame
Our friction
Your aggression
The contours of my thighs
The grinding of our hips
My concupiscent sighs
That penetrated your skin, burning like a flame
As you released your ambitions and moaned my name

Fall’s fleeting force sent my heart flittering to the sky
Skipping beats sporadically
At the thought of saying goodbye
You were my baby; I, your sweet girl
Your yearning gaze tangible before I’d caught your eye
Intermittent kisses, giggling all the while—
Finding fruition in simply making me smile

Your touch gentle and my movements slow,
We melded together in hedonic harmony
Your body, a piece of me—
Like an anomaly I’d never known
Your inhales
My fingernails
Our internal temperatures heating a degree
You whispered, “I love you”
A curiously rational impetuosity
Your love, a beautiful and delicious glow
Tempting me into oblivion below

I  am  no philosopher
I  am  Paul  from  The Meadows
pulled skinny  poor from the  shadows to put  a  deal of fat  on his bones

so  how  did   I  end  up   here?
what penalty did   I  accrue?

taking the  ten  point deduction for  conduct unbecoming
I  place my  attention  deficit on re-order that I  don’t  yet  forget

smothered  in the  scrim of this  Hogarthian hood every  chip toothed  blue   scriptured face
proffers  passage to a  poisonous but tantalising hook

to write the  junk  must I  taste the junk?

peddled or paddled for  a  sweeter  flight this  avenue never  taken,
hedonic ingress  unwalked,  unwanted yet  still wondered
could such  deep surrender  be   so  sweet to  allow the  most  intimate  of plunder?

am I  Dante?
corralled   around  the  streets
of a  society that  shows no compromise amongst  the  dying embers  of fallen  enterprise

eternal  damnable gyres around a  ****** **** pyre
of concrete,  glass  and  broken  humanity

with    each    uttered    breath    a    cold      cocktail    of profanity

the  bouncing soles of the  air  I  wear  may ease  me over  the  gummed archipelagos
flag  spij-speckle  guaran islands slab secure and  fast
against  the  counselled wash an  eternal  fossilised chaw
that  resists  the  fiercest chemical blast

lost in this  sea    I  cannot  be   but shaken  by the  waxy  man  with his  head  of startled  hemp and  coterie  of cracked  carbon
as  he breaches the  domestic brink

turning a key, his shoulders  hunched  in protective  shawl against

the  spittled spate
he stares  back through me
for  sightless  miles insides out,  front  to rear, then  scuffles, rattling,  townwardly

cannot resist  the  insecticidal compulsion of the  green  and  white purgatory
where  the  neatly  stacked  wash  of fluorescence makes  oven ready  your  heaven
amid the  threnodial thrum  of
a  hundred syncopated Siemens

following  that   shuffling   cortege  of  the   bussed  in dead and  dying
I  am dutiful, altar  bound, avowed and  accursed the  host with the  ghosts in this  haunted  mall lost  and  lonely  within  England’s  mountain  green
it  is no longer the  god   bothering needles and  blunts that    draw the crowds
as  flat  screened pharmacological rapture,
that  trinity  of distilled, medicated caffeination

lead   a   once   pious   nation   through   a   precocious dream

maybe Allah yet  sees  here  his
Jerusalem  and  leads his children
upon  England’s  land  of  crescent  green

A spell-cast lure
from hedonic
gypsy's shore
lewdly hitched
my witch-leery
blooded soil.

Tapestric flame
shrouded by emerald
jaspered slits
slaved the dark
mystic marked and
unthrottled the
unreasoned quest.

The emanation desired
a drunken dizzy
thirst to levy and lap
her cauldron's want
prelude to dissolved
barriers.

Staggered I succumbed
simmered, stirred
surrendered into her
cask filled mix
potion pured
forever now sworn
to the gypsied witch.

Tell them, let them to vanish
I mean those cruel vampires
I am referring to them, the crisps,
The evils to our lyrics to perish

Free us, free us from your satanic shores
Let us life, let us be happy but not sores
Let streams flows through our pores
Let our dreams be fulfil at the highest scores

Let those Vampires vanish from our government
From their unruly atitude, where all flaws farment
Where their deathly games begins. Where corruption
wine and wallows within our administration

Refer them to the scribbling scripts of the land
Lay it, Spread it, Open it and read it before them
Even if they resist, Do not desists to grab them
Led them to the truth. Tell them that change, we demand.

What did they wants from us, which they not been
Awarded. When they hoared loudly for votes
We gave them. We paid them through taxes. We have seen
Them brutally burning our fleets of vehicles.

We shall never needs "rocket scientist" to led us
And we don't sense of elegance. Where humours
Hide with hedonic faith. Where they thought we are
Sleeping. Until I task champion to read us "Sleep no more"

From an enigmatic society, where our soul have bee laid
To survive. We shall never slacken our ink. We have paid
Them as servants. How could we surrender our armour
When our only blood vessels were been torn in every hour.

Until then we will never relax to advocate
We can't fold flawless flanges to suffocate
We stand for change. An immediate change
Where we shall all sleep in pleasant peace

What to touch on now..

I could explore the clash of release
And the continued pressure that comes with it
Where openness and strength
Seem at odds and intrinsic

A strange little paradox there
What can I say for the connotations
That breach quietly into life
Hidden *** notes in the song

I notice one thing when I'm not self involved
As can be true of all of us
There's a new adversity
Adversity without adversity in that sweet little irony

As safety and security become thematic
As the glaring tunnel vision of problems disperses
We are faced with stagnation
And the new guilty challenges it provides

The hedonic treadmill
The thirst for more
The guilt of less in others
And discontentment, when we should know better

Though adversity can be intrinsic to me
Though my growth has created colourful threads
I still empathise as I sit in sameness
And burst out of it with the need for more

Because we aren't meant to sit still
We have legs for a reason

Tell them, let them to vanish
I mean those cruel vampires
I am referring to them, the crisps,
The evils to our lyrics to perish

Free us, free us from your satanic shores
Let us life, let us be happy but not sores
Let streams flows through our pores
Let our dreams be fulfil at the highest scores

Let those Vampires vanish from our government
From their unruly atitude, where all flaws farment
Where their deathly games begins. Where corruption
wine and wallows within ouradministration

Refer them to the scribbling scripts of the land
Lay it, Spread it, Open it and read it before them
Even if they resist, Do not desists to grab them
Let them to the truth. Tell that change we demand.

What did they wants from us, which they not been
Awarded. When they hoared loudly for votes
We gave them. We paid them through taxes. We have seen
Them brutally burning our fleets of vehicles.

We shall never needs "rocket scientist" to led us
And we don't sense of elegance. Where humours
Hide with hedonic faith. Where they thought we are
Sleeping. Until I task champion to read us "Sleep no more"

From an enigmatic society, where our soul have bee laid
To survive. We shall never slacken our ink. We have paid
Them as servants. How could we surrender our armour
When our only blood vessels were been torn in every hour.

Until then we will never relax to advocate
We can't fold flawless flanges to suffocate
We stand for change. An immediate change
Where we shall all sleep in pleasant peace

Contentment is perhaps, not something to be perpetual
Rather, as the hedonic treadmill sinks our feet into splintered mud
Before releasing them as we patter into a welcoming sea
We find contentment to be.. given when we aren't looking for it

Like love, perhaps.

I should talk about her, shouldn't I
This one who fills me with ambition and confidence as the man I am now
And a creeping fear, that her sight of the man I was
Would undo the foundations, bring me back down to insecurity

But then.. I know that's not true.

She asks to see everything
Not knowing how the floodgates bulge
A history of positive and negative extremes
That I still have trouble looking at with clarity
Or without the wounds unclosing

Yet...
I know if she sees it all
Clutching my hand, with honest open eyes
And a heel breaking the hinges towards a reveal

She may be angry with me
She may pity me
Or find reasons to question me further

But
I can trust her
I can let myself be me with her
Even if I don't quite know what that means

As I boil out into the sand and let go of productivity
In this strange solace of words where I look inward
With eyes warmer and more rational than I've had before

I know she is the reason this is all easier,

She is the reason to be more,

So.. when I'm able,

I'll show her who I was.

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?

humbug, little slug, never really moved much
never thought I'd prove much
guess I proved myself right, and I'll say that its alright
the parasite will engage the brake light as I sit tight
how hedonic and very ironic, that I loved watching all might
maybe it was because I wanted someone to say that it was alright
too bad this world lacks heroes despite all the villains
maybe they're content with saving the wrong billions