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,

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?

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.

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.

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;

Everything seems to be happening at once:
Memories of every night out blur into one,
Aspirations to manifest now after so long,
And I am off-valence, so willing to be lost, to gain or be bound.

I wonder at our capacity for spontaneity
and wish I had asked for help sooner.

These sways don’t stop, the only thing to soothe them
is music. Those tunes are the most
reliable way this anxiety fades.
"Know thyself"

The dominant drive is the handle on the reducing valve of consciousness.
Consciousness is not merely received, it flows through us,
And one's body is its conduit.

Being has an active role in its synthesis.
It is from this vantage that pharmacophenomenology dares to ask:
Is there something the components of neurotransmission feel like?
For example, what commonalities are felt
under the influence of serotonergic drugs?

What sensate invariants are to be found
in the actions of other neurotransmitters, endorphins and hormones?
Can we identify these felt sensation with those naturalistic concepts?
Could we map the structures and limits of experience from the inside out,
Using neuropsychopharmacology as a cartogram
and the phenomenological tradition as a pathfinder.
Would that be so noumenautic?