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?

Near the center of things, the heart of the sprawl,
The hustle and bustle, the chaos of it all.

I made it to the city, 9 months later I left
having survived and thrived and realized
I'm not sure do I want anyone to live there.

New York, London, San Francisco, Dublin;
The more urban the environment, the more

He thought back,
Through the years,
Months, weeks, days,
Hours, minutes, seconds,
To those moments, surfacing
from memory, his hazy recollection
of deified drug {ab}use, came ever so slowly
to the fore of a mind that long ago swore to keep score.

Somewhere in a dream,
I remember.
Sometime in the agora,
I spent.
Someday I'll recall it all
but until then
I am the man who forgot
{his/he's} god.

At the end of Nimmo's Pier
on a mid-week evening in July,
I gaze across the bay
with the city to my back.

To my left a heron potters about
in orange lamplight, from my right
two lads' conversation drifts
across the harbor docks,

Behind me the city thrums
with its mid-summer's nightlife.
My over-stimulation from three days
of intense work fades, my solemn thoughts

Ersatz orange shadows
cast on urban streets at night.
Lost in disassociation,
There's a tunnel at the end of the light.

Her eyes gaze far into the horizon,
To meet the glare of a storm arising.
The quiet before it's thunder is chilling,
As the energy is distilling.
Shivers dance
on the nape of her neck.
I can hear the contemplation,
Her rumination.

Dark doors echo on a glass plane.
She dwells here,
Transfixed by fluorescent stains.
Black-light projectors
and vibrancy injectors
illuminate this neon dimension;
Trance angel held in suspension.

So many will never experience the sensations we have known,
I trust you will keep our venturous exploits ongoing.

Oh, how hallowed electronica has grown
since the electro-festivities became known.
Now that stellar conflagration
consumes our nation.
All hail techno-paganism!

Our wicked philanthropy and righteous sins
keep us down, drugged-up and praying.
***** mind, clean conscience.

In heathen choice we are condemned
to experience pleasure
beyond what animal would comprehend.
Our souls will be set aflame;
We are to feel the sear of elation,
The fiery rush of indescribable sensation.
We gather to bring the collective to new planes,
Transcendention is the ceremony's name;
The expansion of consciousness
using molecules as tools
to reexamine 'mortal'.

Through cybernetic veins
the blood of a Cybran
runs into this majestic data fane;
Twined, thy symbiont brain.
The matrices code,
This digital rain,
Falling
upon every node;
Our transhuman liberation.

Walking home late
from a festive dinner,
I caught a glance inside
some living room window
and saw two women innocently shifting

Back into the throes of existence
I find myself thrown.
The session has found me again
and I admit
that I lost it
sometime ago. In longing I drown
until something best left unknown
reared its head; The Great Perhaps
was upon me at last

and I could only see heartbreak
awaiting me on the horizon
of her love.

Practice forgetting.

There are some things
which should be forgotten.

The poems we write are being
consigned to the internet's depth
where the data does not express the

semantic intent. As for this poem penned
by the user Mydriasis [real name unknown],
This too will go, it'll pass on, fade out; because
everything is an echo.

Walking home in the heart of darkness,
The winter solstice stole my numbness.
Got nothing in my pockets but willpower;
Fight club coming up.

We've all got mental problems,
Some of us hide them better.
How about that weather?

Tripping the syntax,
And I'm having difficulty
discerning my sanity right now.

There's a voice in the wind
at the throat of the world.
The sacrificial alter will hear me roar.

I'm on a duel-carriageway to crazy,
And the horses gallop onward.

Strange tidings through car doors,
Soft footfall on sand-torn shores.

Want to know whats wrong with the earth?
More violence, less hair,
And people don't hang around beaches anymore.

Innocuous moments stretch through the night
like unwritten nostalgia
condemned to change forever.

Do what seems to be a good idea.

Good is better than evil after all,
We would rather have good neighbors and rulers than evil ones.

Be mindful that
good, evil, law, and chaos
are prejudices and dangerous extremes.

Act naturally, without prejudice or compulsion.

Proposition: Emotions can be explained by three categories or  dimensions of sensation/experience:
-Physical/Biological/Neurochemical
-Mental/Psychological/Behavioral
-Subjective/Trigger/Response

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

Counting electric sheep
as I toss and turn and sigh.
I'll pray to Chronos if ever
I get to sleep tonight.
If ever, whenever, whichever, little heaven.

We lost another one
or so it would seem.
She left us High and Dry,
Walking On A Dream.
I'll wander my memory
under the covers (of sleep)
and remember so little
of that which I dreamt.

"Et in Arcadia ego";
Even in harmonious Arcadia
there is death.
So practice those words
which Epicurus left.

It's impossible to be serious
once you consider
the absurdity of existence
so keep in mind
his letter to Menoeceus.
Staring at the Cirrus clouds
as they drift by, Pan
(paniscus) is by my side.

There's a storm in my head.
The fog congregates, energy generates
as thunderclouds roar the war-cry of profligates.

Frost-fire falls, electrifies one's will

I'd stay here forever if they'd let me be,
Just you and your thoughts wrapped around me.

There is redemption to be found in the souls of others.
All I can think at this moment is I love her.

There's less to this world
then you'd have me believe,
But more to your motives
than their apparent simplicity.
The youthless do have needs.

Where are we anymore?

Ulterior intents will remain unseen
(if even),
Meanwhile we continue to plead.
Suspicion is venomous
yet vengeful is greed.

What fuels
the human difference engine?

Paranoia is a watchdog
that hounds me.
Feed it, heed it?
Bleed it of every thought
and leave it?

In my quieter moments
I sometimes think:
"**** individuality".

There's less to this world
then you'd have me believe.

**** ego, fuel the fuego.

Sometimes I get a bit on the darkside.
A'ight, so what?
I would keep to myself (but for you,
Beautiful reader/sacred deceiver).

When you find solace in words
it's 'cause they found something in you;
It's all about experiencing the view.

The following sentence is true. The previous sentence is false.
An eternity of infinite paradox.
Unequalibrium,
Unto itself in another universe.

When lies are all you have they become truth
and right now all I have is you.

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.

Humanity will fall long before we can abscond to the stars.
Our planet already shifts with this paradigm that is human,
The so-christened 'anthropocene', it will leave us
for another age/deity; Dionysus or Apollo? A Gaian
dream or the Venusian nightmare, whom do we feed?
Consuming needlessly, heedlessly, we became enamoured
with that consummation, forgetting our own Earth-Mother;
We forget nature, we forego any chance to heal the world.
Instead we'll let runaway greenhouse effect be the death
of our home, we're desecrating Hestia
and soon the hearth will burn out
and shall be forevermore cold.

Sure doesn't the madgod hunger
for an end to his own insanity!
Are we not them and they not
an aspect of our own reflection?

Carl Sagan said we'd need four things to stop this madness:
Efficient use of non-renewables, better use of renewable energy,
Reforestation on a grand scale and self-sufficiency for the poor.

Beats been rolling insofar.

"I'm complicated, you don't
get me, I have trouble".
Her idiom on repeat
wherein My Head Is A Jungle
(MK Remix)
[-Wankelmut & Emma Louise].

Driving flat out
the speedometer hit fourscore;
Crash and Burn.

Our hearts keep moving,
Our hearts keep moving,
Our hearts keep moving,
Our hearts keep moving,
Hearts keep moving;
Ad infinitum.

It's done so bounce.

May your word be supple with optimism
and may their cognitions follow suit.
I took a little 2C-D tonight
and prayed to move

Lonely people
seem obligated
to party harder.

Always up in the middle of the night,
Making sure the dark stuff is done right.

Gotta be loose with expression
and make an impression
on the malleable world
that lies before us.

The luxury of living,
At the expense of life.

Are you still there?
A spacious question
asked of the unoccupants.
Empty was the domicile,
No answer, response.
The uninhabitants
had to ante up.
Wasted, deserted,
Kenopsic borderlands.
This is what's left. It is so;
Vast, immense. What
temporal question

With the car stereo tuned in
to the radio, our vehicle glided
through the cityscape.
The machine had been fumigated,
Anguish cleansed, anxiety subjugated
and our appetite content.
Got blazed with the aid of that sliver haze.

Driving in the calm of midnight
through city streets in the half-light

Neon euphoria;
We bring rapture unto the night,
As we venture forth
under orange streetlight.

Join us as we quest
to compose a good time,
And glide, rapt in lamplight,
On a high that's divine.

Express yourself,
Drop a line,
The movies taught us
adventure was never a crime.

No longer do we face rejection,
Now we are the stuff of legend.
When night falls
this city is mine.

It's what we know,
What was left for us
to find; it's not a crime
to have a good time.

Mine is the voice of intuitive reason,
Bearing the words' intricate mechanism,
Surface dripping with such subtle intention,
I am become the human difference engine.

I convinced myself so thoroughly I was under
surveillance that I was sure they were about to
storm into my life and change it permanently.
I keep seeing myself coming home to a house
raided, with the front door kicked in, ransacked
in their wasted efforts to find something I would
simply give them should they ask politely. This is
no way to live. No wonder
I have mental problems.
At least that's what I call them.
No psychiatrist ever attended to me
and the last time I sought counselling
they advised me to seek psychotherapy.
I don't have the money, all I have are these
substances
and the terror
that the threat of their discovery brings. God
help me; I'm terrified, I'm an addict, I'm lonely,
I'm paranoid, my head is ****** up and no one
could save me.

Sham; when I put that black coat on
I change. I look more dangerous
and feel more safe.
Try so hard to keep it interesting,
Hope the savant inside is still listening.

I know I'm going to be a ****** in the end,
How could I not.
I'm just trying to put it off
as long as I can;
Sardonicism and addiction.

When things become difficult
I am not afraid to turn towards the source of pain.
Thus I asked: what is your greatest fear?

Failure is a path to learning.
To err is human.

You can never be abandoned.
Solitude is a blessing.

Damage is the chance we take.
It is the most genuine fear

known to all wounded healers.

I said I was going home
but unpredictable got in my way.
I wandered into the park, curious, for I saw
a crowd milling about, and curiosity did demand
my time. By pure chance, randomness, I acquired
a bounty of yokes in the likeness of blue ghosts.
Such is the way of Millennium on a Friday.
As quickly I found my mates to show them
the treasure.
We decided
to get dosed.
Bitte.

Suspense coming up, then, forty-five minutes in
excitement hit
as our brains leak serotonin. On love buzz again,
Young demon.
Some gang tried to mug mine, I laughed at them
as we walked by.
Howdy-** *****?
Nobody could touch
us, I was on fire. Then
drum 'n bass brought everyone higher.

Awake, warrior
who struggles; my dreams
spill over into consciousness,

The memory of a non-event has
me struck down with its realness,
Lists of hyponyms, this life hypnotic.

The moon forgives me for the issues
I did battle with;
The Oneiroi, Morpheus and Phantasos.

This 'wake oneironaut did not pause
to ponder at the gates
of horn and ivory.

I've been fading,
Nothing respects itself,
I am a piece of work, don't even dare to dream
anymore but from way down
deep the memories slip
through while I sleep
and then I can lose
myself to anything
other than all the things
I could be. The things
I write now
are so different
and I'm so confused
by the changing
things, voices
said to me that
"*** is something
to be respected".

I found it hard
to reconcile this
with my past.

I hope one day
you'll forgive me.
I hope one day I can forgive myself
and forget my faults.

Memory always gets me,
I can't help myself, I fall
into its music and lose myself.

It's hard getting back in touch with life right now,
Hard to hear my self-esteem.
I'm waiting to feel myself breathe again,
Waiting for the brain chemistry.

Remembrance keeps me calm
as these fathoms seethe;
Emotions are temporary,
Knowledge is forever.

Past versus present,
Let the day come together.

What does it mean to wander one's city,
Following paths that appears rewarding?
Where appearance is the very fabric
of our own reward pathways.
With no destiny
what determines aimless wandering?
What does my inclination collapse into the world,
What is it that our will envelopes? Our many drives
are bundled into what appears; we are carried
along a path, arbitrary or otherwise,
Only for one drive's will to be usurped
by the sweet vista, or strange nostalgia
which spoke to the whims of another.
Is there a collective unconscious, are there connections
which whisper unto our subordinates?
Something as simple as intuition or god;
Gut feeling, divine touch. Either being immanent enough
to qualify one's environment by.

Sometimes I'm afraid
if I were to be gentle with myself
I would break.

I write down this thought
I had in the shower, and after sitting with it
realize I'm not broken.

Chatting with Friday in The Blue Note,
She mentioned leaving for Scotland.
A friend commented on your body
language, I could not shake that.

Thought I saw Monday walking The Promenade,
I turned my head only to see you also looking
back. We waved, and it struck me

how we were kids once
and how much time has passed.
Passin’ Me By,

Eventually the festivities drew to a close,
"Back to reality" we jested yet 'twas no joke.

I remember thinking this all could have been a dream,
Oh sweet, lost memories that we struggle to gleam.

Body & Soul, mind or psyche.

It's a fair exchange, time for experience, but
I feel robbed. What's been stolen from me, that
sense of wonder. My curiosity's been left to slumber.
Has knowledge failed me, or I it? What of discovery, or
the ventures my older poems did venerate? Where is that
mindset gone, where'd it go roving, with whom'd it abscond?
Perhaps I should settle for the present;
I hear the brief patter of rain, interspersed
beyond the soundscape of my own ambient
marmalade. All I care for is music.
Music is the antidote.

Twenty-four
orbits of this earth.
Now I notice my energy
dwindling while the wanderers
carry on, heedless of my
human struggles;
Of survival.
I hear that briefest patter of rain.

Came home from Berlin
transmetropolitan,

Came home from NYC
chasing the apotheon.

Back in Galway
I dissolve ♄ere


♐︎his instance; of
being otherwise

"The present is gone. Fantasy is a part of reality
and we take the breaks off. We're thinking clearly
yet not thinking at all, and this feels right.
We stop trying to control things,
The warm rush of chemicals through us. Is this brain damage?
We forget all the hurt and pain in life.
We wanna go somewhere else. We're not threatened by people anymore. All our insecurities have evaporated.
We're in the clouds now. Wide open,
We're spacemen, orbiting the earth.
Yeah, the world looks beautiful from here man.
We're nympholeptics, desiring for the unattainable.
We risk sanity for moments of temporary enlightenment.
So many ideas, so little memory. The last thought killed by anticipation of the next.
We embrace an overwhelming feeling of love.
We flow, in unison. We're together.
I wish this was real.
We want a universal level of togetherness, where we're comfortable with everyone.
We're in rhythm. Part of the movement, a movement to escape.
We wave goodbye.
Ultimately, we just want to be happy.
Yeah, yeah!
Hang on,
What the **** was I just talking about?"
*-Jip

Mydriasis took stock of a reflection, an outline of a body

drawn by the dim light of an LED bulb
fading through the visible spectrum.
The outline of that body
is given false relief

in an oval mirror, positioned above a small desk.
The room's in the partial darkness, and in the half-light
a pair of eyes wander. Their saccades spill
over the figure’s torso. The darting movement
of both pupils take it in, lingering
on a pair of long but simple chains that hang from the neck.

Each chain-link is different in length,
The only distinguishing features on an otherwise plain male chest.
The longer one looks as if it was onyx
in color, but most of its coat has been worn away
to reveal burnished copper. The silver
chain is slightly shorter, and less worn, a tiny spoon
has been attached to the clasp at its end.

The shifting light of the room drifts out a half-open door
to the left of the mirror. Mydriasis’ eyes meet their reflection.
As they take stock of the impression  they began to wander.
The gravity of those  black holes in the mirror cast a moment
endless as sky. These eyes bask in the half-light, maintaining
their stance but wandering in mind, hallucinating
accent and relief unto the image
until color and texture balloon.
This game they play is but a leisurely swim
in the everflowing Lethe.
They do not shy away

from depth, emptiness. What lies beyond
at that moment implores them to be patient.
Pupils twinkle in the darkness, glittering with praise
for something even darker; yes, they bask in this.
A moment so courteously extended between
the drives of this individual. In that moment
an accord is met. Purpose, given, consciousness
extends by virtue of its immanence; it comes to be
across time, a living memory.