/ 1

A SINGLE LEATHER CASE
SITS STERN
ON THE FLOOR OF THE CARRIAGE.

HIS
SHORTENED LEFT LEG
WEARS A SPECIAL SHOE
WITH AN ENORMOUS PLATFORM.

TAKING OFF HIS SPECTACLES
HE SOON SNOOZES THERE LEANING
AGAINST THE PALM OF HIS HAND.

/ 2

CLUTCHING THE CASE
HE STANDS
IN A SCRUFFY PASTURE
BEHIND A DERELICT FARMHOUSE

A MASS OF WEEDS
GROWING AMONGST RUBBLE
CHICKEN WIRE
AND BROKEN TILES
TANGLES ITS VINES
THROUGH THE WINDOW

/ 3

HE DREAMS CHILDREN
FLOATING LIKE BALLOONS,

THEIR THOUSAND EYES
THEIR BURNING EARS
THEIR THREAD-LIKE VOICES,

RISE

I CAME FROM TRINIDAD AT 5 YEARS OF AGE

MY MOTHER - FULL OF PULSATIONS
AND AGONIES AND REPETITIONS
- INSISTED ON BRINGING ME HERE.

HER DREAM
WAS STRONG

SHE ENCOURAGED ME
TO MAKE PAINTINGS
AND SANG TO ME
INCOMPREHENSIBLE SONGS:

"AGWE ARRORO
PROTECT YOUR LITTLE ONES,
RECEIVE
THE SPIRIT
OF ERZULIE:
OF EVERYTHING WHICH IS
MORE
THAN THAT
WHICH IS NECESSARY -
OF VUDUON:
THE MYSTERY THAT
IS GOD IN THE WORLD"

SHE KNEW
THE MOVEMENTS
OF CELESTIAL BODIES,
AND RELATED STORIES
BY GRAVITY

O
THE BEAUTIFUL COMPLEXITY OF THIS WOMAN:

MUSIC FOR THE EYES

"There is something more. It is now clear that new developments in many areas - including mind-machine interfacing, pharmacology of the synthetic variety, and data storage, image and retrieval techniques - are coalescing into the potential for a truly demonic or an angelic self-imaging of our culture. Those who are on the demonic side of this process are fully aware of this potential and are hurrying full-tilt forward with their plans to capture the technological high ground. It is a position from which they hope to turn nearly everyone into a believing consumer in a beige fascism from whose image none will escape.

The shamanic response, the Archaic response, the human response, to this situation should be to locate the art pedal and push it to the floor. This is one of the primary functions of shamanism, and is the function that is tremendously synergised by the psychedelics. If psychedelics are exopheromones that dissolve the dominant ego, then they are also enzymes that synergise the human imagination and empower language. They cause us to connect and reconnect the contents of the collective mind in ever-more implausible, beautiful, and self-fulfilling ways.

If we are serious about an Archaic Revival, then we need a new paradigmatic image that can take us rapidly forward and through the historical choke point that we can feel impending and resisting a more expansive, more humane, more caring dimension that is insisting on being born. Our sense of political obligation, of the need to reform or save the collective soul of humanity, our wish to connect the end of history with the beginning of history - all of this should impel us to look at shamanism as an exemplary model. In the current global crisis we cannot fail to take its techniques seriously, even those which may challenge the divinely ordained covenants of the constabulary"

*

"You don't examine obsessive behaviour; you just do it. You let nothing get in the way of your gratification. This is the kind of life that we are being sold at every level. To watch, to consume, and to watch and consume yet more. The psychedelic option is off in a tiny corner, never mentioned; yet it represents the only counterflow directed against a tendency to leave people in designer states of consciousness. Not of their own designs, but the designers of Madison Avenue, of The Pentagon, of the Fortune 500 corporations. This isn't just a metaphor; it is really happening to us.

Looking down on Los Angeles from an airliner, I never fail to notice that it is like looking at a printed circuit: all those curved driveways and cul de sacs with the same little modules installed along each one. As long as the Readers Digest stays subscribed and the TV stays on, these modules are all interchangeable parts within a very large machine. This is the nightmarish reality Marshall McLuhan and Wyndham Lewis and others foresaw: the creation of the public as herd. The public has no history and no future, the public lives in a golden moment created by a credit system which binds them ineluctably to a web of illusions that is never critiqued. Their authenticity lies in their ability to obey and follow style changes that are conveyed through the media. It is a world of pornographic wealth and slavish consumerism where in the participants become nothing more than the petrified object of their own unrequited desires. Lurking beneath the glistening surface of their perpetual lust for enterprise exists a strange brand of horror - the freedom from meaning. This is the ultimate consequence of having broken off the symbiotic relationship with the Gaian matrix of the planet. This is the consequence of lack of partnership. This is the legacy of imbalance between the sexes; this is the terminal phase of a long descent into meaninglessness and toxic existential confusion.

The credit for giving us tools to resist this horror belongs to unsung heroes who are botanists and chemists, people such as Richard Schultes, the Wassons, and Albert Hoffman. Thanks to them we have, in this most chaotic of centuries, taken into our frail hands the means to do something about our predicament. Psychology, in contrast, has been complacent and silent. Psychologists have been content with behaviourist theory-making for fifty years, while knowing in their hearts that they were doing potentially fatal disservice to human dignity, by ignoring the potential of psychedelics."

Terrence Mckenna

when i call myself mad
i only acknowledge
the triumph of my own ego
over a perfectly beautiful
non compos mentis
reality

was i not
so hung up over myself
instead of being mad
i would merely be
a fascinated raconteur,
a tourist of untravelled countries

i would not ask stupid questions like
"am i mad?"

i would perhaps just shrug
and see madness
as just another tool
as another way to integrate

i will try
not to fear madness
or even the loss of my own limbs

if i die
or go mad
so be it

this is not bravery
it is only an attempt to be
less ego-centric
to acclimatise myself to
things

it is quite possible
for a man with no limbs
to light his own cigarette

so who are we to lament our own madness?

acting is believing oneself to be
someone or something else.

if you can believe with conviction
you will transform

life is a cabaret my friend
and the truth is
that god alone is wise

knowing that
you know
nothing

you might begin to try
to inhabit
or embody
another you

maybe a bit-part
maybe an extra
maybe a cowboy or an injun

whoever

just act it
with conviction
and belief

knowing that
truth
is only as true
as you can be

AND I SEE
a beetle:
the black scarab of the ancient pharaohs -
rolling a ball of dung across the cement floor.
Egyptians once believed the beetle
strong enough to roll the sun
across the heavens

and i see you there, sweating
on a creaking bed, sweating
beneath a musty mosquito net,
lying on a dirty mattress. there is
music outside. it is still light.
the market traders are still
selling their wares as you lie, still,
waiting for cooler, darker hours

meanwhile, thoughts meander and drip, sweating,
slipping off anything solid, dwelling
nowhere, evaporating.

it's hard to think straight in the heat.
it's hard to sleep.

you turn sideways and laugh.
probably you would be better off
outside, somewhere shaded.
at least the air would move, but

out there you will be cajoled
you stick out like a sore thumb.

no, stay here.
close your eyes for a bit and listen

you hear
high spirited talk
melancholy music
the rattle of decrepid rickshaws
rusty automobiles

everything has been rolled over
ravaged by the incessant sun.

*

at last
sleep is coming
and strange dreams.
sweating, slippery dreams
of laughing buddhas and
dancing shivas and
The Cave.

you hope to dream of rain
rumbling rolling rain,
but that dream must wait.

you
dream about the temple again.
you have lost your sandals and
must now walk barefoot. you look
down and see that you are naked.
you have lost your clothes.

you
run, in the heat, your feet dirty
and burning. you run - hiding your
penis in a cupped hand - from the
brown-skinned locals, who stare at
you angrily. they are deeply offended
by your nudity and intend to do violence.

they
surround you, holding sticks
and machetes. its hot, too hot to
run. where are your clothes? where
are you? what is this stink of
sweat and bad food?

you
do not wake up.

you
do not realise that
this is a dream.

a man orders you to lie down, and
you do. the people lower a heavy
stone slab over your whole body
so that you cannot move

you are still cupping your balls in
your hands and you hear the beetle,
scratching at the parched
earth near your toes.

and shadows fall
straight down
sharp as the midday sun.

she walks
toward a door
a slight breeze moves her hair.

in the house,
sitting straight down
closing her eyes
to look
receding
as the sweltering afternoon
sleeps.

a second person
the same as her
dreams
floating now
between each step
deliberate.

she
pulls a key
from between her lips
the room turning
sideways.

returning to that bed
where death left flowers on the pillow
where sleeping lips glisten and taste of metal
she opens the old wounds
of her former self.

taking slow giant steps
towards her double,
crushing whole worlds
beneath her sandles

she holds the knife
before her.

and blood seeps
seaweed slow

and around again
turns the room
a glass smashing there

her gestures
her movements
her steps
deliberate

love
is not a harpsichord concert
in a genteel drawing room
it isn't social security
the lottery
or roller disco

i think of the lunar card
in the tarot deck
some strange huge crustacean
its armour glistening and
its pincers wiggling
clatters out of a pool
while wild dogs howl at the moon

underneath the hearts and flowers
love is loony like that

attempts to housebreak it
to dress the crabs up like doves
and sing soprano
always result in thin blood
you end up with a parody

Out on the factory floor
workers in gray smocks
operate the presses
and down bares the large blade
through piles of newspapers
sad and determined.

Discarded cuttings
fall empty there.

One dark corner
is stacked with huge cogs

In another room
the typists finger
drops like a piston
and the sunlight
all wrinkled
scribbles sparkling white lines
in a water decanter.

Climb up the stairs
hold on to the banisters
cutting light into strips
that float on the carpet

Cling and sway
my lady
The soft varnished wood
under your smooth hand
hesitant

Pick up the scissors
and press them into your neck child,
for the world is too thin

Sort through
the myriad lamps
the leather shoes
the ashen smell of fresh print
the gigantic reels
of paper

Arrange neatly
your quill and ink bottle

Draw letters
with a finger
on the dusty table top

Pick up the scissors
and cut your long hair sister
and cut off the sleeves of your dress

Discarded cuttings
under the arched doorway
where you fought
disheveled
automated
oiled

Asleep
on the coach from Santa Elena de Uairen to Puerto La Cruz
my bag was stolen from right beneath my feet,
in the stupid cozy darkness
at the end
of a ten hour journey.

As we came into the station
I heard a noise
and looked down
at a dark skinned Venezuelan man with acne scars.
I woke, and gave chase.

No good, he was faster, and the bag contained my shoes.
My tattered Pumas,
my notebook,
my music, my t-shirt and
absolutely nothing of
material value to
anyone but
me.

I gave chase anyway
in a tangle of Brazilian rubber flipflops
tripping and hurting my toe.

The tall man ducked away
into dusty favelas
far ahead
but still I chased,
cursing him and my own
stupidity
and the soft sleepy seats
of that coach

My tattered Pumas, my notebook,
my music, my t-shirt and
most importantly
all the words recorded
on that trip.

You see I was on the way
to meet my father
for the first (and last) time and I
wanted to get the notebook back.
I had written it all down.

He's dead now,
that crazy Gordo
drowned himself.

28 years old carrying a broken bottle
looking for the acne man
who stole my bag
no use
no shoes

at a certain point with dirty feet
breathing hard
bleeding from the toenail
you have to say
fuck it