Pharmakon

    the good shit

    for Petals in her present pleasure zone
    she’s rolling round inside the one, the good shit
    the fine, the best, ye olde Platonic shit
    no hydroponic, just sanctified dank

    under Sumatran sun; for snub-nosed exodus
    in summers mud, her laurel wreath of sticky bud
    up drug botanical by trashy magazine
    like chocolate pharma-chronic feuilletine

    and toke thine truffled nugget whilst ye may
    my silk-eared pig for liplined valentine
    today her carrot conversation hearts the play
    her eats the emptiness of tools as feels divine

    //

    E=m11!1

    //

    🌒

    consistere

    psst — the monsters are all in evidence over here
    many with their sights on you, can you not see them?
    maybe they don’t wear chaos like your command
    or ugliness as your specification; maybe in love
    they can’t afford to show the truth; some have been known
    to flatter relentlessly the passing beauty; or even
    to dress up as their own negation, pretending tools
    or fancy chairs or helpless little girls; and many
    renouncing love or beauty altogether; but nobody
    is sorry; nobody knows that everybody
    is swallowed up by someone by the end; and nobody
    is more monstrous than mercy, or more self-same

    still; if you want it darker, we can totally kill the flame
    but the poet will kill it for us in six or seven lines

    //

    xox

    special delivery

    smooth now, that rough magic
    periscopic tragic midnight lookout

    pale arms out arctic like an exiled
    penguin into the nameless city

    coping, cold, gauze in a sand storm
    laron flicker in the mighty dust

    a turning ember, hot
    spark-caught, gold-litter

    in the spider web
    spanning a rattan lamp shade

    my one fish, two fish
    her peacock greenish-black or blue

    the switch, dangling
    sarcophagus

    so dead; quothe the neon miracle
    off-gassing meatlight; or Lalah

    pink, with only enough instinct
    to kill and never eat, my baby, yes;

    deveining ribbons in the snow, scrubbed
    scrubbing, awash in the darkroom; or

    backstage, up rusty rungs, like icicles; blanket
    of rags, pocket of candy-wrapped pills; she goes

    like gamelan trancing crickets at the cross
    by tilem, smoke of incense over the sawah

    //

    a mystery

    to me
    isn’t growing
    on the wood slat ventillation
    of our teak cathedral sanctuary
    roundish, brownish, like raw dough
    it has been for three months or more
    the same size, surface of a dinner roll
    the same place, distance from center
    tender abstract seamless fungal
    too high for me to touch
    the holy infant
    of poetry

    //

    in memory of Oreithyia

    a pearl exposed
    on the one-way road
    demands a rocky throne
    her tritone howling
    unhinging the jewelry jaw
    its hunger pretending
    its hook line preclaiming
    lip angled by whether
    lost inseam unseemly loss
    the weightlessness of stone

    //

    anywhere but poppies

    it’s there
    her pane of a window
    passing passages

    the passing offer to carry
    ten thousand atomic lighters
    black specks on a braid of challah

    or liberate sweet nappers proper
    a chilli-laced hotpot, shiitakis, bok choy
    garlic, in the valley of compost boxes

    loose her transportive reliquaries, poultices
    dank delicious opacity compressed of air
    silkworms for the mundane pocket

    warm pillow for docket signifiers
    fingertips heavy with tawny heads
    inky notations with nowhere there

    to fly, but into the measure, slightly high
    pitched on a dry stone wall, for her
    a pinkish reddish hazy third, with leaves

    to breathe, past purple on the milky way
    eclipse, her eyelid, her lippy friend
    seamless tracing moving core

    //

    🌗

    medium close-up photo of vertical culms of bamboo, ones on the left of the image covered with complex growing formations of lichen and fungi

    lichen et alia //

    Pharmakeia’s triptych

    trippy destiny

    true story: in her salad bruising days
    her myspace name was like a prayer, Pharmakeia
    the profiled face was drawing of a death
    cap mushroom; well, consistency

    and every day a salad day
    and every day un po’ di morte

    today, when sniper scopes an urban label
    the same shaded and subtle botanical
    renderings pop up from top of neon heap
    left truffles for her canny little pig

    for snorts and tickles, yet
    a fact; and do you trust it

    //

    what marriage

    the maskmaker who daily carries her
    drew sigil gold and black on brown bag paper
    Al-Lateef—his soft likeness sleeping by her pillow
    beloved names for her beloved way

    what reck does come to find
    what wreck that came to ground

    as travelers witness landslides and inundations
    upheavals that by eagle’s eye the aftermath
    counts losses, failure, countlessness; what hand
    to brush a tawny cow, her long-lashed eyes

    what blinded word to see
    what marriage of then and now

    //

    big girl

    she sees, by name, the blue of heaven’s white
    behind how obvious a giantess
    the light, the light, it hurts to look at it
    so brightly shines a lofty signature

    built body born from Isis warm
    and catching form her dulcet veil

    some Aphrodites are, it’s said, too tall
    to be from brick wall read, too high to see
    by tools of masonry; how broad her arms
    great fools embracing sky of marbled earth

    her reckoning like reckless love
    big girl logician

    //

    🍄

    Socrates: (cont.) then i would wisely (sophein) declare that it was the wind itself of Boreas that thrust her down from the nearby rocks as she was playing with Pharmakeia

    // 229ξ

    εἶτα σοφιζόμενος φαίην αὐτὴν πνεῦμα Βορέου κατὰ τῶν πλησίον πετρῶν σὺν Φαρμακείᾳ παίζουσαν ὦσαι

    //

    Pharmakeia is not associated with a known mythological figure; her name means drug, remedy, poison, or witchcraft.

    //

    re invited / over hung

    well Lady Dionysia, re invited
    in his season of sacrificial eyes dilated
    regal and settle on spilled contents of purse
    the messy desmudging scene in the mirror
    shrugs

    re selfie up reckening too sour & sweet, ordinary
    melted candies mixed crispy noodles, common
    self wrecked reflux re bilious, re typical
    up curdled and scarlet venereal, my old
    porcelain friend

    encore, shredded mini still twists in the corner
    her demon skin shimmying, re woken wasted
    and wrestling names in the kayfabe reflection
    skin sizzle, sexy sorry, acid re self surrection
    and not Jesus
    or Mary

    over hung
    and rollover
    the cat scratches, blinks, laps pink paper sand
    paws curious and fickle underwire boy toy
    hooks prophesy like prey, her next skimpier suit
    barely feathered and nude in the pitiless bush

    says you will not die, but you ever mistrust
    it’s not poison, flushed affect of purpling fruit
    some feral double is trying on her rings
    Pharmakeia re titrating musical things

    as ripening earth is animal
    angel yet

    //

    🌖

    //

    (for disclosure
    i quit alcohol like
    back in the teens)

    **edited to capitalize the “L” in “Lady Dionysia”

    the horse’s mouth

    teloscopically, my dear, are we botany
    born reading leaves, the pricking fear of bees
    are talking, my lisp, or rearing wobbly nature
    what place, organs and bodies, this disease

    the shying seasons blowing through us, here
    parts animal in starts, quivering vibrations
    made artifacts suspect by cities, near
    or far, the accidents survived, the prisons

    that ended us; the motes and moths in teas
    our flicks or running rivers; wicked courses
    of understanding; what catastrophes
    what phase our faces, without the faith of horses

    you have to have a horse whose feet you trust
    to warn you when a snake is in the grass
    the serpentine who wants to be unseen
    repenting for her gemstone like an asp

    for forking tongues, a talisman is key
    but wear a hat, they’re speaking from the trees
    odd shrubberies are bristling with false friends
    a firecat bristling back can help with jinn

    mosquitoes here are vectors for torpedoes, so
    herbal experiment and/or gorilla war
    sometimes there’s one snake, sometimes there are more
    at least, no kind of viral is a pearl

    a tender canter, daemonic carousel
    remembered ribbons bite in ancient ways
    we play the venom clockwise in our veins
    we shed the dead redundancy of days

    my jungle is a dreadful-clever dreaming
    with shade-grown coffee, waterfalling views
    what godly voices animate my evening
    there’s none i’d rather jungle with than yous

    let’s nicker maps, reverb the mythic blues
    i spell, where y’all are going, where you been
    switch witches laughter with the beating rain
    the crickets will out-round the macet, friend

    to live outside the law, you must be honest
    Bismillahirrohmanirrohim
    by river dark, inside a wounded dawn
    we rhyme it, we just flow to make it rheme

    //

    (Dylan, my Prophetﷺ, Cohen, Cardi B, etc)

    //

    diet

    never too much
    garlic, carrot, oat
    sleep, cake

    but gingerly
    the fungi

    //

    “Then,” he said, “O Simmias, those rightly loving wisdom practice (meleta-o) death, and dying is least fearful for those, among humans."

    // Phaedo 67ε

    If Phaedrus sits between Phaedo, whose act is the death of philosophy, and Timaeus, whose act is full creative flight—then Phaedrus is the birth and fledging of the poet. It accomplishes the transformation from interior to exterior by way of externalized interiority. It demonstrates the containment of love in a poem; its success rests on Socrates’ closing prayer.

    Practicing death (as previously mentioned) is reborn as studying and writing poetry. In this, the pharmakon becomes a necessary tool—like a eucharist, hence the prayer. The pharmakon both kills and resurrects.

    O beloved Phaedrus, whereto and wherefrom?

    hypothesis : the second sailing :: pharmakon : Platonic poetics . . . :: demiurge : cosmos.

    fungi in the filesystem

    event: it needs
    new categories.

    local zoology lately
    portends mycelial memes:
    “camels” vs. “dissertations”.

    monkeys on the roadside,
    — laughing. un-officially, i
    am giddy to be their fool.

    follow-up: mushrooms
    of animal entertainment,
    best medicine?

    antidote of day-
    glow (glitch)!

    //

    I missed the obvious, it could (will) be a pharmakon.

    …It’s heavy mushroom season here, these days.