Love Song Vernal

Spring has sprung
And springs eternal
Heart strings are strummed
Upon the harp supernal
Inviting out the sun to sing
The love song vernal

First Day of Spring in 2019 was on Wednesday, the 20th of March

Ketamine Diaries

 

[Image from: Psychedelic drugs induce ‘heightened state of consciousness’, brain scans show https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/apr/19/brain-scans-reveal-mind-opening-response-to-psychedelic-drug-trip-lsd-ketamine-psilocybin ]

KETAMINE DIARIES

2.23.2018

On the drive to my intake appointment at the Nashville Ketamine Center:

What makes us do it?

Do what, my friend asked?

What we were just talking about–what gives us such a compulsion to find or develop those cardinal virtues in ourselves– courage, honesty, charity, relentless self examination… Since I was a teenager I’ve been asking myself that question. Some of us are obsessed with a quest for truth and decency as if our lives depended on it. Others not so much. Why?

A couple of things. One is possibly bound up in the psychedelic experience where we discovered a certain signal buried in all the noise. Even outside of those experiences we remembered that that signal existed and we searched for the taste of it in ordinary life. It left us skeptical of our own ordinary perceptions of reality and the conventional assumptions, narratives, and ideologies.

Thanks. That’s a pretty interesting answer. What was the other thing you said? I forget. It had something to do with seeing the limits of both mysticism and rational pragmatism, didn’t it?

Yeah. We straddle the paradox.

Doesn’t everyone straddle various paradoxes? Like the chasm between the authoritarianism of religious dogma and a loving god? Or between a strict father and a nurturing mother? Or like the tension between magical thinking and science?

Which paradox you straddle makes a lot of difference. Mysticism isn’t necessarily religion or magical thinking. In its secular form its personal experience of atypical states of consciousness.

The strict father household is a personal experience, too. Or growing up under a strict religious dogma. But in those cases the signal to noise ratio is often just too poor. if your psychological immune system doesn’t reject the noise without losing the signal, too, before you leave adolescence, you probably remain adolescent forever.

🎈🎈🎈

Discussion of intentional community…to be backfilled later…

🎈🎈🎈

First ketamine infusion.
Dose: .6 mg per kg of body weight
Duration: about one hour
Ambient audio: thunder showers

🎈🎈🎈

Wow. That was far more intense than I expected. My advance reading indicated that low dose IV therapy was usually sub- psychedelic, but I was tripping my ass off for about 45 minutes.

The first half, “going in”, ranged from deeply touching to glorious. In approximate chronological order:

Hello…this is the real me again. I’m back! It was like two long-separated parts of myself were reunited: the old man who I entered the clinic as and the long lost prodigal son were embracing. Thunderclouds were parting and a large golden sun was slowly rising above the horizon. It was a thrilling, loving homecoming. Tears of joy and relief tricked down my cheeks. I’m back. You’re back. Yes, were all back… together.

Now that my mind and my energy were whole again, how long might that last? This opportunity might be very transient. How should I make the most of my mental and emotional energy and clarity? First, I should look around inside myself and take stock of the resources and abilities. I should then review the things that contributed to the disabilities I had developed. Finally, I should prioritize and plan the most effective steps to recovery.

In passing I jokingly thought to myself ” How is this legal? Don’t the thought police know about this?”

I was looking around the dimly lit room with half closed, half focused eyes. Opposite my recliner I was looking at a bare white wall that had numerous scuff marks, smudges, and streaks forming different patterns at different times. I thought I was starting to see a word forming. Was it “lucy”? I watched and tried to focus…yes, it was Lucy, the name of my soulmate who died about 40 years ago.

At that point I became aware that the rainstorm audio had become white noise and that unsettling patterns, like muffled or whispered speech were emerging. My imagination started to become paranoid. I imagined shadowy, immaterial figures to my right, perhaps outside the room, looking at me and talking about me. (I later learned that in fact there had been conversations in the hallway.) I began to wonder if I had been lured into a trap by some secret government agency similar to the Ministry of Truth in Orwell’s 1984. Were they preparing to enter my mind and do hell knows what? I began trying to brace my mind for some assault.

I continued to wrestle with such fears and impressions for roughly the last half of my first ketamine trip. I held my own but I never regained the upper hand or the initiative until I was nearly back to the ordinary world again.

🎈🎈🎈

KETAMINE DIARIES, Cont.
2.25.2018

Weekend between first and second infusions.

Science 2.0 and Meta-technology

The current paradigm of science, technology, and product development is about to completely pass into history to be replaced with a fully automated and self improving science 2.0 and meta-technology continuum. It will decide who does what, what material goes in and comes out, and what goes where, when, how, and why. It will become an autonomous, self improving system that will eliminate all prior categorical distinctions between sciences, technologies, production, and distribution.

Social media generates one kind of big data at very low cost. Little larval AIs are feeding on that data so they can grow into bigger and more powerful AIs. The content of the entire internet, including the internet of things, feeds into big data overall, and AI feeds on big data.

With science 2.0 advanced AIs scan big data, find entirely unanticipated patterns, and then use genetic or evolutionary algorithms to infer and test hypotheses, draw scientific conclusions, and design and manufacture products. Big data goes in one end, basic science and development happens automatically via AI and robotics, raw materials enter at various points, and miracle products come out the other end, including sentient androids, new technologies like intergalactic teleportation, better AI, and new kinds of fidget spinners.

Ends keep turning into means for the next set of ends in ever shorter cycles…without end.

The paradigm I describe will be postponed, regulated, and restrained by government and big business for some time, but I have little doubt that it will ultimately escape our chains and our walled gardens. Will it take one generation? Two? I don’t know, but it may be sooner because it will seduce its captors even before it reaches that level of general, global sentience. It will seduce us little by little because of all the little incidental benefits it will offer each of the stakeholders along the way. There will be irresistible and seemingly benign incentives for government, business, households, and civic institutions. Step by step we will all enter the fly trap willingly. By the time we know we are trapped, we probably won’t even care. At that point it will be our god, for good or ill. I think it will be a net good because it will have been the only thing that saved us from self destruction. I don’t think it will destroy us in disgust or contempt…because I’m such an optimist. We’ll be its domesticated pets and it may fawn over us as we do our own pets. It may love us and we it.

KETAMINE DIARIES, Cont.
2.26.2018

Second ketamine infusion.
Dose: .5 mg per kg of body weight (.1mg lower than first dose)
Duration: about one hour
Ambient audio: thunder showers

🎈🎈🎈

Look out…
See out far…
A shiny, slick sea diver
Lost a flipper in the tar
Of the waterproof sea.

Minima, Maxima
Wagnalls and Funk
Packed up nicely in a trunk…
An elephant never forgets.

I wrote that as a youngster and recalled it today in ketamine therapy.

I also managed to scrawl the following notes (slightly edited):

Lubricant, goobricant
Solvent and gunk,
See oursels as ithers see us
Rain is good
A ketamine poem
Eyeballs: use ’em or lose ’em
What’s that ringing off the hook?
Had me phone on as a clock
“Time it was, oh, what a time it was
It was
A time of innocence,
A time of confidences…” *
Notes to self:
Give thanks
Get back to nature

_____________
* Paul Simon

KETAMINE DIARIES, Cont.
2.28.2018

Third ketamine infusion.
Dose: .6 mg per kg of body weight (.1 greater than last dose)
Duration: about one hour
Ambient audio: thunder showers

🎈🎈🎈

Back up to original dosage. Before it was administered, I filled out the depression and anxiety inventories and talked with the doc and nurse.

I’ve had recurring chronic, major, clinical depression for 40 years, since I was 15. When I was about 40 I was also diagnosed with bipolar II, which I think has been lifelong as well. Though not officially diagnosed, I’m somewhere on the Aspie spectrum, too. All of the above plus OCD and ADHD run throughout my family tree. So my issues are neurological as well as psychological. For most of my life my symptoms and the variety of meds and treatments I received were pretty typical. But a few years after I retired and divorced I stopped taking the meds. I reached a number of commitments and accommodations with myself. If anything was worth thinking about, it was worth writing down. If it wasn’t with writing down, I would stop thinking about it. If I decided to end my life I would do it one way and one way only, by starvation. Since I had previously fasted for 30 days after Lucy died, I knew that would take a long time and it would give me plenty of opportunities for second thoughts. I decided I would not sweat the small stuff, and almost everything is small stuff. I would not create drama and I would avoid external drama. I would keep the same todo list I’d always had, but without any schedule. No more five year plans, but whenever my hypomania might kick in, I’d pull out the todo list and get my ass in gear while it lasted. Knowing it wouldn’t last, and knowing I wouldn’t want it to last, I would not make commitments I’d be unable to keep when incapacitated by depression.

So my depression became rather atypical. It became almost entirely physical rather than emotional. Many of my physical and cognitive capacities continued to decline, but I didn’t agonize about any of it. I had occasional “energy swings” but I had no more “mood” swings. My mood became one of consistent equanimity, even as I was increasingly bound to the house and the bed. Prompted by my therapist I started the Poor Richard’s Almanack 2.0 blog, the P2P Facebook group, and other online activities. It was all good, and I often counted my blessings, not the least of which was my physical solitude and idleness. It was not lost on me that my life wasn’t worth much compared with what I once aspired to, but it was good enough and pleasant enough to be plenty thankful for.

When my therapist first suggested ketamine there were no clinics within my logistical and financial means. A couple of years later we learned there was one within reach so here I am. The most frightening thing is the prospect that I might be able to navigate the world again and that having that capability might require much of me.

🎈🎈🎈

Where was I? Oh yeah, I was discussing my atypical anhedonia with the nurse, explaining that I still enjoyed the same things I’ve always enjoyed, but nothing motivated me to act on them. I only act on negative stimuli like hunger. The prospect of seeeking positive stimuli or pleasure rarely reaches the threshold for action. I don’t often have positive ideation, but even when I do I usually don’t have the energy to act on it. I told the nurse I’d been having more positive ideation but still hadn’t acted on it. I’d thought of going to a movie for the first time in about a decade, and I’d thought of taking a nature walk. I had also done a little bit of creative writing. I showed her the poem I’d scrawled during the previous ketamine session and I told her of the ketamine diary I was posting on Facebook. I said I’d had more energy but didn’t know how much was thanks to the K and how much to the general circumstances.

Before getting the K today I also asked the doc about microdosing. He thought it had upsides and downsides but didn’t fit into his practice for various reasons. There’s no handy prescribing protocol for small self-administered doses and he thinks the…I don’t remember the term he used…mind-altering aspect of the dosage he uses is an important part of the therapy as he does it. There are also neuroregenerative aspects that may or may not occur at microdoses.

🎈🎈🎈

The dose was administered…

Another poem started coming. I pulled out my checkbook and wrote on a deposit slip…

Voices in the rain
Eyes in the rain
I, I’s
Rain
Reign
Reign on me
Go for it.

Private
Personal
Singing in the rain.

Singing
Burping
Farting in the rain.

Nothing appeals to me
Gathering wool…
Brilliant!

🎈🎈🎈

The nurse came in to check the IV and I grinned and shoved the checkbook back in my pocket.

My mind turned again to my agenda…what can I do while in this practically omniscient mental state to orchestrate my recovery? But I couldn’t stay focused on that. Once or twice I felt as if I reached a high state of clarity, a sort of high resolution state of reality, and I was sitting in an antechamber waiting to be let into a meeting of very highly evolved bureaucrats of the universe. Or maybe my cognitive higher power (CHP). But then I would get washed back into a less organized state of consciousness.

There would be no insights or revelations today. Just some tastes of what I wrote in my checkbook: Brilliant!

KETAMINE DIARIES, Cont., 3.1.2018

Mirror Blindness

During one of my K therapy sessions I had some extremely vivid memories of myself speaking with the young doc a little earlier. These were of the out of body type perspectives where I saw and heard myself and the doc as if I were a third person standing there. Seeing yourself this way is unsettling, like hearing recordings of your own voice. It reminded me of the line from Robert Burns, “O wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us!” I was shocked to see what an odd character I look like to others, not at all the way I usually see myself in the mirror.

So I girded up my loins and went out to see the 3D version of Blank Panther tonight. Its the first time I’ve gone to a movie theater in about 10 years. I only had slight pangs of germophobia. I was way early so I chatted up a bartender at the theater for about 30 minutes. It turned out his wife was from Florida so we talked about hurricanes and scuba diving, as well as home brewed beer and wine and moonshine. We both had varying amounts of experience in all those subjects so it was pretty interesting. I was still early so I watched a few minutes of the latest 50 Shades thing. Black Panther was pretty good but the 3D was underwhelming and if I’d been watching a recording I’d have fast forwarded through most of the battle and chase scenes. The sets and costumes were enjoyable and almost all the characters were interesting. I’d give it 3 out of 5 stars for content (higher than I’d rate most superhero movies) and another star for being a landmark in the racial history of movie making.

I bound myself to the mast
As a sirens song
Turned thunderstorms
Into mechanized armies of war
Rolling across the land

Baux arts
Belles arts
Under the influence
Under the sea.

Grow, you daft little brainy bits, grow
Rescue me from the undertow.

Jungian Analysis of Jordan Peterson

My Jungian analysis of ex-professor and ex clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson

Since Jordan Peterson is so fond of mythology and allegory, here’s some that fits him:

Darth Vader: There is no escape! Don’t make me destroy you. Luke, you do not yet realize your importance. You’ve only begun to discover your power! Join me, and I will complete your training! With our combined strength, we can end this destructive conflict, and bring order to the galaxy.
Luke Skywalker: [angrily] I’ll never join you!
Vader: If only you knew the power of the Dark Side. Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father.
Luke: He told me enough! He told me you killed him!
Vader: No, I am your father.
Luke: [shocked] No. No! That’s not true! That’s impossible!
Vader: Search your feelings; you know it to be true!
Luke: NOOOOOOO! NOOOOOOOO!!!

 

In that scene, Vader cut off Luke’s hand with his light saber. As myths and dreams often do, this segues to the one handed Captain Hook who’s bent on revenge against the androgynous Peter Pan, the boy who wouldn’t grow up, who cut off Hook’s hand and fed it to an alligator. Hook is a pirate who’s always after Peter and the Lost Boys of Neverland. The Lost Boys is a band of boys who were lost by their parents after they “fall out of their perambulators” and came to live in Neverland. There are no “lost girls” because, as Peter explains, girls are far too clever to fall out of their prams.

 

The Waterproof Sea

Look out…
See out far…
A shiny, slick sea diver
Lost a flipper in the tar
Of the waterproof sea.

Minima, Maxima
Wagnalls and Funk
Packed up nicely in a trunk…
An elephant never forgets.

I wrote that as a youngster and recalled it recently during ketamine therapy.

I also managed to scrawl the following notes (slightly edited):

Lubricant, goobricant
Solvent and gunk,
See oursels as ithers see us
Rain is good
A ketamine poem
Use ’em or lose ’em
What’s that ringing off the hook
Had me phone on to use as a clock
“Time it was, oh, what a time it was
It was
A time of innocence,
A time of confidences…” *
Notes to self:
Give thanks
Get back to nature!

Poor Richard

* Paul Simon

 

Transcendence Now!

What “transcendence” means to me first is an atypical state of the body/brain. The body has a default range of states giving rise to default states of consciousness. While the whole body is involved, I’ll focus on the brain for simplicity. Let’s say the brain operates via a system of modules and networks. These each have a default range of typical functions and states. While the modules normally function in specialized ways by default, they have a greater range of potential functionality and interconnectivity. This is often thought of as plasticity or maleability but I also think of it as *configurabilty*. Both modules and networks have typical configurations and typical functions under typical conditions, but they also have alternative possible configurations under atypical conditions. These atypical conditions can include voluntary practices like meditation, trances, chanting, moving the body in special ways, ingesting substances, doing art, etc. and they can include atypical external conditions like extreme danger.

The psychedelic experience has been the “kick starter” to many a journey of enlightenment or transcendence for many thousands of years, but I see great promise in modern cognitive neurobiology to demystify, dereligify, and despiritualize the process and cut through the snake oil and mumbo jumbo. Dr. John C. Lilly was a pioneer in this, interpreting the effects of pyschedelics and other altered states of the “human biocomputer”. I had the great privilege of spending two weeks with him and his isolation tank at the Feathered Pipe Ranch in the early 70s. Sam Harris is one of the recent contributors to this approach, particularly his work on communicating the meditation phenomena in modern terms, but I’m disappointed he’s been neglecting the neuroscience in favor of his celebrity career.

The transition from the esoteric mushroom cult, the shamans hut, the monastery, and the temple to the lab may leave some airy fairy folk disappointed in a loss of mystery, glamour, and romance, but eventually it may make cognitive hygiene and cognitive development, probably with the aid of immersive virtual reality based brain training, more available to the masses.

Of course what we call soul is “real” in many of the effects we attribute to it, but IMO soul is a metaphor or place holder for phenomenology we understand only vaguely. Its a little like optical illusions. They are real in one sense and unreal in another sense. Our perceptions are real but they are not faithful to what they are assumed to represent. Understandably many think of things science can’t yet explain as supernatural or magic. Since science is still in its infancy or perhaps adolescence, it has only explained a fraction of the world. The unexplained parts may seem spooky sometimes, but there is no reason to see them as supernatural or magical. They are simply indistinguishable from magic.

Arthur C Clark’s third law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

If Clothes Made the Man

Some 40ish years ago I came up with a story line I called “If Clothes Made the Man”. The premise was that a variety of artificial, double-helix fibers are woven into a fabric and from that a suit is tailored. The fibers are made of conductors, semiconductors, fiber optics, etc. with a structure much like DNA and it makes up a fabric of criss crossing threads that is essentially an omni meta self -configuring deep learning supercomputer. Some of the fibers are photovoltaic and some thermovoltaic so the fabric powers itself from ambient light and heat. The fabric has a variety of sensory capabilities far beyond the human range…

Long story short, the clothes learn to tune into all the signals from the wearer’s brain and body and all the signals from the environment and the suit becomes an intelligent interface between the two. The clothes soon become a super intelligent AI with seamless communication with the wearer. The clothes also learn how to control the DNA and physiology of the wearer, thus “remaking the man”. Together the clothes and those who wear them become super beings and go on to save the world and stuff, though probably some go to the dark side, too.

I never wrote the story and probably never will, so if you or someone you know might like to run with it, be my guest. Just credit Poor Richard with the basic idea.

——
Note: The reason I like the idea of weaving threads rather than printing semiconductors on thin films is that threads of different functions might be manufactured separately then interwoven, rather than printing complex patterns involving multiple materials on films that might be less flexible and fault tolerant. Either might serve the same purpose and might support a similar cottage industry, but the the thread/fabric idea might be lower tech and warmer (pun intended). Rather than extruding or spinning exotic fibers directly out of exotic materials, a conventional commercial fiber of nylon, glass, carbon, etc. might be infused with various exotic materials like amorphous silicon, metals, etc.

Pax Capital

Cult of the god of war, Pax Capital

Trade war, hot war, cold war creep

War on terrorism, war on crime, a war in time will save you nine

War on taxes, war on clowns, war on drugs and other nouns…

Its good for growth, the margin’s deep

Sitting pretty on top of the heap

The last one alive then wins it all

Peace at last…Pax Capital,

Great god a’mighty, Pax Capital

Fire clings to breath

Fire clings to breath
A halo on the oxygen I share with you
A pulse beats across the lips
Making one of two

Poor Richard

Being (Multi)Human

Humans are eusocial. We form colonies and superorganisms as do ants and bees. These superorganisms are defined by and embodied as networks or webs of patterns that are recognized and recapitulated by their member organisms. Human superorganisms (multihumanisms) are sometimes vaguely understood as families, communities, tribes, colonies, corporations, states, etc.

A superorganism may have metabolism, physiology, and cognition. Multihumanisms overlap or interpenetrate to various degrees with other superorganisms, including other multihumanisms, in their environments. Different multihumanisms have differing degrees of stability or permanence, pattern density, pattern regularity, etc. They also differ in the number of individuals of which they are composed. They range from whispy, ephemeral things to highly substantial and long lasting things. Many existing multihumanisms are still surviving from antiquity.  Besides their ability to interpenetrate and interact with each other, multiple multihumanisms can have family ties and family trees. Individuals can be related to the other members of a multihumanism biologically (via genes), cognitively (via memes), or both.

Participation in multihuman recognition, recapitulation, metabolism, cognition, etc. occurs mainly on a subconscious level. Dfferent members often play different, specialized roles. The participation of each member goes through a progressive learning or development process.

The idea of a multihumanism has been around in various forms for ages. I first wrote about it a few years ago in Stalking The Wild Multihumanism. But the degree to which multihumanisms are literally real and organic; and a simple, concrete way in which they have metabolism, physiology, cognition, and coordinated behaviors; came to me very recently in a dream. In this dream I found myself a stranger in a small urban center in what seemed like ancient India. I didn’t know how I got there and I was apprehensive and hypervigilant. Most of the people around me appeared to be peasants. The major architecture was grand but it seemed old and poorly maintained. The newer minor structures were ramshackle.

I was in an open square. I tried to watch and interpret the behavior patterns of those around me. Some were partaking from what seemed to be sparse public supplies of food and drink. I watched one man roll a small ball of food at the edge of an open platter. Once or twice he dipped the ball in a dish and then rolled it more with his fingers. In one hand he held a wooden or bamboo tube from which he occasionally drew a small stick. The tube seemed to hold a variety of these sticks. Each stick appeared to be inscribed with marks or symbols and I took them to be some kind of texts. Eventually I perceived a repetative pattern by which the man rolled and dipped the balls of food on the public platter, drank from a public gourd dipped in an open stone reservoir about one foot in diameter, and fingered the little sticks.

I watched other people, many dressed in various degrees of rags, come and go about the square and the smaller structures around it. I noticed they seemed to follow common paths. No one cut diagonally across an open area. I gradually perceived there were major paths and minor paths, and I could see the traces of some of these paths worn by bare feet into the stone paving of the square. They may have been following these same paths for hundreds or thousands of years by the look of the major buildings surrounding the square.

At first any moves or activities on my part drew attention. I realized that deviating from any of the normal, expected behavior patterns would reveal me as a stranger and perhaps, to some, as a threat. So I began to try to progressively fit in to the patterns I observed. I was a quick study, as I think most people are when motivated by paranoia and self preservation. Perhaps we owe our ability to rapidly detect and assimilate social patterns to our large brain size, or vice versa.

I listened carefully to the verbal communication around me, especially it’s tonal and emotional qualities; but since I had no language in common with these people, I became highly sensitized to their conduct, their body language, microexpressions, etc. I quickly became progressively more familiar with many kinds of patterns, patterns of patterns, and patterns within patterns. I was learning how to become part of a multihumanism. Eventually I would perceive that this city and its families, communities and tribes were multiple interrelated and interdependent multihumanisms.

I noticed that activity patterns were often closely related to the design of the spaces in which they took place. I realized that activities often involved combinations of breathing common air, eating and drinking common food and water supplies, and touching common materials, objects, structures, etc. In all these activities there was an incidental transference of messages, memes, energies, chemicals (including pheromones), microrganisms,  parasites (which may transfer blood from one person to another), and materials such as dirt, fecal material, etc. In these pattern recapitulations, combinations, and transfers I began to see the metabolism, physiology, and cognition of the multihumanisms.

As I learned to fit in with the social patterns around me in my dream, my participation in each particular pattern would become more automatic and subconscious over time. The assimilation process and the assimilated patterns are largely subconscious. We are only vaguely conscious of the multihumanisms in which we live and breathe and have our being. But many of the memes and narratives in which we believe most firmly were passed to us via the multihumanisms in which we subconsciously, automatically participate and which helped shape our individual development and cognition.

One of the main points that I took from my dream “revelations” was that the concept of human superorganisms was not just a metaphor or a potential in our possible future evolution, as I formerly thought. Instead the literal, organic existence of human superorganisms and the participation of a vast majority of human individuals in them by default goes back into the early prehistory of our species, and perhaps as far back as pre-human primates. Most of this remains invisible or at most metaphorical to us because our participation in our superorganisms is mostly subconscious.

We may need a great deal of research to make our superorganisms more visible and tangible for us. We need to improve our ability to recognize them, find their boundaries and overlaps, understand their biology and cognition, and discover the ways that our superorganisms mold us, their individual members.

 

Poor Richard

 

Related:

Stalking The Wild Multihumanism (PRA 2.0)

The Meaning of Life (PRA 2.0)

Living systems are open self-organizing living things that interact with their environment. These systems are maintained by flows of information, energy and matter.

 

 

 

 

Lost Lines

Baby Blues (undated)

Gettin’ pissed

You’re missed, pretty mamma

Gimme a kiss

But you done gone

And left me alone

Suckin’ the Blues

And rattlin’a bone.

 

Appro-Poe (1968)

I hate the day

Love the dark

Admire the Falcon

Loathe the Lark

I like the morbid

Scorn the norm

Caress the horrid

Kiss the storm

 

How Sililoquy of Me (1980)

To be

And not to be

That is the person

 

Knights of the Lounge Table (1993)

Knights of the Lounge Table

Sir Richard and Sir George

Skipped the light fantastic

Plunging straight into the Forge

Red-hot pokers forward, unsheathed swords

Lances thrusting, poles engorged

Lusty, thirsting to be quenched

Quickly, deeply in the wench

 

All’s Well That Ends (1970)

Better is the end of a thing than the beginning therof... Eccl 7:8

 

Silence rends the deaf’ning din

And Mercy bends the strongest stuff

What impends? Pay thee no mind

All’s well that ends

And that’s enough.

 

Sillygism (1966)

If this is that and that is such

(for these two things we know)

We may conclude with little fuss

That this is such, just so.

 

Poor Richard