"DMT" by Elijah Perseus Blumov

Mea culpa: When referring to the practice of poets, I should've used they/them pronouns rather than he/him. I was caught up in thinking of the poet as myself! 

Topics mentioned in this episode include:

-The "Psychedelic Renaissance"

-The kind of trip depends upon the mind that trips. 

-How to have a good time your first time

-Don't be Pentheus

-The difference between a cliche and an earth-shattering truth

-My version of Plato's cave

-Chasing the dragon of enlightenment

-DMT vs. everything else

-Getting Rocky Mountain High

-The toke ain't no joke

-The curious case of tripping sober

-It's an English sonnet, mate. 

-Heads are gonna roll

-Word painting revisited

-Metrical problem children

-The Mayfly Method

-Magpie appreciation

-From psychedelia to anagogy

-A time to live, a time to die

Text of poem:

DMT

 For D.K. 

Warm in life’s late morning we ascended 

and sought out a ground to meet the Holy Face. 

High on our own summit, we commended

all our spirits’ hopes to some synthetic grace. 

All began to melt except the mind— 

yet limitless and crass geometry

held nothing that the ego could not find

far better in the magpies on the tree. 

Sober forms and true reality

the revelation: tree, and friend, and bird

more wondrous than mindless infinity. 

No angels spoke but they— yet them we heard:

“It’s fitting setting souls should seek their night—

For you, young suns, to lend the world your light.”