Four years have passed since first I awoke to the dream of Somnus and this I swear to all, if I could have changed anything I wouldn't change a damn thing.

And so once more I write against the sages' prescription. But to dispense is to feel and to feel is an honor, which might just provide a precious second chance at realization and is this not better than any pharmacopoeia? Yet thieves may also have honor.

Compositions stem the demons and I have many such legions to command. The hoards wait gleefully in the woodlands, opportunistic, symbiotic and always offering the proverbial satin sheet to the bride of entropy. They are I as much as I am them and as such are more than tolerated. Their presence provides many insights but if ever self-pity takes root they may multiply destroying the delicate agar of a sensitive psyche with their mindless hyphae.

Despite our current evolution we remain slaves to the whims of a carnal hypothalamus. This is my personal belief and this realization unveils the illusion of completeness in plutonic and non-plutonic equity bypassing the misnomer we know as loneliness. This exchange remains a constant cause of strife and conflict in my chemistry. Easy prey for the non-cynic but am I not also born to this dying animal. Mother dearest, you'll need to do better than whoring me out for your whims!

When existence is threatened an old physiological adage comes to play. You make the fight of your life or become consumed by that ignoble, bitter fire of flight. With these thoughts weighing heavy on an already failing heart and bitter truth seeping through my veins I have chosen to steer the penultimate course for the sake of myself, my children and what little dignity they have left me. My foxglove is justice, my justice is reason and my reason is instinctive survival.

For some time now I have competed with a hidden foe. Long nights of awareness punctuated by apnoic cries to oblivion in the desperate hope of emergence. Daze lying behind an analgesed, gated countenance with manic insight could poison any polygraph. Mendelian numbness expresses a diverse pool of empathic decentralization under such conditions.

Recently confronted by two young men, both fixed, both dilated, I endeavored to chase the dragon but lost the trail at the very outset. Both whispered, "Liar", both capitulated to Ondine's cold draft. Enraged I sought the shelter of my bed but could not shirk that harrowing caveat.

Were I unworthy of the task ahead of me I would have silently retired some time now and sought the path of Oisín with Niamh eternally beckoning across the foam.

I have always scorned fate. Accepting her papyrus is too alien to my habitual hieroglyphs. That aside I am still held prisoner to the perennial flood of my own beliefs, which may drown or invigorate. But while these continue to wash over me I cannot help indulge in my fertile, Osirian fantasy.

Grown weary of broken promises and fractured hopes I remarkably remain human first, then and only then perhaps a physician. Too easy to fall prey to the god-trap and all of its misgivings. Many console themselves in such endearments and ultimately reap their due harvest in the latter years. Witnessing such failings first hand and suffering as the innocent bystander I would hope that I and all concerned would be saved from such a sad, destructive lonely and pathetic fate. But at what is the cost?

The politic, the filth of this tainted republic that tars my mortal body is slowly smothering me. Starved by its malignant cachexia and helpless to the hungry cries a morasmic intellect I waste to the mumbling, metastatic deliberations of baser details.

Democracy in this wonderful subculture we subscribe to is a fallacy, which has propagated for far too long in our land of saints and scholars.

Four winters! Four lonely winters and still the stagnation grows insipidly. A fifth crucifixion awaits my attention. But Morpheus, have I not embraced truth living life to you and your father's sword? This cup weighs heavy for my spirit.

Somnus, I am no martyr and refute this crown of thorns bequeathed upon me by plethoric, mortal generals! Am I now once more to be commended into their bosums?

Prima noce! My only crime is that I have loved and loved deeply. That such sentiments beget treason is a moral tragedy. Yet my passion has led the senators to wash their sins clean of my countenance.

Their baths, coliseums and vomitoriums take precedence above all else taxing the souls of others whilst they hide behind, "for the glory of the empire". Their greed surpasses all. Nothing will stand in the way of their centurions and I am no exception.

Merits remain despite the burning, sterile criteria continually strewn in my face. The problem with the politic is that failure to engage the beast begets the petty tyrant.

Salus dum vigilamus? Safe while vigilant is admirable but falls nothing short of sacrilege when Mens sana in corpore sano is left wanting. Too often dictators cross-dress in a toga of democracy.

Father, Hypnos, why have you forsaken me? Abandoning your son to drown in a suffocating squall of dreams, he lies restless in a poisoned poppy field dying to awake from Dorothy's spell.

I have loved and shall continue to love.
Dum spero spiro

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