Occupy London

Updated: 20/12/11

Occupying Myself / A Future Present.

One day

the world changed

while we were

otherwise occupied.

They asked us

for an alternative -

We threw it out

for democratic debate

but it got lost in the

ever-shifting avenues

of an ever-growing

city of tents

(& is yet

to return)

I mapped it out for myself

& held it up to Reality

but my eyes were like

magnifying glasses

& it burned up

in my hands

All you ever did

was say how

it wouldn't work

All they ever did

was business

as usual

Meanwhile

the alternative

happened

.

It happened

all of its own accord

(just as big changes tend to)

&

(being truly an alternative)

it wasn't quite

what we'd thought

It wasn't the enaction

of some grand plan -

not the fruit of the mind

nor the work of The Man

It was an initiation really

an encounter

with a great teacher -

a lesson from Death

Our world

was held up

to Reality

& when we saw thru

the paper-thin skin

of civilisation to

accept the truths

of a bigger picture -

when we saw our story

glowing as if depicted on

a decorated lampshade &

felt life itself animating us -

& when we then became the bulb

filament & firmament ablaze! -

Our world burned up

in our eyes - no longer

to obscure the brilliance

of our heart-led minds

it fertilised

the long-forgotten

fields of our ImagiNation

and we saw

the true alternative

as if for the first time...

Wisdom.

We were finally ready -

we had wisdom, now

we could have anarchy!

JoyInUs!

Click text or picture to go to download page for "A Psilly Communification For Occupy London"

Limited Edition of 36 Books produced. 10 dropped in the library at the St. Paul's camp (the first of my books to ever be stocked by such an institution!-) another 10 dropped at the Bank Of Ideas on Sun Street (walked in and saw someone had drawn "WISDOM" on the wall, seemed like the perfect place to drop them, on my way out I noticed that someone had moved them to make space for their laptop, can't help but imagine a pile of my books being shifted from place to place, not being read by anyone... maybe I should've written a more rousing poem? ;-) 10 books to be gifted to next 10 customers, remaining 6 books given to friends. (20/12/11)

Mushroom Season 2011

(The following information is intended to be supplemental to a good identification guide, not a replacement for one.)

Greetings fellow fungi hunters! 

I only managed to get out once this season, with mixed results. I headed to a previously unexplored piece of grassland situated in the transitional zone between London and Kent - a beautiful grey day, just as you'd expect. It wasn't until I'd wandered for hours and decided to give up that I found anything (I find it quite amazing to think of the odds that one man walking wibbly paths through many miles of open grassland will ever manage to find even a single of these temperamental and cunning little brown mushrooms!) I was on my way out of the fields when I was flashed by a small group of the mischievous little elves and all of a sudden my faith was renewed! Due to these little fellas in the photo below I spent another couple of hours stomping in sodden boots around this misty wonderland...

Alas I found no more Liberty Caps (and dutifully chided myself for not starting out a little earlier - I had seen another beard+backpack combo leaving the fields just as I arrived) but, just my luck, I found a few of these intriguing fellows - similar enough to the untrained eye - standing solo around the place...

Having returned home and done a little research I discovered these dudes are known as "Psilocybe Strictipes" - the clearest difference is the way the gills attach to the stem, you'll see in the lower image (if your screen isn't too high-contrast or dark) that the gills go straight from the edge of the cap to attach to the stem, in "Psilocybe Semilanceata" (The Liberty Cap) the gills are pretty much free of the stem, if they attach at all it's normally very near to the inside-tip of the cap. Strictipes also lacks a prominent nipple. I wouldn't even have touched these beauties if it weren't for the darkness of the gills - here's a little tip for all you hunters: lots of little brownish mushrooms have similar shapes to the Liberty Cap, but in my experience they all have light coloured gills, Psilocybe spores are nearly black you see, so a quick way to check if you've found something magical (in the field in the UK at least) is to take a look at the colour of the gills (as well as the shape of the cap!) and don't bother picking anything that isn't at least a dark grey in appearance.

I was also pleased to take home my first specimens of the edible (but non-psychoactive) "Parasol Mushroom". These guys are quite a common sight round these parts, and man do they taste good! They're big and beautifully textured and taste great with butter and garlic or in an omelette. You need to be cautious you don't have the "Shaggy Parasol" which some people have mild allergic reactions to - just make sure your mushroom has the scaly pattern on its stem, isn't pungently smelly, and that its flesh doesn't redden when cut.

Happy Hunting!

ReCreate Weality

I'm releasing my first book as a free downloadable pdf. It took me about a week to make this little gift for the people at Boom Festival in Portugal in 2010. I knew I wanted something to be able to give away, to celebrate the joy of being amongst so many happy souls, so I gathered a few of my early poems and did quick illustrations for them, and compiled the whole thing, and printed 36 copies of the 36 page book on the sly while I was at work. I took it home and chopped it up and bound it myself, gave it gold inners and a textured black cover (redesigned for the online version) et voila! My first book!

Click on the cover to access the download page, feel free to share it around, but please point people to this page as I'd like to have some idea of how many people are looking at it.

All my books are designed to be held, ideally, so I recommend using the "Two-up" option on your reader to view the book in double-page spreads as was originally intended. InJoy!

(ReCreate Weality by Psilly, printed 2010, limited edition of 36 copies signed & numbered.)

Place Where The Boar Come

Wild Boar Warrior-King by Psilly

Place
where the boar
come to put on
their war paint

Spring
spreading
iron-rich silt -
a watery tree
of orange furrows
glowing in the damp
dappled light

Chaotic canopy
without bottom
- shot thru
with runs -
tunnels of air
caressing the floor

Place
where the boar
come to put on
their war paint

Primitive
orange dirt
hoof-churned
& snout-pocked

One damp
boar-shaped bowl
where the King
surely lay -
coarse hair
gathering
the colour of rust
molten metal dust
that puffs
clouds of animal power
as he rolls
& ruts

This is the place
where the boar come
to put on
their war paint

Where
brambles cut
strict tattoos
in the iron-ink-blood
of these
quietly awed
explorers -
shins as orange
as fallen trunks
- red orbs
left shining
on the thorns
like dying stars

Minds exhaled
into the amber
light of the sinking
sun, scattered
& broken

Place
where the boar
come to put on
their war paint

Absorbing us
into the picture
by their absence

Urging our hair
to bristle
while a low
wind whistles
in expanding nostrils
& the ground
grows closer
until we flop
with abandon
into the moist
orange mud
& dig with
our hooves
& churn with
our snouts
& roll
& rut
& run
until the earth
is molten
& the air
a firey storm

This is the place
where the boar come
to put on
their war paint

Fierce
Animal
Warriors

Aware
but without care
for battles
beyond them

-as long as
they have
this place-

Their paint
is the blood
of the mountain
&
Their picture
is flowing
&
Their war
is not one
for winning
-
It holds them
together
while the world
gets torn
apart
.

The King, at home, with his portrait.

*
The work in progress
(click images to enlarge)

POMPOUS ARSEHOLE POEM (my lineage is longer than yours)

Holy Shit! It's Chief Arsehole!

My arsehole has

a 200,000 year long

lineage...

It shat before

the first human words
were ever spoken

(THE PRIMORDIAL VOICE

OF THE BODY)

It burped its way merrily

thru the birth

of religion

Fertilized fields

& increased yields

from the dawn

of agriculture

& grumbled with strain

erecting ancient

megaliths

My arsehole

was the big fat

ZER0

that made maths

possible

Its puckered lips

dreamt

science

into being

My arsehole

initiated an army

of priests

as it flapped

funky breezes

from its lofty platform

in the House Of God

My arsehole lost control

to TERROR

& made a huge shitty mess

moments before my

heart was ripped

from my chest

atop some scabby

Mayan pyramid

islanded by mist

My arsehole founded Glastonbury

& has participated

(mostly silently)

in every Druid ritual

since the 17th Century

&

It backed up

every bearded Celtic priest

& shabby shaman Gaul

before history ever

perverted itself

out of myth

My arsehole seeped sweetly

when the word "Wicca"

was first mouthed

& breathed deep

in the fresh air

of dark forests

as it circled

the dancing fire

chanting poetry

My arsehole spun with

the first Sufis,

was too roomy for Rumi,

& messed up

Mohammed's bed

My arsehole

achieved enlightenment

5,000 years before Buddha

ever plucked his first flower

It whined all the way

thru the sermon on

the mount & sat out

the last supper

due to food poisoning

My arsehole was

the abyss out of which

the Kabbalah arose

- as fully formed

as sweetcorn

My arsehole was the

jungle where

the Maya

disappeared

It sat stunned at the centre

of the flattened trees

of Tunguska

My arsehole

gave 33 & a third

turds to the instigator

of freemasonry

It haunted

the dreams

of every occult master

with unsecretable

blasphemy

& soiled the final goal

of even the most

obsessive compulsive

alchemy

My arsehole tried

to make ascetics
laugh

by blowing bubbles

in the bath

It whispered

dark thoughts

during royal weddings

& shat on Eden's snake

while its skin

was shedding

It stank up the room

the day the first

Satanists

learnt how to create

an effective sense of doom

& loomed on the horizon

as the first official Christian

began preaching

love

It gave in

to devilish priests

& let out

for saintly nurses

My arsehole

was a fountain

of mushrooms

one day on the savanna

with the distant ancestor

of Terence Mckenna

My arsehole

blubbered freely

the day Timothy Leary

wrote his first book

& parped "GO!"

the whole time

Kerouac was

on the road

My arsehole wrote

entire lost Gnostic

gospels about

blind gods &

space peacocks

(then incarnated again

& encoded them

into trashy sci-fi)

My arsehole

shat the first totem pole

in the Americas

& tootled brightly

as the first shaman

took on the skin

of a jaguar

My arsehole

has been

here, there & everywhere

e v e r y w h e n

& it remembers

it all effortlessly

resounding in its

all encompassing

r i n g . . .

My arsehole was animal

arsehole before man,

is animal arsehole now,

& will be animal

arsehole long after

& so my arsehole

isn't really mine

at all...

It is OUR SOUL

...So really my lineage

extends back to

the beginning

of spacetime

& I was initiated

by God myself

& personally farted

S P A C E D U S T L I F E

into vast Cosmic

Angels

& personally

expanded galaxies

with my inevitable

W I N D

& created the void

by accident

while exploring

the wHOLE

in my

R I N G

My, my, my,

Our Soul

is the oldest of all

You can try

to lay claim

to its lineage

Butt...

It belongs

to no-one

at all

.