explore the slipperiness of perception, the interchangeability of truth and fiction, rawness and fabrication, eros and that “shit-faced grin” that sometimes seem the truest response to it all. I mean, what isn’t hallucinatory about this human nature of ours, the way it interfaces with this American culture where “if you can look into the TV screen you can see / the emperors of the real / world standing / naked for as long as you can stand to look.” All the decoding-, the breaking-down- and synthesizing-impulses of mind are in these poems, so are the floods of desire that wash away everything not bolted to the floor in some of our most urgent moments. And tenderness. My mind got tossed around by these poems, then set back down again, disoriented and thrilled. Maybe poetry alone is adequately outfitted to illuminate the mysteries of this strange, true world. Fresh from reading HALLUCINOGENESIS, I’d say there’s nothing “adequate” about poetry. Indeed, quite possibly, “there is no lamp more frightening in its splendor.” --Miranda Field, author of Swallow (Mariner Books, 2002) There’s such a balmy (and bawdy) vaudevillian tenor in these poems, but without so much politeness, like classic Kinks—the tirade is lyrical, given to everyone with a heart, mind and soul. Whatever street we walk, apartment we occupy, or flood we wade into, we have seen nearly zero of anything and the performance bill keeps changing, enough to stop poetry in its gentrifying tracks. Because we are frantic. Because we are lovely and wasted. Because we are scientific and in need. -- Joel Craig, author of The White House (Green Lantern Press, 2012)

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