Scarlett Caterpillar Club

Who begot the gap must gawp at the gape between species crossed

What sort of society are you? Sounds like one I’d wish to join – vivid, kind of cute, definitely can-do with undulating segments and all those implied legs.

I look you up for entry requirements: Are you a fan of the great outdoors? You might enjoy grasslands or woodlands. Looking for a change – willing to metamorphose?

Yes, that’s me, an Emperor Moth caterpillar. I’m up for selection; to be sprinkled with special spores. Just the lucky few, mind. We get to settle down in sexy soil or luxurious leaflitter. Begin to pupate.

O, to be in an exclusive club. The thought of it turns your insides to mush, causes your head to explode with a bright orange fungus. Club motto: Need it like a hole in the head.

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P o e m s /

K e l l y

Alternate Reality

Because sometimes there are bits of ourselves we just can’t deal with. Coping mechanisms are exhausted. Dead inside sort of describes it – everything is too much effort and we crave feelings, aliveness, call it fecundity. The hospitalised guy who injected himself with psilocybin, his name withheld, could be any one of us, imposters in the great game of surviving ups and downs, just hanging on, and when Polly puts the kettle on, why not make it a brew worth the risk of kidney failure, liver failure. Surely, magic comes with risk and boiling down shrooms into a mushroom tea, after noting the potential therapeutic effects of hallucinogens in online research is understandable, relatable. Psychoactive effects from psilocybin could be a miracle cure, but the question is, how we do things – recreationally or destructively. Shrooms leading to multisystem organ failure, fungus growing in your blood, treatment in intensive care, and a prescription of long-term antifungal drugs is ugly and unexpected despite any compensating vivid flashbacks, or in medical terms, hallucinogenic-induced persisting deception disorder. What are we going to do with reality? Xtc, etc. is illegal, but taking the edge off with a natural high – you have at least thought about it haven’t you? The relief of reaching an alternate zone of being.