Aidan Nutbrown is a poet, musician and psychedelic explorer living in South West London. His work is centred around theories of mind and nature that are rooted in ancient traditions but are now to be found in the resurgent psychedelic counter-culture. His interests spring from his education in history and philosophy of science at Cambridge and subsequent studies in the history of art, and from his career in the field of probability and prediction. Already recognized for unique ambient musical style, Aidan is starting to bring his poetry to a wider audience. Further poems appear regularly on his Instagram page, @aidan_nutbrown_ and his music is freely available on Bandcamp as the artist Fabersan. His two collections of poetry are available from Amazon, each for less than the price of a pint of beer!
Aspects Of Madness: Prologue
Speak a word that can’t be spoken,
imagine total nothingness,
a thought adrift outside of language
on a sea of solitude,
in a silence that can’t be broken;
a sail a-cast on a windless ocean—
unconveyable.
What dreams will come between my waking thoughts,
what language do these visions speak
that no words can describe?
Did the Will come first and from it
does all abstraction flow,
is the world I see merely presentation
of a pure and wordless thought?
To change the world is to change perception,
when the mind in its aspects of madness
dissolves into deep abstraction,
where thoughts are cast adrift,
without words can we cross the abyss,
and return?
Then can we know what the world is?
High On Hampstead Heath
Poetry is written when sunlight falls,
gilds a floating cloud from
nowhere formed and signifies
this blue ocean, imagination.
Readily the Heath I walk
on acid! my golden thoughts
bind nature, mind and eye.
Oh lighted cloud from whence
you came? I watched clearly
as from nothing mist became
more mist, and just as true,
did I not with darkest mind
begin, but now herein
a thought takes form anew?
Behold now a thought is fleshed,
hallucination manifest, as the
psychotrope takes hold.
A plume of gold in rising smoke,
a harlequin, and dancing folk,
small among the reeds. Are they
dreamed or are they real too?
But what is real and how to know?
is it to touch and so to feel,
enough to show? And what then
of clouds I cannot hold? Who
would deny that clouds exist? do
ideas outside our minds persist,
are apparitions meaningfully true?
How so late? I turn. The clouds converge as
thoughts that merge and form our minds
dissolve in wisps of threads disperse, unravel
a final verse— a secret fall:
when the sky darkens does the soul abide
in this black ocean, oblivion,
where nothing real exists at all?
