POETRY

Dickian

A poetic form for garage philosophers.

Cover of The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick, Ed. by Pamela Jackson & Jonathan Lethem (Image via Miguel Adrover).

It is with an uneasy combination of pride and shame that I confess my condition: I’m a Dickhead and a poet. The latter brings me to Medium, a space where poems that burst*— paraphrasing Antonin Artaud —
sparked the Dickian:

Form**

verse one: 2 syllables
verse two: 3 syllables
verse three: 7 syllables
verse four: 4 syllables

Content

Oblique references to his work, e.g. Ubik; VALIS Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said; The Man in the High Castle; Confessions of a Crap Artist;
The Exegesis of Philip K Dick…Films based on his oeuvre are equally valid, e.g. Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly.
Praise and deprecation of his mythology are welcome.

Whatever feels Phildickian about life can be inserted in this form:

What’s Real?
Is it me?
Orthogonal selfhood, God
spinning stories.

¡Santo!***
Holy beam —
Pinkness rattles sacred glands;
Godhead repeats.

Shepherd —
Electric
Sheep munch on a timespace chunk;
Always ersatz.

Kipple —
Pedazos****
Old bits & pieces of lived life;
Holy debris.

*Inspired by Arjan Tupan’s Tritriplicata
**why 2–3–7–4? Click the link below to find out.
***Lord!/Holy!.
****Pieces.

Robert Crumb Illustrates Philip K. Dick's Infamous, Hallucinatory Meeting with God (1974)