By now it was xmas holiday, getting on winter, getting pretty damn cold, so I was spending a lot of time indoors. Tim & I'd been bickering with each other a lot, so I was alone a lot. I think Tim was starting to agree a bit with Professor MacLeod, that I was "narcissistic." Well I think Tim was just trying to curry favor. Anyway, I started writing poetry & getting into a morbid frame of mind. Here's a poem from that period.

BERBERIDA

like any bract seated on the pedicel
beset with bristles, bearing a leaf bud
with fleshy scales or producing bulbs
with stiff, sharp, bulb like hairs
in shape more or less different
from ordinary small leaf
or scale fallen from the axil,
of which a flower
or its pedicel
proceeds, a branch
in its earliest,
or undeveloped
usually subterranean,
blistered or bladdery
in turf-like patches
or tufts of small bulbs
belonging to the calyx,
as the calyx
belifrande
is known
like calyptra
or candle extinguisher,
channelled with a deep
longitudinal groove
down the inner face,
latticed and rising
stems of the lily borne above
falling early off when
flower
opens