4th floor: paranoia,
depression & other
states of mind

Written from the 4th floor — where the view is clear but the air is thin.

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This is a mournful discovery: Those who agree with you are insane Those who do not agree with you are in power. ~ Philip K. Dick

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In 4th Floor: Paranoia, Depression, and Other States of Mind, Dave Boles takes the reader on a mythopoeic adventure that weaves between tales of those abandoned on the upper floor of a mental institution and an everyman narrating the perplexing throes of his life, a pagan awaiting the moral judgment of the gods, summoning a spirit older than a Judeo-Christian god. He suggests there is very little clearance between the madman and the everyman. Chronicling the insanity of our age and its "political rain"; its many-splendored absurdities and its hypocrisy, while he beckons the moral clarity of a bygone age. Along the way the reader visits Dachau, the Voynich Manuscript, the Nibiru cataclysm and many creatures plucked from a fabled space who remind humans of a confounding nature reluctant to give up its wisdom easily. These fabulist creatures signal the supremacy of nature over culture, and in doing so they signal there are no madmen in the wild, only ones that sound off in the inhabited spaces . . . and if you listen very closely, you can hear the Haldol speaking in all of us.
~ Tim Kahl, author of Drips, Spills, Bursts, Tangles & Washes

As I read the book cover to cover, I wanted to write down key elements: wisdom, deep thoughts, insights, and creative anchors for my benefit. I found myself writing almost the entire book over again. Dave Boles' 4th Floor appears and vanishes from sight as we will it to. We are the drivers of our reality, unless ...
~ Paul Aponte, author of Del Cactus

Dave Boles dedicates his poetry collection, 4th Floor, Paranoia, Depression, And Other States of Mind, "to those varied souls I shared countless moments with as we traveled together, dodging demons." Boles probes society's truth of the human experience, "tell me, what, exactly is normal." In the poem, "Political Rain," even the weather results in academic debates and a solipsistic view of natural phenomena. From the private to the public with special consideration to the unknown, these poems just don't happen but move and grow through the noise of the world. His poems engage our awareness to lift us into Other States Of Mind, and draw our attention to matters that should concern all of us.
~ Lara Gularte, Poet Laureate Emerita El Dorado County, CA author of Fourth World Woman

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