within my own unique and ineradicable nature
I am inexorably drawn to the cartography of the mind
therein lies freedom from fate and the tyranny of eros
where virtue is not circumscribed externally allowing
moral order to be obtained through ethical self-determination
there are roads to intellectual liberty that aren’t littered with confusion
a foundation in critically examining my culture tempered by
learning to understand and harness the motivations of the soul
experienced through the metacommunicative competence of an
evolving paradoxical ecological conception of the psyche
these bounded niches within rational structures of justice
create unity in multiplicity; eclecticism without errors
facets of my self need not be controlled by an overriding central power
social perception uncolored by projection or the prosaic cages of mental sets
resisting the equivocation of attraction and intimacy to know mutual love
syncretic encounters of the mind instruct the lyricism of the body
spinning the quiddity and hacceity of humanity around
I am not simply a woman, an embodied mind, a pneuma striving
undertones of meaningful congruence seduce like a specious categorical syllogism
tempting synchronicity and I forget Hume’s warning against pareidolia
apophenia’s joy and curse as theologically I long to believe it’s all interdependent
in a conflation of self and other, a mystic merging, an ecstatic encounter
always seeing the world’s interconnections from my first moment of self-expression
vagaries and wild turns of philosophy, theology, human failings, and love
the strange and magnificent inexplicable universe turns round
in my infinitely limited understanding it is all I can do to respond:
I nurture you, listen to your desires, and tenderly kiss you
forever entwining in an empathetic embrace
Chromapoetica 
Oh, damn. This is a magnificent write.
Mama Zen, I’m going to make sure you get a lovely reading chair by the window!
I am not simply a woman… is any woman simple? 🙂 This I had to read a number of times… But I loved the easily understood “simple” single lines separating the complicated…
Ha, probably not, from inside the poem I didn’t see that :). Thanks for the reread, I actually hope that my poems require them. Nice to meet you.
This is my kind of poetry. Often I’m afraid to go there because it’s so deep in meaning and full of sophisticated words that color and shade, adding subtle nuances and pithy shadows. I’m always afraid people will skip it or give it a cursory read. I smile though, because I see myself in this style of poetry. Thank you for boldly writing such a deep prose poem.
Thank you Emmett, it’s very nice to meet you. Thank you for your kind words of encouragement.
mm…that ends on a rather nice warm touch there…love those mystic mergings…smiles….you make words dance in ways that make the rest of us look silly…and bring dictionaries…smiles.
Oh Brian, I love all the different dances, variety is the spice of life! Thanks for lugging the dictionary along and for giving us all a poetic home at dVerse.
You’ll laugh(I hope) Anna, but this reminds me very much of a heated discussion I once had on a gaming board trying to explain my preference for strategy gaming over old school role-playing to a male who thought it was boring and lacked depth. I told him process is a refuge when emotion has ruled your life–“there are roads to intellectual liberty that aren’t littered with confusion” –you don’t need or want a facsimile of emotion in basically silly rpg romances and party squabbling. But I digress. This is a wonderful and fun poem to read and unweave, and the conflation of self and other primal and surely a grace when like all things, properly understood. my favorite line : “undertones of meaningful congruence seduce like a specious categorical syllogism..” I *hate* that.
I don’t quite understand how you’ve made me laugh but don’t worry, I did! Hey, at least I never have to worry about another poet storming over and saying, ‘I said subtext of significant agreement seduces like a fallacious categorical syllogism – you plagiarist!’ Saves me lots of time as a poet. Now if I’d just get to that vampire kitten poetry that so desperately needs to be shown to the world… I know Brendan would hate this poem so it’s probably best he stopped reading my work :). As an aside you know my great love for strategy games.
maybe this sounds strange but this feels as if you’re inside the poem, talking to us and i like how it feels and i like what you say…
Not really Claudia, I only had an hour to write for the prompt so I had to go with what was on my mind; there’s a lot of me in the poem (maybe more than Emmett intended when he asked us to write about ourselves :)).
“the cartography of the mind” is one of the many images that will stick with me after reading this gorgeous, luscious poetry.
Your poems always make me look deeper and I have to admit they have also introduced me to a fuller and richer vocabularly 🙂
I feel like true womanhood is reaching out from the words here. A womanhood unrestricted by external forces or preconceptions of what “woman” should be.
Thanks Suzy, gorgeous and luscious are marvelous compliments. Yum, vocabulary, and I suppose I always find a way to express a broader sense of what’s possible for women.
beautiful
Thank you Janet, always wonderful to see you.
Early map-makers who thought the earth was like a table had no idea to do with what was beyond the known margins except warn of sea-wyrms. Round maps made circumnavigation possible but that was still just physiognomy: contouring. The inner maps suffered the same dilemmas. So what of conflating dimensions of world and psyche? 3d is dandy candy but quantum is quicker liquor, as the old blues song inferred. How to play off a polymorphosity? And yet keep it simple and from the heart? We read Anna to find out. – Brendan
About that comment 🙂 …. turns out I was wrong and here you are. As ever you arrive bearing gifts of insight and compassion. Yes, this one is from the heart. Thank you.
I think this line: always seeing the world’s interconnections from my first moment of self-expression
describes you very well.
Thanks manicdaily, must be an obvious trait :).
Anna – I love the poem within a poem, the single lines weave their own fabric along with the stanzas. Very well written.
Thank you shanyns, helping the reader along with those lines, glad it worked!
Such a lovely write from you, again. I too believe most of us don’t realise exactly how powerful a tool our minds truly are. When you know that most of us only use one third of our brains, it is staggering.
I feel/believe we’ve all been at a much higher level of knowledge in our ancient past. We dabbled in genetics (hence the Biblical and mythological creatures) in drawings/carvings from way back. I think we also had a huge catastrophic event (The Great flood) which wiped out all of those beings that had been hybrid and inter-species, until only humans, as they were first created, were left again. There’s so much truth in the Bible and other books but, organised religion corrupted and changed it to what they wished/needed for it to be to control the masses through fear of hell and eternal damnation. I think the powers that be have hidden truths and facts that would open our eyes to even greater knowledge of our learned past if we had access to it all but, the truth always ‘outs’ in the end.
I love your poetry/prose, it is so full of fact and knowledge and learning in a readable, poetic form.
Love reading you. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts with me and happy to hear you enjoy reading my work. I always appreciate your feedback Daydreamertoo.
I don’t believe we can be easily categorized and labelled as a woman. I resonate with this line:
“I am not simply a woman, an embodied mind, a pneuma striving”
I must admit your style of writing eludes and escapes thru my fingers .. though I do admit that you put a lot of work and substance in your writing. Like Brian, I have to bring my dictionary along ~
Thanks Heaven, I appreciate your honesty and that you found something that resonates with you.
This very compact without being crowded. So many great lines that are quotable and stand on their own (“there are roads to intellectual liberty that aren’t littered with confusion”) Really enjoyed navigating through this one!
Thank you zumpoems, I cut lots of ideas out of it as I was very pressed for time and had less than an hour to produce it. I don’t normally work that way but sometimes it’s good to get out of your comfort zone.
Anna- beautiful composition. Love the handling of premise here, where only the introductory stanza is without an opening proposition and the concluding stanza is without a final proposition. Quite open, free and ouroboros in nature. The elaborative sections are illuminating, where there, at least I, see a pattern of combinatory intricacy, between several ideas, most notably the exploratory sets. The infusion of logic and empiricism- Hume was a nice, and well placed name drop-very nice touch, seem to interweave, at points merge-great use of conflation indeed. But I also adore the “undertones…” string, such a beautiful phrase, yet also including the Jungian notion of synchronicity which ties directly into the conversation- Archetype indeed:) Really enjoyed the piece, thank you:)
Yes, I needed that freedom. As always I appreciate the depth of your engagement and analysis Fred. The tension between the need for rationality, synchronicity, theology, emotional expression, and unity are all engaged. In addition the difficulty of understanding and unifying a ‘self’, the conceptualization of self and other, and the integration of a ‘self’ into a larger world are all conflicting, reshaping one another, and then merging. Again, thank you for the close reading.
“social perception uncolored by projection or the prosaic cages of mental sets”…
loved this line most… loved the phrases n metaphors u used.
Nice read
Thanks Jyoti, mental sets are dangerous in my opinion :). Wonderful to see you here and I’ll be by to read you soon.
Anna…I got caught up in this one…might be a little too much, but, I have spent many, many, hours simply sitting, pondering why we do what we do, why I do what I do. I am amazed at the weight I allow others to lay on me, and at the same time, without it I am lost. These human failings, flaws, are at the same time what makes us so beautiful…and while I find it very easy to recognize and forgive in others…I fail to offer the same to myself. So…here I am, writing a book on YOUR blog, that more than likely has nothing to do with the write…but I have been compelled to speak…and now I’m going to dig my own notebook back out…thank you!!! The brain is firing commands to write…I’ll work the confusion out on the page! 😉
Oh, I do hope you learn to forgive yourself Tash, those last lines are about embracing the multifaceted human you are. I love when you write a book on my blog, feel free to come and do it anytime!
made me shiver:
tyranny of eros
quite a concept:
intellectual liberty (who keeps it from NOT being free? does that come from inside?)
ecological conception of the psyche
eclecticism without errors (so what if there are errors?)
prosaic cages of mental sets (labels?)
wild turns of philosophy (makes you want to NOT read philosophy that doesn’t have wild turns, like, why bother when there’s philosophy that’s wild?)
this wraps it all together: in a conflation of self and other, a mystic merging, an ecstatic encounter
but then…it ends up being about love (which was a bit disappointing)
i really liked this…makes you think of so many things.
Thank you for the detailed feedback zongrik! I do think that we often keep ourselves from liberty; I agree with the so what if there are errors as long as they don’t create cognitive dissonance; mental set is a psychological term that refers to the tendency to approach situations in a certain way because that method worked in the past (however, they can keep us from learning new things and trying new methods); oh, I like that you only want to read wild philosophy!; I do think you are entitled to interpret the end any way you’d like but you could also see it as embracing the errors and vagaries of the self (so I suppose that’s still about self-love but maybe not as disappointing?)
Great engaging comment; thanks again for the thought provoking response!
for me it is very much about both. the ability to love truly and learning about how to be a whole self. i think they are interdependent. perhaps the journey is long and isolating, conflicted, frightening. and this is why it is all we can do to respond. it feels raw and truthful. uncertain yet hopeful. the embrace is very beautiful. i love it.
Thank you Janet, I couldn’t agree with you more.
I think this is quite possibly the most thought-provoking piece I read in a really, really, really long time. Excellent poem. Thanks so much for the read! ❤
Thank you Nick, it’s wonderful to meet you. I do hope you return :).
Saul encountering a very female (and very cerebral) angel on the road to Damascus?
I laughed aloud, thank you so much for the read!
The mind is capable and able but restricted by our idiosyncrasies. We utilize only a fraction of it. You brought forth a whole gamut of possibilities that might stimulate the mind to greater things.
Hank
Thank you Hank, yes the mind needs stimulation to strive toward something greater.
Phew! An exploration of the mind, to look at yourself, your ideals and how they are constructed by outside influences is always interesting… must say, I needed the dictionary on this one too… a wee bit of a brain twister but quite welcome to get me thinking. I liked it very much, though it’s one I’d need to spend a little more time on. 🙂
Glad you liked it, thank you pandamoniumcat.
Really enjoyed the flow to this piece, it feels like a river, with streams entering, expanding its course, and then leaving, with the waters added, given, somehow left behind, closing to such a gentle intimate ending. The lines that leap out to greet me are: ‘tyranny of eros’ ‘unity in multiplcity’ ‘Lyricism of the body’ ‘I am not simply a woman’ ‘always seeing the world interwoven from my first moment of self-expression’ ‘tenderly kiss you, forever entwining in an empathetic embrace’
Thank you, that’s a gorgeous description that reflects how we connect to the broader world and each other.