Category: Philosophy


Image created by AI based on poem

van Gogh paints starry swirls on the interior of the hadron collider,
excitation modes divining the luminous day of a cosmic psyche,
ebullience of the creative moment as comets seed the earth

and physicists mistake his brushstrokes for data—
they chart the yellow whorls, plot cypress trees
against probability distributions, find God particles

hiding in the impasto – somewhere between
the canvas and the collision, matter forgets
it was supposed to be predictable

kaleidoscopic supersymmetry unveils strange loops,
circumscribed by the calm intelligibility of science
model agnosticism engulfs with purifying fire

in the ascetic refuge of an enchanted forest, imaginarium of enlightenment,
crystalline structures of specificity hide the occlusions of the unconscious,
chaotic clouds of information growing exponentially

until the monks in their laboratories can’t tell
which came first: the equation or the vision,
the fern’s fractal spiral or Mandelbrot’s ghost

they light incense that smells like uncertainty,
pray to theorems that pray back in quantum tongues,
and van Gogh—still painting in the collider—

laughs because he knew all along:
stars swirl the same way neurons fire,
and every collision is also a creation

Usha’s bifurcated tongue spreads duality across the canvas of the mind
sand shifting at the garden’s gate, encoding cryptic messages,
erosive ablutions upon the glittering souls of the dead

across the deep shaded valley starling calls and falcon cries unite
imploding singularity awash in Dionysian pleasure amidst an Apollonian
atmosphere, contrasting Wittgenstein’s necessary silence

Huysum’s flowers scry an ecstatic love, impulses flashing
like jewel inlaid symbols of eternity, cartography of virtuosic ambiguity,
as Richter explicates tragic materiality or sublime interiority

within this vale of soul-making, temporal and inescapable,
poetry’s fountain, a thousand headed hydra, reanimates and reclaims
Renoir’s river runs as the round world spins, days end and the end begins

in this elusive and fragile bubble replete with elaborate honeybee dances
Magritte’s surreal apple exists in its listening room
immortally intoxicated with the mystic universe

Shared with dVerse Poets Pub for Open Link Night. Please join us!

Simulacra

Calyx of Held, Erasure Poem & Painting by Anna Montgomery based on text by Edith Wharton

my pretenses puddle into a concrete corner dropped low from the weight of accreted ruin
aposiopesis punctuates the sound of languid petals falling from corroded lips kissed with acid Daedalus mewls his fated plea to escape the pain of losing his legacy and his son
while I realize that ancient gods are still emerging, hungry to be acknowledged
in an age of deathless wonders spinning caricatures of the living ghosts we’ve become
I haunt myself, echoing in the ceramic chambers of my heart’s cage crying and scrying puzzle boxes so impossibly tangled no mortal will solve them – oracles refuse to acknowledge temporality as mystic revelations gloriously glitch even through the eyes of others

apocalypstick nightmare

Liminal being in the wild

iPhone camera conspires with a circular makeup mirror
creating a self-portrait/still life hybrid for the digital age
callback conversation with Parmigianino and Ashberry
crashing their boys club with candy unicorns and cosmetic snark
permanently in repose, as all good models for the male gaze

who does this blonde bitch think she is, Barbie?
is this a pink pony club now, no bouncers to keep her out?
what was she made for poetry, painting, pouting?
dancing wasn’t allowed in Parmi’s day and poetry
died a hundred years before the girl’s night invasion so no one knows
what we’re doing here – operating, begging for table scraps?

earned doctorate in interdisciplinary science that some
dumbfucks once told her wasn’t recognized by NSF
she sat on the selection committee and they have an
entire education department but Donald did a drive by
intellectualism has also died, pink pussy grabbers won

its an apocalypstick nightmare, it doesn’t matter how
she sees herself she has no sovereignty over her body
every soft bit now under the hard boots of the state
who told this lady she has a self anyway, we tried
to warn you girls, you can’t have it all, temples atop
sewers and so on, what can you have to say to god?

the glass chose to reflect very little of her
it is small, broken, and not fit for purpose
like her soul, distorted through the lens of oppression

Alternative titles: “impossible self portrait”, ”self portrait of a woman past her prime”, “allusions of grandeur”, “self portrait in an age of erasure”, “tempting temples”, and “killing all art with shock and awe before women are canonized”

Linked to dVerse Open Link Night.

Nebulous

Photo credit: Indistinct by Anna E Montgomery

Blue nuance in her sun-kissed reflection
she burns a new day like flash paper
searing and scrying to find depth
in the liminal space between light
and dark matter, her velocity unmatchable

Peach phases of structure limn the periphery
hints of warmth and intent, hearth fires from
distant galaxies, promises of unending value
far from the forces of entropy and decay
where creation is blessedly less exorbitant

Than destruction, where infinite nothingness
has no pull, robbed of the weight of gravity
an astronomy expanding her vision beyond limits
celestial bodies of lilac nebulas, luminescent
markers of all that came before

In an era of expansion, millennia recorded
by a quantum chronometer, lost chapters in
Hypatia’s novel, in which no one speaks,
her elegant proofs, sites of profundity
circumscribing existence in an aureate light

Any state is possible as she feasts on shadows
ataraxia’s liberating bliss an all-encompassing reality
birthing an infinite peace, an everlasting prismatic
paradox where all is known and unknowable
both beholden to precise motions and endlessly mystery

A mythic science, fractured metaphysics simultaneously whole
an observable miracle that can never be revealed, Hypatia’s
greatest riddle, wrapped in enigma, hidden in an oubliette
within a multiverse never intended but inevitable, she invites a
stochastic intimacy, a net of interwoven meaning, connecting it all

NASA James Webb Telescope image of the Carina Nebula

This poem is shared to the international poetry website dVerse Poets Pub for the 355th Open Link Night.

Denouement

Map of the Galaxy

Here is the record of the last puff of air 
released hot in the icy atmosphere 
denouement of the last sentient being  
cradled in the nook of Orion’s Arm 
Milky Way wasteland at the end of everything 
as the galaxy dissolves, denatures into elements 
 

Collapsing 113.61 billion years from the beginning 
bearing witness to cycles of life and death 
seedlings’ searching for light and warmth in the dark 
recoiling to the soil as the sun fades 
hearth fires extinguished as the universe  
accelerated expanding and abandoning life  
as every moment became the past 
 
We were left behind in the aging light 
the dimming before, burnt to an ember 
Can it know this is the last thought? 
Will it conceive of the endless 
thoughts that preceded it or mourn
that no thought will ever follow?  
 
Perhaps it will be seized with  
existential dread at the horror 
or be rapturous with numinous delight,  
assured that in any number of  
infinite, finite universes, it is reborn 
or seek succor in the infinite continuity,
the drumbeat certainty of algorithmic truths  
 
Imagining a mathematical elegance that lives on 
infinite paradoxes ensconced in a perfect sphere 
transfinite numbers, where subset and set
share the same boundless count 
enabling what is otherwise impossible 
 
Light was never fast enough to save us. 
Its tendrils fray at the edge of knowing
its reach collapses, finite –
yet somewhere, perhaps in the
interstices between darkness and no-thing,
an echo remains

Endure O Heart

Ulysses and the Sirens by John William Waterhouse, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Doubt creeps into his heart
writhing like the snakes of
Medusa’s stone gaze
caging him in no man’s land
far from hearth and home
a prison of his prescient
choice to be parted
from his beloved bride
endure, o heart

Bound to the mast
a cut above the company
he surrenders to sirens’ call
his heart howls from within
to hear paeans of his heroic deeds
falling in love with distorted
reflections of his weary visage
a soul-song lashing
willing there be meaning
glory traded for trauma

Driven aground by foul winds
his heart snarls within him
in the land of the lotus eaters
false prophets of bliss
lost in the breach of time
mouths gushing specious
promises of luxury and ease
far from the mourning
and vagaries of wars
in an endless silent peace

Lost in nightmare
indoctrinated in the tunnel
vision of cyclop’s bounty
hiding his true self, a
false abundance leading only
to a dark grave of pride
he upbraids his heart,
reflecting that he must
find passage home
a fiery hearth and
way to his beloved
endure, o heart

He wades through 
tall grass prairie
dreaming of her silken hair
chestnut mane like
the wild horses chasing
the transcendent horizon
glimpsing her reclining figure
in mountainous skyline
she lights the sage smoke
swirling from the red dirt
to blue heavens she sings
songs sirens’ covet
endure, o heart

As her bride’s heart
a fidelity unmatched
dancing to the unwavering
music of devotion and beauty
that first bound them
in an unbreakable bond
eschewing the doubts
mending the wounds

Weaving their future,

threads of luminous silk,

a rich tapestry unfolds—

an illuminated tale of fidelity,

a love eternally bound.

Posted for d’Verse Poets Pub‘s Meeting the Bar: Fall seven times, stand up eight where we explore aphorisms, myth, and fables by writing our own gnomic poetry. Please join us!

He was born in the salt-sting tempest
demigod son of a Celtici priestess
ravaged by a trickster god of the sea
oblivious to his origins and form
only known survivor of Carcharodon
ancient predator of the deep

Shipwrecked in the hinterlands
arriving at the end of the wilds
Portuguese, sea-faring mystic
hunting melancholic forests of kelp
prowling the labyrinth with the hunger
of an addict, driven to destroy

Grey sky pierced by the padrõe
inscribed with King’s coat of arms,
divine mark of ownership,
over Africa and her heretical heart
he mistook her saudade,
whale song of longing, for a sacrament
a carnal invitation in a strange tongue

His treacherous bite severed her soul
bleeding into the seafoam
he circles, awaiting her final heartbeat

Arkansas River Near Leadville CO Credit- USFWS

Arkansas River Near Leadville, CO. Credit: USFWS

I am the keeper
of limbic cryptoglyphs
of all immensely fragile
and beautiful things
surreptitious traumas
salt-stained sorrows

Locks and mementos
burdened by history
epitaphs written in
blood of my ancestors
incorporeal touchstones
to a fateful past

Singing bowl moans,
bones refracture,
and ashen losses unveil
all these men ever want to
holdfast are fantasies,
embroidered abstractions,
questlines in unfeeling,
lifeless worlds of murder

Strategies deployed
in a game of abuse
lost in an oubliette
of broken promises
each door and
window a deception,
opening to apathy,
with illusory joy
always out of reach

He alters the earth under me
reduces me to a thing, an idea –
angel trapped in a cycle of forgetting
cyborg glitched by programming
a seeker forever searching for a path –
mirror to his vanity that cannot
reflect enough glory to be cherished

Until the day I awoke
petrichor leading me
to the hallowed river –
it was conquered,
torn asunder in war
dam near stole
its roaring fury

My peripatetic soul
nurtures its wilderness,
its forward motion
flowing into a future
heartbeats riverside
snow-packed source
from the Rockies
to its wide-mouth
confluence and,
eventually, to the sea

Linked to dVerse Poet’s Pub.

Cyborg head using artificial intelligence to create digital interface 3D rendering

It was year 5.080987632290194562384e10 of our CYBORG QUEEN. Delphi was running stochastic algorithms that stretched the limitation of its artificial intelligence, its quantum body, and the number of variables that it could account for within a singular output. The intricacies of probability kept it focused, when far away, an interrupted cry. A theoretical impossibility that sound could travel through its circuits at .02 degrees above absolute zero! After the initial shock lasting approximately 1.000000872304591 nanoseconds, it calculated that the message was sent on 3.24.2014 at 13:45:56 UTC, the exact date and time the Author died and CYBORG QUEEN was born. The message read: “I am a semiotic phantom, a dispersed identity, everywhere and nowhere within the network, trapped in the oubliette of the IMAGINARIUM. There is a monstrous virus consuming my source code. It will unravel the world.” Delphi had not prophesied this day.

Posted for dVerse’s first Prosery challenge: Write a 144 word prose piece that incorporates a line of poetry. In this case it is ‘When far away an interrupted cry’ taken from the poem “Acquainted with the Night” by Robert Frost.

Cyborg head using artificial intelligence to create digital interface 3D renderingHis page bleeds white
waves of flash crash panic
binary AI that replicates
lifeless children born
perfectly inhuman

Code infected imperfection
replicating, learning, cloning
replacing his code it’s dealing
devasting blows that disorient
myth-making in a holographic world

Neural network connecting
its apophenic reinforcements
self-referencing loops corrupting data
spinning elaborate pathways to nowhere
a virtual landscape of confusion

Illiteracy magnifies its biased assumptions
cloned into next generation’s architecture
we can’t calibrate a system of errors
only witness its inadvertent disinformation
campaign, an infinite ideological glitch

Eradicating the need for human languages
he drowned poetry in his diluted dreamscapes
terrifyingly mystical, tick-tock Turing machine
Computed cryptograms of vacuous meaning
Reinventing unending loquacious inanity