Category: Philosophy


terricolous vulnerability

(definitions and notes at the end of the post)

wind beats, tears tree limbs senselessly
awakens me at two
progressively earlier, as if getting a head start will make it worksecret self enters a prime neologism
(double edged word)

flashes of the road to Hāna
arriving alone on the black volcanic shore
25 foot waves threaten crisis
crepuscule floats atop the violence

enantiomorphic noctilucent clouds appear as hierograms
somnifacient, auriferous divine projections

cover letters must be written
(logical/sequential marches in the margins):
Dear Board of Directors: I am uniquely qualified to bring your organization into the next phase of its nonprofit lifecycle. With seven years of progressive experience as an administrator I’ve quadrupled the budget, secured more than a million dollars in support, collaborated with hundreds of organizations, partnered with corporate donors, provided measurable outcomes for vulnerable populations…

(dear reader, do you know anyone who needs an Executive Director?)

packing boxes! thoughts invade this sanctuary of art,
all my treasures will be (hidden)

polymythical fractious storylines colliding
synchrotron beamlines branch
as abstract futures smash up

i contemplate my tragic flaw

she reminds me i’m capable, intelligent, creative, functional, witty, lovely
believe the list! win                        fight                 perform                wow              charm               hedge                  prove!
oh and they all say i’ve been through so much worse                                                                                                            (this never helps)

kerfs mark raw silk, ripping
tactile encounters are disasters of percipient stratum
yet i was so open, orgasmic (blush)
tracing your words (thought artifacts)

undertow gains potency – i withstand the pelting rocks – deafening roar
poetry swirls, th e   l    i    n   e   s         w   o     n  ’    t      c         o       n           n           e             c                 t
4………………3…………..2…….1
melodies disenfranchise

lingual possession thieved
corrugated smells intrude, demanding
thoughts dropped                                                           jagged edge
up

i’m an imperfect processor with selection bias
questing for an oracle of algorithms
deciphering code
delineating borders

i smile but lick my canine
press to feel solidity
the rage to master won’t rescue this poem
from the brink
of disintegration

pandect induces bradycardia – NO!

where is the intricate architecture?
you can’t build a civilization without infrastructure
life invades organically
intermingling traumas, visions, and vistas

(it is four in the morning)

tender phylogeny
an imposed or inherent order?
steel girders at wrong angles
concrete poured outside the mold

(WordPress keeps undoing my formatting,
stealing all the spaces!)
who needs self-conscious poetry?

reality stalks like a zoo panther
stuck, stuck travelling the loop
loop my loop
loop my loop

my terricolous vulnerability
(liminal space)

who comes every day                                                                         to loop my loop?
to make me face Brutality Between the Lines
damn lines that don’t connect

i redraw with new colors, open ensō
what does it mean
(do you know what it means?)

my pocket atlas is written in symbols
metaphrastic selenography
buried under ethnolinguistic axioms

i’ve become a sojourner
within my own cultural schema
a foreigner at home

Notes/Definitions: neologism: 1. A new word, expression, or usage. 2. The creation or use of new words or senses. 3. Psychology a. The invention of new words regarded as a symptom of certain psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia. b. A word so invented. 4. TheologyA new doctrine or a new interpretation of scripture.; Hāna: is a census-designated place (CDP) in Maui County, Hawaii, United States. The population was 2,291 at the 2010 census. Hana is located at the eastern end of the island of Maui and is one of the most isolated communities in the state. It is reached mainly via the Hana Highway, a long, winding, 52 miles (84 km) long highway along Maui’s northern shore.; crepuscule: twilight; enantiomorph: 1. mirror image, form related to another as an object is to its image in a mirror. 2. either of a pair of crystals that are mirror images of each other, and are optically active. 3. (chemistry) A similar molecule or compound; an enantiomer.; noctilucent clouds: tenuous cloud-like phenomena that are the “ragged-edge” of a much brighter and pervasive polar cloud layer called polar mesospheric clouds in the upper atmosphere, visible in a deep twilight. They are made of crystals of water ice.; hierogram: sacred writing or a sacred character or symbol.; somnifacient: causing or inducing sleep.; auriferous: containing gold.; nonprofit lifecycles: 1. Grass Roots – Invention 2. Start-Up – Incubation 3. Adolescent – Growing 4. Mature – Sustainability 5. Stagnation & Renewal 6. Decline And Shut-Down (as conceptualized by Speakman Consulting Firm); polymythology: A combination of a number of stories in one narrative or dramatic work.; fractious: tending to be troublesome; synchronotron: a particular type of cyclic particle accelerator in which the magnetic field (to turn the particles so they circulate) and the electric field (to accelerate the particles) are carefully synchronised with the travelling particle beam.; tragic flaw: defect in hero’s character that causes downfall; kerf:  a slit or notch made by a saw or cutting torch; percipient:  1: one that perceives 2: a person on whose mind a telepathic impulse or message is held to fall; stratum: 4. one of a series of layers, levels, or gradations in an ordered system <strataof thought>; disenfranchise:  to deprive of a franchise, of a legal right, or of some privilege or immunity; selection bias: (2) selection of samples or studies by researchers to support a particular hypothesis.; algorithm: In mathematics and computer science, an algorith is an effective method expressed as a finite list of well-defined instructions for calculating a function. Algorithms are used for calculation, data processing, and automated reasoning.; pandect:  2. A complete body of laws; bradycardia: slow heartbeat; phylogeny: The evolutionary development and history of a species or higher taxonomic grouping of organisms.; terricolous: living on or in the ground; Liminality is a psychological, neurological, or metaphysical subjective state, conscious or unconscious, of being on the “threshold” of or between two different existential planes, as defined in neurological psychology (a “liminal state”) and in the anthropological theories of ritual by such writers as Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner.; Brutality Between the Lines is one of my poems (found here http://chromapoesy.com/2011/08/05/brutality-between-the-lines/); Ensō (円相) is a Japanese word meaning “circle” and a concept strongly associated with Zen. Ensō is one of the most common subjects of Japanese calligraphy even though it is a symbol and not a character. It symbolizes the Absolute enlightenment, strength, elegance, the Universe, and the void; it can also symbolize the Japanese aesthetic itself. As an “expression of the moment” it is often considered a form of minimalist expressionist art.; metaphrasis: the practice of making a literal translation from one language into another.; Selenography is the study of the surface and physical features of the Moon. Historically, the principal concern of selenographists was the mapping and naming of the lunar maria, craters, mountain ranges, and other various features.; ethnolinguistics: a field of linguistics which studies the relationship between language and culture, and the way different ethnic groups perceive the world.; axiom: 1. a self-evident truth that requires no proof. 2.a universally accepted principle or rule. 3. Logic, Mathematics. a proposition that is assumed without proof for the sake of studying the consequences that follow from it.; Cultural Schema Theory (Nishida, 1999) explains the familiar and pre-acquainted knowledge one uses when entering a familiar situation in his/her own culture. Cultural schemas for social interaction are cognitive structures that contain knowledge for face-to-face interactions in a person’s cultural environment. Schemas are generalized collections of knowledge of past experiences that are organized into related knowledge groups; they guide our behaviors in familiar situations. Cultural schemas do not differ from other schemas, except that they are shared by certain cultural groups rather than individuals (Garro, 2000). Schemas unique to individuals are created from personal experiences, whereas those shared by individuals are created from various types of common experiences (Garro, 2000). Cultural Schema Theory proposes that when we interact with members of the same culture in certain situations many times, or talk about certain information with them many times, cultural schemas are created and stored in our brain (Nishida, 1999)

Protostellar Phase (repost)

(This is the first poem I posted when I started blogging back in the summer.)

We were standing in the
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Here are painters who want to communicate
They show up on their canvases
Emotive, sensual, engaging,
Pouring over the edges with ideas

They are Hydrogen, capable
Of the complex chain of reactions
Required to fuel a galaxy
Rauschenberg, Mitchell, de Kooning
All Hydrogen molecules
Dancing, spinning, arguing
Contrasting the inert gasses across the hall
Nonreactive as Krypton,
From kryptos, “the hidden one”

It is actually a skill,
This art of invitation
Creating works capable of fusion
Viewer, artist, and painting,
Conspiring toward explosions
A dangerous, naked,
And frightening proposition
Can you blame the countless artists,
Hiding behind flat surfaces,
Incapable of combustion,
Unable to make the invitation?

Dissolution


Dissemination:

if only i’d studied limnology
known the risks before the vows
you struck your claim
eutrophication initiated
your selfish need transfigured me
into a closed hydrologic system
an endorheic basin

Diverting:

my watershed confined
by the mountains of your entitlement
playas expanding, vanishing profunda
no outflow, what am i?
minerals deposit as diversity wanes

Diametric:

tiny nourishments i praised
rain evaporating away
soon i accepted my fate
until it felt natural to be so small
initiating ecological shifts
this dwindling pool reflects you well

Dissecting:

photic volume decreased
remiss in loving me
as you tamed those wilds
beyond the littoral zone
that so invaded your mind
undermined your control

Diallage:

this lake is a dry salt bed
alkali flats expanding
hypoxic initiators
steal all the oxygen

Divorce:

dying, i wound up in the sky,
far from you

Dedicated to the inventor of the diarized poetics form, Fred of Poetical Psyche (see the post explaining the form here http://poeticalpsyche.blogspot.com/2011/08/diarized-poetry.html)

Chinese artist Wang Qian Peony Yuan Dynasty 1271-1368

October 29, 2011. Up before the sun to snow on the ground (it’s below freezing here at 10,000 feet). I reach for the laptop, instinctively, as it’s become an extension of my mind: axons traversing the wide world, its tendrils reaching out. I check the site stats for Chromapoesy: 6,467 visits since I started four months ago, 2,427 comments and I think about all the years I went without one reader or shred of feedback. Now that I quantify my bounty, does this make me greedy?

I trudge downstairs to make my whey protein breakfast; it is Saturday so I put orange dark chocolate chip sherbet in it. Wow, someone needs to clean the refrigerator! I make a mental note to organize and scrub it out today. Light will soon hit the tops of the bare aspens. I proffer a treat to my dog, Jody, still my baby girl though she’s 11. Kissing her head with a deep well of love I push aside the fact that she has cancer. Passing by the piano I see the ashes of Buddy, sweet boy who died in May, I cry again, take a deep compassionate breath, and remind myself I’m still grieving. Funny, that sentence has enough commas for Jane Austen.

Back at the computer I read Political Psyche and look for archived gems. Everyone’s in a Halloween mood. I’ve read about murder and mayhem for more than two weeks: vampires, werewolves, and incubus dreams. His cherub piece is certainly original and disturbing. I remember to click the like button for the poem with the sensuous eye-lid flittingly gorgeous word inquilinity. Then I stumble upon the post Diarized Poetry a form Fred’s invented and decide to try something new. Apologies to Fred if I butcher it in my first attempt but there has to be a first to be a second and so on.

Remembering my poetry notes about calyx I do a Google search to arrive at Calyx of Held (which sounds to me incredibly epic and poetic). I read multiple research articles on it and am transfixed by science’s inspiration. Unique one-to-one connection in auditory ventral brainstem (I get tears on my scarlet moleskin notebook, yes I’m still crying over my dog). Pray, wonder if there’s a God that embraces every living thing or if in this cold distant universe we’re simply fodder in a circle of life which makes me think about the things I do for love, seeing the Lion King in 3D with my mentee and her sister. What a massive headache that gave me though I reminisce how earlier in the day she agreed to speak at the fundraising tea at the Brown Palace. I bought her a dress for the occasion. She told me she loved me, out loud and to my face, there at the Colorado Mills mall while her sister chimed in.

I’m thinking about peonies, the Chinese symbolism, medicinal purposes, art, beauty, and can almost conjure their smell. I dry the tears still falling for my dog. The Calyx of Held connects the globular bushy cells of anteroventral cochlear nucleus and the principal cells of the medial nucleus of the trapezoidal body (MNTB) in the brainstem. I ponder, download pictures, read more about its nascent development, and investigate short-term plasticity. Plasticity is such a marvelous concept/word in Biology. Neuroscience is still illuminating the plasticity of the brain, we never knew how plastic, and magnificent it truly is. I think about poetry comments and The Invisible Gorilla, what bookshelf is that in? By the wood-burning stove and the swiveling reading chair? I’d look down from the twenty-foot balcony but it creates a shock that travels from my head to nether regions with simply the thought. Guess that phobia isn’t going to retreat. Momentary flash of the hot air balloon ride over the Valley of Kings and the Nile (did I move during that whole tortuous hour)?

Can I combine the Calyx of Held and peonies, the rambling of my mind, into engaging poetry? I read Fred’s examples and remind myself I can always rewrite or skip the prompt (based on the clues I think it’s on conversation). If I don’t try and fail I never get anywhere. One of the reasons I write so much experimental poetry. I find a pile of cryptic notes (never a surprise) that has the phrase ‘a state of profound abstraction’ and the definition of nepenthe (so beautiful I need to find a way to incorporate it into poetry, it means forgetfulness of sorrow or something that causes forgetfulness). Thoughts flood too fast to write clearly: the Death Enters the Rooms and Deep Grief sections of my epic Mere Beasts; the death grimace of my beloved dog, Buddy (foreshadowing the one that is coming); Joy’s Poe poem about his dead wife (I must look up the name and write it down, another cryptic note to decipher later); symbolism; Ophelia floating in the river; and finally, focus and reread Fred’s notes.

Rereading the post to refocus I admire his voice and style. I begin to see how to make this into poetry. My attention is called away again to the tracks in the meadow; I take in the sun now flooding the forest with light.

How honest do I need to be? Probably I need to be as honest with you as I’m willing to be with myself. I’ve always been entranced by the romance of what goes unsaid. Who was it that said they wanted to remain a mystery to themselves? Right, Mad King George, no, the other one, Mad King Ludwig, ‘I wish to remain an eternal enigma to myself and to others …’ Yet the vulnerability of art has to be mutual if the artist & the viewer are to be transformed (as I discussed in my post about it on Chromalexicon). I remind myself to be receptive.

Shit, that essay for the blog about Socialist Realism, inspired by The Color of Pomegranates, the film by Sergei Parajanov, is finished but for the final edit! The painting on the easel, in the vein of Torn is likely ready for another layer but I have to figure out where I’m going with these glazes first. It’s a new and intriguing direction and that always takes longer. The Requiem for the Unsung I’m composing will lose its way if I don’t return to it again very soon. The gorgeous sounds of David Lang’s Requiem for the Little Match Girl are ringing in my head (but damn that computer fan is loud). Will I ever finish those screenplays? What are all the things I’ll leave unfinished in my life?

Ok, but now I’m supposed to write a short reflective poem as instructed. I laugh aloud as I see the scene from Sherlock: A Study in Pink where Sherlock’s brother says to Dr. Watson: (Laughing) ‘Yes, the bravery of the soldier, bravery is by far the kindest word for stupidity don’t you think?’ And I must ask myself: Is my writing courageous?

I am in love with the world
engagement acts as a nepenthe
as the landscape floods with light
my thoughts churn and spill over
from pencil to page I’m quiet now
yet do not allow myself fantasy
as if the thoughts send signals
of intention into the world

jumbled in a sea of interconnection
peonies bloom in recesses of imagination
raindrops gathering on nectar drenched buds
their scent, merely incanted in my mind intoxicates
potent stimulus, enough to induce vistas of flourishing
desires full of sensual and intellectual pleasures

Calyx of Held, largest synapse in the mind
nerve terminals moment by moment
receive paeans to a eudaimon life
direct one-to-one connections
co-existing in osculant bliss

yet in the external world
I am entranced by intrigue
by what remains unsaid

Cartography of the Mind

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

Mutual Response

for the artists Olly & Suzi (& the animals)

Mutual Response (click to hear the poem read – sorry for the gravel in my voice, I’ve just regained it after illness)

First there was a line
grace like the breeze
broken and jagged as the earth
smeared with the essential,
clay tainted with sweat

Hand over hand artistic collaborators
paws and hooves animals imprint
bite, scratch, slither a chaotic contribution
intense encounters in the wilds
artists alongside predators in situ
drawn in charcoal, pigment, sepia,
mud, berries, sap, dye, ochre,
sunder ink, rock ash, and blood

Borneo, Nepal, Alaska, the Galapagos
geography defined by one species
charting the dividing lines
bounded territories a Great Escarpment
bleak prophesy portends tales of
timber wolves and cheetahs on the hunt
sketching bloody prints trailing Namib sands
hostile places leading to an inner seeing

Transfixed by snow swept plateaus
Katmai grizzly bears, Mkomazi blue lions
watercolor turtles swim under painted leviathans
enrapturing Cousteau’s angels
heart of darkness beats in black tiger while
Champa Kali charges down a dusty path
and orcas move through the great silence

Adrenaline’s anaconda twisting around
the shark cage of inspiration we see now
with eyes wide to awe and terror
melt water becomes a roaring stream
impregnating the romance of the landscape
fear’s thunder rumbling through impenetrable forests
ice crystals form within the vigil of deepest knowing
dead fox, oryx skull, and scarlet raven calling
spirit pounds in the chambers of conch shells

the story is the wind
it comes from a far off place
and we feel it
as outlaws demarcate
these lines of extinction

Inner Animal (for Olly & Suzi) 2007 Mixed Media on Paper Anna Montgomery

To find out more about the collaborative artists Olly & Suzi and see their artwork go to http://www.ollysuzi.com/. They have a book out about their work called Artic Desert Ocean Jungle. This poem owes a debt to Joseph Conrad, ‘An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest.’ from Heart of Darkness & to a San Bushman ‘The story is like the wind, it comes from a far off place, and we feel it.’

Posted for the amazing poetry community dVerse Poets Pub for Open Link Night http://dversepoets.com/2011/10/25/openlinknight-week-15/ come join us!

Perfect Secrecy

‘save me from the lion’s mouth; for thou hast heard me from the horns of unicorns’ Psalms 22:21

I found myself somewhere
at the edge of the known earth
in an age when there is nowhere left to hide
pursuing unicorns, my elusive alicorn cure
for you it was always a game
you never think I remember
but the blunt force trauma
entered my mind all twisted,
as a matter of survival

Your missive arrives
in that cryptographic mind
geography’s incomprehensibility
impossible to decipher
a one-time pad
on a sheet of nitrocellulose
it burns instantaneously
leaving small ash

We agreed ahead of time
for the 23rd of October
a truly random sequence of letters
trick of modular addition
only I got lost in the ciphertext
mistaking it for meaning
meta-language to transcend
what came before

A tortuous inculcation
using proximity and shame
more like a rearrangement
the homonym of my name
anagram, a twisted joke
more than one hundred thousand
(because the numbers
never lie) forming a:
cacophonic bestiary
axial defense
detested asset lure
hush, rue

A spiritual starving
that hollows me out from the inside
even after all this time
with all this great distance
it is a violence that wrenches free
dissociates, disembodies, a disease

A priori probability
is equivocated to
a posteriori where
the entropy of plaintext
equals the conditional entropy
of the plaintext given in the ciphertext C
you’ll begin to see
where I derailed the equation

All that I have is this legacy of ashes
an unbreakable code
shielding you from your crimes
infinite computing no adversary
for the tangled traumas
obscured in my mind

In a conventional symmetric
encryption algorithm
complex patterns of
substitutions and transpositions
these places dance
to orient me to the key
I see the risk

Data remanence is such
a continual problem
simplest overwrite technique
write the same data everywhere
(often just a pattern of zeros)
a way to be nothing
nullify feeling

Poetry is a cipher but
it isn’t known whether
there’s a cryptanalytic procedure
which can reverse these transmutations
mathematics may be my undoing
while I’m mourning what cannot be recovered
security continually assures me that this technique
is proven to provide the perfect secrecy

Linked to Mark Kerstetter’s excellent prompt on persona poems – join us http://dversepoets.com/2011/10/22/poetics-the-other

Theoria

Imperium is the Latin root of empire
an aspiration to absolute universality
impetus and warrant to wage war, execute laws, expand

Conquest was deemed morally justified
bringing civilization and true religion
to grateful denizens of many Protectorates

Trialectical human geography reinforces social constructs
of core and periphery, defining privilege,
creating marginalization and the status quo
in an application of cultural hegemony

Geopolitics, nationalism, and globalization
reinforce power structures, fuel the use
of vindictive military force among
anathematically opposed world views

Poïesis

Consider the devolution of the dominant center
both within our own psyche and the structure of society
imagine migration with no demands for acculturation
that allows cultural exchange and hybridity

Exploration of the nature of Eros, born of Poverty and Resource,
reveals a lack of the good and beautiful merged
with intelligence and resourcefulness

Love is never possessing but always striving
‘poïesis in the soul through the cultivation of knowledge and virtue’*
a threshold occasion, a moment of transformation

Ecstasis, begetting and bringing forth the beautiful
averting the inevitable consequence of genocide, the legacy of imperium,
violence toward the other, born within fractured selves

A blooming of the blossom, the birth of eudaimonia
through the reconciliation of thought with matter and time
poïesis, the source and meaning of poetry

Praxis

Application begins with critical pedagogy
undergirded by radical democracy, feminism, and social justice
the learner as co-creator of knowledge

Envision post-nationalism where citizens gain
actualized, liberated personhood in a new space
a new humane geography

Dependent on difference
encompassing universally recognized human rights
true diplomacy, an accord, a détente
for our traumatized globe still revolving around the ideology of imperium

*Plato from The Symposium

sophia transmutes into
an encircling ethica
where intellectual and moral virtues
meld with ideal human excellence
to lure the harrowed psyche
into transformation

light years away celestial bodies spin

awe grips creativity
and art claims its home
raw, unhindered by the pettiness
of the projected self-image
encompassing vulnerability connecting
reinforces openness to experience

she refuses to feed their unmitigated desires

flourishing arête arrives
startling long held resistance
honoring that knowledge
creates a place in the world
a dwelling in sacred space

the fluttering self stills, quiets

through a stable structure of ideals
meaning shapes identity
provides the catalyst for growth
adventure and chaos spiral out renewing
interdependence arises out of
a matrix of intimate love

she binds the beings equidistant

freed from the imprisoning deontology,
its logical sequential march of language
flowing like the river to the sea
immutable and relentless,
release is obtained

wanderlust becomes a virtue

the authentic self, in all its multiplicity,
is liberated from the veil
a poisoned gown that sickens the soul
bloodied eyes bound in muslin
ablutions now wash clean the interstices

purification is not judgment, ritual is not dogma

a global self emerges
through dialogue in the liminal spaces
ecology of being blooms
the phoenix reminds us that
she who abides in fire is bliss
the only one living
without fear of consumption

ethics are forged with courage and character
Aeternitas in her magnanimity
charts the arc of eudaimonia

Three little haiku

SUUPAA FURAFFII (Super Fluffy) (c) 2004 Yumiko Kayukawa

SUUPAA FURAFFII (Hatsu Yuki)
for Yumiko Kayukawa

seal hunter polar
bear losing traction on ice
is human at home

Pan-Chan the Elephant by Chinatsu Ban

 Superflat Elephant Blues (Atsusa)
for Chinatsu Ban

piercing wit reveals
elephant sagacity
hidden enigma

Fight with Tako (c) 1999 by Aya Takano

 Survivor (Kasumi)
for Aya Takano

blue octopus ink
deimatic display acts
counter maneuvers

Blog at WordPress.com.
[ Back to top ]