philosophy – poems 2 die for

BEST SHOT

riddle is,
and here we talking,
riddle of RIDDLE

where language
confronting reality
longing
to go mimetic
takes its best shot

despite, in its
heart of hearts, at
the root
of the tree

suspecting infidelity
reality hiding
something, putting
on a show
(and not
for that matter
a critically
acclaimed one)

yes
language has
always clung to the
possibility
that when
we speak of reality
grounding identity

we might
be shocked and
surprised
that when
push comes to shove
the thing
about reality is
there is no such thing

and yet one would swear
to their being
billions of miles, even
lightyears
of thinginess
surrounding us everywhere
in every direction

here
every quantum mechanic
steeped in
field mathematics is
dramatically enjoining you
to hold
his (or her) beer

as you
take a dip
out of consciousness to
hear this
spokesperson speaking

explaining why
everything so
riddled
with riddle

paradox boxed
inside paradox

the more certainly so
the more
simply impossible to
conceive of
such a thing

FRIDGE SYLLOGISM

my cats, great philosophers
that they are
assure me
that inside my
old fridge

it is
pure utopia

a Platonic communist state
jam packed with delicacies
for all
felines
to share

each according to their need, and
power to irrutate

and I, for my Sins (all of
which pretty mortal), have
five of
them, one Socratic,
another Nietzschean and the
rest undecided whether
to follow Slavoj
Zizek or
call themselves Arisotelian

masters (and mistresses) of
the art of the syllogism
each of these
little logicians
expert at reasoning

and so would you be too
if you believed for a moment,
as cats indeed do,
that we
are blessed with
a modicum of rationality
if not an entirely rational species

whose yes/no, valid/invalid, true/false binary processes
can be read off their faces

and exploited to
ensure the

keys to
that aforementioned
paradise are not
left entirely in human hands

SOLUTION

“there can only be
a creative solution”
Gilles Deleuze

when you talk solution
I kind of dissolve

was only 15
in May 68, that most
year of the Monkey

Woodstock music festival
Jimi Hendrix machine-
gun divebombing
the Star Spangled
Banner the
following year

cannot speak French
(the language
seeming
to resist me
at every turn)
but so
into that opera house
of philosophies
that medley
of theories

thought it a kind of
light in the darkness,
laser mental surgery

but now
here we are

won nothing,
captured nothing

intrigued that there is such
a curious parallel
between
endgame in
my life
and endgame in the world
at large

privileged to
navigate this sludge of
landscape
having honed
that Barthes template
critical
apparatus of sign
and code

deconstructing to such
a fine tuned degree

I feel an insider in
the clarity with which
I am
there with Zizek and
the punchline
of his jokes

liberation there, losing
oneself
to right genus and
species of rigorous laughter

IN THE BOX

there was nothing in
the box

no cat about
to wavefront collapse
lap dissolve

no Pandora
still in there upon
whom
we are all about
to pin our last hopes

truth be told
there never was a box
is no box
no such
thing
as box

(except as thing
you need to think outside of
think
your way out of)

nice to play
that
we are real, think
we are
real

there is a world of boxes
and stuff to put in them
structure, architecture,
form

to do this
stick this somewhere
pen it on
the page
send it across
the airwaves

world
starting to look
considerably less secure

yet, still a foundation of sorts
provided,
things that presuppose
boxes are real

WHOLLY FORGET

optical illusion

delusion
allusion

noise in every act of communication
guitar feedback
reaching
crescendo

and now you tell me
I am twisted like a Mobius
pretzel

me is that strain of
consciousness
that gets
filtered out

so many roles just
one actor

best in concentrating
of this taxing script

the other roles be
the ones to wholly forget

FLESH OF THE FAITH

some buffoon
they call and
who calls
himself
a philosopher
slipping between
jokes
and profundity
fires away

name of the game
dance
    of truth, not
so easy to work out
the steps
   world and self what
they want to say
for themselves
despite themselves
so damn intricate
so hard to
    pin down when
in this labyrinth every
level brings
fresh layer
of deception

and why
must he always
touch
his nose?

is that some
kind of tic, sign of
secret brotherhood or
silent spiritual homage
to H and L and
M his
forebears and yes,
masters

meanwhile I am continuing
this badly scripted
life story
my tale of desire
full of
twists and turns but
no story to speak
of itself

an iron wall
dystopian stuff with
digital chip on
the shoulder, chip
in the brain patriarchal
body guards
stretching between my
heart and its object
wherever that
object, whenever it
should
come into being

that the motor, engine of
everything should
be loss
and distance, incompleteness
and sadness

great for Slovenian
thinker, South African poet,
though
    getting it down in all
its harrowing
complexity
      could be an industry
might
not
    keep your warm at night
(flesh
    of the faith to
deeply
    hold on to) may
not even pay the rent at all

VACUUM CLEANER

there’s Plato

and here’s
a vacuum cleaner

helps you keep
the cave clean
get rid of all
those transcendental
appearances
some
great film director
must
have left
lying around

and here I am
dusting and sweeping
giving the place
a thorough
Spring cleaning

cleaners are always welcome
in every utopia
       just have to lie
about their
poetry
    cannot be afford to
get caught
with a scrap
    about their person

the Republic of Philosophy
has clear ideas
on the nature of text
and how
to determine
what it means

OXIDE

angles
are collisions

bespeak incidence
and refraction

can see this
check.it out
from the running time
of the Universe
and

all those iron-oxide
socialist red planets

elephant
in the room

no room
for the elephant

enough
room
in the elephant

space
to cover every surreal
contingency
short of nightmare

space to burble, jumble up
words bounce balls
and spheres and
jagged
pieces of
interstellar debris

around and
around and around

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