Mereology 2009-10-18

…not lost a part of me.

Because if I lost my arm
I’d feel neuralgia
handicap, nostalgia
yet I’d still be intact
and so would the world.

No, I’ve not lost a part of me.

A life was lost by someone
of whom I was a part.

It’s the world that’s no longer intact.

Telecommunications 2009-10-16

The offspring grown accustomed
to reaching Mom by cell
whenever so inclined
will no doubt carry on,
once their mothers are no more,
telepathically, in mind,

except there will be no one
at the end of the line.

Did it then, for offspring,
always only mean
a one-way conversation,
rather like with god,

except She no longer is
whereas the gods have never been?

Neural Imagery 2009-10-16

The way brain scanning works
is to record the brain activity
associated with a
person, place or thing
an act or happenstance
and subtract it from the rest.

But if you subtracted
what goes on in me
that’s associated with
who’s been subtracted from me
there would be nothing left.

Sion [2009-10-11]

[AS: 1928 – 2014 — on 11 Oct 2009]

Old warrior, you dispatched in life
not few to an early void —

the only way, perhaps you felt,
to spare your kin and kind
a fate still worse,

and not their first.

Perhaps all warriors feel the same,
some with just cause some not.

But now your kin and kind shield you —

or what if anything survives
of you within that helpless heap of flesh,
collateral damage, residue
of love and hate, life, death and wrath yet
of their flesh flesh, and while your vital signs
still signal life it’s not in vain:
You’re still not altogether lost to them forever
even you no longer feel nor ever can again.

You’re now for them a human shield
a wall against their woe,
the final redoubt from that void
that’s those who love’s
most dreaded foe.

Ueberchochemkeit 2009-10-10

In later years
you said and felt
that I philosophize.

And you were right.

Though what you meant was nothing
means anything
any more
and maybe never did.

That’s true too. But I,

not quite yet as advanced
in that no-sum no-quarter game
of life of which AE,
philosophizing,
said (untruly)
boshaft ist der Herrgott nicht,”

can’t seem to lose
or still
or foil
that impulse to sift out and mouth
a sense that always
posthumously
proves no more
than soil.

Hedonic Hedge 2009-09-12

Anticipating pleasure
— counting, banking, trading, surviving
on what’s to come —
sets our breed apart, they say,
from brutes for whom all’s ever
now or never.

But there’s a diabolic downside
to this being
forever ahead of the game:

<i>My enemy’s enemy
is my friend.</i>

Just so, despite ourselves,
to spite ourselves,
we fast-forward
to the sequel’s sequel
and know then that there’s no
pleasure in’t,
just pain,
an incommensurable currency,
as both now and then
pick up speed
and the whole pre-emptive pyramid
forecloses on itself.

 

Ad Astra 2009-09-12

Why do I diminish
your pure essence,
dearer to me
than anything there is or was,
into poor verse?
for shelter or for show?

Again for me, and not for you.

Prose falls shorter still
and who’s its addressee?

Deeds, vain too.
Now you are no more
no more are they for you
than if, when you still were,
done adiabatically
so you would never know.

What is not imposture, then?
If words can’t in good faith
embody what I feel
is feeling itself
any more true?
Or just another go
for shelter or for show?

<i>Vuelve, o, vuelve!</i>