Well, tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. Whoever St Valentine was or was not, his feast day has come to be associated with romantic nights out and Hallmark cards. It isn’t the best expression of love that we have, but it’s still a day when our culture focuses quite publicly on a very specific kind of love,Continue reading “You Shall Love – A Valentine’s Day Anthology”
Category Archives: Philosophy
Book Travellers: For Italo Calvino
Italo, I have often had this dream: A bookshop winds on spiral stairs, with shelves Inviting eager eyes to search for names And spines which lie, “Yes, I am here; it’s me.” Italo, in my dream it always seems That though my search for perfect books will delve Across each shelf, the titles play theseContinue reading “Book Travellers: For Italo Calvino”
The Truth is Three Persons (For Gilles Deleuze)
You say I see the world as monochrome – No texture and without tonality. The truth for you grows wild: reality Springs forth, connected, plural, as rhizome. Perhaps it’s true; I’d rather be at home Within the comfort of fixed certainty, For here amidst truth’s many pleats I see The wholeness seen across each movingContinue reading “The Truth is Three Persons (For Gilles Deleuze)”
Apologetic
You’ve heard, of course, how Blaise Pascal played dice – An arbitrary way to find the truth, As though the logic, weighed up in a trice (A coin tossed in the air), could render proof Redundant. Can eternity be found In such impulsive propositions? We Feel that faith should demand much surer ground. All theContinue reading “Apologetic”
Sonnet for the Mad Philosophers
Of course they all had their own complexes: Excessive longings of the silent heart And disorders of the solar plexus. Guilt too played its nagging, primal part: That drive which came from God-knows-where to minds Now smart enough to fear but not to change. Plato jumped at shadows behind the blinds; Descartes saw lying demonsContinue reading “Sonnet for the Mad Philosophers”
Sonnet
Do not mistake the fold for where we live: It overlaps the outside and the in, Suturing together, and it binds What otherwise would float and duck and dive In nexus-waves of incompleteness. Yes: It’s true that we are nothing if our minds Are not caught up in Being’s dance. The less We live toContinue reading “Sonnet”
All the wisdom of Babylon
“The thing that the king asks is difficult, and no one can show it to the king except the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh.” They can only rearrange, those magi whose god is their own minds. Taking what is known already, they squint first through this eye then that. Ask for wisdom, theyContinue reading “All the wisdom of Babylon”
Empirical
Doubt erodes, and reason feeds on the brain that needs it, but eyes can trust what they see and lives the truth they know and hearts can feel the hope stretched out on the living tree and breath gives life to lungs that will open and receive it.
Immanence
What churches, prisons, feudal pyramids Possess in common is Authority. Only the state’s power, not the State, exists, And power is exchanged through you and me. Our eyes, transfixed by prison walls, confuse The institution with the power it holds Mixing correct use up with the abuse And sovereign love with the despot who scolds.Continue reading “Immanence”
Lines of Flight
No root, no trunk, no stem, only these weeds; No path to travel, only lines of flight. No start, no finish, unity or seed, Only these thoughts that twist and turn, alight. And when the course is twisted and the root Cannot be simplified, then who are we? We are creators and Creation’s fruit, WeContinue reading “Lines of Flight”
The Consolations of Writing 