Summer vision

The twilight etches cliffs in stark relief;
a foreground bonsai focuses the scene.
MDMA inclines me toward belief
that someone understands just what I mean.
The atmosphere is scattering the Blue
to stain the cloud-deck many shades of red.
A vignette shared in empathy with you,
and all the moly coursing through our heads.
If I could conjure such a scene in verse,
I wouldn't so despair that I can't draw.
But knowing that I can't, I feel accursed;
no other mind could know quite what I saw.
An isolated mind resents it's plight
preferring to insist we've shared this sight.

decline

Dementia steals the words Trump meant to speak;
one syllable's not following the last.
For those whose comprehension isn't weak,
it's manifest he's blowing empty gas.
His sycophants insist they understand
"his brilliant mind's just faster than his lips!"
Idolatrously focused on the man,
and piously insensate to the slips.
Without an engineer, this thund'rous train
seems poised to go careening off the track.
Most voters are inclined to help  Ukraine
defend herself from Putin's thugs' attacks.
A party doubling down on such a course
has wagered on the wrong end of its horse.

Dead Show

The lyrics raced in flames across the sky,
an alphabet no living mortals know.
Invisible to those who weren't high,
if there were any such, at such that show.
Fierce Revelation of the Fungal Truth,
as Dionysus manifests on stage,
accessible to California's youth,
amidst the strait-laced Ronald Reagan Age.
Old neural circuits latent in our minds,
still close when prompted with the proper key.
Cubensis makes the alkaloid that binds,
but never shared its rationale with me.
Ventura's long since swallowed by LA,
but we remember when gods came to play.

hands down

When cuttlefish can out-perform your pet
in problem-solving, and in self-control
Some want to question which of them gets et
and which enjoys the snug domestic role.
Domestication only fits the few
who understand a social hierarchy
The rest, we're prone to stir fry, bake, or stew;
We're picky in our hospitality.
This season, chordates seem to dominate
'though dinosaurs succumbed, we muddled on
But roll those dice again, a different fate
This time, a mollusc entry might have won.
Contingent evolution favored spines
but something else will rule, another time.

steroidal mania

On steroids, Trump sounds utterly deranged
beyond his trickle-down idiocy.
Sane audiences gotta find it strange
he rants that rivers flow into the sea,
and babies get delivered at full-term
expecting voters should be horrified.
On dexamethasone, he's quite infirm
His handlers ought to keep him gagged, inside.
And as they wean him off, his mood will crash
his staff will have to fabricate his tweets
in imitation of his verbal hash,
in sentences and thoughts, both incomplete.
The critics who deride his orange rugs
will need new adjectives, for Trump on drugs.

apparition

Pink clouds of cherry blossoms levitate
upon a sea in countless shades of green
a challenge for the mind to contemplate
within three pounds of squishy wet machine.
If clouds wax pink, why need a sky be blue?
and must your lexicon comport with mine?
The frequencies reflected set the hue,
but conversation's tinted by each mind.
The qualium evoked when you see "red"
might differ from what I call by that name.
I can't know what goes on inside your head,
'though lazily, I treat the two the same.
A vernal contemplation en pleine air
is pretty, 'though I can't be sure what's there.

Alien

A cuttlefish with glasses for 3-D
will strike at prey that isn't really there,
when shown a movie splitting red from green
as well as any falcon, snake, or bear.
Darwinian selection gave them eyes
quite independent of the orbs we sport,
and neural hardware that might theorize
'though manifestly not the chordate sort.
As alien as any brain you'll find
A parallel construction link by link.
Our common forebear couldn't have a mind
but cephalopods--somehow--learned to think.
Such good ideas recur, time and again
be it in motile molluscs, or in men.

Aesthetics II

the stuff a science studies is out there,
beyond what strict deduction lets us know.
And colleagues with whom we would like to share
may not exist except that we think so.
Hypotheses must be built in my mind;
external prompts can only hint the way.
in all the Babel I still have to find
what's right when it says both 'A' and 'not A'.
Beyond "I am" uncertainty's the cost;
our arguments are never set and hard.
Without epistemology we're lost
our stoutest edifice a house of cards.
And so my gaze must turn to my own thought
where any other theme may not be aught.

Truth is not truth

The stream of consciousness through Donald's mind
portrayed in fragments in his hasty tweets
defies historians who'd hope to find
beneath the smoke, a trace of fire, or heat.
If one would speculate, there's just a hint
of what's the truth that motivates this liar.
That stream of consciousness' yellow tint
betrays what makes his basest synapse fire.
Reptilian drives for warmth, or mate, or meal
extend no further than his progeny.
Each one-night-stand's an unrelated deal
and nothing adds up to a policy.
His starlight promises, each dawn forgets;
Trump's lawyers hope to prove that it's Tourette's.

Vayera M

The voice of God? Or some demonic wraith?
commanded Avraham to bind his son
where Reason balked, he carried on, on Faith
although his seed's invested in this one.
He'd saved his nephew from the fiery rout,
but dared not go to bat for his sole heir.
It took a Shakespeare to ennoble doubt
and lay a hero's vacillations bare.
The man who charged his Maker to be just
won't stay his own hand when the task is hard.
The skepticism tempering Hume's trust
discarded by the mystic Kierkergaard.
But who of us'd endorse the zealot's zeal
without assurances what he'd heard's real?

potential II

The morning glory that all night laid furled,
now blossoms wide to greet the spreading dawn.
In synchrony with our rotating world,
celestial clockwork animates its pawn.
Bright metaphor twined on my garden gate,
of mind encountering a novel light,
as alkaloids make one hallucinate,
igniting sparks across what had been night.
The information waiting to upload's
mere gibberish unless you hold the key.
The plan no planner planned's all there in code
but locked away until you set it free.
Those synapses don't fire except at need;
the phenotype lies latent in the seed.

potential

the morning glory that all night laid furled
now opens wide to greet the spreading dawn
in synchrony with our rotating world
celestial clockwork animates its pawn
bright metaphor twined on my garden fence
of mind encountering a novel light
as alkaloids seduce intelligence
to scatter sparks across what had been night
the information waiting to upload's
mere gibberish unless you hold the key
the plan no planner planned's all there in code
but locked away until you set it free.
that synapse only fires when there'a need;
the phenotype implicit in the seed

Hume II

Hume knew there's none to watch Descartes' stage-set
homunculi recurse in futile chains.
Two hundred years before a neural-net
he grasped the problems such a thing explains.
No test will prove the soul John Searle long sought
there's nothing indivisible to find
determinate as digits 'one' and 'nought'
dumb parts add up to constitute a mind.
As sure as Turing's universal host
there is no little man behind the screen
Searle hunts in vain for his Cartesian ghost
for want of faith in Darwin's wet machine.
The consciousness that tells me that "je suis"

emerges as an abstract entity

Give me but a place to stand...

Hume knew there's none to watch Descartes' stage-set
homunculi recurse in futile chains
two hundred years before a neural-net
he grasped the problems such a thing explains.
No test will prove the soul John Searle long sought
there's nothing indivisible to find
determinate as digits 'one' and 'nought'
dumb parts add up to constitute a mind.
As sure as Turing's universal host
there is no little man behind the screen
Searle hunts in vain for his Cartesian ghost
for want of faith in Darwin's wet machine.
The consciousness that tells me I'm a fact
'though reified, remains a thing abstract.

res cogitans

sir Francis Crick spent decades chasing "mind"
a physicist outstanding in his mode
while Dennett claim's there's no such thing to find
we're emulators, running Darwin's code.
Emergent properties that fooled Descartes
in Dennett's view, may not exist at all.
To reify a "mind" like "brain", or "heart"
kept theorists pent in a fictive wall.
Each unit neuron seems determinate
a switch that throws as ions go, and  come 
but what emerges in the aggregate
subjectively, seem more than naught-or-one.
'Though Consciousness assures me that "je suis"
that anchor's dangling in the deep blue sea.

Why not?

Causality's a figment in your head
the meta-tool on which the rest depend
inhabiting a "now" to which "past" "led".
We're over-quick to think we comprehend.
Frail daisy-chain links 'after' to 'before',
induction builds the cosmos we discern
but we delude ourselves to think it's more
than Turing's robot feigning it can 'learn'.
Imputing agency avoids some threats;
what rustles in the grass might be a beast.
Darwinian selection pays those bets
who flees the quickest get devoured the least.
It's human to presume that we are wise
but most of what we 'know' are our own lies.

ghost in the machine

John Searle's essentialism is his bind
he'll never find that last homunculus
he'd rather keep the student body blind
than cede he's been the wrongest one of us
Dan Dennett knows the parts comprise the whole
the only way to mind is through the brain
what Searle can't find is nothing but a soul
to search for which through science is insane
Spinoza saw for everything, one cause
what's immaterial's not our concern
the marvel is that Nature's bound by laws
that humans--with due diligence--can learn
the cosmos is less spooky that it seems
demystified by culture built of memes

Shannon Entropy

I dreamed that you could understand the code that I'd devised
devoid of ambiguity as plain as broad daylight
and anyone who heard or read could look out through my eyes
a sweet, seductive fantasy that helped me sleep at night
I rushed to put it down in ink the moment I awoke
but trains of baggage came along with every word I chose
the clarity was the mirage, and all I clutched was smoke
that through my fingers oozed away and to the stars arose
Retreat! Retrench! at least in math, we share communion pure
that isn't just conventional, transparent to us all

but Gödel interjects to say I must not be so sure

an edifice on such a base in time may also fall
self-organized, dream-words conform to heptametric verse
so somewhere, entropy must grow, within my universe

that first step

to be a scientist, one first believes
reality--objectively's--out there
'though memory, like senses oft deceives
induction's less substantial than the air
but having made that leap, what realms unfold!
from astrophysics to zoology
transmuting unlinked data into gold
as they cohere to sketch ontology
forever keeping track of what's unknown
while seeking out new problems to explore
what doesn't falsify may further hone
hypotheses that point to something more
the simplest rule that all the data fit
if not the Truth--for now--must stand for it

other maps

our  coprophilia must mystify
the dogs whose poop we scoop like some rare gem
they're quite content to squat and let it lie
out motives are inscrutable to them
and whales can't dream that we don't comprehend
how sound reflects from mackerel, or krill
the characteristics that make it bend
to them are utterly run of the  mill
and what's reality's map among eels
who sense the lifeforce sure as Obi Wan
their flesh and neurons coupled to the fields
that propagate where light of sun is gone
however much one might philosophize
you can't know what's behind another's eyes