Qualia

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
I hammer language 'til it fits in heptametric verse
then launch it on its Viking pyre into the universe

message in a bottle iI

barriers

our speech is fraught with ambiguities
that baffle efforts to communicate
what's clear to me in my soliloquies
means something else when whispered to my date
we only hear what fits our mental maps
dismissing other sounds as aural trash
if not a single meaning, two perhaps
selected from the ambient hiss and crash
it's comforting to think we're understood
that other minds are really like our own
to doubt this link inevitably would
mean we're immutably each all alone
for carpenters, a stool's a place to sit
for doctors, the same word denotes a shit

ongoing

Shavuot finds mt. Sinai flame-obscured
what all can see's devoid of fine detail
we come away convinced each heard God's Word
but argue why the pronouns were all male
"divrei Torah k'lshon bnei adom"
each took from it what could fit in his ear
the revelation landed like a bomb
but only gets unpacked from year to year
on issues unforeseen, from war to sex
we'll get no further input from on high
we've learned to find new meanings in old texts
the arguments get old, but never dry
king David's lineage goes back to Ruth
who-retroactively--received our Truth