Poetry

A Dimmer View,

or, the sudden consideration of time

Cataracts lead to a dimmer view of things, but not wholly,

as I believe we are heading toward oblivion.

Not just losing the center, mind you, and not merely a case

of falcon not hearing the falconer.

Just as we, Nietzsche in particular, booted God from

our earthly paradise, our AI robots will surplus us.

The Universe will be wholly silicon.

What is a man then without his allotment of qualia?

A lack of order is not necessarily disorder, you say.

Since nothing will remain what it is due to the fritter of identity,

Neither phenomena nor essence will retain their shapes,

and friends, we shall meet again in some counterfactual way.

If your mind is merely functional syntax, we are a particular

arrangement of matter and energy, yes, merely,

we are forever those objects K with associated characteristics and

detriments not fatal to its definition. We are human?

The world we wake up to is not the world we slept in for everything is forever in a flux. Identity is always weakening because of entropy. A man at time t + k is not the same man at time t. We are forever becoming “the borderline case” a la Professor John Wisdom. A man and no-man live side by side, at the same time.

Koon Woon

A Mirage

People make monuments out of clay.

In idleness, I study the sky.

Dark clouds portend rain.

The history of clouds is the history of

     rice crops below.

The unknown poet Du Fu thought seagulls,

suspended between heaven and earth,

had traced his signature in the sky.

Still,

he is unsure if his poems will fly

     down the ages…

What does all this matter to me,

for I have even given up wine.

Whose praise do I need,

as I am too poor to take a wife.

Still, I am glad I am not a figment

of someone’s imagination,

and I, I have a cold stream nearby.

I have set the fish trap.

It contains no mirage.

– koon woon