Philsophies

by S.T. Bryant

Philosophy

What do I know for certain? Or, what would I venture
for certainty? As of late, in something of a crisis
that’s shaken the Kantian fundamentals of the universal,
the 2+2’s of our laws; these certainties now uncertain.
The more interesting doubts would be my distrust of Descartes.
Until now, there was no opposition nor adoration for Descartes,
more or less his cogito was absorbed, something someone said
worth remembering. Now, believing he found the bottom,
his bottom, cogito, untrustworthy. The Emersonian the god
within, the god without formulation is a better magnet.
Lately, trying to breach dualism, that precipitated this crisis.
During the summer, briefly obsessed with breaking Platonism,
believing originality a step beyond dichotomy. Emerson’s
formula leads to Yahweh’s I am what I am, which, an acolyte
of Bloom, I know is as much I will be where I will and when,
therefore I will not be even more. Now the Iago. In us. The Iago
in this is: how many of us are not what we are? Who is
thinking when we think? Which of our manifold iterations is
in control of our psyche at any time? Can we abide cogito?
We may as often be what we aren’t as we ever can
identify what we are, pinpoint when what we are aligns
our heart and mind. The tongue is its own wildness.
Seems always be possessed by something genius.
It’s an organ given toward demon interception.

Philosophy II

Othello teaches, contra Descartes, that we are perpetually,
to our precarious doom, unaware of that deepest in our hearts.
We are planetary, too planetary, orbital, to be so singular.
Always susceptible to annihilative ruminations, motives.
Our happiest times, our Monism, prey us to destruction.
It is easy to get within us when we concentrate our consciousness.
Antinomianism inhales too deeply; it swallows aspiring invasions,
self-conquering. Our richest blisses come with a severe exchange,
some liberaty must be exchanged, an exchange that wounds us,
and we bear it for the bliss. We remember, over-remember,
so all that we are not (our exchange) returns to ruin what we are,
what we’ve become. All our lost aspects know too much,
and free of us, destroy. Our Iago. Ontologically destitute beings
sold over for another. As much as the god within is malleable,
formless, unconscious to us but by a glow, a sense that there’s life
deep inside that overwhelms the banality the life beyond;
it is a god with dark corners in its heart. A shadow god. Ambivalent,
easily irritated, infuriated easier. That’s its greatness. That oceanic scale,
the ebb and flow always keeps us in disorder, but when ordered, chaos.
In that chaos, knowing or not knowing, we hark the fire of our immolation.