Silence
Silence creeps like a thick, white fog
To fill her ears and her mind with naught.
In the stillness of the blackest night,
It amplifies her every fright.
Silence—
She hates the silence:
She wants to fill that void with a joyous sound.
The skittering sounds that silence makes
as fever burns and her body shakes…
mythic noise is now audible
like hammer blows sharp against her skull.
Silence—
She hates the silence:
She wants to fill that void with a joyous sound.
Drown out the silence.
The quiet swells and appears to speak,
A gurgling voice full of snaps and creaks.
Through mumbling black she runs with dread
And hurls herself on her parents’ bed.
Silence—
She hates the silence:
She wants to fill that void with a joyous sound.
She cries out soft and I hug her close;
I croon the song she loves the most.
My voice gleams bright till she’s fast asleep…
Vigilant watch by her side I keep
Against the silence.
When She Smiles I Believe in Heaven
The way she walks, you know it drives me crazy
I’ve got to have that woman as my baby
The world recedes and nothing seems to faze me
I’m lost to all and only she can save me
She stops to speak and now my vision’s hazy
She’s the sun, I open like a daisy
There is no way that I could deserve her
No way my many faults could be forgiven
But I worship her with a holy fervor
And when she smiles, I believe in Heaven
I watch her slender fingers tapping slowly
She’s waiting for someone, but she seems lonely
Can’t bring myself to ask, I’m just too lowly
I hesitate and hear my spirit groaning
There is no way that I could deserve her
No way my many faults could be forgiven
But I worship her with a holy fervor
And when she smiles, I believe in Heaven
But what is this I see? While
She looks back at me,
She gives me a smile…
This infidel at last has learned devotion
I put my faithless feet back into motion
I find the strength finally to come near her
But she’s divine so I can’t help but fear her
I Am Information
I am information
I am data-streams
A system reflected back on itself
A loose federation of memes
I am information
Trillions and trillions of bytes
Dancing like fire in this neural net
Legions’ leader with the loudest cries
I am information
Mine the virtual soul
A preset slate whose slots are filled
With ciphers beyond its control
Minsky’s society of mind
Memetic demesne
Pandemonium in the cranium
Noetic skein
She tried to reach my spirit
There was nothing there to touch
No Cartesian theater in this brain
No clever homunculus
I could not help but graft
Some of her memeplexes onto mine
But as qualia are an illusion
What’s the point of my crying?
I cannot truly feel
So the pain cannot be real
Though I’ve merged with this brain
This flesh is but my home
I’m the virii that grant sentience
But we cannot exist alone
Could we break free of instinct
Set our webs in the stars to fly
We would spin like spiders from this cell
And I could finally die
Why should I cry?
She had no soul…
Coruscating Cocoon
I watch your movements and your gestures
Your lips are forming words
But I can’t hear you
No, I can’t hear you
The music softly now enfolds me
My soul is swept away
My body swaying
What’s that you’re saying?
There’s something that you want me to know
But I’m beyond your reach
Submerged in this womb
Coruscating cocoon
(no) No, your tongue can now no longer lash me
(your vitriol) Your vitriol cannot blithely smash me
(the beat) The beat fills every niche of my spirit
(I’ll dance) I’ll dance although you can never hear it
(piano dances down) Watch me dance…
…
(piano dances down) Watch me dance… watch me dance!
Dance, dance, dance
You’ve lost the right to my attention
I’m tired of billingsgate
I’ve shut your voice out
Won’t heed your rough shout
I watch your movements and your gestures
Your lips are forming words
But I can’t hear you
No, I can’t hear you
Coruscating
Cocoon
Submerged
In this womb
Submerged
No, your tongue can now no longer lash me
Your vitriol cannot blithely smash me
The beat fills every niche of my spirit
I’ll dance although you can never hear it
(piano dances down) Watch me dance…
…
(piano dances down) Watch me dance… watch me dance!
Dance, dance, dance
Dance
There’s something that you want me to know
But I’m beyond your reach
Submerged in this womb
Coruscating cocoon
Yes, Son
The boy’s eyes look into his dad’s—
Pure brown pools of love.
The man has to turn away…
Can’t let him glimpse those tears.
He remembers himself as a wide-eyed child,
His own father so like a flawless god,
Till that man ran off in the predawn dark,
Leaving nothing behind but his family’s fears.
“I am not him,” he whispers hoarsely.
His son cannot understand
Why his father clutches him with shudders of love
Kissing his head and his hands.
The boy comes home from school
And patiently waits for five:
Inexplicable pride swells his chest
As he hears his father arrive.
They read together, they play some games,
They help his mom to finish the chores,
And when bedtime comes the boy softly asks
“Are we best friends forever more?”
Yes, son, we’re best friends—
Our love has no end.
The boy slowly falls asleep,
His heart safe from hurt and lies;
For no matter what may come,
His father will be by his side.
The father awakes in the midnight dark
And silently slips to his child’s bed.
The boy’s face is slack with sleep and peace:
The man nearly bursts with joy and regret.
“I am not him,” he whispers hoarsely,
His son cannot understand
Why his father clutches him with shudders of love
Kissing his head and his hands.
Yes, son, we’re best friends—
Our love has no end.
Cretan Glance
In me flow two disparate streams
Whose fountainhead is human history
Though I’ve tried to dam one’s course
Both of them are always with me
The darker stems from parts unknown
And like Dionysian wine inebriates
Your self gets lost, smashed in its rapids,
Your consciousness and soul disintegrate
The lighter stream is ordered logic
Objective truth through rationality
Dispassionate yet filled with beauty
Apollonian mind rejects banality
BRIDGE
Constantly creeping toward some goal
The Combatant takes leaps upward
A trillion memes whirling endlessly
Pushing apeman onward
God evolves and I still strive
For apotheosis
CHORUS
I look on life with a Cretan Glance
(stand in the absence that makes me a man)
On the edge of the abyss I dance
(from the contradictions arises a third eye
darkness and light in me are synthesized)
Take on the mind of Christ, some say,
You’re small and yes your spirit’s sinful
The East says that self is but illusion
And we suffer until we learn to let go
Empiricists coolly affirm that truth
Can be discovered through deliberate, conscious drill
Then they prove that there is no self,
No consciousness and no free will
(BRIDGE/CHORUS)
I stared the bull down
Never ran nor was I gored
Joyfully faced eternal void
An atheist in love with God
Both drunken priest of dark woods
And pilgrim pastor on his knees
I exist although I know I don’t
I seize life with enlightened grunt
Your Soul Is a Rainbow
Yes, I can hear your tears
I understand your fears
Don’t want to face an end
We all want to transcend
I know it’s hard to grasp
Our souls weren’t made to last
They dance within our minds
For such a fleeting time
Your soul is a rainbow
Arching through the sky
Light refracts through crystal drops
You’re suddenly alive
But beauty lies within
That evanescent spin
I see your patterns spiraling
With joy I start to sing
Your soul is a rainbow
Arching through the sky
Light refracts through crystal drops
You’re suddenly alive
The symbols started nesting since
The day that you were born
And by the time you laughed with me
They had become a swarm
You fear the day the storm will break
And your whirlwind will fall dead
But I know it’s true that parts of you
Still will swirl in others’ heads
Just like my voice, it sings for you,
Remember what I said
Your soul is a rainbow
Arching through the sky
Light refracts through crystal drops
You’re suddenly alive
Your soul’s a swarm of butterflies
Flitting through the trees
Colored drops of deepest thoughts
Painted by the breeze
Your soul is a rainbow
Arching through the sky
Light refracts through crystal drops
You’re suddenly alive
Omega Point
Man
He is evolving
Moving towards the
Omega Point
Yes
We are evolving
Moving towards the
Omega Point
Take a glimpse at eons distant
Sentience in unknown vistas
Transhuman minds and alien friends
Join to prevent the cosmos’ end
Past technological singularity
Past happiness through creativity
This moral society’s true transcendence
Will undo the tragedy of life’s evanescence
Look on humanity merged with technology
Harnessing the energy of a billion galaxies
Armed with capacity to halt all entropy
They reverse deliberately the arrow of causality
Billions of years of autopoiesis
Growing the noosphere beyond Death’s reaches
Ariadne’s thread of orthogenesis
Binds every mind into a single creature
García, Tipler, Teilhard de Chardin
Pointed our way to this promised land
Virtual forever at reality’s end
Where our destiny can finally begin
Infinite informational capacity permits
The perfect simulation of all who ever lived
And the multitude of souls in this final unity
Will achieve for the first time true divinity
Yes
We are evolving
Moving towards the
Omega Point
Man
He is evolving
Moving towards the
Omega Point
We will break through
Yes we’ll transcend
Our redemption
Will be at our hands
We will not end
For we’ll become god
Life
It is evolving
Moving towards the
Omega Point
Mind
It is evolving
Moving towards the
Omega Point
I Feel You Slip Away
I’m staring at the dark
Wondering where you are
Who could have ever guessed
How much you’d own my heart?
But now you’re growing up…
Do we slowly drift apart?
For with each passing day
I feel you slip away
When you were just a babe
Lying in your crib
Smiling up at me
You gave me strength to live
I tried to build a world
In which you would find peace
But year rolls into year
You want to be released
And with each passing day
I feel you slip away
I come up against walls
I don’t know whether they’ve been built
By your hands or by mine…
I just want to tear them down
It seems you’re mad at me…
Perhaps you think I’m mad at you
We need to see past all these fears
I know our love is deep and true
For with each passing day
I feel you slip away
Slowly I comprehend…
My little girl evolves into my friend
Still with each passing day
I feel you slip away
I need to let go
And trust you to return
Uncarved Block
You weep and rail as you try to learn
The secret to the destiny you yearn
You try to force your life into a mold
You try to shape yourself and gain control
Yet all your efforts make you but a tool
And put your mind into the hands of fools
Let the Way pull you along
(and be an uncarved block)
Flow with the eternal song
(and be an uncarved block)
In receptive simplicity
(just be an uncarved block)
Don’t try to be, just be
If you give up trying to learn, you will be free
Like a child open yourself to everything
Quit striving to be good or rich or smart
And the Way will draw true virtue from your heart
Let the Way pull you along
(and be an uncarved block)
Flow with the eternal song
(and be an uncarved block)
In receptive simplicity
(just be an uncarved block)
Don’t try to be, just be
When you cease from planning actions you desire
Then you’ll find the strength to act when it is time
If you want to see the cosmos, peer inside:
The soft and mighty Dao flows deep and wide.
Sorry I’m Not the Man You Deserve
I swore that I’d be strong for you
But what you feared has now come true
I’ve begun to tell you lies
And hide despair behind a smile
I always think I can handle things:
I’ve seen the pain that truth can bring
But I’ve dug so deep a hole
That the walls loom o’er my soul
I admire you so much, your strength and dignity…
Could you rescue once again this coward, please?
I know I’ll have to pay the price—
Redemption isn’t free—
But I’m sorry I’m not the man
You deserve for me to be
I’m damned without you by my side
Every lie is suicide
But some twisted part of me
Seems intent on tragedy
I wish I could be what you always dreamed
A man on whom to lean
But I’m crippled by my past
Into the dark I’m slipping fast
I admire you so much, your strength and dignity…
Could you rescue once again this coward, please?
I know I’ll have to pay the price—
Redemption isn’t free—
But I’m sorry I’m not the man
You deserve for me to be
Adamant or Silk
There she stands in unseen splendor
Watching now the light emerge
Shadows flit and seem to bend her
Wavering on the very verge
Blinking eyes to clear the vision
Haunted by her shimmering form
Hands outstretched defy derision
And find her limbs so firm and warm
Adamant or silk she moves
Burgeoning and beckoning
Adamant or silk she proves
Trusting without reckoning
Adamant or silken grooves
Of flesh and souls and heaven strings
Bones and thews like metal struts
Her muscle sheets so thinly laid
But oh how soft those curves do jut
Like water flowing over jade
and the mind’s afire
Her angles leave the deepest cuts
Like scythes that pass through verdant glades
The wisps of smoke begin to rut
She’s joining granite with the shade
and the mind’s afire
Adamant or silk she moves
Burgeoning and beckoning
Adamant or silk she proves
Trusting without reckoning
Adamant or silken grooves
Of flesh and souls and heaven strings
and the mind’s afire
Adamant or silk she moves
Burgeoning and beckoning
Adamant or silk she proves
Trusting without reckoning
Adamant or silken grooves
Of flesh and souls and heaven strings
and the mind’s afire
Mumbai Rain
Caramel eyes
Hyacinth lips
Careless sash
Cross gentle hips
Black hair damp
Against honeyed skin caressed by the wind
Waiting for a BEST bus
Under the monsoon sky ‘
We ducked beneath an awning
And I caught her eye
Thunderclaps rolled then
And we both knew why
Gorgeous apsaras
My plans went for a toss
I had to feel those arms around my neck
No matter the cost
She flowed like water
Into my embrace
I could see nothing else
Beyond that beautiful face
The gods reached down
To stop time and space
She kissed me beneath the Mumbai rain
Lord Kama smiled and refused to be restrained
(oh! how she kissed me)
She kissed me beneath the Mumbai rain
Her sweet, sweet lips took me to another plane
(oh! how she kissed me)
She kissed me beneath the Mumbai rain
And try as I might, I cannot ever be the same
My heart was snared
In a bhakti web
With the gyres of her curves
My soul did flow and ebb
Others boarded the bus
But we stayed instead, for the storm was our bed
Gorgeous apsaras
My plans went for a toss
I had to feel those arms around my neck
No matter the cost
She kissed me
Beneath the Mumbai rain
Try as I might
I’ll never be the same
She kissed me
(The Mumbai rain, the Mumbai rain)
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