Some Ruminations upon the Phrase, I Love You

HUSSERL: (I) LOVE (YOU)

A touch kissing

A kiss talking

A talk touching

A touch touching

A now

A present

A feeling

HEIDEGGER: I-LOVE-YOU

Being-in-love

The fish in the water

The water in the water

The reason why

The blue veins

flowing over your breasts

are better than any blue sky

LEVINAS: I (LOVE) YOU

I, of the womb of your heart

You are not my mother

O! Mother

You give me an I

An eye, a face and a soul

Love - the first and

the only philosophy

DERRIDA: "I" "LOVE" "YOU"

"'I love you' is always a quotation"

is a quote from a novel,

narrated by an unnamed character

remembering the beloved,

a novel by Winterson.

A coat

of memory

wrapped around a tattered stick

of words, of emotions, of feelings -

Quote -

"I" is a quote

So is "You"

"Love", a quote within a quote 

Montage (or The History of Love as Philosophy)

Plato -

You shone like the sun

Over the cave of my being.

The moment I saw you,

I knew all the epics

About us

Revolting against Zeus.

Aristotle -

Contrary to everything;

You were, are and will be

All my causes.

Ibn Sina -

In the contingency of this world,

You and me ARE.

Our love,

The necessary logical proof:

God exists.

Al Ghazali -

You

Are all my knowledge.

I memorized you

Syllable by syllable.

Descartes -

Society,

The evil demon

Deceving us.

Kant -

I see Me

As you.

Both should be counted

Both are true.

Romanticism -

To touch your soul,

I smell grass

At 2 AM.

Marxism -

Lovers of the world,

Untie!

You have nothing.

Nietzsche -

We are and will

Recur eternally

Through every lover

And every lover

Through us.

Existentialism -

Lovers;

One should imagine them

Happy.

Wittgenstein -

You are all my poems

Written, unwritten.

Postmodernism -

A mood,

An incredulity

Towards love poems.

Post-postmodernism -

You and me

Raising a family of bastards.

A BILLBOARD IN ATHENS

As mesmerized

By the black screens today,

People go on

Engrossed in the things people do,

While a voice calls unto them -

Calls for the Truth.

It is a pity,

the wisest man in Athens

Has to beg for it,

Search rigorously for the interlocutors.

The enemy of the Truth

Is not falsehood

But the glamour of it.

The appearances:

To seem speaking the truth,

To appear to be revolutionary -

The same formula,

The same equation everywhere;

The truth should be quotable,

The quotation has to be beautiful.

The face should make a good wallpaper,

The martyr has to be adorable.

While this lustrous flaunt goes by,

Truth appears

Beneath the largest democracy

As Kashmir,

As the face of Socrates,

Ugly and warted.

THE ALEATORY POINT

(A NON-DELEUZIAN POEM FOR DELEUZE)

The hollowness
Death, dread and void
Pain, agony and ache
Suffering, misery and affliction
The emptiness -
Philosophy is recognizing
The empty square within life's square puzzle
Wisdom rests in reminding onself
That the emptiness remains unfulfilled
That this emptiness actually
Propels every movement within.
Art is the realization
That the square is
One among many shapes

A PHILOSOPHER SEES SRINAGAR THROUGH POETRY

THE AGE OF EUDAIMONIA
When the great ancient flood abated
Revealing symbolism behind metaphor
Satisar exposed her muddy ribs
My throbbing chest well kept
Inside a web of bridges
Running from heart to heart
They called me the 'City of Bridges'

THE AGE OF STOICISM
When the children cried for help
They fed them iron, bullets and fire
With bridges burned down
My heart gasped in smoke
Some left and endured
Some endured and left
They called me the 'City of Fire'

THE AGE OF HEDONISM
With wires growing out of my skin
Ugly malls mask my face
Copious cars crawl my plastic veins
Cement obscures my feeble heart
No one hears my frozen cries and whispers
Inside warm cafés throbbing with sound and junk
They call me the 'City of Cafés'