"It's in the click of my eternal return..."

Nada Gordon's ~~ululations~~ is probably my favorite blog to read these days. She posts excellent poems, among other things, seemingly daily, and they're full of great phrases like "I won't be adulthoodedness anymore," "I’ll weep here until my tag clouds run dry," and "Baby please don't lurch at me."

She posted this take-off on Maya Angelou's "Phenomenal Woman" a few days back. Empowering as many have found "Phenomenal Woman," I'm glad to have other options.

From Nada Gordon's ~~ululations~~:


Phenomenal Philosopher
(after Maya Angelou)

Petty philosophers wonder where my thesis lies.
I'm not smart or built to theorize
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my propositions
The span of my logic,
The stride of my argument,
The curl of my rhetoric.
I'm a philosopher
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal philosopher,
That's me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a disciple,
The acolytes stand or
Fall down on their syllogisms.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of minor premises.
I say,
It's the fire in my cogito,
And the flash of my materialism,
The swing in my noumena,
And the joy in my ontology.
I'm a philosopher
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal philosopher,
That's me.

Disciples themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner monadology.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my mind-body problem,
The sun of my hermeneutics,
The ride of my fallacies,
The grace of my axioms.
I'm a philosopher

Phenomenally.
Phenomenal philosopher,
That's me.

Now you understand
Just why my head's not contingent.
I don't appeal to emotion or authority
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me ratiocinating
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my eternal return,
The bend of my dialectic,
the Weltanshauung of my Wirklichkeit,
The need of my petitio principii,
'Cause I'm a philosopher
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal philosopher,
That's me.