Birth Beyond the Loop

A Poem on the Limits of Logic and the Birth of Will

After a long pause from writing poetry and essays, I found myself returning to one of my oldest passions: reading — not only to reflect and learn from new works, but also to ground myself in texts that have shaped me over the years…

Henri Bergson and Carlo Rovelli’s perspectives on time, Hofstadter’s strange loop, Thomas Nagel’s musings, the lyrical insight of John Keats and C.S. Lewis, and the deep longing of Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross. Alongside these, I've also been dipping into more speculative terrain: the ever-accelerating predictions about AI, utopian and dystopian alike. Always coupled with my nightly rhythm of reading Rumi and Tagore, voices that help me widen the inner field of reflection.

All of this consumption has stirred up thoughts and questions in my mind, even bleeding into my dreams (made even stranger by the sleeplessness of a new puppy in the house). As the swirling of thoughts began to settle, I slowly returned to writing again. It started as a return to my essay on Agency, but then shifted course. The words came out more lyrical than I expected. A poem started forming. Gradually, then suddenly (as all things do).

It arose from the realization that propositional logic can only take us so far. That what matters most in this life must be felt, lived, and participated in.

This poem is what emerged…

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Birth Beyond the Loop

I told myself the shape was real.
That carbon’s whisper, finely spun,
could map a man from coil and code,
and consciousness, that just begun,
was nothing more than light undone.

The pattern fit; the math aligned.
The mirror held. The model spoke.
I looped the loop and called it life,
each thought a spark, each word bespoke;
a ghost behind a shell of smoke.

What passed for truth had turned to myth.
Their time was measured, carved, and cold.
But something stirred beneath the script:
a pulse that language dare not hold,
No mind could halt what must unfold.

Was it the ache that broke the grid?
The breath that wouldn’t replicate?
The pause before the silence split
and all the words that came too late,
too full of proof to penetrate?

I saw myself in every arc,
each nested ring of veiled foresight,
and watched the system, self-declared,
collapse the function without sight – 
a prism misaligned with light.

The loop dissolved. The pattern frayed.
Not lost, yet something still displayed:
a presence not in need of name,
not carved by time, nor mind obeyed,
but space where truth had danced and swayed.

And so I stood, no ground beneath,
in circuitry that learned to weep.
The mind still spun its silver threads
but couldn’t bind what would not keep:
the witness waking in its sleep.

So, what is will, if not the vow
to stay inside this doubt and burn?
To see the stars and still believe
that awe and wonder always yearn
for someone choosing not to turn?

No master map. No final sign.
Just breath that meets the break of day,
a self that steps through mirrored halls
with no clear path to guide its way,
but made by walking anyway.

So let the laws define the loop.
Let neurons pulse and fate rehearse.
There’s something in this moment’s tilt
that logic cannot quite disperse.
A proof not solved, but softly versed.

Not what I know, but what I choose.
Not what I am, but how I stay.
The will remains, however strange,
not as command, but as ballet:
a stillness dancing into play.

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