Thursday, October 21, 2010

Apologies

I lay in bed, eyeing ideas to the ceiling. He bounces them back at me, just as I sent them. And in the silence and the darkness of everyone-else-is-sleeping, I realize how lonely is alone.

A little scientist, curious and alert, spins from telescope to table, recording and processing the data in his little lab coat, he prides himself on discovery.

“And what do you mean by this?”
“Ah, how interesting”
“But I don’t think that’s it.”
“That’s nonsense indeed.”
“Of course.”
He rambles on speaking to the worlds of worlds listening to him,
Or so he thinks.
Or maybe not thinks but acts as if, assumes,
Assumes the ceiling listens.

Assumes the ceiling listens,
Do I but soon to panic
When he doesn’t.


The little vials of premises fall to a shatter like a whisper in comparison with
The great silence.
A bat squeals in the night outside the laboratory.
Outside.
Outside.

There is no way outside.


“But see, I need to believe in God.”
They say, we, I, say.
Scoffs from the classroom…
But is it such a faulty argument?
Perhaps, indeed, it’s the best one.
The only one that really makes sense.
The only one abstract enough and yet concrete.
Practical and yet conceptual.
Experience tells us, and so does theory.
Our childhood and our reason.
Our tradition and our war banner.
I NEED to believe in God.
For every fiber of my being demands so.
What being am I really, without Him?

~

I lie in bed and bounce ideas off a ceiling who can’t hold me or say
OH MY GOSH ME TOO!!
Or laugh until it hurts our stomachs but we keep laughing because it’s worth the hurt,
I lie in bed and curse the ceiling for its inadequacy as I realize
I don’t want to be alone.

But people go to sleep.
They die.
They leave.
And I don’t want to be alone.

~

And premises mix in little torrents down the hallways
Looking to their matches for conclusions
As the scientist soaks his lab coat in tears.


~

So there, Dr. so and so and kid with the heart of complexes
Too wound up in complexes to rid themselves of each other,
I need God. Need Him.
And perhaps I have the greatest complex of all.
But it’s the only one worth having.
Totally paradoxical, and all the more lovely for that.
Small it makes me, infinitesimally,
And yet greater than the Earth combined.
Dust, but of God, I am.
The dust of God? No.
The handmaid of God,
His dust and His child,
Of His life and His death,
His reason, and His reason for needing not a reason,
So much smaller than His reason,
I am nothing like I Am,
And yet but for Him am I nothing.
He makes me.
Woven through the tales of magic and fairies,
He completes the picture,
Explains why Santa Clause wasn’t real and that he is,
Why we die and how we really don’t.
But for God, I’m all alone.

~

I panic as I get caught up in thoughts about my mind and how it runs about in crazy twists and turns and won’t slow down. I panic, as usual, when I’m restless and it’s night, and it’s late, and everyone else is sleeping. Wake up, please, someone?

~

The scientist with his broken spectacles hides under his table,
Covered up with stark cloths and buried in a tomb of machinery.
He would have died there,
Could have,
Should have died there long ago, you see,
If not for a tap on the shoulder.
A very deliberate tap it was, only the scientist had been frantically crying and yelling and protesting in his little world too loudly, too harshly to notice.

“Who are you??” he turned around sharply.
No one was there.
He wondered how someone got in his sealed-shut walls.
For he had demanded for years that he was it.

The little scientist stood up and cleared out his fort,
Looking frantically for who dared to have invaded his privacy.

But it was to no avail.
He had searched far and wide, used his special instruments, looked in the in between spaces and studied them thoroughly.

He was just about to give up when he felt another tap on the shoulder and heard a voice whisper ever so softly yet ever so LOUDLY, LOOK UP STUPID!!!

And it was then that the human being looked at its glass ceiling and saw what had begun so long before, when it had broken its little bottles in anger. A perfect conclusion pasted about in a mosaic. A mosaic of premises and far from premises—of photographs of trees and ants and grandchildren—of love notes and drawings done by five year olds—okay, no, premises indeed they were. The research of a life. Tears of joy ran down the face as the human stacked up its machines to climb to the beautiful, to the beautiful.

No, silly, not the pictures.


~

I lay in bed and I’m really restless and I’m frustrated because it’s late and there’s no one to talk to. I get to feeling kind of lonely in my little world. But then remember I’m not alone. No. Not. Ever. Alone.

So hey, God. It’s nice to know you never sleep.

Thursday, October 7, 2010

CLASSROOM

What a funny sight to see,
Sheep dressed in tuxedos,
Combing their hair and fretting about their
Eyelashes.
In a jumbled little line they play telephone,
Though to them it’s not at all a game—
Ordered by age and size and rank they
Pay heed to whoever is ahead
With unadulterated attention.
Turning in a dance of sorts
They keep straight faces
Too important to be laughing.
They introduce themselves
Introduce themselves
Introduce themselves
For what they’ve done and
What they’ll do
And dream to move ahead in
Ranks of “masters” and
CAN YOU BELIEVE IT

…PhD.
Oh, yes.
PhD.
(Hold your gasps and applause please.)

And dance they onward
Stepping, really,
Not dancing at all—
Out of rhythm,
Out of grace
But follow, that they do
Round about the worshipped space of
Nothing in between them—
Empty space, a world
Six feet wide
They cannot see beyond it.
With blinders on their eyes
They brag of insight nonexistent.
“Hey everyone look at me I’m such a rebel!”
They call to the leader ahead,
Tie their bowtie with such satisfaction,
As if it’s something new.
I watch them watch
I watch them copy
Watch them miss the sky above.
From the sixty year old professor
To the freshman just arrived.
Too proud they are, to be silly
And too meek they are to be wise.

In wishing of the mountain, they circle round the valley
And never see their circle only shrinks.
So they’ll glorify the ever-adolescent
Who neither child, nor adult, will cease to think.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

A HAPPY POEM

A happy poem can only come in Autumn
When death is in the air
And all of nature knows it.
That sweet and furious death
That winds its way through stable trees
Who may have thought them stable
And picks off summer's pleasures with her teeth.

A happy poem
Can only come in Autumn
When her cool air stings our noses
And we tend to forget to bring a sweater.

A happy poem
Is what I write in Autumn
For Autumn knows exactly how to kill
Whatever lies and misconceptions
Summer pasted over suntan lines
And smoke tinted windows.
Autumn knows what needs to die.

And sure, you'll write your love songs into May
And find that chirping birds inspire
And (fine I'll admit) I'll wish for warmth in early March.

but Autumn!!
Wakes me up with Christmas bells
And wraps me in a new stranger's embrace,
Suddenly not a stranger, not at all.
Surprises me as she coats this bare tree in
Color
And whistles wind to songs I understand.
For I grew old and died along with summer's passing.
So long ago it doesn't phase me now
But I grow young amidst the open dying of
The breath of life I know will take me home.