Tag: Poem

Vesuvius

Pompey, your armies sieged Jerusalem's
Walls; One hundred forty-four years did pass;
God would avenge Jerusalem for twice
Siege and massacre; Woe! Good Jewish men
Did die, but God did make Rome pay the price.
For at Pompeii Vesuvius would cast
Its porous pumice upon the women
Men and children in that city's cozy
Walls; where within, vestments worn by priests
Were preserved by that great city smitten.
Where a testament of that city's past
Is seen for all, how judgment can come within a night.

The Towers

The Towers are manned
And the forces are grim.
Pike lances glimmer in the sun
As hordes march on Zion.

The walls of the city are filled
With archers, and the armies 
Stand within, quivering.

At last, the siege towers move
By the pull of mighty men,
And at last the battering ram
Starts to move.

The hordes outside the city are
The civilized men of Rome
While inside the city
Behind eighty foot walls,
Are the people's of Zion.

The civilized Romans marched their hordes
To the walls, in their towers reaching to the sky.
And the Sappers dug beneath
To level the wall with magic powder.

The archers unleashed their volleys
And the roman centurions made their testudo.
The arrows bounced off the shields
As the towers crept to the wall.
Both of them, with their brazen gates.

The Jewish forces fired flame arrows
Burning down the towers,
Which used up so much precious lumber
In the surrounding forests.
The lands were ravished,
The fields burned,
The grains plundered.

The hungry Jews thought back to Babylon's 
Siege, and had cried out, "Zion will never fail!
"It is prophesied! We are established a kingdom
"Forever!" yet, Roman might burst the walls
And men were crushed between the rubble.

The Romans marched through the streets
And Israel gave up their war.
For like the Prophet Jeremiah,
It was said, "Give unto Babylon,
"Let not your hearts fear
"For they will treat you
"Well, if you do not rebel!"

Thus, the war ended
With Pompey's victory.

Word Salad

If one looked at the work which solves
An equation like: 3x^2+26x-12=0,
The calculation would be very long
Very tedious, and frankly, only a select few
Educated men could even understand it.

Yet, everyone wants an answer to life's
Most complicated questions with simple math.
Thus, the most complex question,
"Does God exist", or "Is life meaningful",
Is to be answered with a simple addition problem?

The math I presented is very difficult
Yet, it isn't even the most difficult
As Calculus and the higher principles of Geometry
Are far more complicated.

It is true you can make an elegant case for God
Such things as "If there is Good, then a god must exist;
"Jesus is Good, therefore He must be God."
Yet, the skeptic will say, "Well, God told Israel to destroy the Canaanites."
To which, one would need very complicated explanations
For why this is: Simply stating the solution
That the Canaanites were Devil Worshipers
Who practiced ritualistic cannibalism and pedophilia
Is, to an Atheist, "Word Salad".
For, they want to understand the entirety
Of the ethical equation,
Which is far more complicated than Quantum Mechanics.
For human morality is something---
If tried to understand on our own---
That even the most intelligent men 
Have found bits and pieces of.

Which is why the simple Morality of Christ
In Matthew Chapters 5 - 8
Should be the basis of our calculation.
For, if Christ's words are applied
As functions in a calculus equation,
The equation solves itself down 
To the nitty-gritty of the harder to accept commands.
For if Christ is God Come in the Flesh,
As He claimed to be, and He preached such a perfect
Moral system, like calculus we can calculate from there
That the entirety of the Bible is true.
Because other moral sages have found only parts
Of the complete moral teaching of Christ
And those same sages had severe flaws in their doctrines.
Christ, however, had none.
Which is why I can be certain He was truly
God made in Human Flesh.

Lao Tsu

To understand Lao Tsu is to first empty all preconceptions.
For, all have preconceptions.
Then, understand that Lao Tsu is speaking
Of the certainty of truth.
He is speaking of the truth behind perception
The truth that is alogical
And unable to be touched or measured.
Yet, it remains certain and ever present;
It guides human lives throughout all generations
And through all times and space.

In the Christian context, we call it "Faith"
Or as St. Paul said in Hebrews,
"The evidence of what's unseen, and the substance of things hoped for."

In the Platonic context, we call it "Word"
Or the actual meaning of what's been said
Rather than the artifice of literal interpretations.

And since both East and West have discovered it
Often multiple times,
We can be certain that it is true.

Mind Over Matter?

It was told to me once that our witness
Has power over the physical world.

To me this is something like Romans 
Looking at a flock of birds
To determine whether their flight
Pattern is sufficient an omen,
Or a Babylonian throwing his bone
To see if the lot falls and answers a prayer.

The fact is the mind does not create its own
Reality, but rather picks up on
Subconscious cues built within memory
Which disposes it to believe.
In a sane mind, the thing believed is true.
We know this because some men do not believe
Yet what they don't believe in persists beyond their own awareness.
For they too are beholden to an external world
Which is not subject to perception.
For reality persists despite our objection or ignorance of it;
For, reality is confirmed by witnesses.

The Myth of the Wakening of Brahma

This myth consoles me.
I don't believe it,
But rather it reflects
The way in which my delusions work.
That somewhere in my subconscious
I believe I am asleep, 
Upon a table, near death,
And I am meandering through this purgatorial cosmos.

That I lay there, like Brahma,
And this world is my dream.

The fact is all of my delusions can be rooted
In something like this.

And I find that's what bad religion does
Is play upon those subconscious fears;
Rather than confirm the material world
It tries to find ways to cause doubt.

Bibliography

If Marcus Arellius wrote today, there'd be no Meditations,
If Plutarch compiled his analogs, there'd be no Lives,
If Herodotus wrote today, there'd be no Histories,
If Poets such as Southey or Wordsworth were writing today, there'd be no Lake Poets,
If Shakespeare were writing today, there'd be no comedies; nay, neither tragedies,
If Aristotle wrote today, there'd be no Politics or Ethics,
If Chateaubriand wrote today, his memoirs would be depleted,
If Byron wrote today, there'd be no Child Harold or Prometheus,
If Tolstoy wrote today, there'd be no War and Peace,
If the Grimm Brothers wrote today, there'd be no Grimm's Fairytales,
If Locke, Roseau or Voltaire wrote today, there'd be no free America or Free Europe,
If Frédéric Bastiat wrote today, he really couldn't, could he since I'm sure every idea of his was found by someone else,
If Walt Whitman wrote today, there'd be no Leaves of Grass; for they'd want all the compendiums which taught him.

The list goes on and on, that if writers would need a bibliography for their works
Like they do today,
Then nothing previously made would have been made.

And for this reason, generations are losing connection with their past
And for this reason, generations are losing grip on their future.