Tag: Poetry

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The beauty of the human soul
Is that darkness lurks within it
Yet it pretends like that darkness
Does not exist in most others.

It peers into its deep follies
And it comforts itself with words:
"It does not exist in others."
So, it hides itself from others.

Those who have not the luxury
Of their offenses deeply hid,
When revealed to those other hearts
They shrink back scared, wishing to hide.

No, not to hide from the danger
But to hide from their own naked
Shame; that the sorry story seen
Could so easily be their own.

Yet, society can't function
With that stark shame open to all.
If accepted it in others,
We'd understand the chaos. So.

We hide it in ourselves rightly
For the shame within us, it is
Common, yet reveal it to all
And men become hated by all.

Refuting a Demagogue Part II; Not You

No, I'm not talking about you.
Perhaps it is that you don't understand
That educated men have taken the Idiot's
Thoughts, construing it to launch a crusade
Against religion.

But this Idiot,
Misjudging Christianity as the force of evil in the world
Mistakes what is something primal
For something artificial.
Wars between Prods and Papes
Are as equal as a civil war
Defining what slavery is.
And it is hardly a thing common to religion
Slavery. Obviously,
Your impression of Christianity
Is that we like to kill people who disagree with it
And that we go around starting Nazi revolutions
And banning books about evolution.
Silently, I understand your contemplation
Though simple. Reality is often nuanced
And often bad men have no real ideology beside power.
It is that, since the worst of humanity has been touched in this soul
To understand what it is that drove Hitler.
And certainly it was not the teachings of Christ.
Christ, who would be despised by Hitler
As Jesus is a Jewish Name.

I look at you,
And see you influenced by the same Idiot I'm talking about
Giving your factoids about how Nazis censored
Things which they deemed destructive to the "Volk".
You are likely not wise enough to understand it.
I do, however.
Religion unites a people
So does skin color
So does nationality.
And you reject the fact
That the religion was going to be a bait and switch
Where men replaced Yah with Thor and Odin.

No, it was not Christianity.
It was human nature.
As simple as a Blood and Crypt killing each other on Harlem's street
That is as simple as the in-group out-group phenomena
Which you blame on my humble religion.
Often my religion has been in the out-group
And persecuted by all men...
At least the true devotees to my religion.

You rage, you rant
But I do not blame you for your mistake.
I understand what you're saying.
But I understand it is easy to look at the artifice
And see Hitler built a tower with the remains of Christian mortar.
In that, I suppose you're right.
It is the worst of religion
But it is also the worst of Atheism:
It is the worst of ideology;
As you do not see it,
But I see in your atheism the same kind of destructive heresy
That led Catholics into the Dark Ages
And led Hitler to slaughter millions of my people.

Perhaps you will not see it because you are blinded by it.
And with that, It is why I silently bow away from you
And let you be led by your Idiot leader.
When you want true wisdom,
Come here and read and drink
From Brandon's Water.

Some Lies Are Sown

Some lies are sown by the minds of worthless
Men, who, knowing that they have lost their war,
Will seed a tare of doubt to germinate
Many decades later. It is cunning
At its finest, to fallow the soil
Of another generation to take
Up the Burdens of the Past and spill blood.
By it, crafty Fascists tilled Christian men's
Hearts, and sown their seeds into the future
Through ignorance of the past, and factoids.
Some fascists place condemnation on tongues
So to wag at long forgotten heroes.
Others sow their seeds, using Christ's good name
To then crucify devout believers.
All the while a chorus sings their hymn
To summon bestial intelligence,---
To blaspheme what is holy in heaven
And to call what is beautiful, grotesque.

One Thing You Said was True

I study the Nazis
Because I am both a Christian and a Jew.
And when I see a leader who cares nothing for the faith
Using it to tear down our institutions
I know soon my faith will be a target itself.
The fact remains that the danger
Is a man who claims to be a good Christian
But then he introduces destructive philosophies
To the church. And uses that church
As an institution to burn away the saints.

On that point you are right.
But, still, you have no understanding.
You blame my faith for Hitler's folly.
It was not my faith.
That is why I resisted it
Where I saw it.

Our Science

Modern Law---
Earth rotates---
All things were wrong,
Galileo.

Separated from God
For one moment---
The Earth span
And I felt our science.

I awoke to a cold sun
Gray in the windowsill;
Creation's rhythm unsynchronized
So that all on the earth teetered.

All of our daily chores 
Frustrated, providence hadn't
Ordered our goings to or fro.
All were given unto chance.

It felt like vertigo.

Refuting a Demagogue

The idiot said on national TV
Disparaging religion once again,
"It is religion that separates us
"And maligns the human spirit!
"If we just got rid of it, people would have peace."
His raging lunatics cry for a third of the earth to be lobotomized.

Oh, yes, I read how Prods and Papes
Hate each other in Ireland.
Eerily, I see a different truth.
How Blue and Red hate each other
In America,
And Democrat and Republican
Hate each other.
No... there is bitterness enough
To be expelled from a man's house
Should you consent to the wrong flash of insignia.

Or, shall I talk to these idiots
About race? How mobs burn down Manhattan 
Because of skin color
And stores are looted because of class struggles?

Really, maybe we ought to be adealistic.
Then, perhaps we'd have peace
But the idiots I referred to
Have managed to give Hitlerian mindset
To atheists, who assume themselves good atheists
Only, throw the unruly Jews--I mean Christians---
Into the Gas Chambers,.

Should I ever talk to that idiot
I don't think I could speak.
He's an excellent rhetorician
Who turns a news article about how Hitler was not a Catholic
And sources it in a debate
To prove that Hitler was.

Frankly, I'm about tired of it
But in that little microcosm I cannot understand---
Why do Catholics and Protestants hate each other?
I liken it to something that isn't religion---
It's just hate, and hate comes in many colors.

Are We All Solipsists?

I

Is poetry an expression of the self?
Or is it an expression of the truth?

II

Are all our minds just solipsist teacups 
And no man, however penetrating
Can truly know what is in another man's heart?

Is all our poetry simply an expression of self?
Or does a stranger share in our sufferings?
Can there be an utterance of the truth
Something true for all men
Or even just two?

Can there be an expression,
A word uttered that is truly understood?
Can the best poets be penetrated
Or are we trapped in eternal silence
Of the solipsist called our soul?

We reach outward, but do we truly see
The world for what it is?
Do we share our sight
Or are all men that of blindness
And can only see what is seen for them?

Are we truly alone
In our bodies
Our souls an isolated remnant
Which travels,
And it is only us and our sufferings?
No one to reach out to
No one to truly know us
Nor no one we can truly know?

Are we just solipsists?
The answer, I do believe
Is no.

I Told You So

You're only genius
If you're a woman.
Or if you have melanin in your skin.

Dr. King cannot be quoted by
Me. Despite the fact
That I have worked so hard.

No, I offend.
Unintentionally I write honestly
The way I see, the way I feel
But it is offensive.
Therefore, I get threatened 
To be expelled from houses
For my violent speech.

There is no hope for me
For I am of a different time
When talent and work---
Not what's in vogue---
Established a man.
For if I were a woman
I'd be published.

The thing that makes me angry
Is that I spent the past twelve years
Working hard
And nobody will understand the work
I wrote. So why even bother publishing them?

So, I watch the world burn.
I watch people censor one another
Because nobody listens.

So, silently I write.
Is it for myself?
Am I forever to be the solipsist?
Are the postmodernist lies
Going to be the ones who tyrannize?
Is it that we are all just solipsists?
Selfishly saying 
And unable to truly understand one another?
Then expel me from your restaurant
Censor me on Google.
I will watch the world burn
And silently think,
"I told you so."

Notes Handwritten in My Book

Notes handwritten in my book.
Angry I am that it must be the professor's
Instruction. Underline, map the rhymes scheme
A random thought---obviously too nuanced
For a student to write.

Then, as I read it, I hear about the writer's
Mom and dad, her brother
Her time farming.
I begin to understand that the book was not
Indeed, a professor's aimless notes
Being forced into a student's book.

No, they were studiously
Put there, engaging with the text.
Yet, there are only half a dozen poems
Analyzed.
Why was not the whole book written with
Pencil, and such studious notes?

Suspect, the book ended up at the local store
And I purchased it.
With some stranger's notes
It is in my possession,
Where I will keep it,
And study it.

Partly, I wish that stranger's notes
Were written over the whole book
For it is a shame to see it go back to the store
Where I could buy it.
If every book, page to page,
Could be so studiously gleaned.