It amazes me how history defied

Every good idea a thinker had.

 

Where there was a priceless gem

We cast it away for the slag.

Where there was a pearl

We kept the seashell.

Where there was meat

We kept the nutshell.

Where there was food

We took the box.

 

Perhaps philosophers

Like any other orator

Found a certain vanity

Popular among their audiences.

I imagine that is the curse of fame

And the curse of an audience.

What is us—

And therefore good—

Others will defy.

So all that’s left is what history

Will inevitably remember.

Jesus said, “Isn’t it said

“In your law, that you are gods?”

 

I hate this scripture.

But, I understand what Jesus meant.

 

Men apply it to esoteric doctrines

Likening men to partakers in God’s creation.

Though, the term just means

Someone who knows right from wrong.

 

Strangely enough, we can be like gods.

We can build worlds.

We can envision, build and create

And work like God does.

 

What it does not mean

Is that we are God.

We can build a fish tank.

We can populate it.

We can poison it.

We can feed it.

We are not, however,

Their God.

 

We did not create their matter.

We did not give them their life.

We do not hold them together.

 

The best way to understand this verse,

The way Jesus intended it,

Was that there was an ecosystem

Of impoverished souls

Which men had built and were called to govern.

They instead didn’t.

Their actions were directly responsible for others’ poverty.

 

Jesus, by comparison,

Knew His actions were directly responsible

For how His people would behave.

Just like our actions are

Directly responsible

For how those who are dependent on us will behave.

 

Because there is one man

Who sets himself to either give or take

From another, men are gods.

God Himself,

When He came in the flesh,

Set His example

That those whom He was responsible for

He must now take upon His shoulders

And carry.

 

The way we, in our limited capabilities

Are to shoulder our cross

And to carry the small portion of men we can.

A philosopher, I am not.

I am not really a skeptic of anything.

I do not make a good philosopher for that reason.

 

What philosophers toil about

I have neatly tied up in a little bow.

I think about other questions.

Questions that need answered

In my own mind

More desperately

Than whether we exist or not.

 

Fundamentally,

A little thought crosses my head

A little idea.

Writing is so strong a habit right now…

It just goes, rambles on into the night.

I guess it’s why I’m a writer.

 

While philosophers struggle with the moral

Question of whether morals exist…

I struggle with the question,

“How do people not know morals exist?”

While philosophers are certain about a triangle

My friend tells me they have five sides.

I laugh. No, a triangle has three sides.

But, I know he means the two faces

In addition to the three sides.

Because such things are unimportant to me

You see.

I see men struggling to understand whether the reality

They have in front of them actually exists.

It does.

To go any further, it seems like mental illness.

 

An even odder concern of mine

Is the little doubt I just had.

That doubt wasn’t present so long ago.

But, the God who is all things at once

And I the only subject…

I rebel against it.

Because there must be others like me

And sure enough, there are.

 

Snow is very beautiful.

And when I blaspheme,

I blaspheme an idol.

I blaspheme the idol

That says, “You’re the only one in existence.”

I blaspheme that.

I blaspheme the idol

That doesn’t want to lift a finger

And stop wrongdoing and suffering.

That Idol I blaspheme.

Why is there strife?

I do not know. But I know suffering must have an end

For a man like myself.

When it doesn’t, it ensconces me in the belief of God

Because I’m well acquainted with grief and heartache.

I blaspheme the god of America

Not the God of Christians.

I blaspheme the idol of the Muslims

Who says, “Bow down to this rock

“Follow our laws

“And in the next cycle

“Our religion will be true.”

Why? Because Jesus is a better God.

To destroy the wicked.

To uplift the righteous.

To give choice.

And one day, take that choice from us

Because it was too much of a burden to bear.

 

For, a good God doesn’t leave His creation

With free will for eternity.

Otherwise, what the False Prophet said to me is true.

That all men will, indeed, one day rebel and fall away from God.

This doesn’t comport with the promises in scripture.

Eternal life. That is life, without the ability to blaspheme.

That is life without the ability to sin.

To wipe away all tears and transgressions

Means that we no longer have the capability to sin.

Not that we become gods.

I blaspheme the God who would make His creation equal to Himself.

I want God, in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

One God, three entities.

I want we, His subjects

To have eternal rest

Like He promised.

 

Rightly, it is all I ask

Is that God follow through with His promises.

It is the God I worship

And that is Jesus

God’s Word made flesh.

God’s Word Come in the Flesh.

Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.

 

I blaspheme the god of the Atheists.

The one that says, “All men’s opinions

“Are equal, and no one can know.”

I blaspheme that god because it starved

Millions of my people.

 

The God I do not blaspheme

Is the One True God

Because He is real.

He is honorable.

He is filled with righteousness

Not to lay His burden on His creation.

Rather, that is the Sabbath,

To not take upon your shoulders the burden of God.

A famous author

Wanted to change a famous novel

Because of a controversy.

Sadly, she thought she was racist

For describing skin color.

 

Hurt, I said my piece.

What is my piece?

The stupid things we prescribe against.

To think racism is an inherent bias

In us, when it is not.

 

Being racist is a choice.

You ask any black man

He’ll tell you what racism is.

It is a choice.

It is not something implicit in us.

The Implicit Bias test is rigged.

It is a faulty test

Based on faulty psychology.

 

All that matters is that every day

You try to be the best person you can be.

You love your neighbor as you love yourself

No matter what they are.

 

Because when we give way on these small issues

Calling racist what is not racist

It creates hell on earth

For black and white.

 

Life was a game.

Going forward, like Mario

Mario, jumping, doing, playing.

I went down the tunnel

And fell through a snake’s metal stomach.

 

Then there was Beelzebub

With his spear.

He would place it on my chest

And push me into hell

For believing life were a game.

The driveway pleasantly

Scrapes with a sound like sawing bread.

Pleasant, as the flurries fall

The last of the snowstorm.

 

There is work, and

It is welcome.

When children, it distracted from our fun.

As adults it distracts from…

What exactly?

A show on the television?

Household drama?

 

One moves slowly, methodically

Removing every rock of snow,

Changing what was white to a pleasant

Reflective black,

Unlike in youth.

 

In youth, one wanted

Video games

Or toys…

To get done fast

So the real excitement could be had.

 

As an adult, the monotony

Gets broken up by

A driveway that needs shoveled.

 

 

 

If we try to censor the past

We will repeat the past.

If we make vulgar what is beautiful

We will make vulgar.

 

Cocoa skin is beautiful.

When we make it vulgar

What good thing do we have

To relate to?

 

Ebony skin is beautiful

Too. Some of the most precious hardwoods.

Make it vulgar

And you made a race vulgar.

 

Doughy skin—a white man

Will readily apply it to their villain or foil

Don’t say you would not—

Ashen skin we will apply

To an evil prince.

 

Olive skin, of course

Applies to every Italian

Arab and Sephardi Jew—

Yet, when we make it vulgar

What we essentially do

Is make race vulgar.

 

No, you are not racist.

Nobody, I have a hunch to say

Is racist, unless you scream “Nigger”

At the black players during football.

 

Let’s calm down people.

Racism is over.

 

Understand I’m not being racist.

I am not going to list all of the achievements

Of black Americans, and do my lamentation

About their woeful days of slavery.

That, in my estimation, is racist.

 

The fact is, our ancestor’s worst sin

Was probably racism.

Other than that, there wasn’t a single thing they did

To constitute a real fault.

With that, since I spent so much time with the generation

Let the past be.

Don’t artificially change the present

With faux pas about language.

As, that’s how dictators come into power.

By prescribing against uses of language.

It’s how cult leaders indoctrinate.

The honest truth, a good writer can

Make the most vulgar things tasteful.

That’s all it takes.

Be vulgar, but be tasteful.

Tap into the veins of culture

But don’t drink the blood.

 

And for crying out loud

Don’t make metaphors about skin color.

Just call it Cocoa. Everyone likes Chocolate.

How I long for the day.

I want to call black people’s skin Cocoa.

I like Cocoa.

Ebony is pretty.

 

I want Loony Tunes to not be racist.

I want the public to see

The tall brows of the whites.

The stereotypes of them.

But, instead they see the black faces.

That is more racist, to me

That everyone calls one stereotype racist

And another they don’t call racist.

 

How many poems have been written on this on the internet?

Not enough…

Frankly, I see white people the way blacks do.

I can’t help but see their tall foreheads

And their parenthesis shaped eyebrows.

I can’t help but notice they all look the same

In some shape or way.

John Wayne looks like Elvis

Who looks like Johnny Cash

Who looks like a thousand other actors.

And those actors are made fun of in the Loony Tunes

With their stereotypes. I see it…

Trust me, I do.

 

But, to be black is racist.

It’s racist to have skin color.

If there was one thing I wished

It was for everybody to go on YouTube

And look at Harvard’s campus.

There is more diversity there

Than ever.

 

Let’s let the past be the past.

Black, white, yellow, red, blue,

Yes, there are blue people,

Let’s just forget this thing

And see it as eye or hair color.

As, when it’s like that

And we can be honest about it

Without getting offended…

Then I’ll say I did my part

In helping create that atmosphere.