The Miracle

I looked and looked  
and always mistook  
what my eyes had seen  
for the essences of being  
the particulars found  
would always astound  
but the one that confound  
was the miracle found  
I see that  
I see  
and it is me  
that I be  
my  
self  
I   
found.

2 for 1

Nature

Here and now do I care that fish swim and birds fly  
and will I cry in that blink of the eye when they die?  
For all that dwell around the sphere in space and time   
are but here for me to know not why  
yet here I am hidden where it all constructs   
inside the skull  
the tiny sphere
where I see all the world just for me  
and I care  
but why?


Soul

It's all atoms and the void  
was the introit  
entered the white-clad priest  
but doesn't God love us  
the followers cried  
Democritus has spoken  
the priest but replied  
are not we special  
came one lone cry  
all an illusion  
created from matter  
that is your confusion  
and the priest turned away  
but I think thoughts  
the lone voice sighed  
and   
not   
thoughts  
think   
me.

Considering the Garden of Eden -- again

Earth? Earth mother? Sophia? What have you created? Considering the Garden of Eden story, I was thinking that this would be the time and place when dualism was born. For better or worse. Of course everyone seems to latch onto the idea of Original Sin and won't let go, the believers spin and weave in attempts to make sense of the idea, while nonbelievers point to the unreasonable idea that a god would take the misdeed of an innocent and make the innocent guilty, and further, punish the guilty, and atop that, punish all humankind forever more. I think both sides fail to grasp the symbolism of this story. First of all, without humans, not only does the concept of good and evil not make sense, but in all of nature it is absent. In all of nature (apart from humans) only “good” and “nothingness” exists. Bad doesn’'t exist, for everything in nature seeks to exploit it’s own potential to live and replicate. That either happens or doesn’'t happen. You might think of all nature as one big organism that exists, and exists only because each part that makes up the “all-nature” live and die to provide another part of “all-nature” with energy to do the same. Nothing is “bad” because in “all-nature” adaptation to prevent extinction is the only goal (if "goal" exists without humans) and total extinction would be the only "“bad”" possible. Yet again, even extinction couldn’'t be “bad” in a humanless and Godless “all-nature,” for in such a universe, everything just is. Or just isn’'t. No matter. For to matter requires intelligence to create the idea of mattering and not mattering. 

I think the Garden of Eden, this metaphor, explains the need for intelligence, for awareness, for self awareness, before the ideas (and concepts) of good and bad/evil can exist. Adam (aka mankind) before gaining knowledge of self awareness (or if you prefer, evolution before the brain/mind developed self awareness) was as innocent as a tiger pouncing upon a lamb and ripping it to shreds for a meal. Without self-awareness, “pre-humans” did whatever was required in order to live another day and replicate. After self-awareness (Original Sin) humans became aware of their every action and the consequences of these actions and further became aware that life and replication at whatever cost was no longer possible, for the new brain/mind was not only aware of each action, the consequences of the action, but also if the action had a good or bad value. And for the first time "“bad”" had a meaning other than failure to survive, the human brain/mind continued to develop this concept of “bad” until it became a powerful force that identifies all that would or could harm the individual, the family, the group, the environment around the group, and today the entire earth. These are things that no other life/creature can think, humans not only think, but can act upon these abstract thoughts. And so in the story Adam and Eve with full self awareness watched as their sons fought and one became a murderer and the other a victim of murder. Good and evil sprang to life as if it were an entity, a concept so powerful that not one human evermore can return to that Garden of Eden, that ignorant state of innocence where good and bad have no meaning. Or so it seems to me. 

Dividing Rhyme from Reason

Hammer came first
a fist are you
to pound anew
and pliers too
now a tool
like thumb and finger
but then the saw
not tooth nor nail
can excel
when mind did combine
back with forth
to forever divide
rhyme from reason.

Red tomato in hand

A tomato in hand
to be or not to be
did I hear that right?
I bite the firm fruit
the skin explodes
seeds and juice
half in mouth
and soon lick seedy pulp
from my salty palm
the garden overgrown
in the summer heat
the last red bite
and I wondered
how Shakespeare could
have had such lofty thoughts
yet never once
did he hold
a red tomato
in hand.

Should have

We mourn
most
those little girls
so full of hope
and life
and even beauty
as rose buds
yet to blossom
but now gone
open petals
sweet scent
in the summer sun
but our imagination
of what 
should have
become.

Tucson

In the blink of an eye
this can sudden 
become that
good disappear 
and reappear
as black 
as that midnight stare
now awake 
to the glare
of daylight
for all to bear
witness to
the destruction 
caused
by 
a 
single
sick
mind.

Language

With eyes closed
I create a sightless world
of slippery words too
hard to hold for but
an eternal moment
in time that suddenly
vanishes in that dark
place where thoughts
are constructed from
the countless observations
that the Me failed to see
and the I too busy to grasp
the enormity of what was
to be
invisible worlds coming
together with 26 wiggles
of the index finger 
on the smooth sands of time
symbols that we create
for only ourselves
in order that we 
may make sense of
non-sense
that is the stuff 
that makes
us think
we are
alive.

Happy New Year

Three hundred 
sixty five spins 
one revolution 
a year
two spheres
life bound
together
whirling round
our 
tiny
minds.

The unthinkable

What is it 
that is not?
That is 
and forever is
yet is not?
For all our thinking
is not enough
to make 
what is not
to become
what is.