Philosophy

Laughter

Have you ever been lied to?

You are Heaven’s daughter.

Some say “God is dead,”

and you say “I think not,”

and I say “That’s a free Sunday.”

What will you do?

Take offense?

It’s been thirty years since my last confession.

Here, let me tell you my sins…

I’ll start with my birth. Now you try.

For penance, let’s count the last ten years.

Tonight, I will have a dream of our childhood.

Mother will hold our hands as we wander the museum,

not so much from a fear of losing us,

but to transmit the shock of space and time and meaning.

Now that you are sure you have purpose, and I am special,

I can reflect on the fact that this meaning has no meaning;

it slaps to the ground and disintegrates

under the slightest wind.

Besides, do you know how

immense and ancient everything is?

Fine.

If you come to the museum with me,

we’ll find a drinking crowd afterward.

I’ll play guitar,

and you can dance.

il Duomo

The vagaries of pomp,

as befitting a man…

 power corrupts him totally.

So then, prepare a table before me

in the presence of mine enemies.

But do I give myself to fortune,

which has not will

nor purpose?

My own will has been a weak support.

Are “Truth” and “the Good”, transient;

cast off?

I say now this is truth:

the unending Holy See of time and space,

the darkness dance of the heavens

whirling unchecked,

eons after man has slept.

Deny it then:

we are supplicant before the reliquary void.

Human Nativity

We are products of melting,
sloughed from the purest ore,
dismissing what insults our own souls.

Tonight, as the dark shroud of heaven covers the earth,
the mother with child will kneel, asking, Why must I be your servant?
And a sister will say, You are blessed among women.

As a light seeks to pierce the blackened reaches,
the boy rises, and asks, Why must I go?
And a father answers, No one else will.

As the lonely shadows grasp along the land,
the man asks, Why must we learn to die?
And another counters, What is God’s will?

Tomorrow, as the old man rises to greet the spilling gray dawn,
he asks, Why?
And is greeted with nothing but the rain.

We are products of melting;
if we knew, we would be God.
And as the Multiverse asks the question, it shudders under the weight.

a–b, or, post hoc ergo propter hoc

Two ordinary humans, set on a sidewalk, will
inevitably stand, and walk simply
of their own accord
to the next relevant business.

The same humans, when
approaching one to the other, falter softly,
precariously, as if on a ridge or trip-wire,
trying to shift about in a strange tap
of strangers bound by a curved ribbon.

And if curved, then on one
parabolic
continuous loop,
not unlike the quantifiable outcomes
of a Mobius strip.

Causality would seem to be
the perpetual function
more of the effect
than the cause.