"rationalist" poems
I remember the night my mother
was stung by a scorpion. Ten hours
of steady rain had driven him
to crawl beneath a sack of rice.
Parting with his poison - flash
of diabolic tail in the dark room -
he risked the rain again.
The peasants came like swarms of flies
and buzzed the name of God a hundred times
to paralyse the Evil One.
With candles and with lanterns
throwing giant scorpion shadows
on the mud-baked walls
they searched for him: he was not found.
They clicked their tongues.
With every movement that the scorpion made his poison moved in Mother's blood, they said.
May he sit still, they said
May the sins of your previous birth
be burned away tonight, they said.
May your suffering decrease
the misfortunes of your next birth, they said.
May the sum of all evil
balanced in this unreal world
against the sum of good
become diminished by your pain.
May the poison purify your flesh
of desire, and your spirit of ambition,
they said, and they sat around
on the floor with my mother in the centre,
the peace of understanding on each face.
More candles, more lanterns, more neighbours,
more insects, and the endless rain.
My mother twisted through and through,
groaning on a mat.
My father, sceptic, rationalist,
trying every curse and blessing,
powder, mixture, herb and hybrid.
He even poured a little paraffin
upon the bitten toe and put a match to it.
I watched the flame feeding on my mother.
I watched the holy man perform his rites to tame the poison with an incantation.
After twenty hours
it lost its sting.
My mother only said
Thank God the scorpion picked on me
And spared my children.
May 13, 2014
May 13, 2014 at 7:29 AM UTC
Yong Marx, yet to die, jumped
out of an air-conditioned car, a
journey Berlin to Bombay as the
Dream merchant of Utopia
metamorphosed him into a subhuman
white bearded national bourgeoisie.
The third world girl who was climbing a
tree without Motorcycle-
Diaries hung to her clothe looked
like an Engelian mistake possibly
not from Cuba, Zambia or Bolivia,
certainly not a Soviet artefact.
Alienation, self-affirmation and all
unlike modes of production confused
his surplus brain. The dichotomy
of imaginings and reality with the
girl proven anti-thesis kafkaesqued
him an added ****** struggle.
A shift in his struggle with a smile
on her lips gave a hint of welcome to her
Animal Farm. He did get inside.
The moulded furniture, preoccupied sickle
and the lacking exploitation
left him a disappointing proletariat grin.
She opened her mouth, blue words
did not discharge. Neither the mid wife
nor the revolution pumped her conscience.
He got up, disappointed, alarmed,
cursed the chap who misdirected
to a class-less renewed pattern.
“Comrade” she said shaking his hands,
the blood did stir for a moment but
the fight less slant , **** suits and
her distant reality pained the rationalist.
The amusingly alienated young Marx
jumped into his car and left for utopia.
Sep 3, 2015
Sep 3, 2015 at 10:41 AM UTC
I was a believer
Long after the other girls got interested in parties and boys
I would sit on my heels on the floor of the school library
And stare at the musty shelves of stories, searching for my next fantasy
I was a true believer
It seemed strange to me that while all of these characters, my friends,
kept finding magic in their worlds
mine was devoid and empty
I kept wondering, Why not me?
I was sure the magic was just hiding from me
Waiting for the right time to show itself
Waiting until I was ready to become the heroine
Every windy night, every walk into the woods,
I would think
This time, it will come for me
But it never did
I had a book on forest faeries and how to find them
After waiting and waiting all of those years
Clinging to my last hope, I decided I would give the magic one more chance
I went out to my back yard
To the perfect faery tree, with all the knots and holes in its trunk
And deep red berries stirring gently with the warm breeze
I stood under it, hands clasped, eyes closed
And waited one last time
Please I begged Please
And that was the day I stopped believing
From then on, I was determined to be a rationalist
An evidence-only type of girl
I switched to kneeling before the science fiction shelves
Followed the inventions of today's great tech scape
It was magic in its own sort of way
But my metaphoric heart has never quite given up on the romance of true magic
It loves it in a tragic, primal sort of way
It wants to make my life into a hero journey of fate and destiny
It wants there to be something more to this world
A something mysterious, a something beautiful
All my head and heart seem to do is contradict
A long time ago, I used to be a believer
But ever since I decided to give up on magic
It seems that magic has refused to set me free.
Oct 30, 2016
Oct 30, 2016 at 8:46 PM UTC
Musk. Wind
whispers mysteries in the form of it;
it thickens thin air until it turns black,
black enough to
hush. Wind,
being black, absorbs your thoughts,
makes violent curls of them; thickens,
thickens thin air until it
transmogrifies
into pages and pages
stained black with disaster-
as if a hurricane crumpled
those could-have been white aeroplanes, potential
papered to fly, and flung them
into the pit of your mind to
sink
deeper
and
deeper
and
deeper
until
your poems were written and the casualties numbered:
each line a suicide of a thought that could have been,
each syllable ink-stained and bloodied black
by artistic integrity, or madness: the same.
This wind is your hair.
This wind is your territory.
Not mine. Never could I have met you here,
in this place
of your solitary being: where real poets exist.
I am not a hurricane: and I am not your disaster.
I have learnt and re-learnt how useless it is to define you
in terms of myself; how useless it is to define you
at all. A rationalist like me can never truly understand
what it is to be part of your endlessness, the sheer
mountainous immensity that constitutes your thrill.
Yes,
your hair fascinates me as much as any ancient,
spiralling, far-away Andromeda- but the fact
that even now, I've already tried to limit you
with words
shows the absoluteness, the solidity,
the density
of my misunderstanding of your... your...
And
real poets know that rationalists are fools.
You know
I am a fool.
I write these meagre verses
with unreachably cold computer technologies
thinking
that these words could somehow save us. Yet,
simultaneously,
I am some drunken nuisance knocking
vehemently
at your door, who turns and strolls
away
right before you finally
answer.
I am a fool
going home and seeing clouds
in the darkness. It is my first
time seeing them in the sky. First
time in nearly a month.
The moon illuminates the clouds,
and so do
the towers of highway lights in the middle of two roads.
One road leads forward, the other backwards.
As the car passes the towers,
the two lamps attached to each of their heads glow.
They streak on as the car speeds on homewards.
They leave fading tails like shooting stars, except they do not travel.
They are stagnant mind lights, peripheral memories; unmythical,
artificial.
They are not like you.
When I pass you,
You....
You...
You.
Please,
never believe-
for even a whisper of musk
to yourself;
for even a black hush,
to yourself;
for even one sliver, one strand
of Andromeda hair, falling
towards yourself-
that
Grahamstown
didn't mean anything less than Eternity to me.
It does.
I am not a hurricane. I am not your disaster.
You are far too much of yourself
for me to be even a zephyr
to you.
Jul 29, 2015
Jul 29, 2015 at 2:58 PM UTC
Yasna 28, Verse 6
by Zarathustra/Zoroaster
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Lead us to pure thought and truth
by your sacred word and long-enduring assistance,
O, eternal Giver of the gifts of righteousness.
O, wise Lord, grant us spiritual strength and joy;
help us overcome our enemies’ enmity!
Translator’s Note: The Gathas consist of 17 hymns believed to have been composed by Zarathustra (Zoroaster), whose compositions may date as far back as 1700 BC, although there is no scholarly consensus as to when he lived. These hymns form the core of the Zoroastrian liturgy called the Yasna. The language employed, Gathic or Old Avestan, is related to the proto-Indo-Iranian and proto-Iranian languages and to Vedic Sanskrit. The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy deems Zoroaster to have been the first philosopher. Zoroaster has also been called the father of ethics, the first rationalist and the first monotheist. In the original texts, Ahura Mazda means “wise Lord” or “Lord of Wisdom” while Vohuman/Vohu Manah represents pure thought and righteousness and Asha represents truth. Angra Mainyu was the chief evil entity, a precursor of Satan. Keywords/Tags: Zarathustra, Zoroaster, Yasna, Gathas, Avestan, mrbtr, Spiritual, Prayer, God, Righteousness, Holiness, Purity, Grace, Protection
Jun 13, 2020
Jun 13, 2020 at 12:45 AM UTC
I'm in love with a lesbian;
I love when she laughs.
I'm in love with a straight man.
I'm in love with a ***
I'm in love with a totally pretentious ***
always self-flattering - I love how he brags.
I'm in love with a shy girl who hardly says a thing.
Quiet as a mouse,
but oh when she sings!
I'm in love with a dancer whose movements are poetry.
I'm in love with an artist who's modestly vain.
I am completely in love with a rationalist
if only because he's clearly insane.
I'm in love with a girl who's crazy about God.
I'm in love with another who spoils her dog.
I'm in love with the world when it's not bearing down on me.
Love as far as the eye can see.
I am in love with myself -
it feels good and true,
but more than anyone,
I'm in love with you!
Jul 13, 2014
Jul 13, 2014 at 4:18 PM UTC
Wet nights, warm days are what we want in the summer
noosphere.
Man's mind one with weather.
If this is true, life is good, or will be good.
Can I be encouraged that my sons will find mystery on the
planet
as I did?
How sweet the slow spring! May already and the canopy
not out yet.
Woods quiet all winter.
Now I can't distinguish the many bird songs from where I sit.
Red maple flowers and first sugar maple leaves are, to me,
the Christ child
that's been coming.
The ancient poems and the new make the 1/10 inch of annual
topsoil
from carbon dioxide loading.
As a humanist I want everyone pursuing happiness; as a
naturalist
I sometimes pray for man's destruction. As a rationalist I admit
I lack data.
O to play slow and sure, even when the tune is fast. Inside an
aquifer
of love for the audience.
Not to fear or even necessarily obey the changing wind's
direction. Being here I breathe and make the atmosphere as
seen
from outer space.
The song of the world will often take you far from yourself.
There
will be no self. How will you know yourself?
By knowing thyme and dandelion, the blue jay from the hawk,
the heron in its swamp, black cherries and the one pear at the
junction of the trails.
They are yourself.
Aug 10, 2015
Aug 10, 2015 at 11:43 AM UTC
I like his confidence, that working the problem
will certainly result in better outcomes than guessing.
A rationalist who does not depend on a higher power
to direct his decisions, but who may concede,
observe, realize and accept that he lacks the data
or the skills or tools to interpret data and these
decisions he leaves to his god.
But not before
thoroughly assessing the limits of his power. Guessing
before guessing is necessary makes things worse. The skills,
tools and experience are the accumulated wisdom
of earlier experts in his field.
Yet each generation
of communicants must examine the assumptions
from which the mathematics, logic, science or law
was derived. Rebuild the proofs from the simplest
truths, laws, physics. Taking God's first and only words
and extrapolating correctly, getting the trajectory
right for successful take off and re-entry.
And then
to explain the derivations to your students.
Until they too can care for the species and the planet,
making whole sentences, formulas and melodies
from few words, numbers, notes.
Aug 9, 2015
Aug 9, 2015 at 5:46 PM UTC
For high schools, this is a hot summer place.
Outside the car, the community saves the
largest animal championship in Cameroon?
Comedy, Weaving, Festivals, Music, France,
Australia, An Australian Theater,
Otto Barroso. These are DC, PCPC
and new digital printer is Yokompetrimi.
William Lucas Lucas, Virginia and Brian
Wallace Sanders, Muslims
and their legal representatives,
digital airport transportation plans
and signatures, as well as DMS councils,
digital screens and balloons.
We are in Australia, fingerprints;
fingerprints, music, video games,
internet and content, and if you
want to continue with Microsoft
and Microsoft, Sports, Radio
and Television publishers and Digital
Technology, Politics, Police and Terrorism,
Warren, Atlantic Express,
Atlantic models, Islands What
is a Hindu scholar? 600, Seattle,
Windows Windows, Windows
Windows, Windows Windows,
Windows, Japan, Mexico, Tamil,
Australia, Australia, Australia,
Australia, John RP Mingle, stories,
life, children and people. However,
there are 600 seats in the country.
what are you looking for? One state
"Getting food in the jungle, Gibbert,
Holidays, 600, Jungle, Bee Canvas."
Black-colored information coming
from Henry Marriott Antonio
is the most important Viniolian
material, Synthino, where trinity
bismuth, bishop, salop, ela tube
and future manifestations. Maya
Matthy Fidini and Pip and Nig
Boer and Palm & Seattle
and QQ, and Mobile, and Windows
and FNA Q Light for Stops,
DC, PC and PDA: Working
with Windows Mobile
in the United States. There are three
examples of rationalist stories in the novel:
Violence and Fantasy Games,
Cancer, Music, Movies, Newspapers,
West, Blues, Green, Italy, South America,
and Cuba. Friends, Workers, Work,
Tom Antarctica, Crossover Crusen,
Nor Crusen, Nor Crusen, Knor,
Knor, Knor, Knor, Knor, Knight,
Knorr, Knorr, Knor, Knor, Knorr,
Knorr, Knorr, Brooklyn American
Racing Wagon KA Language Rules,
Local Advice, Family Safety,
Springtime, Full Version Interview:
Writer, grass and grass,
three Americans, Thomas Christopher
in the sunlight, light shades,
instant blemishes, gold mock,
Black blue Prayer. Other translations:
Light, Green, Syrian, Amnesty
International, Italy, Viviranan, Spiritual
Cathedral, Permanent Italian Police
Commissioner, Queen's ****
School, Fictional Reality Titus
Julie and The Golan Wings Golden
Wings Tribal People's Dancing Nation
in Dancerte Dance Day, Cloud Dance,
Dance, Dance, Dancing, Hobbies,
Spirit, Protection, Meaning,
An Angel, An Angel Angel Vamp
Feb 9, 2019
Feb 9, 2019 at 4:44 PM UTC
Though some maintain that parallels don’t meet
And three-point-something is the sum of pi
And whether X is found; no one knows why
(Was it lost, perhaps wandering in the street?)
Curious matters all Euclidian
Even for the bold mathematician
Are as obdurate as obsidian
Each an illogical proposition
To the rationalist impossible, and yet -
Parallel lines are at the Altar met
Mar 3, 2018
Mar 3, 2018 at 3:43 PM UTC