Thursday, June 10, 2010

our gods

We have not changed
so much from days of old.

Our opinions are our gods
and we follow them religiously.

They are alive and we worship them,
bow down before them with our lives.

We live in gossamer prisons
of the wispings of our minds.

3 comments:

  1. Well, I don't necessarily love it, but it is the truth, with one exception, the cages of our prisons are not gossamer, but are filled with very real, cold steel, or may just as well be for their effect.

    REBUTTAL

    In answer, not in mime
    may these words fall softly
    on an old man's ears, and
    carry with them no sting
    that truth and different views
    often bring.

    Faith have I that his years,
    and art, and knowing, give
    sedation in the form
    of growing and acceptance.

    Nevertheless, something
    there also is that lusts
    a wall: a sickness long
    born by fear, it slowly
    sets; hardens; as cold as
    dry mortar, as faceless
    as cement.

    Its forms exist not just
    between us but around
    us, and from this side,
    not seen by him, from our
    four cornered rooms, felt by
    him, come the rhythmic strains
    of plastic pick-axes,
    grinding out the blows.

    That God is a bulldozer,
    Faith have I, as he.

    - P. Martin
    Summer 1973

    ReplyDelete
  2. Stan would like to offer a paraphrase of the first entry in the Tao Te Ching:

    The God that can be told
    is not the eternal God.
    The name that can be named
    is not the eternal Name.

    The unnamable is eternally real.
    Naming is the origin
    of all particular things.

    Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
    Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

    Yet mystery and manifestations
    arise from the same source.
    This source is called darkness.

    Darkness within darkness.
    The gateway to all understanding.

    ReplyDelete
  3. These prison walls are ominously yet invisably present. We see them not because we are encased in a delusional perception of freedom and autonomy of separateness.

    ReplyDelete