Technology has it in for us, which is sad as it is a creature of our creation. It is one part desire, six parts dependence, with a dash of insanity. Still each year we line up like good lemmings to march off the IOS or Android cliff into the iPhone and Galaxy abyss. But we are addicts and our suppliers know us all too well, know just what will give is the rush we desire, make us willing to cast aside old comforts for the hope of newer and better. And they do provide us hours of reloading our apps and data except for those few items we cannot live without that disappear in the process.
creation
EXISTENCE
I imagine I am the creator
I imagine I am the created
and I am the creator
and I am the created
I am both, I am neither.
I exist because I think I exist
so I have created myself,
just as you exist to me because
I think you exist, I am creator.
I say I can touch you so you
must exist, but I touch with my mind
so I cannot prove your existence
only the thought of your existence.
When I die, I will no longer exist,
and you will no longer exist
as far as my you is concerned
and that is the only you I can know.
ANGELS
He says he cannot believe in angels
because he has never seen one.
I do not believe in his sort of angels, but not
for lack of visual confirmation, rather
that I live in a world that now
is so deeply in need, that an angel
might be our last, best hope, but
the scope of angelic miracles is
not likely wide enough to encompass
the utter disaster which we have created.
I tell him that I do believe in angels,
that I have met several in my life,
and scowl when he laughs so that
he must consider that I am serious,
and then he asks what an angel
looks like, so he will recognize one
when and if he ever sees one.
I advise him that you don’t have
to search all that hard, that you merely
need to be aware, and watch the face
of the baby when you stop and coo
at him or her as they lie in their stroller,
staring up at the always welcoming sky.
HEAVEN, ONLY SLIGHTLY OUT OF REACH
God is fixed in the firmament
seen as puppet master by some
patrician uncle, small child
endlessly shifting blocks
in new, transitory universes.
All things recede from a point,
have since the creation
and that point, dimensionless
is God, vast and infinite.
It swings lazily, back, forth
a needle in its cusp tracing
lines in the bed of sand
in constant motion as we
and earth, and all of our
universe spin slowly
around its focus, it swings
lazily back, forth, tracing
an ever-shifting path
marked in displaced sand
ponderous from its fine
steel tendril which rises
to a point without size,
shape, or time, frozen
a singularity from which
all else emanates. God lives, bat-like
on the ceiling of
the San Francisco Science Museum
and the Hayden Planetarium
and countless other buildings
given to science,
omnipresent yet fixed
dimensionless and infinite
always a ladder’s climb
just out of reach.
Published in The Raven’s Perch (August 3, 2020)
https://theravensperch.com/heaven-only-slightly-out-of-reach-by-louis-faber/
HOLY MOSES
Consider, for a moment
he said
the absurdity of it all
a guy with brains enough
to shape universes
who can flick on stars
with a thought
faster than you or I
can throw a switch who,
worst case
gives a lizard a kick in the ass
and ends up with man
that a guy
with this kind of power
is going to write his story down
on a bunch
of tablets
or have an old coot
wander the desert endlessly
pen and parchment in hand
taking dictation
and then leave the scrolls
scattered in caves
it makes no freakin’ sense.
If it was me
he said
standing on a hill
watching some scrub pine
slowly burn onward
no ashes, no embers
just keeps on burning
and if I heard a voice
giving me orders
when I couldn’t see anyone
to go and slap
some soldier
upside the head
or march into a river hoping
to find the stones
followed by miles
of lemmings lined up
behind me
not this kid
me, I’d look for a screen
and some short professor
from somewhere
in Kansas.
Do you buy for a minute
he said
that he would wander
sucking sand from his navel
and getting called
to haul his ass up a mountain
for a crisis meeting
and then have
to schlep tablets down the hill
eating hardtack
and pretending to like it
then telling his wife
he knew where he was
he wasn’t lost
so what if it was forty years
Miriam was
really going to buy that
and Aaron
had to be
thrilled
dragging the damn ark
like a bloody albatross
then looking down
into the valley
he’s gonna say
okay, that’s it
go on without me
I just got word
I gotta croak here
but keep a kind thought,
fat chance of that ever happening.
UNLOCKING
There are two keys to it, really
the first, and easier, is to make a well
with your hands, that would need be
not all that deep, just enough
to hold your thoughts as you work.
The second is to add just
the right amount, too little and
it is dry and doesn’t hold
together, too much and it will
refuse to obey your command.
Dust it well, and constantly
as you work, that is
the third key, but we don’t call it
a key, for there should
only be two keys to everything.
And finally, no matter how long
you think it will take, it will
never take that long,
always longer or shorter,
never that long, but
when you are done, you
must savor it while looking
for those thoughts you left
in the now transmuted well
of the making of your hands.
REVISION
She said, “As we get older
we start to come from the place
we only wished we were from,
and the place from which we came,
becomes the place from which
we are now glad we never visited.”
He said, “As I age, my youth changes,
and the things I say I did are increasingly,
the things I wish I had done,
and what I did and wish I hadn’t
are things that now never happened.”
She smiled, “it’s hard to believe
that now we never met in that one place
neither of us says we have been,
and yet here we are
in the midst of our created history.”
FLIGHT
One thousand cranes take flight
and there is a sudden silence
as the cat stares up, bidding them farewell.
We barely stop to notice,
despite the rainbow of colors
replacing the clouds, even the sun
seeming to pause in wonder.
Two thousand hands made this
happen, one person, unrelenting,
knowing anything less
would be nothing at all.
Each crane dips its head
in appreciation for its freedom,
no longer trapped
in a two-dimensional prison.
THE DEPTH OF MEMORY
In deeply hidden corners
of my memory
snapshots of my childhood reappear
from forgotten albums.
I want to know what
was happening just
out of frame, or
in the next picture in the series
but these negatives are lost
and so I am left
to draw my own pictures,
write my own story,
and accept it as truth.
RELATIVELY SPEAKING
“We created time,”
he said, “so we
are free to ignore it
whenever we wish,
don’t tell me
that I am late,
for that is only
by your clock
and you should know
that most clocks
are never right.
It is only the stopped clock
that is right, and that
only twice each day.”
We nervously stared
at our watches, finally
saying, “so sorry but we
are late for something
critical, and will
see you tomorrow,
same time, same place.”