2 Big Think Poems
Because politics is too small and ugly to contemplate
Image by Monika Ullmann
ONE
The Words in Your Hands
When they asked the old/blind woman
If the bird in their hands was alive/or dead
She said
I don’t know/it’s in your hands
The bird/word is still/in our hands
And only we can decide/how dead or alive
the words are/only a symbols/pick one /
/it’s always your choice
Just one word
Das Ding an Sich is elusive like a bird/hovering/
But the word will capture it
So we can use it and abuse it
Let’s not forget/that feeding the bird hate
/words mated with hate/makes poisoned minds
That has consequences/For your head/
We all know
Flocks of dead birds fall on our cities/our streets/our houses
The stench invades our bedroom/wakes us up at night
/and causes confusion/fear and loathing/you cannot fight
bloody violence
Words are not violence/hateful words screamed
Beamed out to the billions/the innocent&the corrupt
foments violent confusion/but
Wanting my words to soar like birds of love
Not messengers of doom/I struggle to find/
only the good/the true word
In the beginning was the word
And I pray that ill will /will not prevail and kill
The beautiful bird of reason/the dove of Love floating above
Our worried world of words
In which only the blind can see/and only the deaf can hear
The keening dreaming whispers of humanity
TWO
Ode to Einstein
Your name says it all/Ein Stein means One Stone
One Rock/of Physics/the man who taught us the
Paradoxical truth/ that only at the speed of light
Does time stand still
The faster you go, the slower you age
To be immortal all you have to do is turn into light waves
Traveling at precisely 299,792,458 meters per second
So simple and elegant/everything else is just details
Elon have you considered this method of travel to Mars?
You are the great ingenious engineer, on a par with the Great Physicist
Between the two of you
We’ll become interstellar and leave our Home Planet to the apes
Gaping in disbelief
Yet one hundred years after your great insight
Most of us don’t understand Relativity
I’m sure I don’t but lately/
My old mind is stretching like space time/ to comprehend what you knew
And here’s my version
it’s like a cosmic building with infinite floors/corridors/
And rooms/with furniture/events/ that happen/in the eternal now/
Which is itself evolving/into ever more perfect forms/
Everything that ever happened or will happen/exists/
/in this cosmic dwelling/nothing is lost/and nothing ever ends/
The cosmos contemplates itself with delight/like a Bach Fugue of forms/
Through US/the Consciousness we are but cannot explain/
An eternal unfolding/a flower with numberless petals
When our bodies give it up/we just move to the next apartment on another floor/
And continue existing/recycled/because once we are Light
We are Everywhere at once/ without future or past
Just give this a think/
and
…wake up in Light
Just as the old Sages have always told us
There is nothing to know & to hold
Everything is Right