PHILOSOPHICAL VERSES # 2

The verses below are written in dactylic hexameter, a meter, which is a certain way of putting words to a rhythm. For more on what this is, see the post below—Philosophical Verses # 1

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* * *

Shame is the stigma that keeps people off of the path of disgraces,
Shame is at times undeserved and at times it’s a testing of patience,
Marriage beneath one’s own station in life or debts left unpaid for,
Breaches of etiquette cut off a knight from tables of valor.
Traitors and cowards and all crooked lawyers and doctors all drunken,
Teaching us lessons of how not to act when in perfect good standing.


Nothing but Truth, for the Sake of itself, will do for the knower.

Don’t fall for tinsel and tinkling of emptiness, carnival side-shows,
when like an ocean, all things are filled without limitation,
filled by the love in the ultimate soul, in the ultimate last hope,
stop now and listen, it surely will tell you, tell you of presence.
Crimes go unpunished, for rulers are only in charge of the present,
At least here and now, yet the eye that sees all, will see all things through.

Robots with tin heads don’t know what to do and they need a command,
Archangels perfectly know what to do but must make their decisions
making them with not the tiniest space for mistakes such as we make.

Digging a well or building a shrine to the honor and glory,
kills just a few little flies that get in the way of the builders.
but in a month or a year many more will rise to existence;
Side effects can be admitted for lovers of flies and of dustmites.

* * *

Bees and wild beasts should devour my remains in the dark of the grotto
making me honey and muscular flesh, but no one should visit,
no one should carve up a stone with my name to give honor to nothing,
meanwhile, no one should try to come visit, as it will disturb me,
seeking to find pure consciousness, seeking to shun all distractions.
Sometimes a single thing will seem to us to be many,
Sometimes constructed concepts are roads that mislead to nowhere.

* * *

Consciences of little children may tell them not to kill tadpoles,
Tadpoles are murdered, and that would disturb them, by rocks thrown in water.
Voices of grownups who teach, who correct them when they might be stupid,
Voices are needed outside of their childish notions of evil.
Grownups as well may be stupid as children, and need some advising,
Conscience alone is blank as a slate, and needs some informing;
Rebels oppose any voice that is bigger, commanding allegiance,
No magisterium ever could satisfy, none but their own one.
Grownups desire their amorous pleasures while not paying their pipers,
wanting their chocolates and puking them out instead of not eating.
Humanae vitae was timely and wise, a warning to sinners,
cake can be eaten but then you don’t have it to eat in the meantime.


* * *

All attachment to ideas must be destroyed,
even to emptiness, or the denial, negation of nothing,
You must proceed to destroy the thought of the thought of non-thinking
If you wish to achieve whatever it is you set out for,
But if you mess up your mind as instructed, how then to remember?
How to remember negation of ego, for who shall remember?

* * *

All of us see how computers can simulate things interacting.
cities that grow and people that move in ways that astonish us.
Entities held together by sparks in circuits and logic
so harmonious, virtually real and incredibly detailed.
Scientists mad have made up hypotheses that this our cosmos
also displays the features of games that are played by another.
I used to wonder how fingers could move when my mind so commanded,
how the incredible light hit my eyes and then understanding,
Harmony was pre-established in all of the things put together.
Measure and weight and modality penetrate all things united.

***

Luke, it is said, was writing the Acts when Paul was in prison,
writing when Paul was in prison in Rome for his faith for the first time.
History is the arena where experts investigate souls of abstractions
far from the putting on of the mind of Christ to the Father.
Dogmas to Harnack are flotsam and jetsam, less worthy than gnosis
stating the value of each individual. That was the message.

* * *
In some utopian vision, James Harrington dreamed up an ocean
ruled by the wealthy, along with a king, and elected officials
from all the people in turn. The state would grow wealthy and larger
Harrington hoped. Well, the king got in trouble and Harrington also.
Stuffed in a prison, he went quite insane, or some say unconscious,
released for good reason, perhaps in a coma, perhaps just demented.
All my good friends take warning, and don’t mess around with a monarch.
Quietly live out your life, and leave off political scheming.

* * *

William Torrey Harris was the czar of the schools
back in the day, when the factories needed new fodder.
Schools should teach their unfortunate victims the art of withdrawal
Drawing away from the crowds of the others who call for attention.
As the unfortunate graduate sits by machines without souls or compassion
formed will his soul be to work one-and-one with iron and with copper.
Whether that man worked a day in his life in the mills that he raved of
I rather doubt.

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