La la la, she sang to herself

La la la

I need a vacation

Madeleine L’Engle is best known for her children’s books.

But this is her work that speaks the best to me.

Pharaoh’s Cross

 It would be easier to be an atheist;

it is the simple way out.

But each time I turn toward that wide and welcoming door

it slams in my face, and I- like my forbears- Adam, Eve–

am left outside the garden of reason and limited,

chill scienceand the arguments of intellect.

Who is this wild cherubim who whirls the flaming sword

‘twixt the door to the house of atheism and me? 

Sometime in the groping dark of my not knowing

I am exhausted with the struggle to believe in you, O God.

Your ways are not our ways. Your ways are extraordinary.

You sent evil angels to the Egyptians and killed;

you killed countless babes in order that Pharaoh,

whose heart was hardened by you (that worries me, Lord)

might be slow to let the Hebrew children go.

You turned back the waters of the Red Sea

and your Chosen People went through on dry land

and the Egyptians were drowned, men with wives and children,

young men with mothers and fathers (your ways are not our ways)

and there was much rejoicing at all this death,

and the angels laughed and sang, and you stopped then,

saying,“How can you sing when my children are drowning?” 

When your people reached Mount Sinai you warned Moses

not to let any of them near you lest you break forth

on them with death in your hand. 

You are Love, and you command us to love,

and yet you yourself turn men’s hearts to evil,

and you wipe out nations with one sweep of the hand

-the Amorites and the Hittities and the Peruzzites-

gone, all gone.

It seems that any means will do, and yet-

all these things are but stories told about you by fallen man,

part of the story (for your ways are not our ways)

but not the whole story.

You are our author,and we try to listen and set down what you say,

but we suffer from faulty hearing and loss of language

and we get the words wrong.

Listen: you came as one of us

and lived with us and died for us and descended into hell for us

and burst out into life for us: 

Do you now hold Pharaoh in your arms?

l(a le af fa ll s) one l iness

Imma pirate

After Reading a Child’s Guide to Modern Physics

If all a top physicist knows
About the Truth be true,
Then, for all the so-and-so’s,
Futility and grime,
Our common world contains,
We have a better time
Than the Greater Nebulae do,
Or the atoms in our brains. Marriage is rarely bliss
But, surely it would be worse
As particles to pelt
At thousands of miles per sec
About a universe
Wherein a lover’s kiss
Would either not be felt
Or break the loved one’s neck.

Though the face at which I stare
While shaving it be cruel
For, year after year, it repels
An ageing suitor, it has,
Thank God, sufficient mass
To be altogether there,
Not an indeterminate gruel
Which is partly somewhere else.

Our eyes prefer to suppose
That a habitable place
Has a geocentric view,
That architects enclose
A quiet Euclidian space:
Exploded myths - but who
Could feel at home astraddle
An ever expanding saddle?

This passion of our kind
For the process of finding out
Is a fact one can hardly doubt,
But I would rejoice in it more
If I knew more clearly what
We wanted the knowledge for,
Felt certain still that the mind
Is free to know or not.

It has chosen once, it seems,
And whether our concern
For magnitude’s extremes
Really become a creature
Who comes in a median size,
Or politicizing Nature
Be altogether wise,
Is something we shall learn.

by W.H. Auden

You got science on my poetry!

Or is it the other way round? 

A while ago I wrote about The Imp of Perversity and The Inner Editor, the voices that live in my head.I blame the Imp for the following incidents: 

1. A visitor to our home (sweet but not the sharpest knife in the drawer) admired the small teapot Mr. Logo purchased for me in Hong Kong and asked what the writing meant, she did not recognize the rather famous Chinese characters; Love, Joy, Luck so I took the opportunity to inform her that it said,“Death to the foreign white-devils.”  

2. Thing One’s little league coach delivered a 15 minute soliloquy and THEN told us he has written down some of the league rules we needed to be aware of and pulled several sheets crumpled and wadded paper from his pocket. As he flattened and attempted to decipher the writing I said,

“Let me guess, no steroids?”

I recognize you but who are you?

You know how at times you will see a familiar face, perhaps in a crowd, and your memory speaks to you and you think, who are you?

Perhaps your memory will come through for you and you will recall the connection that brought your life together with theirs at some point. Then you can decide whether to approach them or let the moment pass without comment.

Due to her accelerating memory loss this is happening more and more to my mom, and rarely does her memory come through for her. It’s hard for her because she is rarely the kind to let the moment pass without greeting everyone, anyone she knows. Sometimes, with enough information to prompt the remaining cells into activity she can remember who we are looking at, or talking to but she is, of course, very frustrated by this.

My mother passed a good portion of my childhood being an incredibly selfish person. It hard for me to even say that despite the fact that it is true. There were a number of ways in which she was very unhealthy but as her child the emotional ones stood out significantly. She grew up though and by the time I had my first child she was…amazing. She lost 100 pounds, she became capable of genuine emotional generosity and was… a mom, not merely a person who gave birth and was sensible of her subsequent obligations.  

These days however, that shining moment has well and truly passed. The more self-centered version of the woman I knew had re-emerged. With a decreased ability to remember and reason she is working almost entirely off how she feels about things.

She is compassionate but impatient, kind but insensitive, and there is never enough for her. You cannot listen to her enough, give her enough, what you did was nice, and appreciated, but more would have been better.

Living in my mother’s freshly bald head is something I recognize but do not know. I will spent time and love this person because I love her but there are times as I try to explain the situation sensitively to my children, or excuse her hurtfulness to myself when I think,

I recognize you but who are you?

ee cummings was a genius

     i like my body when it is with your
   body. It is so quite a new thing.
   Muscles better and nerves more.
   i like your body. i like what it does,
   i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
   of your body and its bones, and the trembling
   -firm-smooth ness and which i will
   again and again and again
   kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
   i like,, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
   of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
   over parting flesh . . . . And eyes big Love-crumbs,

   and possibly i like the thrill

   of under me you quite so new

An update on La Belle Dame Sans Merci

I wrote this a while back because we were going to do a remake of classic painting as an HNT on Hijacked.  Mr. Logo and I were going to re-enact the scene above with me on his Harley. We never got around to it but I wanted to share the rewrite anyway.

Here ya go!

Oh what ail you, knight at arms

Alone and so woe begone

The sedge has withered from the lake

And no birds sing. 

I met a lady along the way

Pretty cute- a faery’s child

Her hair was curly, her boots were black

And her eyes were wild. 

I bought sunglasses for her head

Gloves too and a leather jacket.

She looked at me as if in love And made sweet moan. 

I took her to my garage

At my Hog she sighed full sore

And there I shut her wild wild eyes With kisses four. 

I set her on my roaring stead

And nothing else saw all day

She took my bike and left me With a sweet smile. 

And this is why I sojourn here

Alone and woe begone

Though the sedge is withered And no bird sings.

Oh, and for comparison purposes, here is the original.