Painting from joannekraft.com
never doubt angels
live among us poor sinners
behold a child’s eyes
Archives
All posts for the month March, 2013
Albert Einstein, Theoretical Physicist, 1879-1955
Photo by Oren Jack Turner
Using only the eyes of a beautiful mind
Through the lens of theoretical physics
He discerned mathematical expressions
Of existence, of power, of motion
He sought out among the heavenly orbs
For invisible forces that impel them
That arrange control their synchrony
He imagined a rule-governed universe
Of interdependent elements captured
By one simple Grand Unified Theory
Whose equally simple equation would solve
Every What? Where? When? How? and Why?
Compelled by persistent unsleeping reason
Alas his astonishing intellect never
Did reach that one theory of everything
But in course his magnificent affluent failure
Revealed secret arcane apparatus of nature
Whose exposure forever altered all science
He found and stepped right through a powerful door
To an undulant space-time continuum
Treading upon the Lorentzian intervals
Challenging Minkowski symmetries
He discovered systemic distortions that pushed him
To reshape the world with his stunning
Theories of Special and General Relativity
Among vast phenomena his work informed
Are quantum mechanics and nuclear fission,
String particle waves and thermodynamics,
Cosmological constants, space-warping of time,
Wormholes and black holes and bending of light
In fact, every postulate physicists frame
Still feeds on the fruits of his Annus Mirabilis
Yet he always believed he had failed in his quest
For essential connection that unified all
But successors continue nearing his goal
With new confident formulae joining
Weak nuclear force to electromagnetics
In seductive electroweak symmetry
While continuing search for a still farther bridge
Between outlying strong forces binding the fate
Of gravity with quantum chromodynamics
But science progresses with untidy spasms
That clench or release unpredictably timed
To splatter its knowledge on spatial and temporal
Manifestations of human ideas
Physics was born of mathematics and philosophy
Two-thousand years from Ptolemy to Copernicus
Two hundred more brought the polyhistor Newton
Another two fifty till Einstein arrived
No one else in those spans mattered much if at all
These four were the founders of order, reorder
And structure, restructure of all the known world
They gave their bright lights to the gods of the sky
Each more dazzling in turn chasing more and more
Darkness from the precincts of human endeavor
But beyond all the others what Einstein achieved
Gave a light so exquisitely bright it reveals
Those invisible paths his successors now follow
Theoretical thoroughfares leading to truth’s
Complete wisdom God enabled man to acquire
“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”
– Albert Einstein, in “Science, Philosophy and Religion: a Symposium”, 1941
Books by Einstein recommended for reading:
- On the Special and General Theory of Relativity
- On the Method of Theoretical Physics
- Einstein’s God
- The World as I See It
- Out of My Later Years
Illustration from thereforenow.com
it happened in a dream
I became king of the world
but the world didn’t care
so I stepped from the throne
and a monster took my place
then the world was afraid
I painfully pondered
what my conscience commanded
while the whole world suffered
could I kill the monster
without becoming one too
thank God it was a dream
“Heenan vs. Sayers 1860”
Drawing by Thomas Nast
ego strides right on in
all Dan Post ostrich skin
tree-trunk legs and cleft chin
packing serious heat
hands rough as concrete
it yanks fate to its feet
now fate is no mark
it’s developed the dark
deadly skills of a shark
so fate doesn’t flinch
doesn’t back off an inch
and they clash in grim clinch
rain down mighty hard blows
toe-to-toe, nose-to-nose
fury builds as blood flows
after vicious long hours
fatigue overpowers
these broken-down towers
nodding cagey assent
they retreat this event
bearing deep discontent
I’m the one left to tend
them and see to their mend
though neither’s my friend
still I’ll wait for the rise
of new fight in their eyes
to learn who claims me prize
Illustration by Bryant Arnold
From cartoonaday.com
curricular pabulum pours from hoppers of public school mills
laying feast for least hungry of immature minds
but the grist lacks two essential ingredients
crucial to right/left brain nourishment
skill sets for creative imaginations
and analytical critical thinking
leaving global arenas
unvanquished by
Americans
“The Agony”
Painting by Theyre Lee-Elliott
what exotic wood
soaked by noble blood of redemption
grains our pedestrian souls
“Modesty”
Photo by Alphonse VanBesten
is no intimacy secure behind drawn veils of modesty
beyond reach of inked claws upon poetic paws
that would rip open secrets and scabs
for the sake of mad moments
urged by pent up release
but reckon the cost
of privacy lost
to strangers
forever
Photo from rummy-games.com
writing seems such a solitaire game
between you and a deck of words
you deal them out
onto your paper or screen
and look for the hooks
to connect them in sequence
expressing the feelings
you find in your mind
but isn’t a solitaire game
meant for pitiful lonely
the chronically bored
a device to splice
sleep onto staying awake
escape from rude news
all the bray of the day
and parts of life best ignored
yet unlike a solitaire game
that dies on new turn of a card
writing lives for as long
as alacrity strains
to offer those clever-set
phrases and lines
to other eyes lonely and bored
in their solitaire game of reading
“The Three Fates”
Engraving by Jacob Matham
the most fateful
pair of words ever uttered
unwanted pregnancy
Photo from americanthinker.com
burn your unfingered tenets
in congressional ashtrays
watch the wreathing smoke
strangle those arrow-shot birds
with the balls to keep circling
the coppered bone dome
do not stray onto perilous
elysian fields
where dull daggers of bliss
forged in dung-fires of duty
threaten your transparent skin
flee carnivorous puppets
with umbilicals running from
dead white men’s graves
by shooting yourself
from a cannon that’s trained
upon monuments
honoring enmity
lick clean the dead glory
from bleeding engravures
to nourish your newborn
hybrid hostility
hop a lift on a cockeyed
revolutionist tailgate
but beware its dogmatic
homicidal exhaust
seek rapture in aroma
of overcooked flowers
force-feed them to children
who’d rather eat flags
but grew fat on indulgence
unable to run from your
bombthrower’s hands
imprison in dungeons
atrophied fists clenching
scrolls of rapacious
neatly lined script
that no living pen
has learned how to stroke
cut your soul into swatches
and hide them in pockets
of invisible conformity
the silent new uniform
that stiffens your spine
when the armistice comes
and explodes on your truth
those patches will help you
refurnish your heart
all assuming of course
that you’ll still be alive
Poesy plus Polemics 