Adumbrations of Pessimism

“The Thinker” by Christian Hook

(Regarding Arthur Schopenhauer)

 

 

the world is but illusion

your experience unreal

behaviors objectify will

emphatically suffering

life as irrational product

sufficient of reason but

lacking of genius unblest

save the rarest of men

whose sheer motive of will

drowns in overabundance

of intellect suitably freed

from all place-in-time cause

flooding skillsets enabling

aesthetic contemplation

this singular atheist born

with unique inclination

to kneel before gods both

Vedantic and Christian

 

 

From my book Pieces of Wine

Tailings

“Heart Wave” by Adam Brett

 

abandon what cannot be kept
of the valuable fraction
for two thousand years

land’s end a conceptual
folly for land never ends
it just dives on its whim
beneath oceans the real end
is water incessantly slapping
intending to renovate faith
formed of bedrock and truth
left unmarred by philosophy
leavings of sand and stone
steadfast sufficient with gravity
footfalls for passage of men
who believe in the unanswered
answers that consternate
unwilling skeptical hearts

here at water’s edge froth
oversimple convictions
cool improvisations by
affable atheists fluid of
reason in wave after wave
of procession recession
progressing regressing
yet ever so fluent of doubt
in the ebb and flow language
of moonrise and tides
foaming arguments surge
then collapse under weight
of their very creation

for two thousand years
of the valuable fraction
abandon what cannot be kept

 

(From my book Pieces of Wine)

Faithless

 

“Remnant Torn from the Sky” by Stefan Fiedorowicz

 

 

there’s a rip in the sky
where the atheist blade
found its flourish
psalms emptied of song
colors drained from the eyes
sun and moon leaking light
cast the world in dim
monochrome days and nights
turned a perpetual dusk
leaving life in gray shadows
where poets can barely breathe
thin lusty liquids while
groping their secular sonnets
no praise for the discarded soul
fleeing out through the rent
among scared keening streams
of pale bluebirds and doves
seeking love or a smile
despite angel wings cropped
frantic finding themselves
lost and trapped in the space
on the backside of faith
mourning men who deliberately
choose incompletion
of rational limits
to self-contained bliss
and the easy rewards dealt
by science of dull disbelief

 

 

(originally posted November 2013)

Tailings

“Romantic Sunset Surf”
Painting by Connie Tom
From fineartamerica.com

abandon what cannot be kept
of the valuable fraction
for two thousand years

land’s end a conceptual
folly for land never ends
it just dives on its whim
beneath oceans the real end
is water incessantly slapping
intending to renovate faith
formed of bedrock and truth
left unmarred by philosophy
leavings of sand and stone
steadfast sufficient with gravity
footfalls for passage of men
who believe in the unanswered
answers that consternate
unwilling skeptical hearts

here at water’s edge froth
oversimple convictions
cool improvisations by
affable atheists fluid of
reason in wave after wave
of procession recession
progressing regressing
yet ever so fluent of doubt
in the ebb and flow language
of moonrise and tides
foaming arguments surge
then collapse under weight
of their very creation

for two thousand years
of the valuable fraction
abandon what cannot be kept

Adumbrations of Pessimism

Arthur Schopenhauer
Sketch by Karl Bauer
From Schopenhauer.fr

(Regarding Arthur Schopenhauer)

the world is but illusion
your experience unreal
behaviors objectify will
emphatically suffering
life as irrational product
sufficient of reason but
lacking of genius unblest
save the rarest of men
whose sheer motive of will
drowns in overabundance
of intellect suitably freed
from all place-in-time cause
flooding skillsets enabling
aesthetic contemplation
this singular atheist born
with unique inclination
to kneel before gods both
Vedantic and Christian

Follow Your Bliss

Joseph Campbell 1904-1987
American Mythologist
Photo from baumwollarchives.com

(Regarding Joseph Campbell)

his finely tuned lapsed Catholic mind
understood the one selfsame great story
uniting all men with their godheads
umbilical sustenance shared by all flesh
turned metallic with burnishing rags
of existence then smithed to a purpose
a bronze-age-wrought charger plate
set beneath meals of mythology
rescuing crumbs of millennia
metaphors making up menus of faith
wines of wonder dripped warmly
from lips of this putative atheist
nonetheless thralled by the rapture
of hidden hand guidance invisible
force that benignly compels human
thought gives of nourishing food
for the soul he was neither and both
the theist and atheist sweet with
enigma and gentle of intellect kind
to belief where belief was the bliss

Hume’s Guillotine

 

(The Is-Ought Problem)

 

 

A philosopher Scotsman, by name David Hume,

Held recondite principles brooking no room

 

For systems of ethics derived, with prescription,

From experienced truths cast in rational diction,

 

Impossible, Hume said, that reason alone

Could deduce right or wrong from what facts may be known,

 

“What ought to be” severed from “what is” near clean,

Impassioned belief the lone tendon between,

 

Implicitly, one of strict logical mind,

Unemotive and faithless, stands morally blind,

 

Consider the secular humanist ken,

Unable to tell vice from virtue in men,

 

Unwilling to judge in the absolute sense,

Doomed to wander the amoral wilderness hence,

 

When an atheist claims to hold moral high ground,

Ask what map gave direction to probity’s mound