11 posts tagged “god”

Please visit www.harlotssauce.com, a really wonderful magazine, with a poem of mine and my first published photo!  The magazine's main theme this month is life, god and the universe.  I believe in God, or an "invisible friend."  I have often struggled with this faith, forged in childhood.  I need my God like I need a safety blanket.  I carry God around with my everywhere.  In my poem, I am exploring how I feel about God.  Many good poems and articles in this issue of Harlot's Sauce, so please read and comment.  I plan to do so.

“I question not, Eloise, but you will hereafter apply yourself in good earnest to the business of your salvation; this ought to be your whole concern. Banish me, therefore, for ever from your heart--it is the best advice I can give you, for the remembrance of a person we have loved guiltily cannot but be hurtful, whatever advances we may have made in the way of virtue.” Abelard to Eloise

Eloise and Abelard in the Afterlife

The setting is the sky somewhere

with the souls as clouds.

Night is coming.

It is cold.

Two souls are together:

that of Eloise and Abelard,

two twelfth century,

star-crossed lovers.

Abelard points a finger

through pink pontoon

clouds over the green hills

with their in extremis crickets.

Night comes on like a dark plum

against the rain-swollen lake.

He likes to point out this time of day,

as if she wouldn't otherwise notice.

She also has something to share.

“Remember how the lake ate the boy

who was pale and good as an onion bulb?”

She always remembers the deaths.

Abelard yanks the sleeve

of her midnight habit.

“Let me cram it in m'dear

and I will curl in a bliss-egg.”

Abelard is no longer suave.

He's lost his cool metaphysical reserve.

His lips pucker , the last glow of orange

trying to smooch her white cheek.

“Remember how my uncle

cauterized your manhood?

I tried to kiss the scars.”

He does not acknowledge her.

“It is too late to love me now.”

Eloise's tongue awakens,

a mist-snake over the terrain.

She would lift throat in song,

and grow roots, wet

and bearded into the earth.

8/11/2006 Lucy Simpson Colorado

Hot Houses

there is a desperation to the florid growth

under the glass in New England

the heat seeps through the floor stones

the tropical flowers penetrate my nostrils

disagreeably, holding me too close to the breast

in the house of insects and arachnids

the obsidian eyes stare all day

transplanted from the part of the world

where the searing sun, that God-eye

etches words in fire

under carapaces

Lucy Simpson, Seattle, 8/20/2009

Spring Communion

I would wrap myself in the pallid peach

of the sundown's skin

the blue somnolence of the mountains

also the deepest purple of evening phlox

veins within the body

lastly a communion of the flames of Augustus tulips

sacred hearts in my ribcage-cupboard

Later when I dream

the moon is semi-circle gibbous

I float up in my variegated shift

into the indigo suburban half-witted light

over the halos of street lamps

I open my mouth like a trout

to take in the moon

which tastes nothing like cheese

more like bread

made from the bone meal

of a deceased god

by his wife

in heaven's wave-tossed galley

L. Simpson, 4/30/2009 Seattle

 
He kissed her and hugged her and turned her around,
Then pushed her in deep waters where he knew that she would
drown. Ballad of Omie Wise

The Nixie

He sat on the stoop while I shelled peas
auntie's lemonade sweating in his hand
an oak branch hand, living and veined

Only touch I'd ever known, his rough hands
on my stick arms, his teeth knocking mine

I thought bruises meant love
purple fish on my jaw

II

I grew dizzy in love, lovely in love
I threw up my breakfast of beans and bread
My belly grew melon-round, ripening

John Lewis' son in me, burly iron-fist boy
kicked up a fuss in the waters

I peered in the well to see the future
only the moon's pockmarked face
peered back

like that of my dead mother

III

Time came to cross the Ohio in a shallow place
on the back of his horse to our future
It was dusk, mourning dove call

The tin-blue light with its bit of rust
gathered us in like children
 
He turned me around, cooed my name, smoothed my hair
then knocked me into the water and held me there
I spat out regret and slime, but more came in
 
With pale snail shell fingers
and lime-stone eyes
I went down
to the cold

His son kicked fury inside me

IV

John Lewis, you who sleep on Polecat Creek,
hear the water whisper, my lips at your ear
What you sank cannot remain hidden
Boys drug me up, pale, fish-bitten

My spirit remains in the Ohio
Cold dark circles move
An I Am that Am
of the water speaks
at times
a church

Yet a meanness blooms in the hollows of me
A fish is no companion for a pretty girl
I crave a head of curly hair in my fingers
I sneak the fisherman from his boat to love
 
I need a toddler with pink cheeks to cradle
I drag a girl from the shore down to my rib cage
where breasts once hung
 
They lose their charms
They fail to warm me
They rise into light
leave me in dark
hush

I mean no harm

 
3/30/2008, revised 3/15/2009
Lucy Simpson
Seattle
 

after the hurricane

I am swimming to meet you

when the levee breaks

concrete split to a portal

for the roaring water-lions

I drift for days, sun-bitten

till rescuers haul me out

engorged like a stuffed doll

home is where they take me

frozen timeless land

womb of steel and blessed quiet

I float up and up

a baby to the clouds

above New Orleans

above the world

blue is my home – blue

a Jesus light comes whistling by

Lucy Simpson, 3/12/2009

“ At one time, human nature was split in two, an executive part called a god, and a follower part called a man. Neither part was Consciously aware." Julian Jaynes, The Bicameral Mind, 1976

The Bicameral Mind

She binds her hair with a bit of rabbit sinew

She walks near burning brush

A voice crackles from flickering tongues

She obeys the directive

Water rests over the hill

a pale land-eye

she has forgotten

She takes the thirsty baby

with its tongue pink

and wanting

She thanks her god

the more perfect reflection

punitive and saving

mother - father

II

Two hemispheres

one is dark and one light

One opens at night

and unleashes its dogs

of pearl milk white

One is closed upon its light

upon its well of reason

until the eyes open

Archimedes' Claw pulls up

the ship of dreams

and casts it down again

III

The deity is sinister

because no one else

has a god speaking

The sea-mist

of an eternal mother

at your shell ear

my dear

it is not normal

Two hemispheres

one shakes in terror

an earthquake

the bridge between them

pulsing nerves

IV

The brain is pink and coiled

a soft coral reef

with all the fish thoughts

It is all we have

identity, mother, father

god

Yes god is still there

swimming the waves

of our electric seas

old man

old mother

with long white sea-foam

If You are in my skull

become a whale

and swallow me whole

Birth me through your mouth

Lucy Simpson, 2/10/2009, revised 3/15/2009 Seattle

Louise Erdrich is also an accomplished novelist.  I found these two poems from Baptism Of Desire particularly soulful.  I was raised Catholic and they really resonate in my bones.

The Visit
for Eileen Cowin

It was not love.  No flowers or ripened figs
were in his hands, no words
in his mouth.  There was no body
to obstruct us from each other.
The sun was white-hot, a brand
that sank through me and left no mark.
Yet I knew.  And Joseph,
poor Joseph with his thick palms,
wearing antlers.
What could he do but wash
the scorched smell from the linen?
What could he do but fit the blades
of wood together into a cradle?

The rain fell and the leaves closed
over us like a shield.
A small light formed and the taper
that held it aloft
was dipped many times into my blood.
Now the being rests in the bowl of my hips.
There is no turning.  Already
the nails are forged.
The tree thickens.

Louise Erdrich

The Savior

When the rain began to fall, he rolled back
into the clouds and slept again.
Still it persisted, beating at every surface,
until it entered his body
as the sound of prolonged
human weeping.

So he was broken.
His first tears dissolved
the mask of white stone.
As they traveled through the bones of his arms,
his strength became a mortal strength
subject to love.

On earth,when he heard the first rain
tap through the olive leaves,
he opened his eyes and stared at his mother.
As his father, who had made the sacrifice,
stood motionless in heaven,
his son cried out to him:

I want no shelter, I deny
the whole configuration.
I hate the weight of earth.
I hate the sound of water.
Ash to ash, you say, but I know different.
I will not stop burning.

Louise Erdrich

God Composted

Remember when we heard God's roar

in the house we bought in Colorado

after the Jehovah's Witnesses moved out

and we moved in?

They left a stale crust of God in the cupboard

Now he sighs in the compost

turning green

upon yesterday's bread

Lucy Simpson, Seattle, 12/2008

A Foreigner

Chapala still remembers the foreigner

Who came with a pale red beard and pale blue eyes

And a pale white skin that covered a dark soul;

They remember the night when he thought he saw a hand

Reach through a broken window and fumble at a lock;

They remember a tree on the beach where he used to sit

And ask the burros questions about peace;

They remember him walking, walking away from something.

Walter Bynner (1881-1968)

Idols

I

They must have buried him away from the lake

Lest he be discontented with his grave

And forsaking the image at his ear, rise up

And sail. No edge of water was visible

From where he had lain so many hundred years

That every bone was fibrous like old wood,

And his moony skull came crumbling in my hand

When I removed the god that whispered there.

Part I of Walter Bynner's poem Idols