7 posts tagged “religion”

“ 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

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

Song of the Salem Witch

Of angels and heretics we sang
epileptic fervor of the saints
Was it ergot in the water
caused us to see lights
spinning in the air
colliding into walls

and careening away

on wind currents?

In our hearts

there was already a worm

wan and ravenous

twisting into the aortas

injuring all it touched

We had grown breasts

and all had changed

We were raped by our fathers

by the reverends

and all had changed

and always the worm wriggled
within our rib cages

impatient for more than we could give

who worked from sunup to sunset
and were thinned of fat

We only wanted you

to see us, to notice
yet we had no words

for what was done to us
so we sang of angels and heretics
in shape shifting dusk
We danced about dark trees

and loved each other’s hands

In the end, we offered you
what you had desired

for us to shut ourselves

hold fast our lights
but only after we spun you
a yarn about the devil

It was as if your skulls

were of glass formed

and the truth entering the ear

would have shattered you
So we told you this lie

out of our love for you

Lucy Simpson

Highland Park, Maryland

2/2000

Revised

Seattle, 9/2008

upon holding a prayer book from eighteen hundred and sixty-three

The old prayer book in its finger-worn leather skin

in my palms, burns

I fear the book and conversions

that make the ego an iota

on Gods sea of light

I can hear my ancestors chanting

seated in cedar wood pews

amid the smell of incense,

Surety of heaven at the end.

Speculate roses will nestle in snow

like male members, but sweet and pink,

alive in the white cold.

The sun will shine while the snow drifts,

joining the moon in the dusk indigo.

Laws of nature need not be obeyed.

The sabbath-keepers,

pinned up in their Sunday best,

like trussed turkeys,

chant the prayers they know by heart.

And I in an age of atheism,

posses or feign no such surety.

Lucy Simpson

Seattle

12/23/2007

upon holding a prayer book from eighteen hundred and sixty-three

The old prayer book nearly singes my fingers,

so burning is the devotion in the prayers

of my ancestors chanting in their Sunday dress.

Seated in good wood pews

amid the smell of incense and cedar wood,

they believe the surety of heaven at the end.

Speculate roses will nestle in snow

like male members, but sweet and pink,

alive in the white cold.

The sun will shine while the snow drifts,

the moon will join the sun in the blue.

Laws of nature need not be obeyed.

The sabbath-keepers hope for paradise.

Pinned up in their Sunday best,

like trussed turkeys,

they chant the prayers they know by heart.

Lucy Simpson

Seattle

12/23/2007

The Picasso Jesus Connection

At nine my braid pointed straight down my spine, yet my thoughts curled wild as wisps 

of smoke from mama's cigarette.  It was the year bees swarmed into my mouth on the 

playground and I closed my lips and did not cry.

The picture on Papa's wall, that stood out oddly from the beige wallpaper with its  

flowers and carriages, was of The Tragedy, so my Dad told me.  I knew it is not the 

Picasso of the later stages, with cut up loves on canvas. Every day I stared at  the 

reproduction and fingered its grease-smudged edges, as if it were a relic, the shred 

of some saint's cloak or a finger-bone worn to a nub by pilgrim lips.  Still it was 

not some hoax.  It was real, true-blue if you will.  

I don't recall when I began to see things in the painting that weren't there.  No one 

knows the precise moment a delusion enters the brain, only when it departs.  I began 

to think Picasso's painting was the Holy Family grown older, sadder, hungrier.  I had 

faith that this was so.  How could they be happy being poor?  I knew how my parents 

fretted and fought over money and how my jeans were so tight on me, because a new pair 

could be bought.  How I searched for something to wear that fitted, something not my 

plaid school uniform.  If that was all you wore, then you were really poor.

I began to share this belief in the Picasso-Jesus connection with my mother and father.  

They tried to convince me of my error and laughed nervously every time I began to 

speak my truth.  It must be so when some new religion is started and a first disciple 

starts to preach.  I thought of the Mormons with their unlikely angel, Mulroney.  I 

felt sorry for them, because in my family their angel was dubbed Malarkey. 

How could they not see, what seemed so clear to me.  Joseph stood, cadaver gray,

arms folded, as if trying to hold in blood-pink guts, the hair on his face, a dead 

man's moss like my father's beard that prickled my cheek.  I always had to fight the 

urge to run from him.  So must it have been for poor Joseph that no one wanted to 

touch him.

An indigo Mary pulled down the shades of her somnambulist eyes over what was burnt by 

God's desire.  Like my mother pulled the shades down over the blind-black windows to 

keep private her torments.  I thought of God as fire as in Moses' burning bush as in 

the blazing heat of the sun in Exodus, blistering the skin of the Chosen people.  I 

thought of Mary's poor charred womb that held the son.

My mother was different.  She was still on fire.  Somehow she wouldn't fit into a sad 

blue painting.  She was the red gone wild on the canvas, rage in fists and grinding 

teeth at night in her cups of vodka.  If the Angel Gabriel had come to her, it is she 

who would burn him and crush his wings bloody.  She was that type of woman, who 

wouldn't die, despite all.


The boy, close to Joseph was Jesus at nine, thin as a scarecrow and no one's friend as

I was thin and no one's friend.  I haunted the halls at school, pale shadow girl.  I 

galloped the playground without joy.  I was birthed on the sea of my parent's 

discontent, dead cold father and hot lava mama fighting to the death.  

It was really nothing like the painting.  I realized that one dawn as an Easter sun 

was rising to light fire to the rain splattered pavement.  For one moment, it was as 

if the sidewalks were linear rivers of gold.


Lucy Simpson
Seattle
11/11/2007

revised 2/2008