My website is still in the process of getting rebuilt, so please hang onto your “Spiritual” poems and your “Red” ones. Today’s poem originated from my first conversation at Vox Poplar Typewriter at the Bown Crossing Library!, where I will be typing again this Sunday from 3-5. Here I’ve tried to bring the heart of the stranger-conversation into the poem itself. Xinyang is a nurse, who at work goes by the name Cheyenne.
The Stranger: Xinyang/Cheyenne
The Word: Spiritual
The poem I wrote:
I could see (she said) the quickening
of their hearts in the machine (it tells all)
when they tried to pronounce my name.
Perhaps there is no real difference,
but now I wear another. Listening to hearts
is a spiritual thing: a name like any thin-
bodied organ can be seen straight through.
September 17, 2018 at 1:55 am
Temptation
Conflicts of our duality, the spiritual and mundane,
Often negate our neutrality, causing psychic nagging pain.
We try to deny our instincts because we’re told we are divine
Created in God’s image not, as an animal, defined.
We’re told that our behavior is not like that of the beasts.
We are born of freewill, thus sayeth holy priests.
But don’t you feel urgent prodding, hear the voices of temptation?
Is it the growling of your ancestors, your genes in contemplation?
Some compulsions are deeply rooted within your DNA.
Your reptilian brain paws at you. It will have its say.
Do you have a problem achieving long term goals?
Does the ship of short term happiness leave you wrecked upon the shoals?
It’s no wonder that one says “the Devil made me do it.”
Is he the voice of your temptations? The Master of your screw up?
Why, when you are dieting, does he keep screaming, “Chocolate?”
The voices rarely cease until they get what they want got.
The Devil is in your spirit, but the mundane is in your brain.
If it’s neither here nor there, I suppose it’s all the same.
Nature has decided to provide your appetites
For salt, fat, and sugar. Fight them if you might.
Do you “think” that you want sex because, it’s a good “idea?”
Or does our species say to do it because extinction is a fear?
Maybe you are one to answer a higher Godly calling
Or is it a deeper, lower function? You’re on your belly crawling.
Why do you suppose that Humans go to war?
Is it the fittest will survive? Could that be what it’s for?
Animals are not conflicted, as are you and we.
None of them seem burdened by their spiritual psyche.
Are you one of those offended by the calling of the wild?
When your nature compels you, are you feeling most defiled?
Sure, you have freewill to believe in what you must
And where you go hereafter your dust goes unto dust.
Maybe it’s coincidence. You can have it and your take.
There might be a reason the Devil’s Food is Cake.
Isn’t there good purpose that Humans get stuck in rut?
Our romance is mostly maculate when we answer to our gut.
Evil and Good are both motives for our wars.
As long as we have been here, we’ve done what we abhor.
Conflicts of our duality, the spiritual and mundane,
Form the basis of Humanity, our Glory and our Shame.