Philosophical Poetry

After R.G. Collingwood

On the deck of a ship, he sees a line. He assumes a clothesline.

In his minds eye, he sees its rationally structured history of cleanliness, beauty, social standards, reason, motives and desires. On that clothesline, reality hangs.

When reflection stills our mind, a portal into the non-physical world opens before us. In the echo of facts, there, ghostly imprints hang on that line.

More than mere events, we create the metaphysics around us. Every small thing, a raised eye, a flinch, a dream about something we never experienced, everything is hanging there on that line, next to our lives.

No scientific investigation can reveal our conscience to another. No minute examination of a life will let slip its inner truth. 

Like life-long lovers, all our thoughts are diffused through the measure of skin. 

Closeness seems elusive, most can’t find that key, as the life-long lovers.

We only think we know what others believe. So, there we hang, on separate lines but bound by the same things.

Human connection runs deep, much deeper than we admit. Almost universal, our needs and desires coalesce.

Watch as each generation blends into the next. Within our minds, emotions disolve, secrets tell, and desires unite. Through flags, nations and ideologies, we’re ripped apart like an exploding atom.

Tune out the noise, listen to yourself. Hear your prayers and dreams, we all want peace and clean clothes.

In Saqqara, 730 years before
sat Paherpenes on the floor.

A limestone statue
painted red, brown and gold.

Looking like he’s not to be trifled with
unless you want to be told.

Receiving offerings for the dead
placed about his demanding head.

With Demotic script and hieroglyph
telling a story I’ll never know.

Because my golden education was all tell and no show.

The past is history, for me, just a mystery, to be.

All that’s known and all that’s shown
it’s something I can’t grasp or own.

Throughout thousands of years
Paherpenes sits and stays the same.

He’s not much more than toy,
just a boy with barely a name.

Now, he just travels around in a show
look grumpy wherever he go.

I need to know how to teach children to get along with each other
then I need to learn myself.

In playgrounds and schools, the language of life is learned

like mirrors, children reflect what they see.

If all they witness, is you and me at each other's throats guess why they hate you and themselves.

If all the news is bad, harm is all that’s known.

You need to know about other people
to know their ways and thoughts like you do with your own.

Outside playgrounds life stretches vast and wide, a tapestry untold
with threads of cultures, beliefs and meanings.

I need to know, and you need to know too, this is this tapestry that weaves us together.

If all the news is bad, harm is all that’s known.