Philosophical Vantage Points

Chant Hare Krishna

We'd wake up grateful, chanting hare, hare
at five AM, high on serotonin, rendering coffee
unnecessary
Thankful to Krishna, Rama, Ganesha
learning from Arjuna
studying the Bhagavad Gita
eating prassadum that we offered
to dolls representing Gods
in temple halls
painting Tilak on our foreheads
symbolizing our being soul beings
Giving out flowers, wafting incense
over our auras
asking for peace and wisdom
to get us til tomorrow
in all it's preeminent glory
With our men in orange pants
bald but for a few strands, in back
Our ladies in sarees, making ghee
and beads, for counting
the mantras we could amass
in a day
banging drums and clapping
clanging cymbals and dancing

chanting Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna
and Hare Rama, hare, hare

living organic, vegan
and minimal
life was alright

and our blue god shone
on every wall in every place
and
every home had a rug rug we'd sit on
eating, laughing, talking
learning...
I sat where the Beatles had, before me
singing "Let it Be" and "My Sweet Lord"

looking for God
and finding Krishna
and when I chanted
I was free
I was where I was meant to be
and I knew it

(An admirer of Marx, the social/ economic
theorist, who thinks the Communist Manifesto is nonsense- I am not sure what side that puts me on)

Great events of history, as noted
By Karl Marx, repeat first as tragedy
And then as farce. Our present pantomime.

Capitalism's crash eighty years ago
Was rectified not by meagre public works
But by war- enriching the producers
Of armaments, while the proletariat
Lost lives, friends and family. Tragedy.

Our economic crisis came when
Power and wealth shifted from producers
To players with other people's money,
Who brought down firms- by then quasi-churches
Whose workers had to sing to the hymn sheet
Of the company's mission statement.
Alienation of capitalism
Destroyed by non-producers. What a farce.

The new proletariat have no jobs.
Increasingly impoverished but free
From the mind dumbing alienation
Of selling worthless services to people
Who cannot afford the price asked for them.
Non-workers of all the world unite
You have nothing to lose but those measly
And rapidly disappearing state benefits.

THEY NOW CAN CHOOSE THE DAY OF OUR BIRTH: WHY CAN WE NOT CHOOSE THE DAY OF OUR DEATH?


Dr. Kevorkian was a very great man

Unfortunately he was ahead of his time

He made a machine that really got around

The issue of - who pulled the plug?

The patients were mostly in their right minds

Many were dying in indescribable pain

All they needed to do was press the button

Their own fingers did it, no one to blame


I did not ask to be born

I think I have a right to die when I choose


The argument is as follows:

We no longer wait for nature to take its course

Doctors find labour too long,

Thus WOMEN are INDUCED into LABOUR using

The BIOIDENTICAL hormone PITOCIN

Which is essentially OXYTOCIN - the labour and love hormone

By doing that – alone - they HAVE PLAYED GOD

The second part of the argument, is the incidence of

Caesarians, they have gone up far beyond the actual need

Women sometimes have very long labours

Dilation to 12 cm does not happen at a time

Convenient for the doctor, and they want to get it over with

To cover their asses and to be expedient

They do caesarians on women who otherwise

Could have delivered vaginally

 
Thus your date of birth may be the one designated by GOD, or the FATES

A whole new generation will be born maybe 2 weeks early

WE HAVE PLAYED GOD


If it does not offend any religious group that

We now can choose the date of birth

Why is there so much opposition to choosing the date of death?

**************************************************

I belong to several RIGHT-TO-DIE societies.
I believe in having a living will so as the plug
can be pulled when living is just extended dying.
I also believe in voluntary euthanasia.
My mother - when she was 90, in the last year
of her life, asked me to get something for her.
This is ILLEGAL in Canada (and the USA).
However, seeing both my parents die, long
and miserable deaths, has made me an advocate
for let me die before my life has NO QUALITY OF LIFE.
There is supposed to be a separation of CHURCH and STATE.
However.....whenever the subject of euthanasia comes up,
they are too chicken....they say...the children will
want to murder the parents... All my friends did
EVERYTHING to PROLONG the lives of their very sick parents.
This is a myth.  Thank you Jack...for this competition...
if this poem or my opinions are not welcome...I will delete them.


 

Courage

It takes great courage to stand up against ignorance, intolerance, hatefulness, racism, bigotry, inequality, and homophobia.

It takes courage to intervene when innocent children are beaten, starved, molested, raped and tortured.
when women are abused, murdered for being outspoken and treated as second class citizens, not one word uttered.

It takes courage to be a friend to the unfriendly, the outcast, the diseased, the criminalized.

destructive manipulative groups using fear, coercion, subliminal messaging, brain washing and mind control to make others subdued.

It takes great courage not to remain silent, to speak up against the ills of men and women

Your brothers and sister whom you see everyday, speak with everyday, touch everyday...you do not love
but you profess with all your heart that you love and put no one before that which you do not see, converse, and feel.

It takes courage to leave behind bronze age beliefs
even when the masses are entangled from head to feet
Wars fought for land and minerals and religious beliefs
murder, genocide, countries plundered, money is always the motive, lives destroyed while no one notice.

where is the Shepard, where is the anointed ones, where are you?
I am no lamb to be slaughtered, my Sovereignty intact and unaltered.

Just look at the beings around you
they may look different, have different belief,
speak different languages, have different cultural traditions, but the energy within us is all the same.

You say you love and respect unconditionally but that is not true
you only respect and love unconditionally the things that are similar to you.

How can we grow, how can we prosper as human beings
when the love you speak about cannot be seen
we must be courageous and raise our consciousness to live better and not simply exist.

The love of humanity will always take precedent over Gods
The intellectual advancement of the human mind will always take precedent of religious ideologies.

Love is the reason for any season

It takes courage to exhibit Peace, Harmony, Happiness, Understanding, Unity, Truth & Unconditional love to all living beings. In a world filled with ego and hate.

Am I my brothers keeper, Am I my brothers Keeper

Do I have the courage to be my brothers keeper
I believe I do
Yes I do
I am my brothers keeper because my love of humanity gives me courage


Written by thewatcher33

"Questioning My Faith"
http://img.allvoices.com/thumbs/event/609/480/79896270-the-nazis.jpg
(A Character Poem about Philosophical Vantage Points)

I’m one of them,
pointed-eight,
an original one,
chosen,
the few,
the proud,
the stomped on.
We have proof
in the ovens
of fascism
and in
other places,
our faces have
disappeared,
unnamed.
So, there’s
no way out for us now,
we have to play
the prophecies,
to see if we can
make it
to
a promised land
without goats.
Lord knows
it’s scriptural,
in the part
I do not believe,
just ask the Torah.

Withdrawn.

Oh, there was never a poem here , I just felt the urge to announce that I am.in fact withdrawn.

Bless you all.

( This is an old one Jack. But I think it best suits your dealio you got going here. )

Quaint from a Distance


From airy perspectives  
monkeys appear like guardian angels.  
But when more lowly based, they are  
simply blind, deaf, and dumb.  
   
From an apathetic view, roofs seem quaint  
distressed red-wooden steps;  
(Oh the things we unload  
when we tear down the barn)  
a ladder for God to get the hell away.  
   
He was evicted  
from these garrisons  
from pastoral settings  
where blood-brick cottages  
are tattooed with numbers;  
   
Five for the Rom -  
"Ring around the rosy."  
Ten for the children -  
Mengele had a pocketful  
of cyanide posies.  
Twenty for those dirty Jews -  
"and we all fell down"  
   
even God.  
   
Smokehouses exhaust Non-Aryan clouds  
above this little village  
and proper German wives  
can not be disturbed  
with the cattle taken  
from the cars to be slaughtered.  
   
(I think it's called content  
in flower-boxed homes  
on the better side of the street.)  
   
Those days had a dirty kind of rain  
drizzling endlessly. Noons;  
melancholy brochures  
as dingy men flick the thought  
of humanity from their shoulders  
   
and the neighbors raze roofs  
on their way to dying    
light at the end of the day.  
Turned up from bunks, stacked  
they are now bodies in open pits  
where sleep is a dead sleep.  
   
The Kaddish pours grey flakes of song  
And "It's just factory dust  
coming out of their stoves."  
was said so easily, as we  
slept safe each night  
in our own pass-over.

(I am submitting this under "new age" of some sort..it's Non fiction, my own story and beliefs from what I saw, where I was, who I met) if it's not well suited to this comp, please ignore it )

The Journey...




There was a screeching
smashing glass and metal
wrapping round the body left there...

I was somehow above
looking around, trying to speak to
the police, the pilot
the ones with the ambulance
as they worked to cut a body free from
a mangled Pontiac

Nobody answered, I felt invisible

as they placed a dead body into a helicopter
and flew away

I realized that I was being pulled the other way
and I felt panic wash over me
as I reluctantly spun into another place

In that moment, I forgot all about
the dead girl and the car

Looking around at a new world
filled with energies I'd never known
voices came from around, yet within
speaking in my head, from somewhere else

I yelled, where is this?
who's talking?
who's in charge?

and suddenly, I was with beings
that were pieced together
like chaotic masses of
some strange matter
we conversed without voices, or words
yet everything was clearly understood
I could move with my mind
and only felt my body as a memory

Time and space were different there
I asked some being who showed me around
he said it's all nothing but it's also profound
no days or hours existed
just a vastness of everything that had always been
and would never leave

and in earth time, we traveled
for a month
It felt like a blink
and an eternity as well
I was shown a thousand lives
observing myself as everybody else

I asked to remain, when I felt too tired
wanted a sleep
but another voice answered

go back...
to what, where, why?

I had forgotten everything about this side
this lifetime

My travels were explained, my mission assigned

I still had a choice but was warned

that this life I chose so long ago
had to continue for reasons
I now know

and I found myself lying in a bed, on a vent
broken beyond belief
It hit me like a bushel of bricks
I was the girl in the car
it was me

Gathering of the Faithful


I pull ten thousand doors shut, hear just as
many approving thuds. Walls have stood
then fallen while I claim the stone incline.
I pull my scarf tighter around my head,

ecclesiastically bound… bound.
Triple digits pursed, I self-sanctify
my entrance into candlelit liturgy.
Stoic sainted icons suffer my first

plea, prayerful antiphons amass.
Anamnestic persuasions flow, now
flow… baptized anew, belief molten
into my bones. It cools and hardens –

metal weight behind the words I will fling
at the unbelievers, the doubters, the souls
in peril. The censer swirls, its smoke enshrines
those of us worthy of the one true faith.

[font=Verdana] mikimoondancer said:(I am submitting this under "new age" of some sort..it's Non fiction, my own story and beliefs from what I saw, where I was, who I met) if it's not well suited to this comp, please ignore it )

I think it'll be fairer if you choose one poem for me to judge, mikimoondancer. Which one, "Chant Hare Krishna" or "The Journey", would you like to be your entry? (Thank you for sharing two, however, and to everyone else, feel free to share more than one poem, but please indicate which one you would like me to judge against the other entrants'.)

okay Jack..go with my first entry, I guess..thank you :-)

[font=Verdana]Cheers, miki. x

"ground zero"


don't call it an inside job

that intrigue might collapse
under the heat of thermite
and the engineering of Jenga, but
don't dumb it down for the crowd

the passion might flow through different vowels
but that still
is only a distraction

it's not the virgins,nitrate fertilizer,or jet fuel
nope, it's not even terror

it's love enough to lose myself
into the tumbling of the tower
devoted to debt