Great things happen because you made them happen

Life is too short, so live it the way you want it

You may not cross again the paths you’ve walked on, so

Create memories with your loved ones, and cherish every moment

Only you have the power to control your life

Nothing else matters anyway

Say whatever you want to say, shout if you want to

Unleash the True YOU, don’t hold back

After all, YOU and only YOU can make yourself HAPPY and CONTENTED and

No One Else.

Assess Authority — Assert Autonomy

Bash Bigotry

Challenge Convention

Doubt Dogma

Examine Everything — Educate Everyone

Fight Fundamentalism — Forfeit Faith

Guide the Gullible

Help Humanity

Improve Intelligence — Investigate Inconsistencies

Justify Judgments

Keep Knowing

Love Learning

Mistrust Mysticism

Negate Norms

Outgrow Obedience

Prevent Persecution — Prosecute the Pope

Question Quackery

Resist Rationalization — Resort to Reason

Support Science — Secularize Society

Trash Theocracy

Understand the Universe

Verify Vigilantly — Venerate Veracity

Withstand Worship — Weed out Wishful Thinking

eXpunge eXtremism

Yield Youth

Zero Zealotry

the birth of Another, the apathy of Otherness —

this altercation of the unconscious Self,

born of the irrational Yet:

the vague paradigm of Nothingness

as it unfolds, this phenomenon of alterity

embodied subjectivity of the ephemereal Doom

utterances coalesce with infinity;

impending Dread : anxious metanoia of Becoming

the All revolves, in this orbit of anamnesis

poignant reverie of what Was, and yet to Be

this-being-I, caught in the transitional flux ; between act and potency

the dynamic interpolation of mind and will; pervading Absence

— ,God; ? (It not is if what not is Be if what not is become of yet! )

I elude this context of  preconceptual knowing;

this frailty that succumbs to the Appearance

the unified multiplicity of understanding the Cogent:

derivatives of a preexistent Nous: language

and, as horizons, concrescence of reaching the Beyond

dissolution in the complexity of the Cogent, the face of its pull

all understanding converges in the evolution of mind

ideas converge in the Becoming;

but, not shall it Be for Yet it not is, what is yet not to Be

is not Shall, in the Be of the end and all of what is Yet —

to cry in the miscontextual co-promise; this Belonging

a failure of the messianic, redemptive fulfilment of what is bound to Become,

but is not Yet, 

— as faith dies, only to be reborn in the ashes of reason.

Embrace me

In silence and solitude

You and I,

One.

I am caught in this flux, this constancy

Of things — impermanent

Transcendent, always

Moving, and ? What. Yes, maybe.

Catching, this silence of the mind

Always moving yet

Prying open,

A glimpse into the unknown.

I fly, I dream in this vague luminance.

Where only the —

Only the,

Only.

Is seen.

In, pure light — radiant darkness

As death and nothingness succumb

To the Eternal

Beauty? There is none, nothing more

In silence and solitude

You and I,

None.

I had a dream —

That darkness was all there is to see

That cold is all there was to feel

That there was nothing beyond this cocoon of despair

That, this seeming emptiness

Rendered the very fabrics of existence meaningless

And threw actions into overwhelming futility

It was absurd,

I had a dream.

And I woke up

Then there was light — a timeless luminance

And these sunrays filled me with warmth from within

And I — I am a butterfly!

Fluttering, wings engaged against the still air

Birthed into this enigma of Being,

Embracing the Open that transcends time.

I have endured the deepest winter,

And as the light pierced through this absurdity

I at last discovered —

That there was in me,

An invincible summer.

Here is Weird Al’s Amish Paradise, a parody of Coolio’s Gangsta’s Paradise.  I changed some words and phrases to turn it into Fundie Paradise while loosely retaining the general flow of the song. I suggest you play the video and sing along with the new ‘lyrics’ I wrote below.

Opened my eyes.
I am floating in a seemingly endless lake.
(tricked myself to believe that this surrounding of water is surrounded by land)
I long to stand on my feet…and touch solid ground.
***
Dull.
There is no wind.
The water is as still as the air.
Need to wade my arms, trash my feet
in order to see waves in this otherwise clear still flat waterscape.
***
Think.
Must I swim?
To where?
Blankly I stare, flat horizon everywhere.
Or should I wait?
For what?
Something, anything that’d rescue me from this tranquil waters for a hell.
***
Should I drown in order to end this peaceful monotony for a life?
Sink or swim?
Neither.
I will float.
***
Strange.
I feel no hunger for food nor thirst for water.
I am still alive.
Here I am,
dying to satisfy the hunger, quench the thirst-
the question:
Why am I still alive?
***
Opened my eyes.
Surprised to see a wooden box floating nearby.
I smiled.
Finally, my coffin.
I swam towards the box… it is locked.
***
Where is the key?
Is there a key?
Perhaps there is…lying somewhere at the bottom which I couldn’t see.
***
I dived, dived really deep
to find the hopefully existing key.
I dived, dived really deep
the pressure kept on pounding at my chest,
still determined to find the key that’d open that mysterious wooden chest.
***
I am running out of air.
Need to surface…
to breathe.
***
Opened my eyes.
Frowning, I brood at the thought of me drowning
without finding out what’s inside that wooden box.
***
The closed wooden box still laughs, mocks me with its lock.
***
I punched the lock over and over with my right hand
-in a desperate attempt to break it-
instead it broke my right hand, my fingers.
Most specially, my middle finger.
Great.
Now I am deprived of my only source of twisted satisfaction-
the art of clenching my right hand into a fist,
extending my middle finger
-proudly
confidently straight-
pointing it at the sky that has no clouds, sun, moon nor stars.
All stolen.
All I have is an insane blue ceiling for a heaven.

Then I laughed.
I laughed at my stupidity.
Why am I lamenting over my right hand?
I still have my left left.
***
Opened my eyes.
Delighted to see a scarlet bird
-a cardinal-
defy the azure sky.
The bird circled
then perched on my disfigured, outstretched right hand.
Talons tightened their grip
my expressionless face is ripped by a painful smile.
Once again
hot-living blood flowed out of my hand,
trickled down on my arms to desecrate the sea.
Gently
I lowered my right hand to better see the cardinal’s beauty.
I noticed- something is in its beak.
Slowly
I placed my left palm under the cardinal’s proud head.
I begged.

The cardinal dropped what it was holding in its beak
and I was not surprised to see
that it is a key…
it must be that key.
***
The cardinal flew away.
I shed tears as I witness the most depressing scene-
a moving scarlet dot vanishing in the still blue horizon line.
***
Opened my chest.
Found only blank sheets of white paper.
Paper.
HA!!!
Broke my right hand just for paper!!!
I grabbed, crumpled and threw the nearest sheet.
***
So surreal ( as if my problem of existence is not surreal enough)
the sheet which I grabbed, crumpled and threw
flew back to its pack.
***
***
***
So, I am to write.
-But I have no pen.
A scarlet feather floats nearby.
-But I have no ink.
Water is all that I could see.

But I have blood.
***
Counted the blank sheets of white paper,
the treasure I found in my chest.
Forty-four.
Forty-four sheets where I could squeeze my thoughts.

Thoughts…
About what?

I looked around
my tranquil water hell
mocking blue heaven
broken right hand
broken fingers
broken middle finger.

I smiled.
Serenely.
I know what to write.

Defiance.

First, I must learn how to use my left hand
so that I may begin writing my silent crusade of screaming thoughts
of defiance…

…thoughts.
All that is left of me.
Thoughts that are, I strongly believe, right.

.
.

.

-Jonathan Maines Ramirez, circa 2003

left the playeronbacktobackrepeat,songsOrestesAndRosebyAPerfectCircle.

woke up with the idea for a poem in mind…finished in an hour.

Come on guys, let’s show our love for science and poetry. Let’s keep the creative juices flowing. Here’s my start on this mess. I’m sure you can think of other creative limericks, whether they be about science, math, or anything under the freethinking sun, no?

There was a guy named Schroedinger

who was quite an exceptional thinker

He posited that

there’d either be a dead or live cat

Even before you laid down a finger

And I don’t want to leave another favorite subject of mine (among others) without its own limerick.

Newton discovered calculus

So did Leibniz, plus its use

There was some dispute

on who’d bring the discoverer’s loot

But Isaac won over a ruse.

I took the lyrics of the song The Big Bang Theory and tried to write a line after each of the song’s lines. The original lyrics are in normal type while my lines are in italics.

* * * * *

THE BIG BANG THEORY

Our whole universe was in a hot dense state
A singularity – you can’t predict its fate
Then nearly fourteen billion years ago expansion started. Wait…
Space-time became a growing estate
The Earth began to cool
And formed the primordial pool
The autotrophs began to drool
Helped produce our fossil fuel
Neanderthals developed tools
Placed the beasts under their rule
We built a wall (we built the pyramids)
And scaled them like we’re arachnids
Math, science, history, unraveling the mysteries
As well as mankind’s glory and all that misery
That all started with the big bang!

“Since the dawn of man” is really not that long
A lot has happened before we came along
As every galaxy was formed in less time than it takes to sing this song
(In one of them we happen to belong)
A fraction of a second and the elements were made
The stars and planets then came in cascade
The bipeds stood up straight
Tried new positions when they mate
The dinosaurs all met their fate
Just like the animals they ate
They tried to leap but they were late
Imagine jumping with all that weight!
And they all died (they froze their asses off)
While the furry mammals merely coughed

The oceans and pangea
Tibet and Himalayas
See ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya
Saying all this blah blah
Set in motion by the same big bang!
It all started with the big bang!

It’s expanding ever outward but one day
Gravity will make it sway
It will cause the stars to go the other way
And bring to mankind a great dismay
Collapsing ever inward, we won’t be here, it won’t be hurt
What will be left is only our dirt
Our best and brightest figure that it’ll make an even bigger bang!

Australopithecus would really have been sick of us
Wondering what’s all the fuss
Debating out while here they’re catching deer (we’re catching viruses)
They really needed good irises
Religion or astronomy, Encarta, Deuteronomy
Chemistry, biology, philosophy, theology
It all started with a big bang!

Music and mythology, Einstein and astrology
The proletariat and the bourgeoisie fighting over a decree
It all started with the big bang!
It all started with the big BANG!

I’d rather see this picture hung upside down.
Makes it more interesting to see
the familiarity
`top -> sky; bottom -> ground’
shattered -
now, it’s the other way around.

Still, horses don’t fly into the sky.
Their feet are hanging by the ceiling of verdant grass.
Chandelier trees are not uprooted to join the company
of the what used to be company of clouds.
Water of the lake, dewdrops on grass mountains
don’t rain to put the light out of the morning sun.

How I wish to see -
rose petals sprinkle on the opalesque sky.

One thing is quite surprising -
the rainbow,
which used to look like a giant frown,
is now a radiant prismatic smile.

I believe in Nature, the ultimate Reality, that there is no Heaven, just Earth.

I believe in the Rational Man, he himself, his own Lord.

He was conceived through the Process of Evolution and born of a Man and a Woman.

He suffered under Professors and Priests, was catechized, bribed, and was brainwashed.

He descended into Superstition. On the third day he reasoned again.

He ascended into Reality and is seated at the throne of his own Thinking.

He will reason again to judge the real from the fake.

I believe in the the Human Senses,

the Freethinkers without a church, the Community of Scientists,

the forgiveness of Science,

the re-education of Mankind,

and the Life that I’m living.

Amen.

(originally posted as Atheists’ Creed)

A day goes by routinely

In the same one singular life

The hours reset perpetually

But the years are finite though rife.

Like a wheel that keeps spinning

On a long road unwinding

Up goes down and round and round

But never on the same patch of ground.

innerminds.wordpress.com