‘Some Talk of God: A Dialogue’ by Damian Robin

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I am an atheist. I don’t believe
in God ! Argue this with me or leave !
There is no evidence that ‘it’ exists
though faith sects say they squeeze it in their fists.

Divine Design is spin-doctoring.
A human eyeball, flower, clockwork working –
like the argument of prime mover –
are fallen hairy bits inside a hoover.

But what I really hate about you theists
is how you turn us into a-theists –
you make the stress fall on the negative –
like we’re against, with little good to give.

Which means we’re ‘bad’ and must give up / give in
or end like brushed-up hair in a loony bin.

And Forth  [ 1 ]

If you ponder the material,
(what exists / is indivisible)
and go down passed the surface sheen of things,
atoms, hadrons, quarks, neutrinos, strings,
you won’t see many signs of human beings.

And if you take ‘as gospel’ all the note-ings-
down of scientific instruments –
apparatus measuring events,
exact recordings of reality –
you’ll join up ev’ry point from you to me.

Which vaporizes thoughts of “them” and “us”
and makes the difference innocuous.
Like days under the sun, we are one,
an unbroken linked phenomenon.

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But I’m a person. I’m a one. Distinct.
I think my thoughts. – Of course our lives are linked.
But I am me. I see the things I see.
In all of life there is no other me.
In all the cosmos, only one of you.

And here’s another thing that I know is true:
yes – we’re of “the Universe,” of “Nature” –
but I also say there’s no creator.
The Big Bang’s flash is not some residue
before which godly breath gave one big “Boo!”
There was substance prior to that bang.
The numbers will add up, just now they hang.
The math will prove there’s just some balanced state –
for we just are – just live – no question – no Fate.

And Forth  [ 2 ]

Some arguments use black hole points of view,
singularities to see thoughts through –
like peephole cam’ras must reduce the light
to make what’s seen be seen and seen just right.

And there you find what you were looking for
and keep it – no exposure any more,
for you have funneled chaos to one point
and – in bland conversion – you anoint
the image that the tiny hole lets through
and vow that it is absolutely true.

So many cosmoses on one pinhead
so many microphysicists have said.
The human senses sense a tiny part,
what more there is we only know by heart.

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You talk inside a shoebox! A cardboard cam’ra!
You might as well be lecturing on China
or North Korea, or other ‘godless’ states
where thought is stamped from rigid printing plates –

“Do not ‘believe!’” – they bang – “believers go to jail!” –
religious forms are hammered tooth and nail,
they’re battered down or sing the loyal song –
I’ve heard the horrors heaped on Falun Gong.

If thoughts are not exposed to wide debate
there’s no displacing prejudice and hate.
Next week the leader might have turned to God,
then atheists may not be spared the rod.

That’s not the type of human base I want
with humans synced from one big heavy font.

And Forth [ 3 ]

With those tyrant, rigid states, observe
their plated Human Rights and watch the curve
they throw when they are pointed out. They sulk
with arch defensive heavy weight and bulk.

The CCP has made an earthly hell
(“The Nine Comment’ries”*** explains this well)
and ISIS too, with wifi, screen, and gun,
in Allah’s name gets its business done.

(Does ISIS do that work on necks with blades
as retribution for the West’s crusades
or later bloody beatings in Iraq
or ‘cause the West keeps watching Israel’s back?)

Each scores weakness in its earthly heaven –
they roll their worlds towards oblivion.

NOTE
*** “The Nine Comment’ries”  = The Nine Commentaries on the Chinese Communist Party (2004)
Epoch Times

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The CCP’s an anti-human clan
and ISIS has a life-destruction plan,
I know, and hold no truck with politics
where leaders’ slights of hand make pledges tricks
and State and Church and Army are semantics.

I follow thought-through human characteristics.
I’ve combed the net, The News, and Youtube flicks –
when seeking hits, I’ve reeled from porno graphics,
the ones consuming innocence for kicks.

Though life drives meaning passed the city’s bricks,
the vapor trail for “God” has no statistics;
and as for “holy war,” I see no fix
for, all in all, Man’s leanings are at odds,
that fault is ours because there are no gods.

And Forth [ 4 ]

Yes, being human means we are at fault,
that goes for ev’ryone who’s worth their salt.

And, all at sea, what lasts we cannot tell
as needs and knowledge fit a present swell.

What’s proved may sail on evidence that’s wrong.
To have no proof does not prove something wrong.

To say some thinking shows us solid truth
is built on present thought and present truth.

To use a way of thinking that’s correct
with evidence that’s scant or has defect

can make a splash in speculation’s pool
but only quench like superficial drool.

I have no qualm with truths that you define
but don’t see why you scupper the divine.

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You patronize by flagging mine and yours
as though we’re mud-deep in outlandish wars
while oceans thick and wide keep mowing down
the beach, the cliff, the coast, and make land drown,
go low, dissolve, until it can’t be found …

Maths can map how seasides swell, give ground,
how packaging from inorganic stores
reclaims the sea, remaking swallowed shores
with never-ending plastic things conveyed
half round the world from riff-raft, cast-off trade
to stay, pressed colorfast in swollen sways,
waved and added from the Gulf Stream’s maze …

Man made this clutching supra market field …
not gods but men and women get it healed.

And Forth  [ 5 ]

It’s great you want to fix our human mess.
Such shifts can make our moral rise progress.

Our inner thoughts seed matter of all kinds;
we manifest the changes in our minds.
Some people make their things come to a head,
uphold one thought and leave the rest for dead,

so, worldwide, more than one horizon dies,
flat-lines and loses light and sets in lies.
Our growing thoughts may stoke or sink our fate
can cede calm hearts or corrugate more hate.

Some people balk at God. Some people talk
of many gods or classics’ gods or awk-
ward flavorings fished up from dismal moods –
while mind thinks on beyond where death concludes.

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As I’ve said, this damps my consciousness.
I feel aware of how my thoughts progress.

No matter how the parts of me divide,
my heart still feels there’s part of me inside.

This is the bit I feel I can’t let go,
the nearest thing I have to say “I know.”

Belief sleeps deep, entrenched, full-blooded, strong,
we cannot prove one right, another wrong.

When I’m gone, that’s it, There is no more,
no need to keep the sin or karma score.

Though I think deep about morality
I don’t philosophize what I may be.

We are all earthy matter like the sky.
That’s it, no need to question Who Am I?

And Forth  [ 6 ]

When we get beyond the argument
of you-there / me-here – the in between that’s wrent –
when No Man’s Land is seen in all its gory,
bleak, bald, broken, stand still story,

when jagged wreckage in between us blends
and on the floor are edges, corners, ends,
conceptualizing into one whole thing,
the chorus of its parts begin to sing

and what we hear is something earlier,
the evolutionary integer,
the monody of deeper instruments
vibrating space till harmony cements

and gods or God or not, is splitting hair,
for we are here and we are also there.

Backdrop, Backstop – Both Together

We plan to build a somehow “better place,”
with hope, to open wide our jaw-drop face,

build bridges firm on concrete blocks of awe
uphold the genuine, accept the poor.

Sometimes tsunamis overrun our course,
each challenge changes us, we feel its force.

Some travel smashes us or hits with breaks
and piles our bodies up with stony aches.

Some people have no god, some one, some more
and some see pearls on gates, and some no door.

We’re swirling, stirred in shocking free events
by forces fixed by distant elements.

Whatever serves our intellectual shape,
our awe at being is beyond escape.

NOTE

Divided into fourteen lines of verse
these rhyming couplets do not just rehearse
ideas and principles from arguments
way back in time or present parliaments;

nor fundamental dissertation claims
of one side or the other; nor the games
of sparing mental chess or dealing hands
where one side wins, the other drops demands;

nor the tawdry bickering round fault
where one view wants to make the other’s halt;
nor the sentences of clever mock
from limited but deeply researched stock;

they’re two live constructs used without a name
responding from odd thoughts, not from one frame.

Damian Robin works for an international newspaper and lives in England with his wife and two of his three grown-up children.

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