Poem: Halloween

The butcher knife goes in, first, at the top
And carves out the round stemmed lid,
The hole of which allows the hand to go
In to pull the gooey mess inside, out—
The walls scooped clean with a spoon.
A grim design decided on, that afternoon,
The eyes are the first to go,
Isosceles or trapezoid, the square nose,
The down-turned mouth with three
Hideous teeth and, sometimes,
Round ears. At dusk it's
Lighted, the room behind it dark.
Outside, looking in, it looks like a
Pumpkin, it looks like ripeness
Is all. Kids come, beckoned by
Fingers of shadows on leaf-strewn lawns
To trick or treat. Standing at the open
Door, the sculptor, a warlock, drops
Penny candies into their bags, knowing
The message of winter: only the children,
Pretending to be ghosts, are real.

                Mac Hammond 

 

 

 

 

 

Lucky

Statistically the probability of any one of us being here is so small
that you would think the mere fact of existence
would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise.
We are alive against the stupendous odds of genetics,
infinitely outnumbered by all the alternates who might, except for luck, be in our places.

        Lewis Thomas, Lives of a Cell

 

 

 

 

 

Telling

The truth is always something that is told,
not something that is known.
If there were no speaking or writing,
there would be no truth about anything.
There would only be what is.

        Susan Sontag, The Benefactor

 

 

 

 

Wisdom

Wisdom comes not from reason but from love.

        Andre Gide, Fruits of the Earth

 

 

 

 

 

Take the sunny side

Every street has two sides, the shady side and the sunny.
When two men shake hands and part,
mark which of the two takes the sunny side;
he will be the younger man of the two.

        Edward Bulwer-Lytton, What Will He Do With It? 

 

 

 

 

 

Think about this

We are not thinking machines that feel,
        we are feeling machines that think.

                António R. Damásio, Descartes' Error

 

 

 

 

Whatever gets you through the night

I'm not unmindful of man's seeming need for faith;
I'm for anything that gets you through the night,
be it prayer, tranquilizers, or a bottle of Jack Daniel's.
But to me religion is a deeply personal thing
in which man and God go it alone together,
without the witch doctor in the middle.

        Frank Sinatra, Playboy interview 1963