Free verse № 114040
A Better God
When I become god of a far away planet,
Iâll set up my world with great beauty and wit.
And to keep me from getting too lonely,
Iâll make beings to admire my work.
My creatures will discover all that Iâve made
quite pleasing and right in their finite minds.
Iâll show them in love how their world was formed,
remove any doubt of who did it or why.
Ancient texts on how I created, Iâll not leave about
to conflict with evidence for some other way.
No, Iâll make plain how to seek me and praise,
if they wish to, but never they must.
Then they will let me receive them
and heal their self-made diseases.
Thatâs the kind of god I will be.
Not the unknowable elusive kind.
53 comments
Whatever is in anyway beautiful has its source of beauity in itself. and complete in itself; praise forms
no parts of it. so it is none the worse nor the better for being praised. when you create this planet let me
know.
Besides, if I said what was horribly wrong with your poetry in an inoffensive way, you'd be forced to find some other reason to disregard my advice or, maybe, have yourself a good cry over it and then find yourself a new way to feel good about yourself like hanging with Goths or being a really great porn star specialised in interracial sodomy. Trust me, it's better for both of us this way.
lol.
iam here; and i shall exist till the end of time, for my being has no end.
S2, L1:
-My creatures shall find everything I've created
Just my own tick really. In response to your piece, I say that:
Faith sought & praise uttered, inevitably conflict; for gods shape is incomplete, recklessly manifested-- burdened with the weight of confused human expression and mis-calculated interpretation. Amen.
Blessed with seven.
"Praise sought" is sought by God. That seems to be one of His desires. "Praise uttered," then is a human response. Thanks for your thoughts.
1) "with great beauty and wit" is poorly phrased and an innaccurate description of how you'd set up a world. If "with great beauty and wit" is how you'll be acting while you're setting up the world, then beauty seems kind of out of place. If the world is going to have the qualities "great beauty and wit", even before you've made people in it, then wit is out of place. You might consider changing it.
2) "discover all ... quite pleasing and right" is an innappropriate use of discover. You can't or shouldn't, for example, "discover a dog friendly". You might consider changing it.
3) I don't understand why you're not "leav[ing] about" ancient texts, when you just said you'll "show them... how their world was formed" etc. Aren't those pretty close to the same thing? You might consider changing one of them.
4) What are you on about "self-made diseases"? That's all kind of pleasing and nice, but if you're going to believe in a God, you pretty much have to believe He made diseases, too. Oh, right, you're not going to be that kind of God. Well, you might consider changing it so people don't think you're just taking a super-easy way out.
5) In fact, there's no kind of conflict here, except the half-alluded-to one with the real God, which isn't really enough and isn't fair since God can't answer. Besides, almost everybody in the world besides you and me, practically, thinks God IS exactly like this poem. As it is, this poem is just kind of a daydream and fluff. You might consider doing something about it.
6) The places where the rhythm is off make the rest of it - the rhythmed part - seem kind of jumpy and weird. You'd do better to either loosen up the rhythmy parts or tighten up the non-rhythmy ones.
7) Stanzas 2-4 just repeat the same idea, sometimes contradictorily. The last stanza, particularly, doesn't pack very much of a punch, mostly because it's already been said. You might consider adding some more ideas and condensing these to one stanza.
8) Other than an inconsistent rhythm and the big honking central conceit, there's not really a lot of poetic phrasings or devices (like bits of simile, metaphor, alliterative words, or original ways of describing things.) You should consider adding some of these.
9) By the start of the twentyfirst century, this is all kind of old hat. The only part that makes it not old hat is that most twentieth and twentyfirst century writers have figured, probably rightly, that their worlds would have all sorts of problems, too, while you haven't.
10) If you say this isn't criticism because I haven't added some, I don't know, praise-thingy on the end here, well, sorry, that's not my idea of criticism, and I guess I should have a pretty good idea about it by now, shouldn't I? Well, ta-ta!
Yours truly,
zodiac in Karak Islamland
a) "discover all that Iâve made quite pleasing and right";
b) my simplified example, "discover a dog friendly"; and
c) the structure in your comment, "discover what god has made and find it pleasing"?
In the first two, "discover" is performing the action which results in "pleasing and right"; in the last "find" is. I see now you meant to use "discover" as a synonym for "find", which of course it is, but not in the sense that you can "find grammar difficult", you see? Why not correct it by simply saying something like
"My creatures will find all the things that I've made
quite pleasing and right etc etc".
As far as "not a technical writing on science and religion" goes, what do you mean? And why shouldn't a poem hold together somewhat logically, grammatically, philosophically and so on and so on and so on. I don't know if you read poetry, or what kind of poetry you read, but I dare you to find me a famous poem that's not pretty consistent in these respects. At least, I can't think of any at the moment. Hey, thanks for listening.
"Thing" is probably a poor word choice, but not nearly as bad as an ungrammatical, botched-metered line for the sake of using "discover". Why don't you use "everything" in the place of "all the things"? Or figure something out yourself. I'm not going to write your fucking poem for you, JEEZ!!!!
I'm not sure it's an actual error to use discover as a synonym for the sense of find that means "come to feel", but it certainly is jarring, and by using it so you risk making those readers who possess a finely developed literary sensitivity wince.
I did.
And since I was reading during my morning enstooling, it caused me in fact to inadvertently pinch off a log quite before I was ready to do so. The delicate mopping away of the resulting splashings necessitated my full attention, hence I was unable to complete my perusal of the pome. These are the risks one takes with one's audience when one neglects to adequately ponder proper usage!
English 201:
if you intended "discover" as a synonym for the sense of find that means "come to feel" then:
"My creatures will discover that all I've made
seems quite pleasing and right to their finite minds"
was what you were looking for.
If you intended discover as a synonym for the sense of find that means "judge", the only d-word I'm aware of is "deem":
My creatures will deem all I've made
quite pleasing and right in their finite minds.
a) Just like yourself now, only with invisibility and creating-matter-from-nothing superpowers;
b) Have invisibility and matter-creating powers, plus a +50 Cloak of Perfection (ie, also perfect);
c) It's all the same thing, since if you were God whatever you thought or did would have to be by definition perfect - kind of like the reality (but not the idea) of Papal infallibility probably is.
For a), you'd have a rough time claiming your planet was better than the real God's, since he'd just say, "How can it be? I'm perfect and you're not. If you don't understand how I run my planet, maybe that's BECAUSE YOU'RE NOT PERFECT." And it's true: without perfection, you stand the big chance of your planet being a colossal mistake.
If you picked b), you're screwed already, since being perfect would make you exactly like the current God (assuming he's perfect), and you'd have to decide to make a planet exactly like he did.
And I can't go in for c). It just makes the word "perfect" kind of trash and trampy, while I believe in real (or at least some abstract notion of) perfection. I mean, if you're going to make up a word like "perfect" and make it mean something like "completely suited for a particular purpose or situation," or its even stricter (maybe) religious sense, then there's not much good in fucking around with it.
In short, it's probably easy for you to believe in a God who's not perfect, since you don't seem to really believe in God anyway. But for a poem that presumes a (probably Christian) God right off the bat, even ironically, that seems kind of dumb. The way I see it, you kind of have to accept that if there's a God, or at least the Christian one, he's perfect. That's part of His definition.
How do you argue with that? Anyone?
â¢Â°â¢Gregory Jamesâ¢Â°â¢
Log in to add a comment.