Tuesday poem: Gone in five seconds
May 25, 2015
Gone in five seconds
And their words seemed to them as idle tales, and they believed them not.
Luke 24:11 KJV
So all that spiteful back story erased
by my birth to a woman,
and my walking with women,
and my resurrection revealed to women
and it takes about five seconds
for the old dispensation to reassert itself.
Idle tales; how they will rewrite things
and take the story into their dumb hands
and make idols of themselves
and never learn to listen
and pray, noisily, to a one-eyed God.
P.S. Cottier
So that poem is a bit of a whinge written as if in Christ’s voice. Who saw the resurrected Jesus first varies between the gospels; but it is always a woman or women. And the men don’t trust her or their report. Classic!
Of course, some notable Christian churches still don’t allow women to be priests.* You can’t get rid of poverty unless you see women as fully human, including spiritually. Just sayin’.
And of course, Jesus would have voted yes in Ireland, for all couples to be able to be married, despite the religious conservatives who align themselves, theoretically, with Christianity. Well done you Irish! Love is love.
Now I don’t know if any other Tuesday poets have written on religious themes this week, or feminist ones, or on sexuality or justice. Read the works of the other Tuesday Poets around the world by pressing here. I intend to have a look presently!
*Bizarrely, that includes the Sydney diocese of the Anglican Church, as well as the Catholic Church. Radically freaky stuff!
Tuesday poem for Ada Lovelace Day: When geeks were women
October 15, 2013
When geeks were women —
or one woman.
Lovelace, unknotting expectations
into programmes; cognition dancing.
Father’s couplets sounding through
the could-be Difference Engine cogs,
but twirling in pas de deux maths;
poetry dressed and transmogrified.
‘Supposing, for instance…’
you saw a computer writing music;
an Aeolian harp catching numbers,
driven by numbers, until numbers
were the musician and the song.
No mere calculator; you sang too.
Your thoughts ring in history’s ear.
Medicine lagged behind your mind,
and the small number 36
is all the years you had. Cancer
bloomed inside your womb;
a sick reminder of biology.
No algorithm could remove that fate.
The same age as your (to you) unknown father
who died heroic on the shores of myth.
Ada, when I Google you,
I think of you holding a fan
(lace as elegant as your ideas)
and I want to shout back through clogged time
to deafen sad boors who still say no:
‘Ada, it works! My dear, it works!‘
*
‘Supposing, for instance’ is a quotation from Ada Lovelace’s writing. Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (1815 – 1852), born Augusta Ada Byron, wrote the world’s first algorithm.
P.S.Cottier
(Note that the first line is supposed to be properly broken into two; so that the words ‘or one woman’ occur at the extreme right of the line. My blog — or, more probably, my ancient difference engine — doesn’t seem to like cleverness today!)
Ada Lovelace was a scientist/mathematician back when women really didn’t do that sort of thing. There are still places where women don’t get any education at all, and even in highly developed countries, there are far fewer women than men who manage to occupy the highest research positions in academia.
But raise a glass to all the women who do science, including Ada Lovelace, all those years ago. Then click this link, for further poesie. You may put your glass down first:
Tuesday poem: Thirteen reasons for burning her
December 19, 2011
Thirteen reasons for burning her
One irrevocable stutter from left-handed mouth,
forever failing to birth ovate words.
Seven skin tags, crooked nipples of flesh,
sprouting from her sordid shoulders.
(For the Devil to suck from behind
for his greater convenience. Many teated sow.)
Three companions inside her cottage:
wrinkly goat, grey cat (black in smoked disguise), inexplicable toad.
Fluency with rare herbs, no flustered stutter there.
And a bovate of best land, just beside the river.
P.S. Cottier
From The Glass Violin
Other (hopefully more bewitching and seasonally appropriate) poems can be found at the Tuesday poem hub.
PS Cottier 