Concept of You

Concept of You
What is a concept,
And what does it do?
What is a concept?
A concept is you.
For you cannot conceive
Yourself without it,
So there really is 
No doubt about it.

You’re a concept,
An Idea,
An Abstraction too,
And You is your symbol 
For doing by who.
You is a hashtag,
For all that you care
To attribute to one 
Who’s not really there,
Who seems to live inside
A skull that grows hair,
But when we look inside skulls
We find nobody there.

Concepts, ideas,
Abstractions, oh my—
Symbolic thinking
That helps you get by,
In this game full of symbols
We made to get high,
That we’re forced when we’re born
To play till we die—
Concepts, ideas
Abstractions, oh my.

If you were not a concept
Then you still could not think,
Of yourself without concepts,
You could not make that link.
And while it’s true that
There’s much more to you than your thinks,
The rest of you smells
But doesn’t know if it stinks,
As stinks is a thing
Only concepts can think.

Concepts, ideas,
Abstractions, oh my—
If you are what you think,
This would explain why,
It’s so easy to be terrified when you die.
For thoughts cannot go on with thinking at all,
If the body they think from can’t rise from its fall.
The body won’t mind if it’s time to stay down,
Alone it can’t know if it won’t be around,
But the concept it has of itself, You and I, 
Will keep on conceiving right up till we die,
Right up to the end of its walk toward the light,
Or the end of its darkening descent into night,
But neither the light nor the night’s really right—
Conceptions conceive until their own fall,
Because they cannot conceive no conception at all.

An Ever-Unusual Game

An Ever-Unusual Game
(for Alan Watts)

I am what I am,
I am what I do,
And I can be what I am
Because I’m not You.

I am what I think,
I am what I feel,
I’m what I remember,
But am I real?

Some of I Is, 
Some of I’s Not,
And I could not remember
If I never forgot.

You are what You are,
What else could You be?
You are what You do,
You’re You and not me.

You are what You think,
You are what You feel,
And what You remember,
But are You real?

Some of You Is,
Some of You’s not,
And you could not remember
If You never forgot.

But If I don’t know I 
Unless I know You,
And we both feel like I,
What the hell do we do?

If not for You I never was born,
And if not for I You neither—
If not for the both of You and I,
Nothing exists that is either.

If I do something to I,
Or if You do something to You,
Both You and I will find that we
Both do it to I and You.

And if You do something to I,
Or if I do something to You,
Both You and I will still find that we,
Both do it to I and You.

So if all that we do affects I and You,
Then are we different or are we the same?
Or just two-sided parts in a whole of no parts,
In an ever-unusual game?

-Saint Andrew of Snohomish

Truth Disguise

To the one who wants more truth I say,
To get more I know a way—
Just make it easier to be gotten,
Then more lies will be forgotten.

For the ones who lie to you would not,
If you didn’t make them feel they ought,
To be the way you think they should,
And bad your bad and good your good.

So if you want to get more truth,
And be much less of a lie sleuth,
Then bend with truth instead of break,
And truth will out for truthness sake.

But if you make truth want to hide,
For feeling it will be denied,
And feeling that it will suffer
Too much against your stiff truth buffer.

Then truth will often turn to lies,
That utilize a truth disguise, 
To throw you off their lying trail
And keep their true friend out of jail.

Truth with lies and lies with truth,
They start collecting in our youth,
Preserved on hidden, secret shelves—
Secret shelves made of ourselves.

Sometimes our selves can hide so well,
Which ones are true we cannot tell.
They wait and want to be revealed,
But some might better stay concealed.

-Saint Andrew of Snohomish

In the Whole of All Parts – Saint Andrew of Snohomish

I could expound this little rhyme of mine and philosophize away to my heart’s content.  I could use it as inspiration for a sermon against the objectively false truth claims of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Or, I could simply let the words speak for themselves so I can move on with my work, and hopefully sometime in the near future I’ll finish some more poems— the one about honesty, the one about my place in space, or, if I’m lucky, I’ll finally finish the one about butt cracks (Take out your hand / reach around back / And feel around till you find a crack).  For now though, I’ll just set “In the Whole of All Parts” aside in this post. I might be back…

In the Whole of All Parts
No parts without whole,
No whole without parts,
No starts without ends,
No ends without starts,
No hearts without brains,
No brains without hearts,
In the parts and the whole 
Of the whole of all parts.

-Saint Andrew of Snohomish

Star That You Are – Saint Andrew of Snohomish

Star That You Are
Everything happens before you become aware of it—
Including you.
And when you realize this to be true,
Relax—
There’s nothing for you to do,
Except what you already are—
Your being is doing,
Your doing is being,
And your you-ing shines on like a star—
A star that shines back on itself and thinks “Welp,
I’m not really shining that well.
I should do my job better
And be a go-getter,
And shine more, or I’m going to hell.”
But shines are directed
By all things connected,
And not by the will of the star.
The will’s just a feeling
That can act like a ceiling,
To keep stars from shining too far.
But even when you find out
That your “you” has no clout,
And that everything’s there before you come about,
You can shine all you want on the shadows of doubt,
But you will still be the star that you are.

-Saint Andrew of Snohomish