Love of Wisdom

I loved Pascal. His dark wit and habits for eyes,
Mathematical mind driven mad by poetry,
I read Descartes first and fought him like we do
young puppies, young liars
until I loved him, greasy moustache
denied inside his thinking thing mind,
all the pain he felt in his extremes—
no mention of the pleasures he had but
in saying they were rotten years of youth—

but here's Pascal.
fractured skull and lukewarm slurps
his beautiful bombshell sister
poured into his manic deprived face
as visions of conic wheels spinning slinging
holy water in perfect harmony throughout
a thirsty depraved world
kept him in the grace of God.
But he can't unsee the river on the map
has no meaning except in the stupid
inconsistent
unreal
twisted
perverse
dreamland games they
say is our reality as they
slaughter or esteem whatever they
feel keeps them from falling into voids they
leave behind with each heavenly mistake they
fail to see are all the wicked's dice
unfolding in probable contours until
You notice how the decision is
the easiest way think
when you see how it fits
how it had to be
How broken and How stolen
How abandoned and How diseased
so that you alone with god inside
your wracked and jerking frailty
come to the decision to be
All god requires us to be

He tells Descartes it's still a dream
But Descartes doesn't hear him
Descartes chases smart women who upstage him
(only to die in their laps)
twisting tiny tubes in twinkly toes
proves to us through pen scratching
tracing scathing arcs across parchment
proves we are machines, hydraulic automatons
walking in suits on street corners
and thinking things whose whole
sensorium experience thinking things think
for themselves. But
who knows it can't be dreaming
because it remembers a time when
it made mistakes but
{it doesn't seem to remember
how many mistakes were made before
it thought
—I am}
it remembers it's always thought highly of God



I loved Pascal and I loved Descartes
I loved God and I loved you
You are a different version of me
I will see it as you do
when Pascal and Descartes
both love us