literature

Does God Drink Coffee

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timeraider's avatar
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Literature Text

Sometimes I wonder what sorts of gods
we would be if those scientists in France
and Switzerland smashing all those atoms
together for days and weeks on end
ever smashed the right two at the right speed
and created a universe. I wonder
if they have a Heaven picked out or even Hell
and if they know what sort of life to expect
and will they take shifts being God
or simply store it all in a crate. I wonder
if someone spilled their Monday-morning coffee
could a universe taste like hazelnut cream.

I wonder about the dreams we will assign
to the robots currently being assembled
in industries all across Japan,
because they have to post profits,
and who would purchase a robot friend
that could not share in your dreams. I wonder
if we will build them like us,
and include silicon chip-sets for hate and war
and give them the freedom to sin. I wonder
what sort of god I would be,
and I think if the position were posted
on a bulletin board somewhere
I would just pass by and leave it for God,
because I can only dream so far
and I am prone to spilling my coffee
on Mondays and every other day.
A little different from what I usually write.
© 2010 - 2024 timeraider
Comments17
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Parsat's avatar
:star::star::star::star: Overall
:star::star::star::star::star-half: Vision
:star::star::star::star::star-half: Originality
:star::star::star::star::star-empty: Technique
:star::star::star::star::star-half: Impact

For about as long as humans have conceived of God, I think in the back of their hearts they have wondered how they would fare as one. I think that in the limits of our human experience, we are bound to anthropomorphosize any truly infinite deity. This was the age-old quandary that struck me as I read this poem, but you put it in a very fresh new light when you pose the question: Does God drink coffee?

Stylistically, the poem itself is not particularly original. It's a free, conversational style that has become especially popular in the realm of free verse. In this case, though, I think that the style fits the narrator perfectly. It reminds us that the narrator is a plain person like the rest of us, someone "prone to spilling [their] coffee/on Mondays and every other day," not a paragon of human potential or even a God. There are a few punctuation marks you could have added or fixed for grammatical correctness and clearer understanding, but I think it's a very minor quibble.

Or are we? As the poem relates from the beginning, even the brightest of us, the "scientists in France/and Switzerland," are subject to human foibles. We squabble. We are indecisive. And of course, we spill our coffee.

Even in the domain of control we have today, the "robots currently begin assembled" that are under our control, it cannot tell us about what it means to play God. Can we really be God if we are out for a profit, or if we give no free will? These are questions posed but unanswered, as questions that extend past the limits of our dreams. I admire this approach: Many times poetry seeks to be superficially deep without actually answering the question, but your poem avoids this trap. Your poem throws up its arms at these philosophical questions, but it frames it in a way that seems perfectly natural. After all, we spill our coffee in the worst days and "every other day." Why not solve the problems salient to us first before attempting to plumb the inner mysteries of the universe?

Overall, your poem was a thought-provoking piece. Although in terms of style, diction, and meaning, the poem might not have been the most original, you managed to combine all these elements in a way that the sum is greater than its parts. That is commendable indeed.

Tea is the True Divine Beverage,
Parsat