The Angel Rafael

I remove my shoes and enter the Shimmering Void.
Rafael S per IQ ta sits at his computer and greets me.
He shows me an AI art program that will create any image
That can be described by words:

“I’d like a penguin lounging in a tea cup, like the ride in Disneyland;
Wearing a raspberry beret; the kind you find in a second hand store.”

And by gumbeaux, the AI artist makes this unlikely image appear
Out of rarefied air–quibbling slightly at the last detail; adjusting
The shabbiness slider to make certain it is sufficiently shabby
And second-handed – as described.

A few days later he posts an essay on facebook that some
AP [Actual Person, not AI] named Rafael Espericueta wrote
Asking the musical question:

Science and Spirituality? – Complimentary or Contradictory?

The opening phrase is in Sanskrit:
सत्यात् उच्चतरः धर्मः नास्ति
(I did not know that facebook had a Sanskrit font):
Satyan nasti paro dharma Roughly translated as:

“There is no religion higher than the Truth”

The essay is diligently well researched – names dropped
With both aplomb and abandon: Zen Master Torei Enji,
Author of Discourse On The Inexhaustible Lamp mingles with
Sir Isaac Newton; who, by the way, was an avid alchemist.
Newton wrote over a million words on Alchemy – more
Voluminous than his scientific and mathematical works.

Lao Tzu hobnobs with Einstein, who noted,
“The most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience
Is the sensation of the mystical.” Lao Tzu begins his classic
Taoist scripture, the Tao te Ching, with the disclaimer,
“The Tao that can be spoken is not the true Tao.”

The essay Rafael showed me is both more succinct
And profound than this crass collection of scribbles and
Chicken scratch – this plagiarism posing as paraphrase –
But I was sorely in need of material for some poetry
Because my own life has become a raw rodeo
Of putrid Pollo Loco
And I’d rather
Not talk
About
It.

Thanks, Rafael.
You’re an angel.

Christopher Robert Craddock © 2023