Oscar Scholin Poetry

ex animo infinito symphonia maxima

The NewsBreaker – Issue 4

Hello again! To view the .pdf of the fourth issue of The NewsBreaker, please follow the link below.

Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I am unable to offer any paper copies of this issue.

Our Darkest Hour is Our Finest Hour

These are the times that try men’s souls.

Thomas Paine

It is times like these when it is all too easy to acquiesce to the sense of dark despair pervading the world. I, too, feel the almost hypnotic seduction of the darkness, a suffocating paranoia fueled by relentless media. As one by one tournaments and festivals, classes and clubs, dances and even graduation ceremonies cancel, stocks plunge into losses whose red horror rivals that upon Lady Macbeth’s hands, and the world seems to be crumbling from its very center as the ground beneath our feet—once so visceral and so solid—disintegrates into mere wisps of failed promises. And let us not forget that beyond the inevitability of the infection and death of millions of people worldwide due to the coronavirus, the conflicts in the Middle East and in Africa have not ceased; the immigration crisis involving the displacement of hundreds of millions is growing graver every minute of every day, and climate change is still marching towards its point of no return. You would not be downplaying our situation if you claimed that we perhaps face total, utter, collapse as a species. Now, more than ever, does it seem futile to fight our seemingly inescapable fate, and perhaps it is simply best to end the game now and leave others to pick up the pieces.

The Sparrow’s Cage

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

Ernest Hemingway

“Soon all this will be no more, and all shall be as it should.”

“Brother, I don’t understand. You should rest your voice.”

“I will not rest—not now, not ever,” I said through convulsive wheezing.

“Oh, Emmanuel. Why do you always have to be so difficult? Why do you always have to be so perfect?”

“Elon, I’m not perfect—I’m human just as you are.”

“Yeah? Well, it doesn’t seem like that,” said Elon, standing up from his chair beside my bed. “You’ve always been so kind, and life has always been clear for you. Look at me—I’m a mess. A stinking mess. Years spent as an accountant, working through the ranks, trying to do well to eventually become CFO—and then it all falls apart. That sonofabitch Judas. He’s always, always impressing everybody with his charm and handsomeness. But he doesn’t fool me for a minute. I know he’s a liar and a cheat! I just couldn’t take his awful presence any longer—I swear he makes my skin crawl. He kept calling me weak and cowardly—so I silenced him with my fists.”

“Now, now,” I said through a cough, “that doesn’t make you bad. But neither do his actions justify your response. Remember, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

The NewsBreaker – Issue 3

Hello again! To view the .pdf of the third issue of The NewsBreaker, please follow the link below.

If you wish to request a free paper copy of this issue, please email me at [email protected] with your name and intended address for delivery.

“Faith”

We cry, we children of the blessèd light,
Against our deeds most reeking in the dark—
For Faith’s kind roots reach deep and do unite.

Our children we expose to future plight
While oft we miss the calling of the lark
We cry, we children of the blessèd light.

A holy hush of Faith within full sight
That scatters seeds all o’er our gardens marked
For Faith’s kind roots reach deep and do unite.

We are good soil, most fertile if we might
Unite behind our prophet Thunberg, hark!
We cry, we children of the blessèd light.

Affected not are we by cold twilight;
We do not fear to stand against the dark
For Faith’s kind roots reach deep and do unite.

So, will you water seed with Faith’s sunlight? —
Diluvian escape upon an ark.
We cry, we children of the blessèd light,
For Faith’s kind roots reach deep and do unite.

The NewsBreaker – Issue 2

Hello again! To view the .pdf of the second issue of The NewsBreaker, please follow the link below.

If you wish to request a free paper copy of this issue, please email me at [email protected] with your name and intended address for delivery.

Euler’s Identity: The Poetic Beauty of Mathematics

[Euler’s formula] is the most remarkable formula in mathematics.

Richard feynman

Now I know what you might be thinking – what place does a video on a mathematical equation have in a poetry blog? Well, in my mind, there is no dividing line between intellectual subjects; they all blend into one cohesive gestalt: knowledge. Furthermore, I consider mathematics as yet another expression of limitless human creativity. I see poetic beauty in the ability of mathematics to represent the wondrous enigmas of our universe: the simplicity and eloquence of Pythagoras’s theorems and Euler’s formulae are to mathematics as Shakespeare’s sonnets and Hemingway’s short stories are to writing.

As I explain in my video, mathematics is the language of the universe, and we can master it to create the most exquisite expressions of the very conscious of the universe. That to me is poetry.

Earthrise

The sky is eternal dark—
Black as Erebus
An abyss of nothingness
Devoid of the faintest glimmer of stars

The ground is eternal light—
Bright as Apollo
An abyss of nothingness
Devoid of any presentiment of life

Only dust, dust, dust
And millions of craters
On the bleak surface
Of the silvery moon

Only dust, dust, dust
And a tranquil sea
On the bleak surface
Of the silvery moon

Only dust, dust, dust
And hollow hills
On the bleak surface
Of the silvery moon

But on the edge of the horizon—
A pale, blue sphere
Peaks above vapid flats
And desolate sky

A stranger to the darkness
It dances delicately
Upon the lunar shore
And sparkles in a glorious jubilee

Life—breathing, beating, bleeding
Loving, lasting, loathing
Flowering, fasting, fighting
Struggling, smiling, surviving

Life—in all its infinite capacity
For good and evil
Creation and destruction—
Thriving on planet Earth

A glinting sapphire
Alone and incongruous
Writhing in the great emptiness
And stillness

A jewel that harbors all life—
Great and small
Complex and simplistic
Regardless of any artificial preconditions

Where everything is connected—
The wind, rain, and sea
All work in harmony
Inside Earth’s glass sphere

All eight billion humans—
Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist
American, Venezuelan, Chinese, Zimbabwean
Wealthy, impoverished, educated, illiterate

All eight billion humans
Live, loathe, love, and laugh
While cradled by the tiny azure moonstone
Drifting through nothingness

Our differences are hollow and trifling—
Race, religion, and politics are but
A superficial and inconsequential
Arbitrary divide

For we are all one:
United in our struggles
United in our griefs
United in our passions

For we are all one:
One expression of life
One human conscious
One beating soul of humanity

For we are all one:
Dust, dust, dust
From dust we came
And to dust we shall return.

Ignorance Isn’t Bliss

Science is our salvation as a species, but until we can unhinge the heavy door of intransigence we shall remain doomed to the dark abyss of ignorance; we shall remain that sailor, swallowed by the uncontrollable maelstrom raging around us.

Oscar scholin, 2019

A world devoid of science is a perpetual night where not even the faintest stars of reason glimmer in the distance. We, in an effort to preserve our fundamental truths, often resist new ideas. While the scientific attitude does include a healthy amount of skepticism to challenge those ideas, curiosity and humility—an openness to new ideas, even if contrary to personal beliefs—are two other integral aspects to approaching science. Thus, the ramifications of people at large as skeptical and intransigent rather than skeptical and receptive are grave: millions of people dismiss science itself as unimportant or uninfluential in their lives. When people discount science, they discount reason and knowledge, and they essentially admit that they cannot and will not look beyond to understand the true nature of the universe. On a larger scale, a world that discounts science plunges itself into the filth of its own vanity and ignorance—a world whose future is as bleak and hopeless as is a sailor’s who, with his head tipped down and his hat covering his eyes, fails to heed the ominous warnings of thunderheads on a warm, lethargic summer afternoon.

The Goldfish

Any one who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light.

Plato, The Allegory of the cave

I don’t remember when I hatched, nor do I remember who my parents were. The earliest thing I can remember is swimming around my rock in a large tank with hundreds of other goldfish. I remember seeing “!elas no” on a big green sticker adhered to the glass wall of our tank. 

Life was good. All I had to do was swim around all day, and every evening the lights would dim and a great giant five-fingered tan being would descend from the heavens and, using its magical powers, would open the sky to sprinkle nourishing flakes of hazel-colored food. All the while I would swim around my rock, explore and hide amongst its crevices, and escape the bustle of the open water. 

But everything changed one fateful day. I remember being physically jolted by a harsh, rhythmic sound coming from the front wall. As I swam over to investigate, I noticed that the normally blurred images outside the glass were more distinct, and I saw a strange creature: it had a face like an oval, with a mouth full of smooth, rectangular teeth; it had red lips, wide brown eyes, and red hair. Every five seconds or so it would smash its fingers against the glass. It felt like it was pointing…pointing at me.

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