Wendell Berry :: Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti :: The Situation in the West followed by a Holy Proposal

Kyrie Eleison Kerista





Dreaming of utopias
where everyone's a lover
I see San Fransisco from my window
thru some old navy beerbottles
The glass is dark
What's it all about
I move the ships about
in my binoculars
like some mad admiral
Dark Dark Dark
we are all shunted into it
a concrete Crete
freeway pinball labyrinth
cars into tunnels
dancers long gone under the hills
kiss kiss in stone boudoirs
the earth a turbine
storing sexual energy
turning and turning into the dark
under the skyscrapers with their time on top
tickertape time tick tick
civilization and its crickets
The dark thread
draws us all in
into the wind-up labyrinth
undischarged sexual energy
not mine the city's
There's the Fairmont phallus
There's the Mark masturbation
There's the Park there's the cement works
There's the Steam Beer Brewing plant
There's the Actor's Workshop
Nothing brewing there these days
There's the Bay there's that Bridge
There's that treasured Island the Navy doesn't need
We need it but we don't need the Navy
Sail Away forever somewhere why don't you
Ah there's the sun again
There's the Hall of Justice blockhouse
personifying itself
Mussolini Modern
There's the sky there's skywriting
chalk on a mirror
What's it all about
Someone trying to trace something up there
Sun solves it
in the mirror
of eternity
A train pulls out of Third Street Station
not going anywhere
discharge of aimless sexual energy
tick tick over the rails
to a coupling in Palo Alto
Life goes on not going anywhere
Time goes on tick tick
what's it all about
find the tick in the labyrêve
of eternity
follow your thread
around the next corner
I sometimes wonder if that is what Krishnamurti meant
Love's a lost tick and desire fails
As we grow older the clatter becomes more complicated
Put your ear to the flesh and you'll still hear it
tick tick over the rails
bearing us away
And there is a time to die
and there is a time to live
but who's got a bad ticker
and what's everything waiting for
Don't tell me they're still Waiting
We've been thru all that already
even the poets dug it
you could almost dear them beginning to think
tick tick
even the painters finally caught on pop pop
Now it's all over maybe
nothing happening anyplace anymore maybe
especially in San Fransisco baby
stranded whales all over the place
elder statesmen poets high and dry
flopping about out of breath
and a labyrinth the worst place of all
for a whale to find himself
How do we get out
where do we go from here
what's the next development
what's around the next corner
why is everything holding its breath
why am I here typing
turned-on in my attic
holding my breath Om Om
tick tick
I've got a good ticker
I'm winding up my thread
but I am no Prince Theseus nor was meant to be
I'll slay no minotaurs in my Attic retreat
with the sword I use to cut my meat
Still I'm always looking for the action
at the heart of things
Must be something shaking somewhere
someone on some rooftop must be loving
in the hot sun
in this labyrinth of solitude
which is neither cold Crete nor hot Mexico
but is still full of solos
gringo pachucos
trying to trace it out
trying to figure out
what it's all about
and why the sun still goes on turning
and still is god to my dog
The sun the sun behold the sun
Great God Sun still riseth
in our rubaiyat
and strikes the towers with a shaft of light
The sun the sun still rules everything
even the sky as we know it
even love as we know it
even life which is nothing but heat
discharge of sexual energy
And there is a time to embrace
and there is a time to refrain from embracing
and the sun goes on cooling
Discharge of undirected sexual energy
and the Cold War gets cooler and desire fails
Other-directed sexual energy
And there is a time to hate
and there is a time to love
and there is a time to keep silence
and there is a time to speak
and two more government scientists throw in the sponge
Mis-directed sexual energy
But is this cooling-off period to string us out forever
How about some love in the cool-cool climate
how about some instant joy
inner-directed sexual energy
let's get hot again baby
I didn't say Shoot I said Fuck
I'm sorry officer don't take me away
I'm sorry Mother
that's the only word that works
It's a word of love daddy
for which there's no refined substitute
even in French
Still I'm trying to refine it
I'm trying to make it holy
I'm trying to make it socially acceptable
even to Cretan cretins lost in a maze
for to fuck is to love again
and we shall rise up again at the voice of a bird
and there is a time to hate
and there is a time to love
so let's everybody love it up
in the sun
which won't burn on forever and ever
That's the solution Comrade
maybe the only one Comrade
Why are you so puritanical Comrade
kicking Allen Ginsberg out of Czechoslovakia
Let's turn on together Comrade
and you too Colonel Cornpone
I'm serious Comrade
I'm serious Colonel Cornpone
let's repeat it together
To fuck is to love again
kyrie eleison hallelujah
A litany like that
means more to us Romans
than any Hail Mary full of grace
though blessed be the fruit of her womb
And don't think you have to lie down abjectly General
for there is a time to kill
and there is a time to kiss
but the tick of hate is loose in the labyrinth
dies irae dies illa illa illa
and ticks carry diseases but kisses carry love
which is also infectious
And there is a time for war
and there is a time for a piece of love
So get ready General
Ready Get Set Fuck
kyrie kyrie hallelujah
By the right flank Fuck
and blessed be the fruit
By the left flank Fuck
and blessed be the fruit
By the rear Fuck
Blessed Blessed Blessed
So kiss thy neighbor in another country
kyrie kyrie kyrie
exchange fucking populations
kyrie kyrie hallelujah
You send us all your women in babushkas
We'll send you all our men wearing neckties
Americans love travel
We love exotic places and people
We dig Chinese chicks we dig Cuban chicks we dig Arab boys
You'll think yours are exotic too
I'm tired of this climate anyway
you're tired of yours
so let's get together on this
let's get down to bare essentials
and have a mass exchange fuck
a fucking real exchange program
an enormous international hardcore Fuck Corps
And nevermind the protocol
and nevermind the quotas
We've all got our own passe-partout
if to fuck is to love again
And nevermind the overpopulation
Contraception can contain
all but love
And blessed be the fruit of transcopulation
and blessed be the fruit of transcopulation
and blessed be the fucking world with no more nations!
hosanna pulchrissima
kyrie kyrie kyrie kyrie hallelujah!
we'll all still have the sun
in which to recognize ourselves at last across the world
over the obscene boundaries!

San Fransisco-London 1964--1965
Read at Royal Albert Hall, London, June 11, 1965

Katherine Larson :: Love at Thirty-Two Degrees

I

Today I dissected a squid,

the late acacia tossing its pollen

across the black of the lab bench.

In a few months the maples

will be bleeding. That was the thing:

there was no blood

only textures of gills creased like satin,

suction cups as planets in rows. Be careful

not to cut your finger, he says. But I’m thinking

of fingertips on my lover’s neck

last June. Amazing, hearts.

This brachial heart. After class,

I stole one from the formaldehyde

& watched it bloom in my bathroom sink

between cubes of ice.

II

Last night I threw my lab coat in the fire

& drove all night through the Arizona desert

with a thermos full of silver tequila.

It was the last of what we bought

on our way back from Guadalajara—

desert wind in the mouth, your mother’s

beat-up Honda, agaves

twisting up from the soil

like the limbs of cephalopods.

Outside of Tucson, saguaros so lovely

considering the cold, & the fact that you

weren’t there to warm me.

Suddenly drunk I was shouting that I wanted to see the stars

as my ancestors used to see them—

to see the godawful blue as Aurvandil’s frostbitten toe.

III

Then, there is the astronomer’s wife

ascending stairs to her bed.

The astronomer gazes out,

one eye at a time,

to a sky that expands

even as it falls apart

like a paper boat dissolving in bilge.

Furious, fuming stars.

When his migraine builds &

lodges its dark anchor behind

the eyes, he fastens the wooden buttons

of his jacket, & walks

outside with a flashlight

to keep company with the barn owl

who stares back at him with eyes

that are no greater or less than

a spiral galaxy.

The snow outside

is white & quiet

as a woman’s slip

against cracked floorboards.

So he walks to the house

inflamed by moonlight, & slips

into the bed with his wife

her hair & arms all

in disarray

like fish confused by waves.

IV

Science—

beyond pheromones, hormones, aesthetics of bone,

every time I make love for love’s sake alone,

I betray you.

2

I like imagining the beginning most--before time existed, where every atom that ever was was condensed into a point of infinite density, before some spark expelled everything that would ever become anything, including our selves, ever further outward into the vast, empty loneliness of space. I imagine it inevitable the sun will, far off somewhere in our unimaginably distant, postmortem future, collapse into a neutron star, pulling us back to the start of things, together, again.

Mary Ruefle :: A Little White Shadow

Dorothea Grossman :: I have to tell you

I have to tell you,
there are times when
the sun strikes me
like a gong,
and I remember everything,
even your ears.

Albert Goldbarth :: Myth Studies

Myth Studies

The custodian erases whatever simple biology
lesson was on the blackboard: BIRTH.
It's only a several-seconds glimpse I've had
through a door on my way to the car, but enough
for me to think of him as the Saint
of First-Time Mothers. What I mean is,
after the walls split, and the screams stopped,
and Atlantis disappeared, another Atlantis
--the one we carry in our heads, of scented gardens
and ornate avenues--fills the emptiness.
I've seen it in my friends: the terrible
pelvis-wrenching pain is at an end, and then
some chemical washes the mind, and creates
the blankness of fresh possibility.

Even texts can be poems

I received this text message from my good friend Zack a couple nights ago, all the way from somewhere out in the Nevada desert:

Every once in a while I like talking about last week's rodeo and slamming a bottle of jack with the bartender. He only charged me for half cause we were the only two in the bar.

Dave Bonta :: Notes Toward a Taxonomy of Sadness

There are as many kinds of sadness as there are things that prompt it, each as exquisitely adapted as a species of ichneumon wasp to its smooth or bristly host. There’s the sadness of 100-year-old postcards that were written on but never sent, the sadness of an alarm clock that was turned off three minutes before it was due to throb, the sadness of countries too small or crowded to accommodate wilderness, the sadness of a pump organ whose church music has long been silenced by mice chewing holes in the bellows, the sadness of open USB ports, the sadness of cities with utterly predictable weather, the sadness of a faded Sears Wishbook catalog kept in lieu of toilet paper in a seldom-used outhouse, the sadness of milk served in the last chipped member of a favorite set of drinking glasses, the sadness of time travel, the sadness of fireflies broadcasting their positions every few seconds in total silence, the sadness of an overcooked vegetable that tastes like rain, the sadness of dust mites whose entire civilization depends on a giant stranger’s poor housekeeping, the sadness of airports that afford no views of the runway, the sadness of pasture roses forced to weather the loving ministrations of those that chew the cud, the sadness of lights designed to illuminate billboards, and the sadness of pulp science fiction magazines from the 1950s that could predict flying cars but not oil spills, let alone this flea market, the world-wide web.

July 4th, 2007

Since it's Allen Ginsberg's birthday and all, I thought it'd be appropriate to share a few pictures from an adventure a few friends and I took back on the 4th of July in 2007...well, it really started on the night of the 3rd, but our adventure definitely bled into the wee hours of the 4th. Our intention was to force people into considering the words of Ginsberg's subversive screed/poem "America" while engaged in their American Tradition staples of cooking out, block parties, fireworks and beer. For the record, we used chalk...because we were either pussies or polite--you decide.

Happy birthday, Allen Ginsberg!

excerpted from "Transcription of Organ Music":

...I had a moment of clarity, saw the feeling in
the heart of things, walked out to the garden crying.
Saw the red blossoms in the night light, sun's
gone, they had all grown, in a moment, and were wait-
ing stopped in time for the day sun to come and give
them...

Flowers which as in a dream at sunset I watered
faithfully not knowing how much I loved them.
I am so lonely in my glory--except they too out
there--I looked up--those red bush blossoms beckon-
ing and peering in the window waiting in blind love,
their leaves too have hope and are upturned top flat
to the sky to receive--all creation open to receive--the
flat earth itself.

The music descends, as does the tall bending
stalk of the heavy blossom, because it has to, to stay
alive, to continue to the last drop of joy...

Excerpt from Adrian Blevins' "Watching the Newshour"

                       It is just so wrong of me not to know what to
   call the paraphernalia
the boys are given to extinguish the women inside them

by killing off the women inside the others, but I don’t have that
   kind of dictionary here.

An epiphany

I've been out of touch with poetry for waaay too long. I'm gonna start reading some fucking poetry--a fucking lot more poetry; starting with Adrian Blevins' new book, Live From the Homesick Jamboree. Then I'm gonna write some fucking poetry. I'm fucking tired of poetry being something I "did," rather than something I "do." That shit's gonna change. I'm blogging this via iPhone, so that's all for now. Seacrest out.

Paul Guest :: User's Guide To Physical Debilitation

It has been at least 4 years since a work of literature made me weep, but not any longer; this poem just hit me like a sledgehammer.*

Should the painful condition of irreversible paralysis
last longer than forever or at least until
your death by bowling ball or illegal lawn dart
or the culture of death, which really has it out
for whoever has seen better days
but still enjoys bruising marathons of bird watching,
you, or your beleaguered caregiver
stirring dark witch's brews of resentment
inside what had been her happy life,
should turn to page seven where you can learn,
assuming higher cognitive functions
were not pureed by your selfish misfortune,
how to leave the house for the first time in two years.
An important first step,
with apologies for the thoughtlessly thoughtless metaphor.
When not an outright impossibility
or form of neurological science fiction,
sexual congress will either be with
tourists in the kingdom of your tragedy,
performing an act of sadistic charity;
with the curious, for whom you will be beguilingly blank canvas;
or with someone blindly feeling their way
through an extended power outage
caused by summer storms you once thought romantic.
Page twelve instructs you how best
to be inspiring to Magnus next door
as he throws old Volkswagens into orbit
above Alberta. And to Betty
in her dark charm confiding a misery,
whatever it is, that to her seems equivalent to yours.
The curl of her hair that her finger knows
better and beyond what you will,
even in the hypothesis of heaven
when you sleep. This guide is intended
to prepare you for falling down
and declaring detente with gravity,
else you reach the inevitable end
of scaring small children by your presence alone.
Someone once said of crushing
helplessness: it is a good idea to avoid that.
We agree with that wisdom
but gleaming motorcycles are hard
to turn down or safely stop
at speeds which melt aluminum. Of special note
are sections regarding faith
healing, self-loathing, abstract hobbies
like theoretical spelunking and extreme atrophy,
and what to say to loved ones
who won't stop shrieking
at Christmas dinner. New to this edition
is an index of important terms
such as catheter, pain, blackout,
pathological deltoid obsession, escort service,
magnetic resonance imaging,
loss of friends due to superstitious fear,
and, of course, amputation
above the knee due to pernicious gangrene.
It is our hope that this guide
will be a valuable resource
during this long stretch of boredom and dread
and that it may be of some help,
however small, to cope with your new life
and the gradual, bittersweet loss
of every God damned thing you ever loved.

*At age 12, the author, Paul Guest, was paralyzed from the neck down as the result of a bicycle accident. He wrote this poem on a typewriter, with his mouth.

Reid Baer :: Can't You See?

The poem, "Can't You See?" by Reid Baer, in the video above and in the quoted text below, floored me when I first saw it on youtube about a week ago. I think it was Baer's reading itself that impacted me the most of all: with its stammering emphases, heavy breathing, and its very range of varied, true emotions--especially the natural quiver that falls on his pronunciation of the word 'long' at 2:04/2:05. I asked Reid for permission to post his poem in video and text form here, which he graciously granted, because I thought that perhaps some of y'all readers would enjoy. If you read/watch the poem, leave your impressions/thoughts in the comments section if you would, pretty please!

My youngest son stayed with me this summer
At the right suggestion of his mother

But once again I was thrown into the
Blame and the shame of personal poverty

How many years ago did my family
Side with her in this hellish custody

Can't you see?
Can't you see?
What I mean?

This time around I'm changing the old dreams
For new ones with my boy with all good means

I'm getting the messages rearranged
From when I was mad and possibly deranged

Oh yeah I let my three kids leave but I
Really kicked them out from inside out

Can't you see?
Can't you see?
What this means to me?

I've held onto this anger for so long
Still quietly screaming and hollering

Hey take another look - the ancient restraints are gone
And a sharper sword has cut the binds away

There's nothing left for me to do or say
But let the healing sun shine in today

Can't you see?
Can't you see?
How glad I am to be?

My babies were all but lost and gone
Now each one on his own has come back home

And it's like I'm singing a merry song
After so much pain for so damned long

I honor this last lad who has returned a
Warrior -- willing to see me as his dad

You see!
You see!
What he means to me?!

Stephanie Goehring :: For My Father, My Dad

Stephanie G. is an old friend of mine from our English-majorin' days at GMU. She wrote this poem a few days ago about her father, who is sick right now, then recorded a reading to the tune of Points, Lines & Polygons' rough cut of "River Song." Here is Stephanie's (wonderful, as usual) poem with/out Jeremy's and my accompaniment:




For My Father, My Dad
- Stephanie Goehring

When I said I was tired of speaking
of your chest, the stars it houses
collapsing, our love, the loss of it,
I meant the fictional love of lovers,

but now my father's lungs are full
of shooting stars not yet shot
but maybe someday shot
into his heart or brain and aneurysm

is not a word I'll ever be prepared to say,
the way it opens like a black hole closing
its palms to the world. I know I never opened
my mouth to say such things, but if I could

take back everything I've written
about these things inside us, their betrayals,
I wouldn't; my father taught me
to mean what I say.

Not a cruel song, no, no, not cruel at all. This song Is sweet. It is sweet. The heart dies of this sweetness.

I have two poems to share: the first, Brigit Pegeen Kelly's "Song," is available in its entirety on this webpage. The poem is about a small girl in a small town and her beloved pet goat which meets an unfortunate horrible, awful death at the hands of a group of cruel older boys. The poem is far too long to actually copy and paste into my blog, but it contains several of my favorite lines of all time, which I will copy and paste here:

...and each morning she woke
To give the bleating goat his pail of warm milk. She sang
Him songs about girls with ropes and cooks in boats.
She brushed him with a stiff brush. She dreamed daily
That he grew bigger, and he did. She thought her dreaming
Made it so...

...They would
Wake in the night thinking they heard the wind in the trees
Or a night bird, but their hearts beating harder. There
Would be a whistle, a hum, a high murmur, and, at last, a song,
The low song a lost boy sings remembering his mother's call.
Not a cruel song, no, no, not cruel at all. This song
Is sweet. It is sweet. The heart dies of this sweetness.

Click the link above (or here) to read the whole poem. It's wonderful.

The second poem I have to share is much shorter--and thus, quite copy-and-paste-able--but no less dripping with pathos. Robley Wilson's "I Wish In The City Of Your Heart:"

I wish in the city of your heart
you would let me be the street
where you walk when you are most
yourself. I imagine the houses:
It has been raining, but the rain
is done and the children kept home
have begun opening their doors.

Old Shit

milk light of morning
spills in through the windowsill
spoiling good coffee

~~~

Before Leaving for Vegasorig. 4/6/05

She leans, looking west, ashing
Our last cigarette off the edge
Of my balcony at sunset. Bits
Of burnt paper float upwards
Like confused snowflakes and the sky,
Impatiently, sticks out its tongue.

~~~

The Way You Talk About Love
orig. 2/26/05

You make it sound like it is some kind
of choice, some thing
that we make, yes, but some thing
to otherwise run from? It is
that which chooses us, yes,
until we choose to let it
make us anew, yes it does that too.
You try forging it, and it just forges you.
But ever so cautiously? No, not never, honey;
something to be made?
The love you talk about
the way you talk about love
is only in your brain, and you know
that's not the same
place as your soul
or your body.

~~~

the washing machine was made for this
(for Zack)
orig. 2/28/05

there is an order to this random
-seeming string of events, my friend, there

has to be; consider your heartbeat: feel the way
you sync to the swelling of the song, which now
appears a conduit of feeling worth far more
than the aural total of its orchestral parts. love was

never a zero sum game, my friend, though you’ll
fight for believing in as much: "I only have patience
for the ones I don’t have
to work for," you tell me

it’s your cards which compel
you—they have been all
along, you insist, still
forgetting the sweat on your brow
which drips out the fact,
in rhythm, such a swelling exists
is itself born of numbers: look down

at your cards again; there must be rules
to this random-seeming game that we play.

consider
the odds:

the vast likelihood this very
moment should have been aborted: your father
having settled on a different wife, the third percussionist
in Toronto having had a bad trip that day, the dog
having been slightly less clumsy on the mattress
with the ashtray and any other endless
list of et ceteras.

no. we were meant to be
here and there is no other way
but now. the beauty
of the washing machine was made for this vibrating
music the way this moment was made
for our feeling and your heartbeat

made for this panic. oh yes, oh yes, say yes
there is an order to this random.