Manifesto: the Mad Farmer Liberation Front

~thanks to Jena for posting this on her blog~

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.

by Wendell Berry

Love Letter

A work in progress...


To the strangers who smile back
To the enemies I haven’t met
To the honest politicians
and the humbly devout
To everyone who earns more than money
To the millionaires who go without:

This is my love letter to the world.

Dear everyone,

I hope you know I love you.

I’ve been meaning to write you for a while, but when you write a love letter, what do you say?
Here, I bought you some candy for Valentine’s Day?

Fortunately, what I'm tasting is now
sappy sweet Hallmark fabrication of an explanation, no -
It's the spiced fire of my sincere soul simmering restlessly
between my heart and my mouth,
between my mind and my hands,
between what is and what could be.

This love that I feel is a muscle memory
Remembered in my feet
Movement that flings me
forward, forward, forward, and
it’s the air that keeps me breathing,
it’s the breathing that keeps me living
each moment loving you

You who were all small once.
Back then you would wake up the dawn and tuck in the night
back then before anyone told you that you couldn’t do that,
back then when the big world was still small and small child was still big…
You grew up, but I’ve never stopped loving you.

I want to see your beautiful smile, but you know,
I still love you when you’re crying –
Sometimes I wonder who broke your heart,
and sometimes I wonder how to stitch it together,
and sometimes I realize that even healed wounds have scars.

It's true that you have given me a few,
but I hope that I could sew a few good stitches,
because I’ve never stopped loving you.

Now listen -
what I’m telling you is no princess story because I’m no princess,
and it’s no fairy tale because it might not end in happily ever after,

This love - this life - my love letter to the world:
I’m still writing it.

Missing Jack

You're gone, they tell me.
They might as well tell me
a fairy tale, except
I can imagine
Jack and his beanstalk
better than I can
a world without you.

Obituaries are for old people, young man.
What are you doing here?
Go home.
Please.

Emergence

The smallest sprout of green a system of intricacy; atoms build molecules build membranes build cells build structure defiant of the suffocation of nothingness in a marvelous chaos of order and form and noble purpose of nourishment at the foundation of another and still another existence.

Becoming

Becoming asks me infinite questions
that I answer incompletely.
It never begins and never ends with a continuous choice:
Who will you become?

I will be smart, I told Becoming,
And Becoming answered me,
Yes, you will analyze the basic parts of matter.
But will you understand what really matters?
Will you analyze hydrogen two oxygen til your heart ices over,
Never looking (out) beyond your ivory tower,
To see the drought-parched dirt where hour by hour
By hour by hour your neighbors fall faint of thirst?

But I will be compassionate, I told Becoming,
And Becoming answered me,
Yes, you will see the people walking around with their broken hearts,
But will you hear that their broken hearts are still beating?
Or will you plan funerals for their poor souls,
And bury their memory
while mourning your own bleeding heart?

But I will be just, I told Becoming,
And Becoming answered me,
Yes, you will witness and testify, represent and arbitrate,
But if your glass courthouse shatters,
will you recognize you were among those throwing the bricks?
Or will you plead innocent to the charges of accomplice,
And, holding yourself in contempt of court,
Flee, imprisoned by your own hypocrisy?

But I will be honest, I told Becoming,
And Becoming answered me,
Yes, you will ascend the path of authenticity,
But will you dare to stand exposed when you reach the mountain face,
To shout your naked truths into the frigid wind,
Or will your shouts remain in stillborn silence,
Suffocated by the safety of self-censorship?

But I will be courageous, I told Becoming,
And Becoming answered me,
Yes, you will take Fear by the hand and lead her onto the dance floor,
Will you embrace? Will you let her go?
Or convinced you’re in control,
will you stumble when she leads
you to reconsider your abilities?

But I will be humble, I told Becoming,
And Becoming answered me,
Yes, you will labor countless unnoticed nights,
But will the darkness dim your sight of what your work means in the light?
Or will your eyes, resigned to dark, meet the dawn without remark?

But I will be patient, I told Becoming,
And Becoming answered me,
Yes, you will craft yourself into the world as a living masterpiece,
Exquisitely unique yet obviously unoriginal,
Like a tenderly written love letter to the world,
Because Becoming is that question that teaches without answers
And Becoming is that lover we never meet,
It is our own infinitely unanswered question:
Who am I becoming today?

In God We Trust

What’s the secret to this country?
We’ve got God on our money.
And we worship God alone
Are you forgetting here is the home
Of the brave and the free and
To live well all you need
Are as many
In God We Trust funds
As you can put your hands on.

Good lord, we trust our SUVs, court fees, golf tees,
house keys, corn seeds, poison weeds…
In the land of milk and honey,
We’ve got God on our money,
All for me, all for one,
Shooting guns, just for fun,
It’s manifest destiny never done

Because we declare this truth to be self-evident
That God has blessed America
with promised lands we promised to stay out of
But with God on our cash
Making a fortune is no trespass
It’s our God-given right
to pursue our happiness with all our might.

One nation under God, we
Resolutely stayed the course
We were the first ones in the store
And on our way to victory
We stepped over her trampled body
But, sweet Jesus, we won liberty
For our hearts and minds – a free Wii.

So by all that is true and holy,
Put your faith in the one, the only,
The almighty, God Bless-ed
The United States of America
Federal Reserve Note.

Scenes Overheard in Music City, II

for Beth

On a seat in the Spanish subway in September
Sitting silently together in September
Mother's Moroccan inmigrant hand reaching,
resting on a daughter's American turista knee, as
Looking straight ahead and through
the tears falling down her veiled cheeks,
she mourns a sister's pain
on that September Spanish subway.

Que Viva

for Pancho

Will you take my hand?
May I have this dance?
Let us love while we have the chance.
We'll step lightly through those crosshairs,
softly past those hard stares,
swinging through the sullen shadows,
beckoning to the beat between us,
reminding all those rifles round us,
that though their gunshots
graze our shoulders,
we're alive and growing older,
we're not afraid and growing bolder.
Heart in hand
we take this chance
to live our love
to dance our dance.

Scenes Overheard in Music City

Sometime Saturday night sittin
on the couch whispering up from the heart
silently - or rather,
I was on the only one who could hear it,
But actually,
I think everyone else heard it, too
True.

Listen, see, they were telling stories,
stories that must be told
or rather -
stories that must be heard
but to be heard they must be told.

So they sat on the floor in the living room
of the house
by the urban farm
in the old neighborhood with cop cars
on every corner
and told the story of revolution.

The vet picked up his banjo and sang about home
but we heard a song about peace.

The door in the corner of the strip mall
squeaked but not meekly,
creaked though its cause
was beat.
The would-be recruit had already deserted,
but the uniforms behind the counter didn't know anything
about playing banjo in the Afghan mountains.

The conversation flew over Libya.
One of the uniforms left the counter.
It was midday.
The only place he could bow his head to Mecca
was the women's restroom.

The door squeaked, but not thoughtlessly,
Water-closeted prayers were the price of an education, after all.
Booming military business as usual continued
deaf to the bluegrass spiritual and the Adhan requiem.

A two figured gesture
a sidelong glance
a twitch of a lip
The uniform never asked
The veteran didn't tell
The squeaking door
in a corner of a strip mall
of the heartland closed
uncertainly.
And the banjo biked away.

Efrain

Street kid,
your pants are too big for you,
your shoes don't match,
your t-shirt is grimy,
and you need a haircut.
Under your fingernails are dirty.
You whine like a 3-year-old
until someone treats you like
the young man you are.
You asked me for money,
you asked me for my jacket.
I was going to give it to you,
but you wanted me to keep it
after I explained that I
didn't have another one.
I wish you had taken it though.
You work all day and sometimes
go to school at night.
Some of your friends are addicted
to glue. Actually, a lot of
them are. They don't live long.
You have flowers and saints
in your house, and mattresses,
blankets and radios. Maybe you
stole them. Maybe poverty
stole your family. Maybe others' apathy
stole your future. Street kid,
you pray for the world,
a world that doesn't even
know you exist.

Spectacle

It's OK to stare.
My white skin is already burning
under your glaring Sesotho sun
even though I already put on sunscreen
that costs more than all the food you ate this week,
twice.