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.