LMNO, It Really IS About The Art.

[Doktor Howl]

I keep hearing this shit about authenticity or originality of music, about how this band or that band is just a knockoff of bands that preceded them...How Elvis ripped off Roy Orbison & Big Bill Broonzy, or how Memphis Lil wasn't really from Memphis, you know what I mean.

But so what?  Warren Ellis ripped off Hunter S Thompson's style, and HST ripped off H.L. Mencken, and Mencken ripped off Samuel Clemmens.  But I still like to read Warren Ellis.

It's not about any of that shit, LMNO, it's about getting people out of their seats.  It's about getting people to dance or at least feel something.  Roy Orbison could make you feel like your heart was breaking, even if your life was everything you wanted it to be.  Brad Paisley can make you feel like things are getting better, that life is GOOD, even if your life is collapsing around you.

And I think that's what art is, man.  It's a way to communicate emotion at a visceral level...If you see Guernica and don't feel any different, you probably don't have a soul.  Art isn't the province of some bitchy elite, forever moaning about the pedestrian masses and their lack of appreciation.  If you're an artist, those pedestrian masses are your actual canvass.  If your music or your painting or whatever you do causes a portion of those masses, however small, to sit up and feel what you feel, then you've succeeded.

This is why I feel that artists are quite possibly the most important part of any culture.  The rest of any society concentrates on making life possible...Artists of all kinds make life worth having.

Okay for now,
Dok

[Kai]

This reminds me of Tom Montag. He's my favorite poet, a Midwestern native, and he writes poetry about farming. Among my favorites is a thirty page poem about making hay.

Thats right, making hay.

You see, poetry is way too often about something outside of our experience that we can't possibly touch but the poet can touch and he'll lord it over us because he's that much better than us for seeing it. You know the type, the poet who write about esoterica, the ones who try to imitate Frost and Byron and the rest, the poetry who is for a select few who can grasp it because they are about all these shallow earthly matters.

Montag takes a different view. He writes that poetry is for everyone, that the masses that most poets ignore are the ones who really NEED that poetry. So, he writes poetry about farming, and making hay, and the old rural towns he grew up in, he writes of red tailed hawks and fog and hailstorms that destroy fields and lives, he writes of a farm woman whos husband has died and now she's married to the prairie, of a soldiers letters home from the civil war, of ordinary things. Because the ordinary is what we experience every day, and is the most extraordinary when held up to the light.

Because, poetry is for everyone. 

[Doktor Howl]

Stephen Vincent Benet was like that, he wrote an entire book-length poem about the Westward migration of the 18th and 19th centuries.  It was a pleasant read, made you realize what people went through.

Then, in the Nazi era, he wrote a poem called "Litany For Dictatorships", that made you feel what it's like to live under black fascism.  It makes you angry, it fills you with a righteous wrath against all forms of injustice, and does it without being nationalistic about it.

Then he went back to writing about day to day life.  Nobody's ever heard of him anymore, but they should.

Also, Stephen Leacock.  In his day, he was the most popular author ever, and he wrote about World War I in ways that would make your hair stand up on end, and make you laugh at the same time, without trivializing the tragedy.  Nobody's ever heard of him anymore, of course, because he wrote of war as a horrible beast that destroys everything it touches, and calls glory a shitty lie.  And we can't have that.

Stephen Leacock and Stephen Vincent Benet are examples of what I'm talking about, and what you're talking about.  I challenge anyone here to read either one without coming away a different person than you were before.  Like Montag, they wrote for you and I, and made themselves understood.

Some people would call that pedestrian.  I call it real art, art that leaves civilization better than it was before these three guys came along.

[Kai]

You're right, I've never heard of Benet or Leacock. I wish I had, I wish everyone had.

Who are the artists worth knowing? Who are the ones, forgotten, that we MUST seek out to see where we are and how we've arrived here? Whose are the voices most important to our personal stories, to my personal story?

And whose voices, overwhelming those that I should be listening to, should I now block out?

[Dimocritus]

Wow. This is great. Being in a hardcore/punk band, it's easy for someone to criticize our musical style. What is undeniable, though, is that, regardless of the notes we're playing, people go nuts and have fun. They break out of prison completely, even if for just a moment. And that emotional response is what it's all about.

[Doktor Howl]

Wow. This is great. Being in a hardcore/punk band, it's easy for someone to criticize our musical style.

Any idiot can find something wrong with anything.  That's what makes them idiots.

What is undeniable, though, is that, regardless of the notes we're playing, people go nuts and have fun.

Then you've succeeded.  Fuck the critics.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Wow. This is great. Being in a hardcore/punk band, it's easy for someone to criticize our musical style.

Any idiot can find something wrong with anything.  That's what makes them idiots.

What is undeniable, though, is that, regardless of the notes we're playing, people go nuts and have fun.

Then you've succeeded.  Fuck the critics.

Memebomb dropped ITT

[Jasper]

Fuck yes, fuck yes... oh, and fuck yes.



I've always been glad to find genius little stylistic tidbits to make my own.  

[Faust]

I keep hearing this shit about authenticity or originality of music, about how this band or that band is just a knockoff of bands that preceded them...How Elvis ripped off Roy Orbison & Big Bill Broonzy, or how Memphis Lil wasn't really from Memphis, you know what I mean.

But so what?  Warren Ellis ripped off Hunter S Thompson's style, and HST ripped off H.L. Mencken, and Mencken ripped off Samuel Clemmens.  But I still like to read Warren Ellis.

It's not about any of that shit, LMNO, it's about getting people out of their seats.  It's about getting people to dance or at least feel something.  Roy Orbison could make you feel like your heart was breaking, even if your life was everything you wanted it to be.  Brad Paisley can make you feel like things are getting better, that life is GOOD, even if your life is collapsing around you.

And I think that's what art is, man.  It's a way to communicate emotion at a visceral level...If you see Guernica and don't feel any different, you probably don't have a soul.  Art isn't the province of some bitchy elite, forever moaning about the pedestrian masses and their lack of appreciation.  If you're an artist, those pedestrian masses are your actual canvass.  If your music or your painting or whatever you do causes a portion of those masses, however small, to sit up and feel what you feel, then you've succeeded.

This is why I feel that artists are quite possibly the most important part of any culture.  The rest of any society concentrates on making life possible...Artists of all kinds make life worth having.

Okay for now,
Dok

In the part you quoted from Ellis, he agreed Authenticity was bullshit. However it wasn't agreement because of the heart or feeling, not with Ellis. If the man indeed has a heart it must be a dried up, worn down little support system to the biological hate factory that is Ellis.
But your tulpa or cousin or whatever from the inks, the mad scientist of the mountain channelling the voice of his creator hinted at it but never quite said it:
It's evolution.

It wasn't that "Warren Ellis ripped off Hunter S Thompson's style, and HST ripped off H.L. Mencken, and Mencken ripped off Samuel Clemmens.  But I still like to read Warren Ellis."
Its that Clemmens begot Mencken and Menken Begot HL and so on so forth.
Physically and socially we are the capstones of our predecessors, music is no different. So we see an overlap or element similarity, when a story was good it would spread out across the world on the lips of the bards retold a million times. How well each incarnation fared was down to how well they told it.

You say "This is why I feel that artists are quite possibly the most important part of any culture.  The rest of any society concentrates on making life possible...Artists of all kinds make life worth having." and I agree completely. Its not the Historians who change society or give us a true glimpse at the past.

Its the artists who capture that feeling, the spirit of each era in their work. So maybe they do carry on of the spirit from some artist who came before but that just shows that it was something worth preserving.
Engineers evolve our technology, our bodies take care of that themselves but its the artists who evolve our culture.

[Doktor Howl]

Sure.  When I say "ripped off" I meant "took a bite out of his style", not "directly copied".

There is no harm in influence.  I'd be a ridiculous liar if I tried to claim that all 4 people listed, plus Ivan Stang, weren't HUGE fucking influences on what I've written.

[Doktor Howl]

Stephen Leacock's Merry Christmas

"My Dear Young Friend," said Father Time, as he laid his
hand gently upon my shoulder, "you are entirely wrong."

Then I looked up over my shoulder from the table at which
I was sitting and I saw him.

But I had known, or felt, for at least the last half-hour
that he was standing somewhere near me.

You have had, I do not doubt, good reader, more than once
that strange uncanny feeling that there is some one unseen
standing beside you, in a darkened room, let us say, with
a dying fire, when the night has grown late, and the
October wind sounds low outside, and when, through the
thin curtain that we call Reality, the Unseen World starts
for a moment clear upon our dreaming sense.

You _have_ had it? Yes, I know you have. Never mind
telling me about it. Stop. I don't want to hear about
that strange presentiment you had the night your Aunt
Eliza broke her leg. Don't let's bother with _your_
experience. I want to tell mine.

"You are quite mistaken, my dear young friend," repeated
Father Time, "quite wrong."

"_Young_ friend?" I said, my mind, as one's mind is apt
to in such a case, running to an unimportant detail. "Why
do you call me young?"

"Your pardon," he answered gently--he had a gentle way
with him, had Father Time. "The fault is in my failing
eyes. I took you at first sight for something under a
hundred."

"Under a hundred?" I expostulated. "Well, I should think
so!"

"Your pardon again," said Time, "the fault is in my
failing memory. I forgot. You seldom pass that nowadays,
do you? Your life is very short of late."

I heard him breathe a wistful hollow sigh. Very ancient
and dim he seemed as he stood beside me. But I did not
turn to look upon him. I had no need to. I knew his form,
in the inner and clearer sight of things, as well as
every human being knows by innate instinct, the Unseen
face and form of Father Time.

I could hear him murmuring beside me, "Short--short, your
life is short"; till the sound of it seemed to mingle
with the measured ticking of a clock somewhere in the
silent house.

Then I remembered what he had said.

"How do you know that I am wrong?" I asked. "And how can
you tell what I was thinking?"

"You said it out loud," answered Father Time. "But it
wouldn't have mattered, anyway. You said that Christmas
was all played out and done with."

"Yes," I admitted, "that's what I said."

"And what makes you think that?" he questioned, stooping,
so it seemed to me, still further over my shoulder.

"Why," I answered, "the trouble is this. I've been sitting
here for hours, sitting till goodness only knows how far
into the night, trying to think out something to write
for a Christmas story. And it won't go. It can't be done
--not in these awful days."

"A Christmas Story?"

"Yes. You see, Father Time," I explained, glad with a
foolish little vanity of my trade to be able to tell him
something that I thought enlightening, "all the Christmas
stuff--stories and jokes and pictures--is all done, you
know, in October."

I thought it would have surprised him, but I was mistaken.

"Dear me," he said, "not till October! What a rush! How
well I remember in Ancient Egypt--as I think you call
it--seeing them getting out their Christmas things, all
cut in hieroglyphics, always two or three years ahead."

"Two or three years!" I exclaimed.

"Pooh," said Time, "that was nothing. Why in Babylon they
used to get their Christmas jokes ready--all baked in
clay--a whole Solar eclipse ahead of Christmas. They
said, I think, that the public preferred them so."

"Egypt?" I said. "Babylon? But surely, Father Time, there
was no Christmas in those days. I thought--"

"My dear boy," he interrupted gravely, "don't you know
that there has always been Christmas?"

I was silent. Father Time had moved across the room and
stood beside the fireplace, leaning on the mantelpiece.
The little wreaths of smoke from the fading fire seemed
to mingle with his shadowy outline.

"Well," he said presently, "what is it that is wrong with
Christmas?"

"Why," I answered, "all the romance, the joy, the beauty
of it has gone, crushed and killed by the greed of commerce
and the horrors of war. I am not, as you thought I was,
a hundred years old, but I can conjure up, as anybody
can, a picture of Christmas in the good old days of a
hundred years ago: the quaint old-fashioned houses,
standing deep among the evergreens, with the light
twinkling from the windows on the snow; the warmth and
comfort within; the great fire roaring on the hearth;
the merry guests grouped about its blaze and the little
children with their eyes dancing in the Christmas
fire-light, waiting for Father Christmas in his fine
mummery of red and white and cotton wool to hand the
presents from the yule-tide tree. I can see it," I added,
"as if it were yesterday."

"It was but yesterday," said Father Time, and his voice
seemed to soften with the memory of bygone years. "I
remember it well."

"Ah," I continued, "that was Christmas indeed. Give me
back such days as those, with the old good cheer, the
old stage coaches and the gabled inns and the warm red
wine, the snapdragon and the Christmas-tree, and I'll
believe again in Christmas, yes, in Father Christmas
himself."

"Believe in him?" said Time quietly. "You may well do
that. He happens to be standing outside in the street at
this moment."

"Outside?" I exclaimed. "Why don't he come in?"

"He's afraid to," said Father Time. "He's frightened and
he daren't come in unless you ask him. May I call him in?"

I signified assent, and Father Time went to the window
for a moment and beckoned into the darkened street. Then
I heard footsteps, clumsy and hesitant they seemed, upon
the stairs. And in a moment a figure stood framed in the
doorway--the figure of Father Christmas. He stood shuffling
his feet, a timid, apologetic look upon his face.

How changed he was!

I had known in my mind's eye, from childhood up, the face
and form of Father Christmas as well as that of Old Time
himself. Everybody knows, or once knew him--a jolly little
rounded man, with a great muffler wound about him, a
packet of toys upon his back and with such merry, twinkling
eyes and rosy cheeks as are only given by the touch of
the driving snow and the rude fun of the North Wind. Why,
there was once a time, not yet so long ago, when the very
sound of his sleigh-bells sent the blood running warm to
the heart.

But now how changed.

All draggled with the mud and rain he stood, as if no
house had sheltered him these three years past. His old
red jersey was tattered in a dozen places, his muffler
frayed and ravelled.

The bundle of toys that he dragged with him in a net
seemed wet and worn till the cardboard boxes gaped asunder.
There were boxes among them, I vow, that he must have
been carrying these three past years.

But most of all I noted the change that had come over
the face of Father Christmas. The old brave look of cheery
confidence was gone. The smile that had beamed responsive
to the laughing eyes of countless children around unnumbered
Christmas-trees was there no more. And in the place of
it there showed a look of timid apology, of apprehensiveness,
as of one who has asked in vain the warmth and shelter
of a human home--such a look as the harsh cruelty of this
world has stamped upon the faces of its outcasts.

So stood Father Christmas shuffling upon the threshold,
fumbling his poor tattered hat in his hand.

"Shall I come in?" he said, his eyes appealingly on Father
Time.

"Come," said Time. He turned to speak to me, "Your room
is dark. Turn up the lights. He's used to light, bright
light and plenty of it. The dark has frightened him these
three years past."

I turned up the lights and the bright glare revealed all
the more cruelly the tattered figure before us.

Father Christmas advanced a timid step across the floor.
Then he paused, as if in sudden fear.

"Is this floor mined?" he said.

"No, no," said Time soothingly. And to me he added in a
murmured whisper, "He's afraid. He was blown up in a mine
in No Man's Land between the trenches at Christmas-time
in 1914. It broke his nerve."

"May I put my toys on that machine gun?" asked Father
Christmas timidly. "It will help to keep them dry."

"It is not a machine gun," said Time gently. "See, it is
only a pile of books upon the sofa." And to me he whispered,
"They turned a machine gun on him in the streets of
Warsaw. He thinks he sees them everywhere since then."

"It's all right, Father Christmas," I said, speaking as
cheerily as I could, while I rose and stirred the fire
into a blaze. "There are no machine guns here and there
are no mines. This is but the house of a poor writer."

"Ah," said Father Christmas, lowering his tattered hat
still further and attempting something of a humble bow,
"a writer? Are you Hans Andersen, perhaps?"

"Not quite," I answered.

"But a great writer, I do not doubt," said the old man,
with a humble courtesy that he had learned, it well may
be, centuries ago in the yule-tide season of his northern
home. "The world owes much to its great books. I carry
some of the greatest with me always. I have them here--"

He began fumbling among the limp and tattered packages
that he carried. "Look! _The House that Jack Built_--a
marvellous, deep thing, sir--and this, _The Babes in the
Wood_. Will you take it, sir? A poor present, but a
present still--not so long ago I gave them in thousands
every Christmas-time. None seem to want them now."

He looked appealingly towards Father Time, as the weak
may look towards the strong, for help and guidance.

"None want them now," he repeated, and I could see the
tears start in his eyes. "Why is it so? Has the world
forgotten its sympathy with the lost children wandering
in the wood?"

"All the world," I heard Time murmur with a sigh, "is
wandering in the wood." But out loud he spoke to Father
Christmas in cheery admonition, "Tut, tut, good Christmas,"
he said, "you must cheer up. Here, sit in this chair the
biggest one; so--beside the fire. Let us stir it to a
blaze; more wood, that's better. And listen, good old
Friend, to the wind outside--almost a Christmas wind, is
it not? Merry and boisterous enough, for all the evil
times it stirs among."

Old Christmas seated himself beside the fire, his hands
outstretched towards the flames. Something of his old-time
cheeriness seemed to flicker across his features as he
warmed himself at the blaze.

"That's better," he murmured. "I was cold, sir, cold,
chilled to the bone. Of old I never felt it so; no matter
what the wind, the world seemed warm about me. Why is it
not so now?"

"You see," said Time, speaking low in a whisper for my
ear alone, "how sunk and broken he is? Will you not help?"

"Gladly," I answered, "if I can."

"All can," said Father Time, "every one of us."

Meantime Christmas had turned towards me a questioning
eye, in which, however, there seemed to revive some little
gleam of merriment.

"Have you, perhaps," he asked half timidly, "schnapps?"

"Schnapps?" I repeated.

"Ay, schnapps. A glass of it to drink your health might
warm my heart again, I think."

"Ah," I said, "something to drink?"

"His one failing," whispered Time, "if it is one. Forgive
it him. He was used to it for centuries. Give it him if
you have it."

"I keep a little in the house," I said reluctantly perhaps,
"in case of illness."

"Tut, tut," said Father Time, as something as near as
could be to a smile passed over his shadowy face. "In
case of illness! They used to say that in ancient Babylon.
Here, let me pour it for him. Drink, Father Christmas,
drink!"

Marvellous it was to see the old man smack his lips as
he drank his glass of liquor neat after the fashion of
old Norway.

Marvellous, too, to see the way in which, with the warmth
of the fire and the generous glow of the spirits, his
face changed and brightened till the old-time cheerfulness
beamed again upon it.

He looked about him, as it were, with a new and growing
interest.

"A pleasant room," he said. "And what better, sir, than
the wind without and a brave fire within!"

Then his eye fell upon the mantelpiece, where lay among
the litter of books and pipes a little toy horse.

"Ah," said Father Christmas almost gayly, "children in
the house!"

"One," I answered, "the sweetest boy in all the world."

"I'll be bound he is!" said Father Christmas and he broke
now into a merry laugh that did one's heart good to hear.
"They all are! Lord bless me! The number that I have
seen, and each and every one--and quite right too--the
sweetest child in all the world. And how old, do you say?
Two and a half all but two months except a week? The very
sweetest age of all, I'll bet you say, eh, what? They
all do!"

And the old man broke again into such a jolly chuckling
of laughter that his snow-white locks shook upon his
head.

"But stop a bit," he added. "This horse is broken. Tut,
tut, a hind leg nearly off. This won't do!"

He had the toy in his lap in a moment, mending it. It
was wonderful to see, for all his age, how deft his
fingers were.

"Time," he said, and it was amusing to note that his
voice had assumed almost an authoritative tone, "reach
me that piece of string. That's right. Here, hold your
finger across the knot. There! Now, then, a bit of beeswax.
What? No beeswax? Tut, tut, how ill-supplied your houses
are to-day. How can you mend toys, sir, without beeswax?
Still, it will stand up now."

I tried to murmur by best thanks.

But Father Christmas waved my gratitude aside.

"Nonsense," he said, "that's nothing. That's my life.
Perhaps the little boy would like a book too. I have them
here in the packet. Here, sir, _Jack and the Bean Stalk_,
most profound thing. I read it to myself often still.
How damp it is! Pray, sir, will you let me dry my books
before your fire?"

"Only too willingly," I said. "How wet and torn they are!"

Father Christmas had risen from his chair and was fumbling
among his tattered packages, taking from them his children's
books, all limp and draggled from the rain and wind.

"All wet and torn!" he murmured, and his voice sank again
into sadness. "I have carried them these three years
past. Look! These were for little children in Belgium
and in Serbia. Can I get them to them, think you?"

Time gently shook his head.

"But presently, perhaps," said Father Christmas, "if I
dry and mend them. Look, some of them were inscribed
already! This one, see you, was written '_With father's
love_.' Why has it never come to him? Is it rain or tears
upon the page?"

He stood bowed over his little books, his hands trembling
as he turned the pages. Then he looked up, the old fear
upon his face again.

"That sound!" he said. "Listen! It is guns--I hear them."

"No, no," I said, "it is nothing. Only a car passing in
the street below."

"Listen," he said. "Hear that again--voices crying!"

"No, no," I answered, "not voices, only the night wind
among the trees."

"My children's voices!" he exclaimed. "I hear them
everywhere--they come to me in every wind--and I see them
as I wander in the night and storm--my children--torn
and dying in the trenches--beaten into the ground--I hear
them crying from the hospitals--each one to me, still as
I knew him once, a little child. Time, Time," he cried,
reaching out his arms in appeal, "give me back my children!"

"They do not die in vain," Time murmured gently.

But Christmas only moaned in answer:

"Give me back my children!"

Then he sank down upon his pile of books and toys, his
head buried in his arms.

"You see," said Time, "his heart is breaking, and will
you not help him if you can?"

"Only too gladly," I replied. "But what is there to do?"

"This," said Father Time, "listen."

He stood before me grave and solemn, a shadowy figure
but half seen though he was close beside me. The fire-light
had died down, and through the curtained windows there
came already the first dim brightening of dawn.

"The world that once you knew," said Father Time, "seems
broken and destroyed about you. You must not let them
know--the children. The cruelty and the horror and the
hate that racks the world to-day--keep it from them. Some
day _he_ will know"--here Time pointed to the prostrate
form of Father Christmas--"that his children, that once
were, have not died in vain: that from their sacrifice
shall come a nobler, better world for all to live in, a
world where countless happy children shall hold bright
their memory for ever. But for the children of To-day,
save and spare them all you can from the evil hate and
horror of the war. Later they will know and understand.
Not yet. Give them back their Merry Christmas and its
kind thoughts, and its Christmas charity, till later on
there shall be with it again Peace upon Earth Good Will
towards Men."

His voice ceased. It seemed to vanish, as it were, in
the sighing of the wind.

I looked up. Father Time and Christmas had vanished from
the room. The fire was low and the day was breaking
visibly outside.

"Let us begin," I murmured. "I will mend this broken
horse."


END

[Freeky]

That made me choke up a bit with it's poignant sad bits.

[Doktor Howl]

Stephen Vincent Benet's Litany for Dictatorships

Litany for Dictatorships

For all those beaten, for the broken heads,
The fosterless, the simple, the oppressed,
The ghosts in the burning city of our time ...

For those taken in rapid cars to the house and beaten
By the skilful boys, the boys with the rubber fists,
—Held down and beaten, the table cutting their loins,
Or kicked in the groin and left, with the muscles jerking
Like a headless hen's on the floor of the slaughter-house
While they brought the next man in with his white eyes staring.
For those who still said "Red Front!" or "God Save the Crown!"
And for those who were not courageous
But were beaten nevertheless.
For those who spit out the bloody stumps of their teeth
Quietly in the hall,
Sleep well on stone or iron, watch for the time
And kill the guard in the privy before they die,
Those with the deep-socketed eyes and the lamp burning.

For those who carry the scars, who walk lame—for those
Whose nameless graves are made in the prison-yard
And the earth smoothed back before morning and the lime scattered.

For those slain at once. For those living through months and years
Enduring, watching, hoping, going each day
To the work or the queue for meat or the secret club,
Living meanwhile, begetting children, smuggling guns,
And found and killed at the end like rats in a drain.

For those escaping
Incredibly into exile and wandering there.
For those who live in the small rooms of foreign cities
And who yet think of the country, the long green grass,
The childhood voices, the language, the way wind smelt then,
The shape of rooms, the coffee drunk at the table,
The talk with friends, the loved city, the waiter's face,
The gravestones, with the name, where they will not lie
Nor in any of that earth. Their children are strangers.

For those who planned and were leaders and were beaten
And for those, humble and stupid, who had no plan
But were denounced, but grew angry, but told a joke,
But could not explain, but were sent away to the camp,
But had their bodies shipped back in the sealed coffins,
"Died of pneumonia."   "Died trying to escape."

For those growers of wheat who were shot by their own wheatstacks,
For those growers of bread who were sent to the ice-locked wastes,
And their flesh remembers their fields.

For those denounced by their smug, horrible children
For a peppermint-star and the praise of the Perfect State,
For all those strangled or gelded or merely starved
To make perfect states; for the priest hanged in his cassock,
The Jew with his chest crushed in and his eyes dying,
The revolutionist lynched by the private guards
To make perfect states, in the names of the perfect states.

For those betrayed by the neighbors they shook hands with
And for the traitors, sitting in the hard chair
With the loose sweat crawling their hair and their fingers restless
As they tell the street and the house and the man's name.

And for those sitting at table in the house
With the lamp lit and the plates and the smell of food,
Talking so quietly; when they hear the cars
And the knock at the door, and they look at each other quickly
And the woman goes to the door with a stiff face,
Smoothing her dress.
                           "We are all good citizens here.
We believe in the Perfect State."
                                             And that was the last
Time Tony or Karl or Shorty came to the house
And the family was liquidated later.
It was the last time.
                             We heard the shots in the night
But nobody knew next day what the trouble was
And a man must go to his work. So I didn't see him
For three days, then, and me near out of my mind
And all the patrols on the streets with their dirty guns
And when he came back, he looked drunk, and the blood was on him.

For the women who mourn their dead in the secret night,
For the children taught to keep quiet, the old children,
The children spat-on at school.
                                             For the wrecked laboratory,
The gutted house, the dunged picture, the pissed-in well,
The naked corpse of Knowledge flung in the square
And no man lifting a hand and no man speaking.

For the cold of the pistol-butt and the bullet's heat,
For the rope that chokes, the manacles that bind,
The huge voice, metal, that lies from a thousand tubes
And the stuttering machine-gun that answers all.

For the man crucified on the crossed machine-guns
Without name, without resurrection, without stars,
His dark head heavy with death and his flesh long sour
With the smell of his many prisons—John Smith, John Doe,
John Nobody—oh, crack your mind for his name!
Faceless as water, naked as the dust,
Dishonored as the earth the gas-shells poison
And barbarous with portent.
                                      This is he.
This is the man they ate at the green table
Putting their gloves on ere they touched the meat.
This is the fruit of war, the fruit of peace,
The ripeness of invention, the new lamb,
The answer to the wisdom of the wise.
And still he hangs, and still he will not die,
And still, on the steel city of our years
The light fails and the terrible blood streams down.

We thought we were done with these things but we were wrong.
We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom.
We thought the long train would run to the end of Time.
We thought the light would increase.
Now the long train stands derailed and the bandits loot it.
Now the boar and the asp have power in our time.
Now the night rolls back on the West and the night is solid.
Our fathers and ourselves sowed dragon's teeth.
Our children know and suffer the armed men.

[Kai]

Poems from Tom Montag's collection Married to Prairie

Married to Prairie

So they keep telling me
we buried him. That
a handful of dirt
dance on his coffin
set to earth. That
now the prairie has
accepted him. So
I do remember
wind through my hair,
how my eyes went
empty. So my
husband is dead,
is gone. So I am
married to prairie.


Daybreak

The prairie grass stands so tall
it covers dawn. Oil cloth
on the windows and only the glow
of the fireplace speads of morning.
In the loft above, the children
are stirring. the corn mush
thickens. My back goes straight:
another day, like another horse
to harness.


Planting the Garden

That ice was on the creek
is only a blue memory
now and new grass changes
the warming earth here, green
and tender and tufted. So

my winter-stiffened fingers
need to be poking these
fat seeds to the damp soil.
Counting and patting and
counting, I breathe the slow

wind's moist heaviness, and
dream, measuring my plot
to that plump fruitfulness
we will depend on. The rich
earth dirties my dress at hem

and knee and muddies my hope
with wild expectation.
Always, last winter, enough
corn meal was enough, which
sent me to the cellar, for

root crops and vegetables-
when the bins weren't emptied
yet. That they won't be empty
again, seeds and sun and, yes,
aching back give promise-

a small promise only,
beneath this restless sky.


Living Alone

Yes. I do expect him to
come riding back, through
grass so deep and thick it
hides a man on horseback.
Every day I watch and wait,
watch and hope to see him
part the sea around us.
I am a woman alone, with children.
And still the grass is seamless
and still I feed the chickens
and still I hope. And when my
hands cup each other, they must
find a comfort all their own.


The Hawk

A lone hawk circles
about the field.
It rides a wind
all its own, until it
plummets into violence.
The world fills
with these small deaths.
Sometimes the sky is
wide with mercy,
for those whose
necessary end
comes quick and clean,
whose bones become
the living earth.


We Live With Wind

We live with wind; it rides the grass;
bends the trees, young trees, which guard
the house; sets the barn to creaking.
This morning I gathered up
the year's first apples, windfalls
all. Last night I dreamed them dropping.
My husband planted that greening stick
and never lived to taste its
fruit, so sweet the tongue must
tremble. And now the wind
speaks my name, calls me Katie
the way he would, and did. Calls me
Katie. I fight back tears. You learn
to live with wind like this, as with grief,
to hear instead the wine of harness.


Oh, Husband

All these days go round
like wagon wheels.
The seasons change,
and stay the same.
The moon, it
pulls at me
to mark the months.
and so blood flows.
I am alone and
must pretend
your hands still
touch me.
Sometimes I speak
a secret tongue.


The Winter Barn

Even the fiercely-driven
snow--it is white against
the barn--did not turn me
back: how my dress flapped
against determination.
The animals here must
make their own warmth; and so
must I. The smell of hay
remains; in the draft
through barn boards, it mingles
with the brute odor
of manure--as the sound
of the braying cow seems
to become a moaning
of the wind. It is
a serious axe which cracks
the wather trough's dull,
thick ice; my summer-strong
arms have not gone slack,
carrying buckets from
well to barn in winter.
This is a morning and
evening chore, a havit,
as reassuring in its
fashion as the smell of
hay: the hourses drink and
snort, stamp their impatient
feet. I fill the manger.
I milk my only cow
and my hands seem to
thaw. Oh, there is no
mistaking for wind the sound
milk makes in the pail
warming between my legs.


Things I Could Tell You

I could tell you about my fingers,
how they tremble with the strngth in them;
about my back,
how it bends toward evening, curving into sleep;
about my shoulders,
too broad now for any arm put round them.
I could tell you about my breasts,
how they've sagged with children; they fill with sorry;
about my legs,
how they've thickened behind the plow;
about my arms,
dark as leather and strong as green wood.
I could tell you about my feet,
which step toward the grave, resisting;
about my wild hair,
how it accepts the wind we live with;
about living alone,
so far from neighbors their sounds won't carry.
I could tell you about my children,
sleeping above us, how they bring me strength
like buckets of water, how I live in them.
I could tell you all this and more
but I reach into silence while you are here.
I am quiet as iron, with no need for pity.

[Kai]

The Farmers Manifesto by Tom Montag

Weeds, again: the muddy earth.
Well--hell!--I am old

enough to stand it. To
peel layer off layer &

--yes--find the onion's core.
I am hungry enough, straddling

this country, to wait, listen:
the fire/wash of sun against

black dirt, to crack it
open; the run of water

here in spring, sometimes waist-
deep in ditches--

comes off

the fields: the ice &
snow; what sun & what

burn of river beneath it;
the odor of a farrowing

house, of wet hair, of
death, sometimes death, the water

running. The gurgling sound of
death, sometimes--

That impulse to
life; this flat country belongs

to me. Well, I am
old enough to claim it.

Our lips are caves when
we try to speak, black holes

which talk: "the price of
corn, what it costs to

feed hogs & cattle, how
the roads are so soft

still--the tractor tires throw
mud against us. The bite

of stone defined by welt
on cheek or arm; pull

the throttle back: stacked roar
of diesel engine--

& curse
another small pain. The black

drift of exhaust fumes catch
your eyes; your eyes recoil.

--Grassland? prairie? What the water
runs off: weedland!, at least

until we get some seed
into the ground (while our

straight backs ache with strage
dark madness, some amazing avalanche

of wolves, lakes, stars, tongues
(and I don't speak lightly--

that rubble lost in the darkness
of some abandoned barn. This

in our muscles when we
move; or in our pockets

when we empty them: what
grows, what we face when

we undress; what must grow,
our full desires-the fire

of our undoing. What our
hands possess: muscle, gristle, bone.

That strange mad ache along
the spine. I am old

enough to feel it. Hell,
man, birth and death balance

out: I can stand it.
We may not be as

slick here as a glaze
of ice on a tin

roof, but we know enough:
the shell of a house,

another broken secret. Meat hanging
in the smokehouse; how far

those who leave must travel.
How trees can distort your

sense of a forest. How
far the water running off

our fields must flow; and
how it returns, turns back--

a knife between the ribs
or a slap on the back.

Hell, man, the wet years
and the droughts balance out.

I know the sun will
dry my fields; can wait--

August sun will crack open
the ground: long whips of

cracks (I know that too.
I can see, the same

as you; maybe better, mister.
Don't let my gritty talk

or temper fool you. Don't
stop by the farmhouse, disturbing

the wife, trying to peddle
your secrets. You are devil

enough to have a beer
with; but any farther than

I can throw a bull
I don't trust you. You

can dance ankle-deep in your
fancy shoes through this dog-thaw

mud--I don't care--but,
mister, watch out for those

ditches, that gurgle as you
slip and go under. What

the mild current carries evaporates,
or turns to soil. Matter

comes to energy finally. We
know it. Rock comes to

grit, the grit to dirt
we can use. Wind &

rain & sun, these endure,
nameless, fragrant: the rock crumbles.

"And then went down to
soil, to make it new

(Roll that off your tongue,
and back.

          Pound your hands
one of these cold spring

nights, against a crumbling headstone,
for instance: only people howl

at death or nightmares; or
the wolf howls another loneliness,

wishing to be soil again.
Bones turn back upon themselves.

What dwells within. What is
sifted by wind. What we

cannot see rustling corn leaves,
though we can hear it;

when we dress at daybreak,
we can hear it: crack

of dawn is larger than
the expression: you can hear

it. Or would, mister, if
you lived among us these

many years. It is not
enough to see the land

spread out in all directions
(you must see what lies

above the ground, and beyond
direction and distance; you can

hear corn grow in summer;
can hide your face in

the curving surface of sky;
examine a potato in light

so special you know something
flies back at you, each

breath you take. Breathe, breathe:
running, standing, hugging your

woman; that special a tension.
Deny it?--

drive yourself across

this ghosted prairie; cry out
when you feel it come

upon you--a knot in
your stomach, your muscles; your

learned breathing. Would you deny
the sun drying those fields

right now, while we sit
here, drinking beer and talking;

and talking; another day
or week of sun will dry

the roads & ditches. Weeds
break dirt first, every spring;

that green so very mute
at first it is yellow;

so mellow, as almost white.
White against the black mud earth--

those weeds; my father knew
them too, and hist father.

Heavy-lidded eyes, quiet voice; he
knew how far his legs

must carry, that distance; knew
the moan of clawing wind,

how far it would come;
the hump of stones on

stones as he piled them
behind a toolshed. He would

sleep and dream those stones
to soil, crumbling. He dreamed

small animals in their burrows,
or the sheen of their golden

furn in sun; the quiet
sadness of the darkening land

at dusk. He had no
ideas but the things which

his hands could touch, or
those his eyes could find

at great distance--a glint
of sun off farmhouse windows.

Or close at hand, beneath
his feet. What he could

catch as breath; wind would
carry. He knew those weeds.

Uprooted them; tore stem &
leaves: into summer. Broke ground

for seed. The mud earth
every spring, mister. Believe me.

We know it--

I am
old enough to work this

land; clay deep beneath black
dirt. And rock finds plowshare.

We see water vapor rise
from our fields: a thinness

overhead; "And then went down
to mud as rain. His

breath rattled, when he died.
That moisture. Believe me, mister--

the rock crumbles to soil