The Mad Farmer Liberation Front Manifesto:
Love the quick profit, the annual raise, vacation with pay.
Want more of everything made.
Be afraid to know you 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 millennium.
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 easy in the shade. Rest your head in her lap.
Swear allegiance to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and 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.
4 Comments
Who wrote this– Bono?
I’m glad I now know what all the secrets of life are, and exactly what the right things to do with one’s life are.
If I hadn’t been given the answers to everything, this might seem to be more about the metadata of living than actual life. Too much conception always strikes me as showy and unhumble. Almost violent.
By the way, it’s hilarious that a poem that consist of giving orders is celebrating “the questions that have no answers.” This is truly fucking garbage.
I love it. It may not be a phenomenal poem stylistically, but the underlying thought seems right on.
Asking questions that have no answers and praising ignorance doesn’t make as much sense (unless I don’t understand it yet), but the rest is fine. The imperatives have their own bite, but if you’re listening to the poem in the first place, you won’t follow even these imperatives blindly anyway.
Hehe, I can tell I’m in a good mood when I’m putting up posts that annoy Matt!
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