Poetry, Freedom and Revolution

And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk upon Englands mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God, On Englands pleasant pastures seen!
And did the Countenance Divine, Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here, Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold:
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem, In Englands green & pleasant Land.

Would to God that all the Lords people were Prophets. Numbers. XI. ch 29 v.
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Poetry is something almost universally forgotten in the USA. There is no real love of poetry in the American people. It is not because they banished poetry that it is irrelevant, but because the education system militates against it. Moreover the entire American way of life is anti-poetic. Can you imagine a US citizen staring at a pebble in a stream, lost to time and being filled with wonder on a workday? Can you imagine a worker taking a day off in spring because the tulips have reached their peak bloom?

Poetry is the treasure of truly democratic individuals, free men and women, truly free in soul and spirit and mind. Crass materialists who measure their worth in terms of the homes, their families and the brand names on their vehicles are incapable of poetry and unworthy of democracy. If you would love freedom more than life, i.e. more than the life of your wife, and children, more than your job, your social esteem, your religious practices, if you would love freedom this much you would make a good citizen and perhaps a good poet.

Poetry has no life second hand. Nor does freedom, nor does democracy. The essence of these three has nothing to do with governments. The true democrats are revolutionaries, as they always were and always will be. This is why the american forced education is so despicable. The teachers are not free individuals and democrats and poets but are materialists, slaves grinding at the mills of american technology. Freedom is a spark housed in an individual soul which when roused against fascism, and liars like Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush, Gonzales, etc., etc...ignites a bonfire of courage to rise up against the impossible mountain of military and the false picture of America presented by these unscrupulous, and shameless ultra-republicans. Granted no amount of arms could help unseat these false american leaders. It is the ultimate David and Goliath story.

Democracy cannot be handed down generation by generation from father to son, it must be earned by each new generation. Well, what has this generation done to earn democracy? Like Bush, grow up in luxury, avoid any responsibility for armed service, live like a playboy for many years, drive several businesses into the ground through complete ineptitude and incompetence, make lifelong allies of the Saudi House of Bin Laden, get Karl Rove to smear, break in, plant false evidence against your opponents so that you can be made Governor of Texas, then be handplaced as President in an illegitimate manner spearheaded by James Baker III, turning over the actual legitimate popular victory of Al Gore. This kind of life is perhaps not so untypical in the US today, but one thing is certain, there is not one trace of democracy in it.

Unfortunately the bulk majority of US "citizens" have done nothing to earn their "democracy", nor will they ever do a thing to earn it. It is not handed out to you because you were born! That is the reason that this tyranny has emerged---the people are sleeping in delusion, deprived of legitimate historical training, training in truth and logic and poetry. They think they are empowered by these hollow banners, the waving of the flag, empty slogans about spreading democracy in the Middle East. Excuse me, but democracy is not Peanut butter! These citizens like drugged Guinea Pigs, being experimented upon by the corporations, whose boards are full of multimillionaires who could not care less for an honest working citizen. Meanwhile the laboring citizen is being led by carrots to want to live like these multimillionaires, in mini-castles, exerting the influence we find in Great Britain amongst the lords and petty royalty. Precisely the bondage and the blueblood the Founding Fathers sought deliverance from. Now it returns with Bush dynasty proud of their family ties to the Queen of England, their hobnobbing with the Bin Ladens, and keeping a country mile from having to see, or touch (ugh) ordinary laboring men and women.

I recall the goals of humanistic psychology in the '60s labor saving devices were supposed to free men and women up for purposes of personal growth, enlightenment, and poetry. The computer may be said to be a kind of labor saving device... Tell me, are the workers working any less today than in the '60s? And show me your citizens liberated from labor consciously seeking their growth and enhancement as persons.... Is it not rather that computers have trebled working hours, made work a 24/7 reality, and not contributed one iota to anyone individual's enlightenment. Instead illiteracy is the norm, poetry is entirely forgotten, the populace is as ignorant of history as the serfs in Russia prior to the Revoultion. Is this President Bush's idea of 'leaving no child behind'? In other words to dumb down not only the texts, the classes, the teachers, the degrees to the lowest common denominator---until there is one simple monotonous blather of news, entertainment and idiocy backed up by the bomb. The hopes of an enlightenment among the citizenry as dreamed of in the '60s is all but forgotten. Tell me, what honor and what dignity is there in going on living like automatons? It does not matter that these are rich automatons! And what honor is there in winning a game of soccer if everyone receives a trophy? And what honor is there in being the poet laureate in a nation that openly despises what poetry stands for: silence, wonder, beauty, nature....?

All work and no play makes Johnny a dull boy...Johnny, Johanna, and almost all of the workers in America at every level are made dull with business. We need a one week work moratorium in teh USA in order to discover if there is anything more important than work itself, i.e. we need to remind ourselves why we are spending the best years of hour lives to trade sacred hours for mere dirty green paper money.

American citizens are made into slaves by the passion to work, and earn money and accumulate things and experiences. One thinks that they are working for themselves, or for their wife (often greedy to accumulate, to "pad the nest"---a typical mammalian feature)---what is in an animal species an honorable instinct becomes in human species a pathetic monstrosity of greed, overproduction, and the continuous carrot of better labels, brands and better schools for the kids. Hence this "free citizen" is now unknowingly a slave, a hamster running on a wheel pumping up the GNP. In point of fact it is clear to see that technology does not work for America but America works for this emerging technological matrix which strips every man, woman and child of their human dignity, alongside their freedom, poetry and truth.

'Revolution' is a word rarely heard among American citizens, and yet the hallmark of a healthy democracy is its citizens' legitimate authority to dissolve a treasonous government. With the Bush dynasty treason is the breakfast of champions. There is treason for breakfast, lunch and dinner...Treason: wars hoisted upon the populace with deceit and PR, rampant corruption in the Attorney General's office, the vice president's office, in congress and in the senate---however, it is the executive branch that manifests tyranny, anti-democratic tactics, and lies for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It is difficult to imagine that President Bush could speak the truth if his life depended upon it, so immured in lying , posing and PR. That he is a puppet of anti-american corporate interests echoes Plato's warning in the Republic concerning democratic governments----they tend to evolve into corrupt oligarchies while the citizenry loses their reference to truth through a thoroughly depraved state enforced education K-12. Thanks to this set of affairs, villains like Mr. Bush, his father, the NeoCons, etc... bulldoze their fascism over American citizens who are rendered impotent, dreaming, lacking in individual courage, in short they lack poetry. If Payne, or Franklin or Jefferson and their courageous democractic peers were alive in the U.S. today, and the people were in agreement with the Founding Fathers truth and valor, then a revolution would be under way to dissolve the anti-democratic nation state housed in the White House, Pentagon, who wave their banner and flag everywhere as a token symbol of the very truths that they wantonly mock, deride, subvert and abolish.