Thursday, July 8, 2021

Society Produces Its Ill-Kempt, Ignorant, and Sore Idiosyncrasies

 

Tomorrow one of two posts a year not tagged my complicity so have links and songs and a (not mine, don't worry) poem today
The Assange case isn't about national security, it's about narrative control
Valve draining Lake Whetstone left open!
Fine metaphors abound, I can't open the drain here, I won't open the drain there, and there I might be able to too soon because of what I can't drain there now
The Practical Political Witchcraft of the Conscious Refusal of Neomania and Nostalgia
If I say what I want to change at the other place I can't do what I want at the other place
How pessimists should avoid despair
Cruelest summer: freon and you
Misinformation, mythology, mainstream media
*The Golden Bowl* has been abandoned, I have until sunset tomorrow to start a new first read of a novel, I do have the options of another attempts at the new Dara and/or the new Cohen if I can't come up with anything else
The supplication of John Wieners
Will I put there what I won't put here and there's LOTS of late (the cycle is UP!) I can't put here though I can put here that I *did* wake up with Glaxo Babies in my head, I don't worry I don't know where that came from



CHILDREN OF THE WORKING CLASS

John Wieners

to Somes
 
from incarceration, Taunton State Hospital, 1972
 
gaunt, ugly deformed
 
broken from the womb, and horribly shriven
at the labor of their forefathers, if you check back
 
scout around grey before actual time
their sordid brains don’t work right,
pinched men emaciated, piling up railroad ties and highway
ditches
blanched women, swollen and crudely numb
ered before the dark of dawn
 
scuttling by candlelight, one not to touch, that is, a signal panic
thick peasants after the attitude
 
at that time of their century, bleak and centrifugal
they carry about them, tough disciplines of copper Indianheads.
 
there are worse, whom you may never see, non-crucial around the
spoke, these you do, seldom
locked in Taunton State Hospital and other peon work farms
drudge from morning until night, abandoned within destitute
crevices odd clothes
intent on performing some particular task long has been far
removed
there is no hope, they locked-in key’s; housed of course
 
and there fed, poorly
off sooted, plastic dishes, soiled grimy silver knives and forks,
stamped Department of Mental Health spoons
but the unshrinkable duties of any society
produces its ill-kempt, ignorant and sore idiosyncrasies.
 
There has never been a man yet, whom no matter how wise
can explain how a god, so beautiful he can create
the graces of formal gardens, the exquisite twilight sunsets
in splendor of elegant toolsmiths, still can yield the horror of
 
dwarfs, who cannot stand up straight with crushed skulls,
diseases on their legs and feet unshaven faces of men and women,
worn humped backs, deformed necks, hare lips, obese arms
distended rumps, there is not a flame shoots out could ex-
tinguish the torch of any liberty’s state infection.
 
1907, My Mother was born, I am witness t-
o the exasperation of gallant human beings at g-
od, priestly fathers and Her Highness, Holy Mother the Church
persons who felt they were never given a chance, had n-
o luck and were flayed at suffering.
 
They produced children with phobias, manias and depression,
they cared little for their own metier, and kept watch upon
others, some chance to get ahead
 
Yes life was hard for them, much more hard than for any blo
ated millionaire, who still lives on
their hard-earned monies. I feel I shall
have to be punished for writing this,
that the omniscient god is the rich one,
cared little for looks, less for Art,
still kept weekly films close for the
free dishes and scandal hot. Some how
though got cheated in health and upon
hearth. I am one of them. I am witness
not to Whitman’s vision, but instead the
poorhouses, the mad city asylums and re-
life worklines. Yes, I am witness not to
God’s goodness, but his better or less scorn.
 

The First of May, The Commonwealth of State of Massachusetts,
1972

1 comment:

  1. Every year I wait for that gottversplunklen dancing cat video. Happy milestone.

    ReplyDelete