"obedience to the force that drives you forward" "you are pledged to
this Thing become your life"
The conventional view that artists are nuts makes sense bcuz fighting to
bring out in the open a thing that no one wants to think about makes folks
nuts. We will forgive a practicing psychopath, a robber or a rapist, we
will try to rehabilitate them. But we will not forgive those who refuse the
social system, we will make them pay for our discomfort, for what they
insist upon seeing and saying.
Top quotes remind me of Automatic Pilot, a neutral term, a moving forward
without will. Yet no thing nor person nor self of me I've ever known was or
is neutral. There's a separate victory and glory in that.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ken Wolman" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, July 27, 2005 12:20 PM
Subject: SNAP/Ken: On Being Asked for a Poem About Mental Illness, He Thinks
of Passchendaele, August 1917
> Funny how some I read by Paul Fussell back in 1976 has stuck with me.
>
> On Being Asked for a Poem About Mental Illness,
> He Thinks of Passchendaele, August 1917
>
> 4:00 AM. Restive sleep ends.
> Farting, objectless dream-erections,
> dream-weeping, oh Jesus
> I want to go home.
> Filth in everything, orders and
> ordure everywhere. No imagining
> the outhouses: they will become life,
> old men will die in 1960
> still trapped in the stench.
> Fear lives even in the trench lice.
>
> To rise and peer over the top
> is to demand disaster.
> It is irresistible
> to peer at one's coming fate
> 300 yards across the mud.
> Curse the dead mule
> that blocks your view.
>
> Summer crawls in the flesh,
> madness, no control,
> you are pledged to this Thing
> become your life
> no escape except to go mad
> and answer the blowing whistle
> Go over the top
> the term for coming generations
> for it is your duty
> your horror
> your life and maybe death
> unoptioned
> out of control no control
> obedience to the force
> that drives you forward
> for this moment endless.
>
> KTW/7-27-05
>
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