Dear, Billy Joe I have to say a few words to you. You're my favorite modern artist. In that you are not a modern artist, but sing of the ancient subjects of war, political theory and romance. Myself, I am obsessed with words. Words of all kinds. Censorship is my enemy. All forms of it. I love ideas. I love notions. I love all forms of poetry---even the ones I disagree with. Make a well orated lambast of my religion, and I will applaud. Which you do well, and I see those same faults in my churches. I love words, a truly spoken word. But only when such word is true. However, much falsehood needs to be tolerated, so men can attain to the bigger truths. Learning is a journey, from whence we come from some ideological framework, and we multiply ideas until the mere breadth of ideation becomes fascinating. The communication of difficult concepts, the predictions people make, and how they can be more accurate than any prognosticator's. We are not fortune tellers, we writers, poets, bards. Yet, we often understand the truths the world would like to forget. Those it would like to hide. How many foolish things had we said, before we got to a point where truth was recognized? Freedom of speech is America's most sacred value. More sacred than religion. For, religion in the Middle Ages suppressed the truth, just as much as any Fascist or Communist regime. And there is a reason to be afraid of a government regulated by the church. Though I would never be a Mormon, they too must exist, as with all Arians. As forbidding them only makes it less possible for another man to express truth. For, if we regulate our ideas, men who have truth cannot speak, for the government will be a obelisk which defines everything for the masses. And therefore, it being a black, calculating machine bent on power, it will never let truth be spoken again. I despise many things---but with speech and not violence I combat it. My words are the exorcising of my demons. Those strong inclinations I have for war and justice. The same ones that make you adealistic. I understand you... For I am you. I see injustice in everything, and every establishment. Unlike you, I understand it is a necessary evil the world must tolerate--- Yet when those princely powers rise up, and strip from the people their voice, then truth ceases. Truth must be allowed to exist--- then so must falsehood, for pursuit of the truth means much falsehoods must be entertained. For no man is perfect in his knowledge and intellect, and by a congruence of many voices, truth is pursued. Speech is America's most sacred virtue. The seconds only Privacy and Jurisprudence. For racial equality, religion, the press and all other sacred rights are borne from this one. And speech is also the vehicle by which we correct what is wrong with everything else. And I commend you on your use of it, though a few F words are sprinkled in. I myself have dabbled with it.
Tag: Green Day
The Hymn of the Citizens
Fife and drum go Hum dee dum,
The marching citizens draw their guns
Their words, their airs, their country farms
Did get sold by the county Bar…
Hum dee dum,
Hum dee dumb.
We wage this revolution with our words
Not a bullet we will incur
We shall march in our battle lines
With these words and verse so spry…
Hum dee dum,
Hum dee dumb.
If a martyr we shall make
To speak our words and masticate
That violence spreads in silent wakes
Hum dee dum
Hum dee dumb.
I shall not e’er throw a stone
If I shall die all alone
I shall not ever throw a stone
For my words are mortar bombs
Hum dee dum,
Hum dee dumb.
Wage a revolution wise
That men in flames, they do die
While I have sung my battle cries
For the wasted men who die
Hum dee dum,
Hum dee dumb.
We might have our first president
A woman good with righteousness
She might give us what we need
A stitch, a bone and well hemmed sleeves
Hum dee dum,
Hum dee dumb.
But the ghosts they testify
That with the awful costs they cry,
That they should give a man his rights
When a woman ought to win the fight,
Hum dee dum,
Hum dee dumb.
Trump, I say, is not the cost
He is not the one who robbed us all
It is not Warren nor congress’ cauc…
It is all the specious laws we wrought,
That by liberty’s woes they cause,
Hum dee dum,
Hum dee dumb.
So I sing this verse or two
Of revolution with words couth
That if a woman should not be right
But a man should win the fight,
Hum dee dum,
Hum dee dumb.
In Logic
In logic, “P” is a rule of inference.
This means, as it stands alone,
It can be reasoned true, therefore acceptable as a proof of validity.
Where my writing comes from,
Where my whole breadth of knowledge comes from,
Is thousands of “P”s…
Some moral and others extant.
If I had said “Green Day” is God’s favorite band,
I suppose I must have meant it.
The band could foresee the futures.
Are they God’s favorite band?
How am I supposed to know?
I truthfully don’t know.
But the fact is I might have said it in passing
To my brother;—
Someone might have heard it
And called me “apostate.”
I reason up to larger principles from established facts.
Green Day says the F word;
So did I.
Green Day is a little rowdy.
So am I.
Green Day is scathing and mourns.
So do I.
Green Day could predict tomorrow.
So could I.
I am not one who can judge them;—
I understand them.
Genius, with the ability to see into the future
To draw from it possibilities.
I understand that madness.
Their dystopian albums showing genocide
And religious wars;—
Their skepticism might be what the LORD Jehovah
Wants in the world.
A little more skepticism of our actions
Rather than our words.
We put too much emphasis on
Predictions…
When Green Day had gotten eleven of them wrong;
So have I.
We, Billy Joe and I,
See a lot of Ps and Qs.
We see the irony of how men live their lives
Allowing atrocities to be committed in the name of Religion.
We’re called Apostate for it.
Rather, I will not be skeptical of my religion.
I never saw Christians as an example of it.
Only Christ.
I would have that same advice for Billy Joe.
And should he be angry that God commanded wars,
I would tell him that was a time when man was supposed to create heaven;
Now, we are to let the world fail.
As, the woman caught in adultery is my “P”.
The sins of the Pharisees are my “Q”
Which were written in the ground as a testimony to their face.
It says that in the Old Testament.
It’s one of the hidden verses that appears to my eyes,
And often they do.
When I read it, I see often that man has censored the Bible
With opinions,
And sometimes I get glimpses into what it actually said.
How clear, even in the Hebrew, that Christ is Christ.
On that miracle, the miracle of good will and kindness,
Believe. As, a world without Christ is a world without kindness.
Slowly we edge toward that world,
Because men do not listen to their prophets.
Sometimes they wear black, and are themselves agnostic.
Other times they are like me, fanatical about their religion
To a point of self harm.
Either or, it is Christ Whose is the power to sustain
The good we love and cherish.
That same goodness that often we look back on
And wonder, “Where has it gone?”
The Hymn of the Citizens
Fife and drum go Hum dee dum,
The marching citizens draw their guns
Their words, their airs, their country farms
Did get sold by the county Bar…
Hum dee dum,
Hum dee dumb.
We wage this revolution with our words
Not a bullet we will incur
We shall march in our battle lines
With these words and verse so spry…
Hum dee dum,
Hum dee dumb.
If a martyr we shall make
To speak our words and masticate
That violence spreads in silent wakes
Hum dee dum
Hum dee dumb.
I shall not e’er throw a stone
If I shall die all alone
I shall not ever throw a stone
For my words are mortar bombs
Hum dee dum,
Hum dee dumb.
Wage a revolution wise
That men in flames, they do die
While I have sung my battle cries
For the wasted men who die
Hum dee dum,
Hum dee dumb.
We might have our first president
A woman good with righteousness
She might give us what we need
A stitch, a bone and well hemmed sleeves
Hum dee dum,
Hum dee dumb.
But the ghosts they testify
That with the awful costs they cry,
That they should give a man his rights
When a woman ought to win the fight,
Hum dee dum,
Hum dee dumb.
Trump, I say, is not the cost
He is not the one who robbed us all
It is not Warren nor congress’ cauc…
It is all the specious laws we wrought,
That by liberty’s woes they cause,
Hum dee dum,
Hum dee dumb.
So I sing this verse or two
Of revolution with words couth
That if a woman should not be right
But a man should win the fight,
Hum dee dum,
Hum dee dumb.
B. K. Neifert 