The True Artist Lives By His Art, or Dies. He Does No Harm to Anyone for not Receiving Him.
When interpreting a poem,
One must read the poem
In the context of the year it was written in.
It might seem too intuitive
To be harping on,
But there are methods which wouldn’t do this.
Because if I did not know that Blackbirds
Were Irish revolutionaries,
A certain poem would be illegible,
And I would have thought it was about poetry dying.
Eagles,
6’ers
Phillies
Flyers.
I love my Philly teams.
In the eagles,
Carson Wentz is injury prone.
He always gets taken out of the game.
We made it to the playoffs by the skin of our teeth.
We like our O and D lines in Philly,
One of the few team bases who make the linebackers stars.
The 76’ers
Ben and Joel are good players.
But, they don’t like each other it seems.
They always do better when not playing with one another.
Tobias Harris is good,
But we need someone who can shoot more consistent threes.
Ben makes a good layup
And Joel, when he’s not injured,
Can shoot pretty well,
But the team is never right in the chemistry
When they’re all together.
Phillies, Bryce Harper was overpaid
But, he did a decent job this year.
Rhys Hoskins was a bust.
We had a good base runner in McCutchin
And a good first at bat.
But he got hurt.
In the Flyers,
There aren’t any shining stars
But they win some games.
Hart, their goalie,
Is alright,—
But Voracek
Giroux and Lindblom
Are decent.
We had a lot of shoot outs this year
That I saw,
And a lot of games won or lost in overtime.
II
The old mantra is this:
“Take your stripes now,
Or take them in hell.”
We’ve forgotten this part of our religion.
I would love to be happy,
But it seems like the prophecies of Christ are coming true.
The world is rejoicing,
Are happy and filled with good.
Meanwhile, the shepherds are idle,
The prophets are prophesying a lie.
What I want more than anything,
Is a wife and children.
I might not get it.
So… what do I have to mourn for?
I mourn for the unforgiveness
Of our modern era.
How men are given swift and harsh rebuke
For petty crimes.
Meanwhile, great men murder,
Take a bribe, and wrap it up.
I
Nature destroyed
And in place there are statues of bronze,
The trees garish
And in place men read my poetry,
The trees bud in the winter
And in place we get plays,
The animals die
And in place we get democracy…
I will not make a prediction.
The trees might live,
But they are budding in January and February.
Something needs done.
The world will rejoice,
While we Christians will mourn.
That is the prophecy.
America is in decline.
It is rejected by our president
But it is the truth.
Simply, if you have a nation of thieves and adulterers
And make them richer,
It doesn’t make the country any better to live in.
If everyone feasts, but have not love
It is not as good as a dish of vegetables where there is love.
What I want, more than anything,
Is to see America be strong.
We have to understand it is not strong.
Our religion is faltering.
It, in name, is Christianity.
In practice it is a falsehood.
What I want more than anything
Is this: Freedom.
My revolution is with words.
To hold the people we elect accountable.
If a gun is fired in my name,
I spit on you.
We need a revolution with words.
We need to wage it with our words
With our bombs and ammunition.
Not with insults, nor petty name calling.
Just with cold hard reason.
It works.
It can take the most hardened idiot
And make them a little wiser.
And an idiot made wiser is one less idiot.
I’m a believer in Green Day’s revolution,
Waged with words, not bombs or Gloria.
If I wanted anything, it would be this:
For the country to stop fighting among itself
And to realize that there are shady things happening underneath the surface.
I, like Warner Brothers,
Give your revolution in words, not bombs.
Because if we patriots are censored,
Then men die, and line up in piles high.
Literature is a purge of our aggression,
And a cry for peace.
No war was ever started by a fact.
Rather, it was the forbidding of hearing that fact,
And covering it up so the populations could laud it as heroic,
That is how every war was started.
A hospital wants to take a child off life support
Without the parents’ consent.
It, by law, says it has the ability to do it,
And it says it’s ethical.
This is what I’ve feared for a long time.
It could be you on that bed.
It could be your child on that bed.
America, in the words of Green Day,
“Give me revolution!”
Because silence is the enemy.
Revolution of Words!
Not just I, but many people
Are worried about this democracy.
Elizabeth Warren could be our first female president.
She’d be a pretty darn good one, too.
As it stands, Pete Buttigieg
Who nobody knows,
Nobody’s heard of…
I saw him in the debates,
And he was wormy…
He wins the Iowa caucus with 26% of the vote.
Warren comes in third.
A socialist comes in second.
Oh, laud him if you will,
These educated voters voted for him
Because he’s Gay and has “Butt” in his name.
As, this is the qualities of a president we want.
Meanwhile, Trump is in office.
He’s looking better every day.
Whatever nonsense is happening,
I don’t think it’s him.
Rather, he said, “I respect all life,”
I hope he does, and stops what I fear is happening.
I petition my president,
But know I don’t want him in office.
I want Lizzy Warren in office;
Why?
Because she’s right for the country.
But with Trump,
Since its inevitable that if Buttigieg won
I would assume Americans would vote for Trump in a landslide,
I know the problems in America are ancient.
I don’t blame Trump for the problems…
I know the problems exist…
But, Mr. President, stop them.
Fulfill your promise,
Because I assure you it is happening.
But, I will vote for Elizabeth.
I will vote in the caucus,
I will use my right to do what every responsible American should.
Do I despise Trump?
No.
Do I truly believe what I’ve said?
Yes.
The reason why is because I have a good primary education.
I worry for this country because the qualifications to run it
Are to have “Butt” in your name, and be openly gay.
This is why…
Here is the whole list of why I’m angry.
You cannot make a living off of what you want.
You can, as a matter of course,
Make a living off of what very rich people are selling.
2. If you spend hours of labor doing something,
The United States says that such work will be rewarded.
But it is not.
3. The United States also says that Speech is Free.
Just today I was harassed
By people trying to trick me into believing it is March or April
Because I have said some inconvenient truths.
4. The Government gets away with murder
For no aims but its own.
It will arbitrarily kill, spy on, and investigate innocent people
For nothing they did wrong;
5. Simply, having an IQ of 157 is enough to get you on a Government watch list
And also being curious.
6. Christians laud the government like it’s the New Zion.
7. They defend it, they vote in officials who send us to war,
8. They scorn fiscal policies that would help the poor.
9. They, in all their gratitude, will kick homeless off of their stoops
10. Tell people they are not allowed to exercise their rights outside of their building,
11. They will call the police on people for saying Jesus in a different language,
12. They will exclude you when you are poor.
13. What’s more, Protestants hate the Catholics.
14. The Pope is wicked.
These things I cannot stand.
Protestants should love our Catholic Brethren
And the Pope should be elected based on his merit;
15. Not his ability to solicit converts through indulging in their sins.
16. I’m angry that we need minimum wages.
17. I am angry that work is all an American lives for
18. And they do not get to have off their holidays or weekends.
19. I am angry at the false conviction rate of the United States
20. That people can be perpetually investigated for nothing.
This is twenty things, and I could go on to 99 if I wanted to.
I’d be a hypocrite
If I said I did not say a swear word or two every week.
It is something I want finished.
It is a part of me I had under wraps
But has welled up in my soul recently
Because I allowed it to.
I said “S***” in a poem
And began, slowly, to say words.
That poem was about a genocide,
But rather than go back and change it…
For it is said…
What I will suggest every Christian do
Is not swear.
It is an ugly thing.
Every time I do it—
Since it is fresh on my mind—
There is an ugly welling up in me
And then a release with that dirty word.
We ought not allow such dirt well from our mouths
To come from our soul
And to be made apparent to someone else.
We are to have self control.
For every time I swear
It is like an ugly thing is welling inside of me…
An ugly, hideous, rotten thing.
And if I express it that one time
It will well in me twice again.
Hideous, ugly, rotten…
Even if I say “Faggot.”
Whatever word—
Define a cuss word, I shall try to do it—
Wells in the soul like a boiling pot of water
And whatever boils the water over,
Onto the burner, and makes a great mess
That is a cuss word.
If there is an ugly feeling in you
And it cannot be expressed except with a cuss word
That feeling is sin.
If it has to be expressed with cuss words,
Don’t—I am being a hypocrite,
But let me be one because I know what it is.
I feel it deep in my soul that every time I swear,
Say “Bitch,” “Fuck,” “Shit” or “Piss”,
I leave them naked for you,
Every time I say them, there is an ugly feeling.
One time I told a man, “Suck on your mother’s breasts.”
That was a cuss word.
Because it welled such an ugly feeling from my soul,
And every oath said, every imprecation,
Though even without intent,
Has the odor of that evil thought and feeling.
It is unclean, and unsavory speech.
We should, and do pray for me,
Cut it out of our hearts
And go to church
And read our Bible.
B. K. Neifert 