Love other human beings as you would love yourself. -Ho Chi Minh
Oh my gosh… I have so many half done entries. The world is accelerating at such a rate that my well thought out post are overwhelmed by the happenings in the world before I can post them. Days of thought and writing erased by madmen with guns, loose lips, and crazed political commentary…. you know what I mean.
So, I catch my breath. I discover a song I have never heard before by a beloved artist, and return to muse on the concepts of Revolutionary Love. It takes many forms, and it has been wrongly slandered by some… but I am not talking about picking up arms, but changing consciousness and performing correct action.
I am talking about the love which motivates people to get up off their duff, and devote themselves to a cause that they will never see completed, to a task that offers no immediate award, to the task that may imperil you, but benefit unknown others. Revolutionary Love is found in dishwashers, labourers, poets, mothers, fathers – Lovers. I am talking about the act of putting your shoulders to the wheel and help move the unmovable for those not yet born, that we’ll never know.
We are in that precious now, and life is ours to share. Not only with those with us know, but those to come. Not just human, but all of life. Revolutionary Love for shaping the world to come, for everyone and everything.
We have been given the gift to live in interesting times. Shall we shiver in fear? Shall we hesitate? I say no, we shall proceed together hand in hand in Love with each other and the bright and shining world…. we can be that difference that finally shifts the wheel of the juggernaut.
Much Love,
Gwyllm
On The Menu:
Emma Goldman Quotes
Patti Smith – Gung Ho
Ho Chi Minh- Poems From Prison
Patti Smith – Glitter In Their Eyes
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Emma Goldman Quotes:
All claims of education notwithstanding, the pupil will accept only that which his mind craves.
Anarchism is the great liberator of man from the phantoms that have held him captive; it is the arbiter and pacifier of the two forces for individual and social harmony.
Before we can forgive one another, we have to understand one another.
Crime is naught but misdirected energy.
Direct action is the logical, consistent method of Anarchism.
Every daring attempt to make a great change in existing conditions, every lofty vision of new possibilities for the human race, has been labeled Utopian.
Free love? as if love is anything but free. Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love.
Heaven must be an awfully dull place if the poor in spirit live there.
I’d rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck.
Idealists are foolish enough to throw caution to the winds. They have advanced mankind and have enriched the world.
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Patti Smith – Gung Ho
On a field of red one gold star
Raised above his head
Raised above his head
He was not like any other
He was just like any other
And the song they bled
Was a hymn to him
Awake my little one
The seed of revolution
Sewn in the sleeve
Of cloth humbly worn
Where others are adorned
Above the northern plain
The great birds fly
With great wings
Over the paddy fields
And the people kneel
And the men they toil
Yet not for their own
And the children are hungry
And the wheel groans
There before a grass hut
A young boy stood
His mother lay dead
His sisters cried for bread
And within his young heart
The seed of revolution sewn
In cloth humbly worn
While others are adorned
And he grew into a man
Not like any other
Just like any other
One small man
A beard the color of rice
A face the color of tea
Who shared the misery
Of other men in chains
With shackles on his feet
Escaped the guillotine
Who fought against
Colonialism imperialism
Who remained awake
While others slept
Who penned like Jefferson
Let independence ring
And the cart of justice turns
Slow and bitterly
And the people were crying
Plant that seed that seed
And they crawled on their bellies
Beneath the giant beast
And filled the carts with bodies
Where once had been their crops
And the great birds swarm
Spread their wings overhead
And his mother dead
And the typhoons and the rain
The jungles in flames
And the orange sun
None could be more beautiful
Than Vietnam
Nothing was more beautiful
Than Vietnam
And his heart stopped beating
And the wheel kept turning
And the words he bled
Were a hymn to them
I have served the whole people
I have served my whole country
And as I leave this world
May you suffer union
And my great affection
Limitless as sky
Filled with golden stars
The question is raised
Raised above his head
Was he of his word
Was he a good man
For his image fills the southern heart
With none but bitterness
And the people keep crying
And the men keep dying
And it’s so beautiful
So beautiful
Give me one more turn
Give me one more turn
One more turn of the wheel
One more revolution
One more turn of the wheel
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Ho Chi Minh- Poems From Prison
– Translated by Kenneth Rexroth
A COMRADES PAPER BLANKET
New books, old books,
the leaves all piled together.
A paper blanket
is better than no blanket.
You who sleep like princes,
sheltered from the cold,
Do you know how many men in prison
cannot sleep all night?
–
AUTUMN NIGHT
Before the gate, a guard
with a rifle on his shoulder.
In the sky, the moon flees
through clouds.
Swarming bed bugs,
like black army tanks in the night.
Squadrons of mosquitoes,
like waves of attacking planes.
I think of my homeland.
I dream I can fly far away.
I dream I wander trapped
in webs of sorrow.
A year has come to an end here.
What crime did I commit?
In tears I write
another prison poem.
–
CLEAR MORNING
The morning sun
shines over the prison wall,
And drives away the shadows
and miasma of hopelessness.
A life-giving breeze
blows across the earth.
A hundred imprisoned faces
smile once more.
–
COLD NIGHT
Autumn night.
No mattress. No covers.
No sleep. Body and legs
huddle up and cramp.
The moon shines
on the frost-covered banana leaves.
Beyond my bars
the Great Bear swings on the Pole.
–
GOOD DAYS COMING
Everything changes, the wheel
of the law turns without pause.
After the rain, good weather.
In the wink of an eye
The universe throws off
its muddy cloths.
For ten thousand miles
the landscape
Spreads out like
a beautiful brocade.
Gentle sunshine.
Light breezes. Smiling flowers,
Hang in the trees, amongst the
sparkling leaves,
All the birds sing at once.
Men and animals rise up reborn.
What could be more natural?
After sorrow comes happiness.
–
And one after being released from prison.
FREE, I WALK ON THE MOUNTAIN
AND ENJOY THE VIEW
Mountains. Clouds.
More mountains. More clouds.
Far below a river gleams,
bright and unspotted.
Alone, with beating heart,
I walk on the Western Range,
And gaze far off towards the South
and think of my comrades.
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“If I can’t dance – I don’t want to be part of your revolution” – Emma Goldman
Patti Smith – Glitter In Their Eyes