I've Had It With These

Today We Hear A Great Deal About Organizational Men, Mass Culture, Conformity, The Lonely Crowd, The Power Elite And Its Conspiracy Of Mediocrity. We Forget That The Very Volume Of This Criticism Is An Indication That Our Society Is Still Radically Pluralistic. Not Only Are There Plenty Of Exceptionalists Who Take Exception To The Stereotyping Of The Mass Culture But That Very String Of Epithets Comes From A Series Of Books That Have Been Recent Best-sellers, Symptoms Of A Popular, Living Tradition Of Dissent From Things As They Are.

Perhaps This Is What Really Happens In Life To Most Good Men. They Are Not Crucified. They Simply Pass Through Life And Then Die, And Their Passing Influences Just A Few People To Make Them Just A Little Happy.

The Mature Man Lives Quietly, Does Good Privately, Takes Responsibility For His Actions, Treats Others With Friendliness And Courtesy, Finds Mischief Boring And Avoids It. Without The Hidden Conspiracy Of Goodwill, Society Would Not Endure An Hour.

Now I Know Surely And Forever, However Much I Have Blotted Our Waking Love, Its Memory Is Still There. And I Know The Web, The Net, The Blind And Crippled Bird. For Then, For One Brief Instant It Was Not Blind, Nor Trapped, Not Crippled. For One Heart Beat The Heart Was Free And Moved Itself. O Love, I Who Am Lost And Damned With Words, Whose Words Are A Business And An Art, I Have No Words. These Words, This Poem, This Is All Confusion And Ignorance. But I Know That Coached By Your Sweet Heart, My Heart Beat One Free Beat And Sent Through All My Flesh The Blood Of Truth.

With My Own Group I Like To Keep It Loose. They Have To Counter Rather Than Go With Me. When They Stop I Like To Be Moving.