May Day 2014

By TheGameCat

Thu, 01 May 2014
  • 1596 reads
3 comments
 

Maybe there's a fire raging in the belly of this man
Maybe there's a soul yearning for the days of old Bealtaine
Before the feudal lord and master tied us to his land
No longer hunter gatherer but tithe born, taxed and damned

Maybe our great historians don't always tell the truth
Maybe the workers struggle in the seasons finds it roots
The hunter owes his thanks only to his arrows bolts
The consumer owes the banks his essence of the self

May day's no fertility dance
It's more a grim remembrance
That when we swapped our bows for hoes
We settled down in mortgaged homes.

Certificate U
Poem
Poetry by The GameCat
Western

Comments

Submitted by skinner_jennifer on

A great inspirational read here and I agree with those last two lines.

Jenny.

 

Submitted by TheGameCat on

:)

Ant, The GameCat, Smith
www.antsmith.net

Submitted by TheGameCat on

here's my May Day sentiments. Bit.ly/AntSmithMayDay

I have never trusted farmers nor farming. Being threatened by shot guns on the Pennines in my youth may have coloured my vision ('get orrf my laaand'), but from a philosophical perspective I have always been uneasy - nay, queasy when thinking of them (it took all my courage to kiss a farm girl when I was 13, and to this day I feel that horror anew whenever I have to handle fish, oddly). I find it hard to conceive the kind of mind that would impel a man to attempt to exert such control, such force of character, upon the earth itself. And to battle with the seasons. 

There is something deeply erroneous in the act of farming. 

But it seems so ancient, and fundamental an activity that I have become accustomed to believing myself mad for harbouring such thoughts. 

My enemy, my rational mind, laboured under the illusion that the decadent behaviours of the farming industry (it's poisoning of us, it's serial killer approach to animal husbandry) was a recent consequence of a capitalist system - one of many weeping cankerous sores of our modern world. 

But now a veil is lifted and it is clear to me that farming is rotten to the core, a disease that throws back to the dawn of modern times. 

What sent me thinking was the origins off May Day. The associated festival, with all of its bonfire leaping acrobatics, was the highlight of the year for the nomad. Whereas the farmer had cause to celebrate the spring and the autumn over the summer and the winter. 

So for a time we had two competing social organisations that were as far apart philosophically as it is possible to be. 

The nomadic hunter gatherers moving to the seasons, as hunting and foraging opportunities followed the arrivals of the rains and the waters. 

And the farmers investing great efforts into one spot, over generations, until it becomes to feel right that they should lay claim to the land. 

Bullshit. 

I never asked you to invest all that time and effort. Your choice. You knew when you did it that land is unclaimable. That a man can not own the earth beneath our feet. 

Farming starts with an immoral act, the imposition of ownership. Upon such a foundation, it can only behave abusively. It also distorts the natural controls on population size. Every other parasite is limited in numbers by the availability of hosts. Farming is to blame for the sheer number of people that the planet creaks under. 

The nomad versus the farmer. This is the core of the split that we face in society. This is the true struggle. It is possession, and only that, which divides us. 

There's so much more I could say. So I wrote a poem. 

Ant, The GameCat, Smith
www.antsmith.net