Spare the rod and spoil the child;
you've got to tame what grows up wild,
'cause nothing tends to be the way it should.
Control the symptoms, not the cause,
look past the gaping, fatal flaws ---
there's nothing left to do now, if you could.
It's not a sickness, this malaise,
but passing fancy, just a phase,
although you've got it bad, and that ain't good.
You're not so special or unique
that people listen when you speak;
you're just deliberately misunderstood.
The world will pass on to the meek
once kindness kills in a blue streak
and iron and steel revert to earth and wood.
In a great show, equality
will appear quite heroically
and take its rightful place where evil stood.
The lion will lie with the lamb,
those who don't care will give a damn,
and truth will conquer obvious falsehood.
But 'til that future's time is due,
you'd best beware, I'm telling you:
you'll be deliberately misunderstood.
It isn't that you make no sense;
There's always ample evidence,
statistics turning out the way they should.
Nor is it some great mystery ---
the world is what we let it be:
we tend to hide our light under a hood.
Because, some claim, there's no excuse
for letting things get wild and loose.
Much better if the cause of common good
is to reduce the question marks;
force you who doubt to swim with sharks ---
you'll be deliberately misunderstood.
And then, when you are tired and weak
from offering the other cheek,
a candidate for the next world's sainthood,
they'll turn you out to graze their fields,
so long as you increase the yield
and eat only the tares and not the good.
Because, they'll say, we have control,
all knowledge is within our hold,
we've always known exactly where we stood;
while you sought for some unseen truth
and spent a wild and fruitless youth
being deliberately misunderstood.
5 JAN 2007
There's a Bob Dylan song called "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go" from Blood on the Tracks (I think perhaps my favorite Dylan album, in terms of its poetics) that has a wonderful cadence to it. As an example: "Dragon clouds so high above / I've only known careless love / It's always hit me from below / This time around it's more correct / Right on target, so direct / Yer gonna make me lonesome when you go." (bobdylan.com). Thinking of that cadence, which employs the poetic device of repeating the last line with each stanza as its refrain, I came up with the rhythm of the line "to BE deliberateLY misunderSTOOD". And I started thinking about a jacket pin I had when I was in high school, that someone got me as a joke, which read "Misunderstood" --- as if I were advertising the fact as some great bonus (LOL). The rest, an amalgamation of pithy sayings, proverbs and other tired cliches woven into a tapestry of convincing bullshit that THEY are obviously trying to get US all to swill, and you've got hte makings of a pretty good song --- well, the makings of this one, anyway.
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