Love the quick profit, the annual raise,<br />vacation with pay. Want more<br />of everything ready-made. Be afraid<br />to know your neighbors and to die.<br /><br />And you will have a window in your head.<br />Not even your future will be a mystery<br />any more. Your mind will be punched in a card<br />and shut away in a little drawer.<br /><br />When they want you to buy something<br />they will call you. When they want you<br />to die for profit they will let you know.<br />So, friends, every day do something<br />that won’t compute. Love the Lord.<br />Love the world. Work for nothing.<br />Take all that you have and be poor.<br />Love someone who does not deserve it.<br /><br />Denounce the government and embrace<br />the flag. Hope to live in that free<br />republic for which it stands.<br />Give your approval to all you cannot<br />understand. Praise ignorance, for what man<br />has not encountered he has not destroyed.<br /><br />Ask the questions that have no answers.<br />Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.<br />Say that your main crop is the forest<br />that you did not plant,<br />that you will not live to harvest.<br /><br />Say that the leaves are harvested<br />when they have rotted into the mold.<br />Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.<br />Put your faith in the two inches of humus<br />that will build under the trees<br />every thousand years.<br /><br />Listen to carrion — put your ear<br />close, and hear the faint chattering<br />of the songs that are to come.<br />Expect the end of the world. Laugh.<br />Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful<br />though you have considered all the facts.<br />So long as women do not go cheap<br />for power, please women more than men.<br /><br />Ask yourself: Will this satisfy<br />a woman satisfied to bear a child?<br />Will this disturb the sleep<br />of a woman near to giving birth?<br /><br />Go with your love to the fields.<br />Lie down in the shade. Rest your head<br />in her lap. Swear allegiance<br />to what is nighest your thoughts.<br /><br />As soon as the generals and the politicos<br />can predict the motions of your mind,<br />lose it. Leave it as a sign<br />to mark the false trail, the way<br />you didn’t go.<br /><br />Be like the fox<br />who makes more tracks than necessary,<br />some in the wrong direction.<br />Practice resurrection.