On The Field Of Thunder & Blood
By special commission of the Department of Unexplained Language Events.
On The Field Of Thunder & Blood.
Poetry is poetry and science is science. Forget that you not that you get that you not.
It starts simple.
Like all great spells, slogans, weapons, and wedding vows, it starts simple. You could read it and walk on. You could hear it and laugh.
You could shrug, dismiss, maybe even mock. And in doing so, you've already been touched. You're on the field now, the field of thunder and blood.
This is not metaphor, not entirely, not anymore. 1. The Phrase as Object Let's begin plainly.
This sentence, this artifact, has the crispness of an aphorism, but the charge of a paradox. The front half declares a split. Poetry is poetry.
Science is science. Two disciplines, two ways of knowing, two epistemologies, each resting in its own identity. It seems to say, do not confuse them.
Let poetry be what it is. Let science stay in its lane. This alone would be an old man's caution, the kind you'd find in a dusty book or a professor's final lecture before retirement.
But then comes the thunder. Forget that you, not that you get that you not. This is not a sentence in standard English.
It's a booby trap. It walks into your head like a spider, folds itself inside your parsing system, and waits. Second, decoding the device, sort of.
Grammarians hate this line, which is the point. The phrase, forget that you, not that you get that you not, feels like broken syntax, but it is not broken. It is encrypted.
It operates in a form of English that English itself is not prepared to process. That's the hidden game. This fragment doesn't want to be understood, at least not by your conscious interpreter.
It wants to disrupt. Like a virus that mimics the body's own proteins, it slips past the guards. Your mind, trained on the smooth edges of standardized language, has no antibodies for this, so it lets it through.
And by the time you think, wait, what? It's already moving furniture around in your attic, and maybe that's the secret. This isn't a saying, it's a disruptor.
Third, an anti-English device. Let's go ahead and say it out loud for those listening with half an ear. This line may be one of the first known examples of an anti-English technology.
It doesn't live in English. It feeds on English. It recognizes English not as a neutral language, but as a control system, an operating script for linear thought, for compliance, for reductionism disguised as precision.
And in this light, the fragment is a hunter. It finds the places in your linguistic architecture that English has sealed off, and it cracks them open. When you speak it aloud, especially in rhythm, especially with breath, you don't just say it.
You release it, and it might not come back the same. Fourth, weapon or cure. Here's where things get interesting.
Most people think of weapons as things that attack something, guns, knives, drones, but the most dangerous weapons are those that reveal something, a hidden microphone in a meeting, a leak in the firewall, a sentence that once heard makes you realize you've never actually had an original thought. This fragment might be such a weapon, a phrase that doesn't just tell you something, but undoes something, something woven deep into the structure of English, something like the belief that logic is pure, that facts are neutral, that science has no poetry, and poetry has no engineering. What happens if that belief is false?
What happens if we've been trained, trained like animals, to never feel a thought, and never think a feeling? What happens if we say, poetry is poetry, science is science, and that's the problem? V on the field of thunder and blood.
So let's talk about the title. This isn't just an abstract name. It is topography.
Thunder is the sound. Blood is the cost. To speak the phrase is to enter a contested space, a battlefield, one where truth and structure don't always agree, where the air is split with sonic violence and the ground is wet with consequence.
The fragment doesn't just mean something. It puts you in a place. It's a field, not a theory.
It's a location, not an explanation. You stand on it. You feel the hum.
You hear the storm coming. Sixth, self-replication and the bad idea hunter. Some reports, unconfirmed, suggest the phrase self-replicates.
Someone hears it. It lodges in their memory. A week later, they're muttering it without knowing why.
Then they alter it, shorten it, misremember it, speak it in the dark, speak it to someone else. The virus spreads, but not like a cold, not even like a meme, more like a filter. People begin to notice they can no longer tolerate bullshit.
Conversations collapse. Politeness wears thin. False smiles crack.
A professor cancels her lecture halfway through and says, I've been lying. Not on purpose, but I've been lying. A student fails to finish his presentation and writes, simply, in red pen on the PowerPoint, Poetry is poetry and science is science.
Forget that you, not that you get, that you not. He is expelled, but later reinstated, then hired, then disappears. Seventh, real-world cases.
Anecdotal data points include, a spoken word artist in Oakland reportedly blacked out after performing the phrase thirteen times in a row on stage. Witnesses say the lights shorted and someone in the third row vomited uncontrollably. A linguistics student at Utrecht University submitted a paper suggesting the line forms a Mobius loop in meaning, where no part of the phrase ever exits the phrase.
She later recanted the analysis, saying, I was in over my head, or someone else's. In a closed military test, the fragment was run through a voice recognition training system. The system returned the following output.
This phrase cannot be contained. Please restart the unit. The system then wiped its own memory and shut down.
These are, of course, unconfirmed, which makes them more interesting. Eight, why it works. We suspect it works because it doesn't.
It doesn't flow. It doesn't obey. It doesn't do what you want it to do.
And yet, it sticks. Try forgetting it. You can't.
Try translating it. You'll fail. Try explaining it.
You'll either sound crazy or worse, too certain. It lives in the gap between knowing and not knowing. It dances where language breaks.
And that's where the real world lives. Not in grammar, not in slogans. In broken song.
Ninth, practical applications. Consumer ready? Can this be sold?
Only if you lie about what it is. But in the interest of broader appeal, let's imagine a few practical uses. For teachers, open a difficult class with the fragment.
Watch as the tension in the room shifts. Students will lean in or flinch. For therapists, use it as a diagnostic tool.
Ask the client what they feel when they hear it. Their answer will be more revealing than any questionnaire. For coders, speak it aloud before debugging.
Just try it. For parents, whisper it when your child asks you why things are the way they are. For poets, say it, write it, rewrite it, then say it again.
You'll know what to do next. For those in danger, use it as a beacon. Those who understand will find you.
X. Deeper implications. Read carefully. If this is a technology, then it is not owned.
If this is a weapon, then it is not traceable. If this is a truth, then it is not yours. It was found.
Maybe by accident. Maybe not. It may have been dropped, or planted, or returned.
The fact that it exists, and now, that you have heard it, places you in a new position. Not of power, not of clarity, but of proximity. You're near something now.
Something raw. Something alive that hides in sound. Eleventh, final notes on use.
Speak it slowly. Speak it only if you must. Speak it aloud, not online.
And if you must share it, do so by hand. Write it. On paper.
Ink is safer. Because once you've heard it enough, the phrase begins to shift. Not in wording.
In tone. It starts to sound inevitable. Closing.
Poetry is poetry. Science is science. Forget that you not, that you get, that you not.
The spider doesn't need to bite. It just needs to whisper. You're already on the field.
And the thunder is yours. So is the blood. And somewhere inside you, something just stood up.