Veterans In Memoriam

 On the very first Vietnam draft  lottery, my number came up 349. So I was not drafted. But many of my generation did go to that war and serve our country. My neighborhood buddy Johnny joined and went. He was one of the lucky soldiers who didn’t have to make their return in a coffin. 

But 282,000 Americans were killed there.  On this Memorial Day, we honor them.

I published my novel, King of Soul, in 2017. It’s a story about what happened to our nation during that war. In honor of those dead soldiers and other personnel who did not make it back home, here’s a snippet from chapter 13. The setting is a battlefield in Vietnam, where we hear where we find what they were up against, and we hear:

       The sound of a chopper.

       Craig grabbed the radio and dashed to the center of the LZ. He heard a human voice coming out of the radio, “. . .was that you, Black Box Two-Niner?” 

        He saw the helicopter. Craig waved his arms like there was no tomorrow. 

        “Is it a hot LZ?” the voice asked in crackling, fucking miraculous splendor.

        “It’s pretty damn warm.”

        “Get ready,” came the reply.

        The H-34 dropped out of sight beyond a hill. A few eternal moments later, the big lovable green insect came a-flyin’, swooping down low over the mountain of the shadow of death. MARINES was painted on its tail. The blessed bird flared and hovered above those stumps that had earlier been trees.  And then there he —the  United States by-God Marine leaped out while his gunner buddy on the chopper kept up the fire cover. Green tracers whizzed all over the damned place, some of them whacking the skin and the glass of the chopper. 

         Craig was the last of the walking dead nine soldiers to get aboard. And so they were able—by  the grace of God and the fierce determination of them US by-God Marines—able to hover the hell out of there. And we were grateful. But we didn’t know it yet, because we could never really know, never truly understand nor appreciate,  all that he and his men had done that day: all the hell and high ordnance they had eluded that day, and just how perilously close that day was to being the big chill for them, so damned close to requiring of them their last full measure of devotion. And the appreciation that would later be  shown to them was cast into the shadow of a gray granite wall in Washington DC, but that was to come much later. 

In my generation, we have a unique memory that recalls not only the tragedy of that war and the grief of our friends and family members whose friends, sons and daughters, never returned.  We also pause in gratitude to those Americans—especially the soldiers— who died in all the wars and battles that have ever been fought on behalf of assuring the peace and safety of our United States of America.

This memorial day, I also remember and appreciate those law enforcement officers who were overwhelmed to the point of death in their defence of our Capitol on January 6, 2021:

Brian Sicknick and Howard Liebengood of the Capitol Police.

Jeffrey Smith and Kyle Defreytag of the DCMetro Police

Gunther Hashida, with Emergency ResponseTeam

Ashli Babbitt, USAF veteran

King of Soul

The Love Song of J. Walking GoofRock

 This poem is posted with appreciation, and apologies, to T.S. Eliot.

 

Let us flee then, by and bye

when the worldweb is spread out for you and I

like civility anesthified inside a screen.

Let us glow, through webbish wicked wires

with muttering retreats

to restless nights of tickee-tack deceits

through cultural deserts and political hells,

sites that blather with an overworked controversy

of insidious intent

to lead us through some worn-out argument.

Oh, but don’t ask “What is it?”

Let us go and make our visit.

 

In the Net the people come and go

talking of what they think they know.

 

The bizzy buzz that rubs its pixels into our screening dreams,

the fizzy fuzz that subs its AI nose into our texty schemes

slips its nipples into the dark spaces of our memes.

In the Web the people come and go

showing what they should not show,

Tweetting what they do not know

trivializing all the world that once we knew

before it got run over by a speeding few.

In the Web the people come and go

showing what they should not show,

Tweetting what they do not know

trivializing all the world that once we knew

before it got run over by a speeding few.

Then noticing it’s become a flightless flight;

we give  up the fight?

but that doesn’t make it right.

Oh well

What the hell

say those denizens who come and go

doing what they do not know

until the traffic takes its toll;

then some go part and some go hole.

In the Web the people come and go

showing what they should not show,

Tweetting what they do not know

trivializing all the world that once we knew

before it got run over by a speeding few.

Glass Chimera

World Web Beach

 One hundred and fifty-six years ago, the British poet Matthew Arnold composed a profound poem, Dover Beach. Since that night  of his musing on the English Channel, while he pondered, wistfully, the pounding of  moonlit surf upon the  sands beneath Albion's ghostly white cliffs, the poem has been read and pondered by thousands, yeah millions, of poetic souls.

I am one of them. 

Matthew's musing has inspired me on many reading occasions, over, lo, these many years of my time on this earth. This afternoon I took the liberty of poetic license  to expound upon Matthew's original inspiration by composing  a tome of my own, reflecting upon the world as it is now, in 2023. I hope you don't mind my borrowing from the long-dead poet, to compose a few contemporary verses augmenting his original vision. . . and extending it to the world as we experience it now. This represents a kind of borrowing that poets have been doing for many centuries, even millennia of time.

The Web is mad tonight.

The hype is full, the moods’ unfair

Upon our minds, in the worldwide fright.

Glee is gone; the broken barricades unmanned.

Blunderous ballast, out in the festering froth.

Come out of it; sweet is the salt-sea air!

Away, away from the wired strands that fray

Where the Web wrings our love-lost time.

Listen! we hear the swishing song

Of waves which the seas draw out, and fling back

As they return, upon this glistening strand.

They begin, and cease, and begin again, out here . . .

While inside, the worldwide web writhes to bring

The latest shriek of madness in.

 

John of old, long ago

foresaw this in the Patmos, and it brought

into his spirit the turbid ebb and flow

of human destiny; we

discern,  in the swish, a similar vision

As he was seeing it o’er that distant Aegean Sea.

The Sea of Faith 

Was once, too, at the full, all across our earthen shores

Unrolling like His rolls of scroll unfurled.

But now I only hear

His burdensome long, prophetic roar

Retreating, from the Net

Far from the mad’ning Cloud, o’er the vast froths of fear

And naked urls of the world.

 

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

Strung out between us like a web of dreams,

So various, so scatterous, so desperate

Hath really neither sense, nor joy, nor faith, 

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for hope

And we are here, in some spy-strung scope

Are swept with urgent signals of struggle and flight

Where strung-out denizens surf by night.

RevWebRowland

The Cross and the Crown

 Many and many a year ago in a kingdom across the sea

My King was raised with  thorny crown on a cross at Calvary.

His miracle resurrecting life changed our course of history.

Then many and many a year went by until nine-seventy-three AD,

when Edgar was anointed king by Archbishop’s ceremony. 

Many and many a king was crowned through English history;

Right up to now with Charles’ anointing in twenty-twenty-three.

Now I’m a yank in America; we don’t comprehend the monarchy.

I do see that Charles’ is crowned by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

So there’s some connection there with the King at Calvary.

Now the world still turns by God’s redemptive authority.

But I wonder if King Charles will take his anointing seriously.

Or is his high position now just a power move for royal authority?

Now as many and many a year pass by in that kingdom on the sea,

May God save King Charles and establish his authority,

as Charles himself doth take seriously Our Lord’s divinity.

Smoke

Coronation 1937, 2023

 On May 12, 1937, King Charles' grandfather, GeorgeV, was crowned King of Britain. Here's a glimpse into the Times of London special Coronation edition, May 20, 1937:

His Coronation day in London was the setting for my third novel, Smoke, published in 2014. Here's a description, from an American perspective, of what was happening on the streets of London that day, Coronation Day, May 12, 1937.

 Philip was hurrying to finish a business report. As soon as the monthly was done, he would hit the street hoping to find a suitable place in the crowd to get a glimpse of the new King of England, whose crowning would be today.

     For the love of a woman can change the course of the world. As Helen's face had launched a thousand Greek ships, so the affections of an American divorcée had turned the tide of royal authority from one brother to another. From one duke to another. Made ostensibly of sterner, though stammering, stuff than his older liege, Albert--soon to be called George VI--would, in only a few short hours ascend those few hallowed steps in Westminster to sit upon the throne of Edward, James, Henry and all those other regents who had ever commanded the armies or fleets of British empire.

     The American, Philip Morrow, whose typewriter rang its final return as he completed his report, anticipated the mounting pageantry with distant, though wondrous, curiosity.  He stood up, walked over to the open window, and surveyed the stream of English yoredom  migrating south on Tottenham Court Road toward Trafalgar and beyond where the royal procession would pass in a few hours. His cigarette had died; he flipped its butt in the ever-present ashtray on the window sill.

     The people of England were expectant, exultant. No mean Mr. Mustard here. No, they were ready to receive a new king, now that the whole affair of Edward's abdication had resolved itself into the ashtray of history. And all the more so, since the role of the regents was now largely ceremonial, having little effectual responsibility except to maintain that proverbial stiff upper lip with a vigilant eye upon the horizon where an eternal sun was perpetually setting, but never, of course, on the British Empire. God save the King, but it would be Mr. Baldwin, or Mr. Chamberlain,  Mr. Churchill, or some such privileged commoner who would ultimately compel English hearts and guts to bear sacrificial defense of their storied shores.

     Only a hundred and fifty-odd years ago, Philip's yankee forebears had fired the shot so-dubbed “shot heard ‘round the world.” Upstart revolutionists in that hotbed of rebellion, Massachusetts, had sparked a powder keg of free-thinking independence that had since set the whole of civilization ablaze with yearnings for liberty. But not here, no, not here in the realm, in the Albion of old. No, the very Magna Carta that had implanted, in former times, plucky zeal in the hearts of Englishmen--the very document--languished in a glass case at the British Library just a few miles from here. Who knew? These limeys were streaming like lemmings to a Dover cliff, like vassals to a gilt coronation, like white on rice. How many of them, this very hour, paraded right by the sacrosanct text unaware of the incendiary ideas embalmed within, in inky arcanity? How many?

For the 2023 version of Coronation, turn on the telly or the tube or whatever network floats your boat, this Saturday, May 6, 2023.

 

We the Yanks wish the King well, and wish upon him a long reign, perhaps even as long as his mother's was. As God Saves the King, his reign will not end as Charles' I did in 1649. Providentially, Charles III reign will, we hope span even longer than Charles II's did, from 1649-1651 and then 1660-1685, as long as some roundhead trumpian troublemaker doesn't come along blowing his treason horn.

And of course we are hoping Charles and Camilla can make amends with Harry and Meghan.

Smoke