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

Boston Marathon Massacre Bounce

Crime don’t pay in Boston. These people love their city; they love their traditions. They love their marathon. They love their survivors.They even love the US citizens who did not survive.

The people of Boston and other Marathon visitors were the key to solving the crime that took place at the Marathon finish line in 2013. Three days after that explosive disaster, the FBI and the Boston Police asked Marathon witnesses to send snapshots and video that had been captured at the moments before and during those  two murderous acts of terror.

By viewing all those pics and videos, our Law Enforcement officials were able to ascertain the identity of the criminals who had set up their two acts of lethal terrorism.

And we do mean “terrorism.” If you ever meet a person who was there in April of 2013 on Boylston Street in Boston, at those two explosive moments, they will attest that they now know, from experience, what that infamous, dreaded thing called “terror” is. 

Terror is no walk in the Park, although the Boston Common is a park nearby where many Marathoners and observers traditionally unwind after the big event.

But in 2013, there was no joyful gathering of runners and observers in Boston Common as the Boston Marathon concluded. Instead, there was, literally, a Terror-driven sudden dispersal of everyone immediately after the bombing.

Post-terror, our Law guys and gals wasted no time in working together to identify the bombers and apprehend them.

The Boston Police, the FBI, ATF, CIA and several other agencies worked together.

One observer, Jeff Bauman, lost both his legs in the detonation. Furthermore, Jeff’s traumatic experience was  profoundly intensified because he actually saw the bomber drop a fully-loaded backpack in the spot where it exploded moments later. According to Wikipedia, Jeff later gave a detailed description of the suspects.

Our law enforcement guys got right on it, identified the Tsarnaev brothers and put out an APB.

The FBI released images of the Tsarnaev brothers three days later, asking for help from the public to help in identifying and apprehending the bombers.

Sure enough, the cooperative efforts of our Law Enforcement officers and an attentive citizenry culminated in a successful manhunt. But Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were not easily apprehended .

The two young Kyrgyzstani immigrants made a desperate getaway. 

But thanks to the cooperation of citizens and Law Enforcement officers, their frantic getaway lasted only 101 hours. 

In those last hours of high-speed getaway, one brother ran over the other brother while desperately evading the police in darkness in nearby Watertown, across the Charles River from Boston.

But Dzhokhar Tzarnaev’s ill-fated runaway ended, alas, when Boston’s well-trained assailants apprehended him hiding in a tarp-covered boat.

Dzhokhar’s anti-heroic act of terrorizing destruction ended in a suburban driveway, of all American places. What a way to go—hiding in the dark in a boat that won’t float. 

The lesson of the 2013 Marathon is: Don’t mess with Boston! These people have been defining American freedom since the King’s soldiers tried to stop them in 1770.

Furthermore, this is no time to collapse in the marathon of  our American nationhood. Be inspired by the resilience and determination of those Bostonians! Appropriate their resolute resistance as we strive to defeat the trumpian magamaniacs who conspire to destroy our Constitutional Republic!

Glass half-Full 

SayJFK

 In his masterpiece song about the latter half of the 20th century, Billy Joel concluded his sixth verse with a reference to President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. 

We Didn't Start the Fire

In a dramatic crescendo, Billy finished that verse about the early 1960's with this line:

"JFK blown away: What else do I have to say?"

For those of us Americans who were alive and aware in 1963, Billy's profound question stands completely understood even though he offers no explanation. Our President's assassination on November 22, 1963 is one of those moments where we all remember where we were when we heard the news. .  . like how we remember where we were on September 11, 2001.

Today, April 27, 2023, I was reminded of President Kennedy while I was strolling along the Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This memorial triggered the remembrance of a Statesman whose Presidency was a profile in courage, a memorable landmark in our American history.

These words of President Kennedy are still a timely message today:

Yes, my fellow Americans, the question is still as profound now as it was in 1963, when Kennedy posed the question only five months before he was gunned down: Are we willing to treat every one our fellow-Americans the way we ourselves want to be treated?

This was JFK's timely rephrasing of the message that Jesus spoke long ago: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

That high standard of compassion is indeed a principle with which many wise men and women have challenged all mankind throughout the ages of history.

Don't forget it. Try to live it if you can. We are all of us, when you get right down to it, to be held accountable for how we live out the meaning of that golden rule.

King of Soul

Gone Done

 Gone, gone, the lifetime done

oh no, not done yet

but this one life, yes, this one

done getting what we can get.

 

Done doing what we can do

oh but there’s something yet

‘though the days be few

just so they won’t forget

 

Surely there’s a lesson or two

for the kids yet to come along

from boomers with words, a few

or just an ole star-crossed song

 

There’s wisdom in here somewhere

surely, the testimony of a generation

leaving  legacy of love and care

more real than imagination

 

Must be some kind of lesson here

behind confusion’s whirlwind storm

beyond sentiment’s eternal tear

to disrupt this same ole same ole norm

 

Where’s the purpose in day to day

What’s to redeem our futility

Peace and Love and Live for today?

Still seeking out profundity!

 

But where profundity dwells

I can’t tell.

What the hell?

There’s only one who hung in hell

then lived to tell.

I’m going with Him.

Glass half-Full