The Hurly Burly Swirl

 Oh ye foolish Republicans, who hath bewitched you? 

(as if I didn’t know) Oh ye blarney-blinded GOPpers,

How is it you fell for such whoppers?

How is that yon golden scarecrow descended 

from his dark towers; the Elector count was ended

when he clicked his heels and tweeted magic drivel 

to signal his insurrectionary swivel

to signal when the  hurlyburly’s to be done

and when the counting’s lost and won . . .  

when fair’s made foul and foul’s made fair 

through the Elliptical and Dome’d air.

“Stand back; stand by” spoke the Jester in his maga-dare, 

when his dogged whistle sailed through fogg’d air;

then maga magic spoke foul to fair

and dogged drivel filled Ellipse air. 

’T’was then the hurlyburly ’t’was done

’t’was then when the battle lost was won.

or so they thought;

’t’was them who had been bought!

And as if the dirty business . . . t’were not enough, 

to secure the  dirty duty stuff

Now it turns out that behind the scenes

Lawyers do dream up immunity dreams

to cloak the hurly burly in dark words

of jingle-jangle and legal turds

in jibber-jabber of legalese

lost in an alito sneeze

to find the battle lost as won:

so what was done is then undone 

as the Jester had said

before our Rule of Law was dead

Then the daily caller sent out her call

to let the the crows know one and all:

Now’s the time for maga fun!

While the hurly burly’s being done. 

Summon crows; call them all.

Immunity’s the call! 

Smoke

Recalling Redemption

    Childhood memories of Mississippi in the 1950’s provide historical context for my story, early education wrapped in Catholic school memories, although that deep postwar South was a beehive of Protestant buzzing. . . then a move to Louisiana layered my childhood experience into a ‘Cajun’ French gumbo dominated by Catholicism and high school named “Redemptorist.”

    Today, at age 72, I am pondering that concept, “redemption”, which is layered into my post-LSU season of sales in Florida, a brief jail sentence there and ultimately a trek to the promised land in lofty Appalachian wonderland, Asheville, Aspen of the East.  My elevated worldview was intensified there, including a failed attempt to start a newspaper, the purpose of which was to block the severing of a mountain so that a road could go through.  But have no fear. An unexpected Nashville opportunity yielded a serendipity album of original music: 

    By 'n by, disillusionment and a failing marriage compelled me to hit the road, Austin bound. But that musical quest propelled me to a crossroads and a road less traveled—Waco, where i had a pentacostal encounter with people who were serving the King of Kings. . . changing my course, my values, my priorities, my path through life. Who’d have thunk it? 

Then . . . a momentary rambling around the Rockies for week or two, stopping along the road at some point to compose a song on my guitar, “Follow,” which you can hear at  http://www.careyrowland.com  

After a while, I journeyed into the decision to return to Asheville, where I rounded up some friends and recorded a second album. 

    Funny thing happened on the way to the Kingdom of God, brutha Bo’b caught the train to heaven at about that same time; he did a vinyl which included an intense gospel message, including the most basic gospel message of all: “He’ll replace wrong with right!” 

Years later, in the domestic haven of love, marriage and raising three young’uns, I turned, having left the vinyl circular behind, to writing books. So far, in this life, I’ve managed to publish four volumes that illuminate an historical view of this world:  Glass half-Full, Glass Chimera, Smoke, King of Soul, which you can read snippets of at   http://www.careyrowland.com  

Lastly, I will mention that that last novel, King of Soul, (Thank God for Jeff Bezos and Amazon KDP) is a story about what happened to our nation during the war in Vietnam.  

Sands of Time

 Watch these lines of rhyme

Slip through the sands of Time.

Washington was father of our nation

Lincoln gave birth to Emancipation

When Roosevelt saw the Crash of ’29,

Hope was sown in New Deal time. 

After Europe torn by nazi scourge

Eisenhower silenced world war dirge.

“50’s found Ike as President

Elvis as chief resident

As Abe had gone to Gettysburg

Jack went to unwall Berlin urge

for peace, almost seen 

like Martin, with his Dream

Walk hand in hand

and together we’ll stand

on a new threshold.

But We gotta be bold. 

But. . . but . . .

But what?

But Kennedy in Dallas slain

Jackie cloaked in bloody stain

Kronkite takes off his glasses

As smoke veils o’er knoll of grasses?

But hey life goes on. That’s what!

I feel it in my gut.

What’s done is done.

But who had the gun?

Fugedaboudit.

Life is good; don’t doubt it. 

What’s gone is gone.

Carry on.

Love is coming. 

The beat goes on. 

Drum keeps on drumming.

You think so?

I know. I know!

Life is good, y’all. 

Let’s go to the mall.

Yeah I say unto thee

All Americans got to be Free!

I mean Martin glimpsed the Promised Land,

But taken down by trigger’d hand!

Still yet we build our American heaven.

But where were you on 911?

Don’t remind me. 

Don’t you see?

We gotta let it slip through the sands of time!

cuz despair ain’t worth a dime. 

And I told him that!

As Amos, to Andy, had said.

And we ain’t dead!

Yet.

Glass half-Full

Gun Power Done Done

 When Death Gun Be Done 

Before anything could be done

Fate foisted foolishness

before anybody could run.

History wrote a story

with the firing of that gun.

Royals lost their grip

With Sarajevo stun 

Krauts launched at Marne

Reason then undone.

Euros lost their Reason

with the firing of that gun.

Four years in trench

beneath the fury of the gun.

Stuck in Flanders mud

Nothing could be done.

’Til armistice stumbled in

Wnen guns were undone. 

Then all is well for awhile

Till hell again did come

Through upstart corporal ire

And peace again undone

Cuz devil went down to Guernica

Looking for luftwaffe fun

Drag’d whole damn world

Again by tyranny of the gun.

‘Cuz bombs are just a glorified

Flinging of the airborne gun

To mangle a fragile peace 

the peace of Versailles undone.

Reich demons running wild

hoisting death ton by ton

to obliterate a Euro peace

once again undone.

But in that second war

with holocaustal gun

zyclon be in noxious death

People of the Book to be undone 

Every demon born in hell

with the power of the gun

Until yanks crossed the Rhine

To rip that reich undone

with eastern fire from Ruskie Joe

But if Joe had that far come

He shooda learned

From what Ike and Bulldog had done

Yeah uncle Joe shoulda known

that power of fist and hammer and gun

as Ike and Harry had spoken

that tyranny of terror, fist and gun

even tyranny of stalag/gulag

must some day be undone!

Later, after PT 109 time

Jack spoke in Berlin, let the world come 

“Let them come to Berlin”

See what the Ruskies had done

Meanwhile back at the Ranch

Cowboy called for wall to be undone

But it didn’t happen until Gorbachev

with Glastnov thaw did come.

Now I don’t know I been told

shit that’s done can be undone

and in heaven streets are gold

Yeah, son, this world will be undone. 

When the One who conquered death

When He again doth come!

After death is dead

What’s done is done.

No more power of the gun. 

And I told him that.

Glass half-Full

Revisiting Gettysburg

Two hundred and forty-eight years ago, our founders brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all Americans are born equally.

Now we are engaged in a ridiculous cultural war, testing whether this nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. 

We are a met online in a gritty political battle, testing whether this nation, or any nation so convulsed, and so dessicated, can endure the slings and arrows of outrageous insurrection. We are strung online in a great webwide net of trolling treachery and foxy boxing contention. 

We have come to re-dedicate a portion of that nation, as a vital meeting-place for those who still commit their lives, that our nation might endure beyond the slings and arrows of outrageous magamania. It is altogether necessary that we do this. 

But, in a larger sense, we can not, perhaps, commit to this; we cannot concentrate upon prolonging this hallowed legacy. The brave citizens, living and dead, who struggled here and there throughout our history, have consecrated our America far above our pathetic power to aid or repair it.

The internet will little note, nor even give a flip about, what we say here, but it can never forget what our founders did here in our Capitol.

It is for us the peacemakers—for blessed are the peacemakers—to be dedicated now to the unfinished repair work before us. . . that from these honored steps and this broad dome we make increased devotion to that which our fallen defenders have given their last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these casualties shall not have died in vain, but rather, that his nation, under God, shall have a new birth of tolerance, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from our United States of America.  

Glass half-Full

Mitt Making Sense

 Mitt Romney is a highly experienced leader in our United States. As a senator, he ran against President Obama in 2012, and lost. 

That’s okay.  America needed Obama in that season of our nation’s development. 

Since that time, Mitt has been in the background,  generally out of the fray. 

But just a day or two ago, the former senator stepped out of the shadows and made a statement about the guilty verdict decided by a jury of twelve citizens in a court of Law. Speaking of New York City Attorney General Alvin Bragg, Mitt Romney said:

“Bragg should have settled the case against trump, as would have been the normal procedure. But he made a political decision. Bragg may have won the battle, for now, but he may have lost the political war. . . Democrats think they can put out the trump with oxygen. It’s political malpractice.”

I am sure that the millions of Americans who despise trump, such as I am, are probably disappointed in Mitt with his statement about the New York conviction and Alvin Bragg’s prosecution."

But there is something very happening important here.  You wanna hear what it is?

MItt Romney would be a very good president for us in 2025.

As a politician, he is smart enough to see that his Grand Ole Party will be in confusion at the convention.  There are many Republicans, many Republicans, who understand that another trump presidency would mean disaster for this country.  We must never elect a self-obsessed powermonger who speaks hitlerian rhetoric after attempting to steal an election with his lying tongue.

The grifter from New York has been running his mouth about immigrants. Who are these people? 

Beyond the ancient occupants of this continent—Native Americans— we are all—almost all—of us, the descendents of immigrants.

 The trump accusation that contemporary immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” is third reich hatred, spoken to conjure up violent dissension among the magas who now stand back and stand by waiting for their fuehrer to burn down the reichstag, or, as the present case is— to destroy the US Constitution.

When the Republicans gather in Milwaukee—and I am still a registered Republican, although I will not be there—when they convene to nominate a presidential candidate . . . and discover that their primaries-winner is not electable by the American people because of his criminal record and his immoral behavior . . . those GOPpers will have to find an admirable leader to nominate.  Will it be Nikki? Ron? Chris? Vivek?

Maybe. But hey!  Wake up, Republicans! This is no time for nominating someone who just collected the second-most votes.  This nation needs an experienced leader who has morals.

In their hour of confusion, the party of Lincoln should turn to Mitt.  He is signaling to the trumpians that he understands fully what is happening to our nation and he is willing to step in and act correctively--and reasonably-- to bring this nation back to its Constitutional, law-abiding roots. He is willing to work toward guiding us back to the nation that Lincoln delivered from slavery. 

In pointing out that Alvin Bragg had a political motive, Mitt Romney is himself acting with political motive. And that's okay. They all do it. He is signaling to his people that he is willing to come down from the mountaintop of isolation and deliver them from their present fascist peril.

The Republican party NEEDS a leader with experience, morality, a decent reputation and the political awareness to realize that this could be his destiny. . . instead of watching this nation maybe fall into fascism following the hateful, spiteful, revengeful tongue of trump.

All ye Republicans, of which I am one. . . listen to Mitt. He knows what he’s talking about. Mitt Romney for President!

http://www.careyrowland.com