Carey Rowland's blog

Brave New Whirl

 

The descent of man:

 it does spiral down through history and time

  to some questionable fate, beyond freedom

and dignity;

    it just takes our breath away.

 

Passing through Huxley's brave new world,

 a controlled world that is-- made stable by

  bio-engineered castes, who've been rendered "blissfully

   ignorant 

    of passion and old age" by test-tubed wonderkinds,

     with social pharmakia and so forth and so on--

      well, here came a working class hero

       into this spiraling business of mankind.

 

He wandered in--

  another Brit he was, and another genius, at that-- 

    into the vortex of supine wizardry

     that is the art and sciences, and of course the music,

      hawking tickets to soma magical mystery tour;

       he would pied-piper us through strawberry fields,

        over men and barrels and hoops and horses

         and lastly through some hogshead of real fire,

          and onward 

through the brave new whirl.

 "Imagine" said he,

   "there's no countries…nothing

     to kill or die for,

      no religion too."

 

Well whoopdy do.

 

In your dreams. 

 

All the while, the fool on the hill

 had nails in his hands.

  But that was no dream;

   yeah, I say unto thee, it became the resurrected

brave new pearl

    of great price. Oh! what a price! 

Now that's the descent of Man,

 and the Ascent too.

  What's it to you?

 

CR, with new novel, Smoke, in progress 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Malaise? again?

The question of whether the news is good or the news is bad--

 whether America is in decline or not, 

  whether anything can be done about it or not, 

   whether we are citizens or are we just consumers,

    whether the government must needs be the initiator 

     of of all our rehabilitative and wealth-generating strategies, 

      or whether the corporate powerhouses that be are bound 

       to lead us out of this withering prosperity that so easily distends us, 

        or whether by some miracle the people shall rise up 

         by yon legendary bootstraps and from within themselves 

          and through their own God-given and/or earth-extracted resources 

           take on the responsibilities and burdens of their own freedoms and 

            well-being (let us not call it welfare),

             whether we shall or whether we will not--

that is the question.                      My vote is: go for it.

 

Glass half-Full

 

Ode on the Chinese Urn

(with allusion to John Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn)

 

You still unbroken vessel of longevity,

  you elder of Silence and slow Time,

   You Middle kingdom historian, who doth express

     a powerful tale more enduring than the mandarin:

What dragon-drawn legend lives within your Han,

  your provinces, your dynasties, your Confucian,

   in walled Beijing or the mists of Sichuan?

 What emperors or peasants are these? What workers' revolution?

What mad five-year plan? What struggle to progress?

  What Song? What Gong? What New Year's pageantry?

 

New prosperities are sweet, but those ancient

  are sweeter; therefore, with huquins, play now;

Not to the occidental ear, but, more revered,

  play to the maosoleum  march  of Mao:

Young man, within the Party, you can't forsake

  the Song, nor ever can your heritage be gone;

   Bold youth, never, never will you tire,

Though winning be your goal--oh, do not expire;

  China cannot fade, though you have not eternal bliss,

For ever will you excel, and thereby make progress!

 

Ah happy, happy urn, that has not broken

 

 your porcelain, your bronze, nor your Cathay!

You determined worker, unweary,

  for ever working steel and silicon today;

More production, more quotas , more yuan renminbi,

  for ever productive and for ever employed--

    go ye ever panting, and ever for the gain;

with seething dedication, and no small pain.

  It makes a man productive, not void

in the ever-marching cadre, the wagging dragon's train.

 

Who are these coming to your revolution?

  To what five-year plan, O fearless Chairman,

lead'st thou these workers ascending to the Party

  in all their ancestors' silken flanks?

What little village by Yangtse or Yellow banks,

  what Pudong tower or Chongqing power

  is steaming with your folk, to dawning dynasty?

Oh Shanghai! thy streets forevermore

  will crowded be, Onward Guangzou, Xian,  Beijing,

    with overflowing urns of Deng Xiaoping.

 

Oh China vessel, such prodigious capacity! with breed

  of terra cotta men and women overwrought,

with  harnessed rivers and jade of steed;

   You, porcelained dragon, dost challenge us from thought,

     to red conformity: Cultural evolution!

When old age shall this generation waste,

    thou shalt advance, in midst of Tiananmen woe,

upon the hard and fearsome world, with haste:

"Life is work, and work is life--that is all

  ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

Not. 

 

CR, with new novel, Smoke, in progress

 

 

Text dumbed down; pics hyped up

Maybe you think we evolved from primordial elements or maybe you believe God created us from the dust of the earth.

Maybe we used to grunt and groan and then that became language over time or maybe In the beginning was the Word and we are rising to it.

Maybe neanderthals used to draw pics on their cave walls and now we post pics on utube.

Maybe smart people used to use big fifty-cent words like disengenuous and evbody else used little nickel words like like.

Maybe you think and write in sentences and paragraphs or maybe u text.  

Maybe you quote shakespeare or maybe jus utube

Maybe you be rich or maybe u b po. Maybe u b hi or maybe u b lo.

Mabe u b in 99 or mabe u b in 1.

Now as for me, I b me. How bout u?

:-)

Glass Chimera

The Give and the Take

If each person produces

a little more than they receive,

then the increase he induces,

our abundance may retrieve.

 

But if each citizen collects

more than he does contribute,

our collective task reflects 

a deficiency to distribute.

 

So how can each one be induced

in the system and in the fray

to make more of what's produced

than what he has consumed today?

 

But does it even make sense

to think of productivity this way,

when dollars turn to cents

and abundance slips away?

 

I mean the world is really not

so logical as we would wish;

some neglect to give from what they've got

when we pass around the dish.

 

Some will always get more than they give

while others give more than they get.

We see its just the way folks live.

So get used to it; don't fret.

 

If you're disturbed 'cause of inequality,

and you find this world's so unfair,

just make the most of your potentiality,

and try to do your fair share.

Selah.

Glass half-Full

 

 

Redquity, Whitequity, and Bluequity

From the moment of our bloody birth

this equality thread's sewn a sturdy seam;

it flaps red dream stripes across our flagg-ed earth,

as justice in a dream.

That sanguine color was borrowed from French egalit'e;

yet runs red on American soil,

so every man and woman's own unique regalit'e

might flourish bright in blood, and sweat, and toil. 

Now the extremities of our ruptured economic wounds

draw social sympathy for Occupy Red Square,

while our banner stripes flap o'er flagging glooms.

Does anybody care?

 

'cause t'was like a row of stony marble whites

set upon each soldier's devotion given wholly, 

we laid our solemn hopes and fights

on Arlington ground made holy,

while all across this manifest destiny quest

sprang picket-white fence, and courtly documents

to assure each citizen's effort best

to prosper and to thrive, in enterprising sacraments, 

as white stripes snap o'er our flaggy threadbare cares; 

they're new as the driven snow,

and prosperity blooms bright on our equity shares

with wealth and health to grow.

 

We always held high that true blue hope

from mom and pop, of limitless expanding sky,

of deep blue ocean, and work, and cleansing soap, 

purple mountain majesty and  blueberry pie.

Oh, mister bluebird on my shoulder,

do you still sing with America singing?

Can we whistle and rhyme and yet grow bolder

with our cracked bell of Liberty still ringing?

Hey Bo, can you thump us that delta thang?

But don't tread on my blue ragtime shoes.

Go set yo'self down on the front-porch swang.

Flap us your red, your white, your field of starry blues.

 

O, say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave?

Does it fly high o'er the level playing field,

while our anthem's strains cry out to  save 

opportunities to knock and profits to yield?

We're not making equality here,

'cause Nature's God done created that;

we're merely holding these principles dear--

of freedom to blog and liberty to chat!

To gather on the public square,

to prosper, to invest, to build on equity that grew,

to pray and to love and forever to care,

to flow red, flap white,  and shine like the starry blue.

Glass half-Full

 

Severity

 

Just because I grew up with you

doesn't mean

I have to condone your way of doing things,

your slackery get down party hard irrelevance,

because your slatherin relativity 

will wither

in the hot wind of rigid sharia shakedown.

 

Just because I hunker down

at the onslaught of your slitherin sitcom triviality

doesn't mean

I have to concede to your casting spells,

 because your broadcast of splinterin smithereens

will splatter

on the heartless blade of swaggerin sword.

 

Just because we part ways,

you to broad and me to narrow,

doesn't mean

I don't love you,

 'though your stumble on slippery slope

will sever

our simple serfish slavery.

 

But when you strive to crucify

the likes of me

then don't be surprised at what's to come thereafter.

Selah.

Glass Chimera

 

Rockproof twits and tires that roll

 Let us drive, then, you and I

when the morning spills out from suburban sky,

let us drive and let us now commute

from suburban grass to urban loot.

Let us crawl o'er shrubbish cul-de-sacs

where networked souls run tribal tracks

to lead us to an underwhelming question.

Just don't ask us  why it is

that engines purr and tired wheels whiz

while red lights come and green lights go

twitting tweets of decaprio.

 

The gray exhaust that rubs its back 

upon our concrete ribbon track

slithers down and wanders up 

through traffic jam with coffee cup;

we measure out our days in pixel spoons

with idling fumes and idol tunes,

while texting out the urgent news

that paris is yearning, wall street a short fuse.

On the cells girls come, and women go 

tweeting of bieber and decaprio.

 

And indeed there is time at the traffic light

before red turns green and tweet turns trite,

to wonder "Do I dare?" and "How's my hair?"

To think of debts but not to care--

and would it have been worth it after all

to call my prince, so cute, so tall?

while johny boy in the middle lane

dreams of bustin out and raisin cane. 

But they all grow old, and faces fold;

they shall eat their pastries rolled.

 

We have lingered in the intersections of the game, 

with idling pipes and spirits lame;

we wait to crawl,  mutating paws

o'er ancient seas with neo-claws.

Throughout our sprawl and tyrannies of the urgent

lurk restless souls that stir, insurgent.

But we do grow old, we grow less bold;

we shall wear our courage rolled,

while on the freeways we come and go

dreaming of Jeanie and Michelangelo.

Glass Chimera 

 

The Two Trees

I took just a few bites of it--
a few chapters--
and already I knew too much,
more than I can handle now.
To know the truth
if it is the truth
(for who can you believe?)
To know that terrible truth,
to hear the dark pinochet ricochet
even now
thirty years later--
that the so-called chicago boys
put those chile storm troopers up to it?
This knowledge is to terrible for me,
if it is knowledge,
And that sinister suharto shock
heard round the world
Am I supposed to feel
like responsible for this mess?
like I can do somethin about it?
Am I supposed to go out
and clean up all that shit
thats going down?
still going down?
Take up the jacobin club?
--start down that lenin road
that leads to the stalin road
the mao path--
cultural revolution, because of classified wikileaks
because of class-war hijinks
what kinda revolution do they have in mind
when the mob turns impatient
starts to turn
to occupy what? the human condition!
schmoccupy!
a fruit stand in Tunis?
a flaming vision of hell on utube.
There's no end to that burning.

A plague upon your houses!
There must be a better way
than pissin in the ocean
or in the park.
There must be a better way
than jerkin' cia strings
and coup d'etat blings.

I can eat no more from this tree now.

I just need to find something else
now,
because all my yankee hope
was sunk into that american dream
and if that dream of hard work bootstraps and get ahead of the game
turns nightmare behind the ugly scenes
with shock doctrine and torture,
i just cant...

I know now why the other tree
satisfies.
Its not too late for the other tree
the one that brings life
not guilt.
I'm not responsible for this stuff.

Come out of it my people.
Because of what Jesus did
I will eat from the other tree.
That's a better choice than Abraham had,
and sure the hell better than Mohamet
or Mao.
That's my story and I'm stickin to it.
Merry Christmas from the Garden,
Gethsemane, that is.

CR, with new novel, Smoke, in progress

Trouble

Trouble I'm scared
of what gonna happen
Just give me democracy
I want it now
not aristocracy
cant handle no meritocracy
gotta slide to mediocrity
gotta save my middle classity
keep my couch potata rutabaga raava
dis the inequality
cant balance the frugality
cant handle no fragility
cant locate my ability
dam the ram idolotry
I'm crying for veracity
but findin  volatility
Just give me liberty
or give me debt--
debtitudinal longitudinal polarizational globalizational hesitational
notional value unfathomable oceanal
debt!
need seratonin give me oxytocin
 with comfort  lotion potion notion ocean
no emphatic static
no radical shmadicals
to hell with chaos pathos loss and dross.
I see a cross.
Forgive them.