POEM: NEWS OF THE WORLD #23

 

ATOMS SPIT THEIR ATOMIC MIST

Tectonics shift while leaders grift.

“Helter-Skelter!”  “Watch it melt her!”

WINTERS SWELTER IN THE SMELTER

 

Most things just grow, while others blow.

“Let’s watch the show, bask in the glow.”

“When they attack, our rain turns black.”

(Tough nut to crack. Can’t we just tack?)

 

Summit squawking: morals hocking.

Some still balking—way past talking.

“Bombs will scare there.” “Bomb them! It’s fair.”

(Some are aware—at voids don’t stare.)

 

Leaders row, then take a bow.

“But it’s right now! Just off the bow.”

“Let’s hear the band. Their music’s grand.”

“Why take a stand? Who needs an ‘and’?”

 

NEW GERMS AMISS! Boy, did we miss!

“Hey there! Don’t kiss!” “Fuck your abyss!”

WORLD UPENDED! HELL MOUTH MENDED!

“Are souls rended? Bliss suspended?”

 

Moral preening. (We’re left SCREAMING!)

Bankers scheming. Money gleaming.

DOORS STAY SHUTTERED: PROTESTS MUTTERED

Babies buttered. Last rites uttered.

 

A NEW YEAR’S  PALL? “Of all the gall!”

“Let’s to the mall!” (We’ve far to fall.)

All gulls' wings stall before a squall.

And bounced, a ball, will ALWAYS fall.

 

NOT SURPRISING: CHINA’S BUYING.

Trump’s still crying. Debt is skying.

HE’S OFF TO MARS! Who raised the bar?

“What’s next, the stars?” Is near that far?

 

THE KING’S ON ICE! “Isn’t that nice!”

(He rolled the dice—he’d got his slice.)

“It’s quite a sight when set alight!

But Snow White’s right: you can’t fight might.”

 

The king is dead! He’s full of lead.

“Of us he led?” Why was that said?

Will these changes rearrange us?

Or explain us? Or exchange us?

 

It’s politic, not polattack.

That kind of mix, you’d best not match.

“Let’s bring it down!” Then turn around—

You’ll catch a round before you’re crowned!

 

Murderers dream of murder scenes.

And cows of cream, and rips of seams.

And clouds of streams and stars of beams.

While men, it seems, of dark daydreams.

…..

The dark men come and dark men go,

Dark men walk where dark shadows grow.

New ghosts are seen inside machines,

And life’s sweet dream, is all but weaned.

…..

We explored it, then ignored it.

We adored it, then deplored it.

We absconded, then abandoned.

Then they banded, left us stranded.

 

 

Scully and Mulder

You lied! I can’t abide—

That, I cried.

I wished you’d died

instead.

Now, no more sighs

to hide your lies.

Your “My Mys!” won’t fly here,

anymore.

 

From youth, THE TRUTH,

with “proof”—its sole roof

was your shelter.

 

Nothing was amiss. Your salty kiss,

your tearful bliss

became you.

(Even while our ocean’s

abyss

was still forming.)

 

Later, you said I was dead.

Your dread. Your “come-to-bed”

solution.

Our heads on pillows (weeping willows).

Like the mountain snows,

it all goes

in the springtime.

 

“THE TRUTH is out there!”

Where? Up some stair?

In a witch’s lair?

Or in some other siren’s 

sweet song?

 

And truth? Of what?

What ridge?

Across what bridge?

What knowledge

scraped

from what fridge

of a lonely chemist’s life?

 

“It’s sunrise! Come and see!”

You call to me. Ever-patiently.

And me (by then)

just waiting to be free

from all your searching.

 

Much later, behind the curtain.

Beaten, lying uncertain—

a drowning captain,

with all truth’s levers

pulled back hard in Oz.

 

It’s then you reached

for your magic wand and potion book.

You recalled a brook.

Then you made me look,

while Death took back

it’s greatest liar.

  

 

“The edge of the sea is a strange and beautiful place.”
― Rachel Carson 

WELL, THE “NoW #23” POEM IS A BIT GLUM; SORRY ABOUT THAT. But then 2020 was a bit glum, so there it is. The poem is about how we feel about different things happening in the world, about the actors and non-actors that root about the forest, digging up truffles and cold turds in equal measure….

After the last couple of months of hysteria coming out of our great neighbour to the south, we’ve so far not had to bail out our little boat up here in Canada despite the sea being unusually choppy, with whitecaps and swells as far as the eye could see. But with the waters—at least for now—calmed by a new Biden administration in Washington, and the orange Kraken descended back into the inky depths from which he arose, it’s clear sailing ahead. Right? Unfortunately, there are more monsters in the sea that have yet to rise and thrash about. 2021 might not have any more tsunamis in store for us—we’ve had a couple of those already—but as the new year rolls out, most of us are still swamped and soggy, scrounging around trying to find something dry to wear, and blinking half-blind in the white light of winter mornings. So, what’s next? We're standing on the edge of things, more so now than at any time in years. It could be a razor's edge where danger is one wrong step away, or it can be like the edge of the sea, that shoreline place Rachel Carson writes about--where the land meets the water and where both are changed by the meeting. 2021 can be a place meeting, of union, a place where ideas and people come together, mingle and have a synthesis. Why not? Stay tuned!

 

The “Scully & Muldar” poem is direct and personal, and I like its emotional tone. And it’s fun to write something where you can point and wag your finger about! (In which direction is for the reader to decide.) The poem reminds me how love and relationships are like a tango where each partner must decide who will surrender (joyfully, passionately, willingly) to the other’s embrace by the end of the dance. You really need to trust your partner in that moment.

And the dance reminds me of that game played at “team-building” weekends, where staff are made to stand and then fall backwards, having been assured by their team leader that their fellow co-workers will catch them before they hit the ground. It usually works, and at least you know which of your office buddies has got your back. Oh, the thrill of just letting go and relying on the kindness of others, even the office prankster!

 

And pivoting slightly, I’m absorbed here with the idea of surrendering—giving yourself completely to someone or something, and what that implies and so on. One person who just might embody this giving of the self to others or to an idea is Tommy Douglas. I’m reading a short biography about the Canadian politician who is famously known as the “Father of Medicare” in our country. I’m at the point where Douglas is beginning his political career in 1934 as a Member of Parliament for the riding of Weyburn, Saskatchewan in the newly formed Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) party, a party that had its origins in rural populism and the “social gospel” movement*, and that in its parliamentary role questioned and challenged the rising levels of inequality wrought by unfettered capitalism that were seen at the time in Canada and elsewhere. Douglas would eventually go into provincial politics to become the premier of Saskatchewan (1944-1961) before returning once more to federal politics in 1961 to lead the New Democratic Party (NDP), which replaced the CCF as the party of the Left.

It was during his premiership that Douglas created for the citizens of his province a system of “universal”, government-funded healthcare. He would go on, as leader of the federal NDP, to champion “Medicare”, based on Saskatchewan’s model, a program that would eventually become the health care system adopted for the country.

Tommy Douglas

I’ll probably go into more detail on his life and the history of Canadian Medicare in another post, but one thing I’d like to focus on is Douglas’s early life where I was surprised to learn he started out, after college, as a Baptist minister in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. He was deeply influenced as a young man entering the ministry by the “social gospel” movement that was active in rural Canada, the United States and in Great Britain at the time. The social gospel movement was an “attempt to apply Christianity to the collective ills of an industrializing society, and was a major force in Canadian religious, social and political life from the 1890s through the 1930s.” (Canadian Encyclopedia) Douglas was committed to the idea of using his faith and his pulpit in practical ways to help his parishioners and community cope with the hardships of rural life during the depression. As Douglas's biographer Vincent Lam says of the movement and its effect on young Tommy:

 

“The social gospel movement spoke to the real problems of the working people of that time. Its new and idealistic ideas within the progressive parts of the Christian church were both a radical stream of thought in their time and the starting point of Tommy’s political outlook. All of his early view of progressive politics was through the lens of a humanistic Christian faith.” (27)

 

And it was Douglas's commitment, his surrendering to this cause, that I found so admirable, and is thus my roundabout way of saying how politics and the personal are often intertwined—like a tango—and it's when you surrender yourself wholly to an idea or a cause, or to a person, that truly transformational changes can happen—like Medicare for all, and even love.

 

Cheers, Jake. 

"It's not time to dilly-dally. We've no time for Silly Sally!"

 

 

Rev. William Barber II

 *A modern version of the social gospel movement can be found in the ministry of Reverend William Barber II of Goldsboro, North Carolina, who is co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, and an articulate and passionate campaigner for economic reform. Reverend Barber “delivered the homily at the official inaugural prayer service. [In Washington] Barber says President Joe Biden’s focus on unity cannot come at the expense of major reforms needed to fight systemic racism, poverty, environmental destruction and more. “It cannot be just kumbaya. It has to be fundamental change,” he says. “We cannot be the wealthiest nation in the world, where billionaires in this country made a trillion dollars between May and November during COVID, while poor and low-wealth people of every race, creed, color, sexuality have suffered and continue to suffer.” (from a Democracy Now Interview, Jan. 25/21.)

 

 

 

 

 

Vincent Lam, Tommy Douglas. Penguin Canada, 90 Eglington Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Canada, 2011

 

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/social-gospel