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Drive-By: Turnabout in Great Boomer Moments
WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Welcome to the New American Digest: 2003-2020
Gerard Van der Leun
Even though a cloud’s white curtain in a far-off corner flashed
An’ the hypnotic splattered mist was slowly lifting
Electric light still struck like arrows, fired but for the ones
Condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting
Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail
For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale
An’ for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained
thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
— Robinson Jeffers
Reason will not decide at last; the sword will decide.
The sword: an obsolete instrument of bronze or steel,
formerly used to kill men, but here
In the sense of a symbol. The sword: that is: the storms
and counter-storms of general destruction; killing
of men,
Destruction of all goods and materials; massacre, more or
less intentional, of children and women;
Destruction poured down from wings, the air made accomplice,
the innocent air
Perverted into assassin and poisoner.
The sword: that is: treachery and cowardice, incredible
baseness, incredible courage, loyalties, insanities.
The sword: weeping and despair, mass-enslavement,
mass-torture, frustration of all hopes
That starred man’s forehead. Tyranny for freedom, horror for
happiness, famine for bread, carrion for children.
Reason will not decide at last, the sword will decide.
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
— Eliot
The scientists are in terror
and the European mind stops
Wyndham Lewis chose blindness
rather than have his mind stop.
Night under wind mid garofani,
the petals are almost still
Mozart, Linnaeus, Sulmona,
When one’s friends hate each other
how can there be peace in the world?
Their asperities diverted me in my green time.
A blown husk that is finished
but the light sings eternal
a pale flare over marshes
where the salt hay whispers to tide’s change
Time, space,
neither life nor death is the answer.
And of man seeking good,
doing evil.
In meiner Heimat
where the dead walked
and the living were made of cardboard.
Even though a cloud’s white curtain in a far-off corner flashed
An’ the hypnotic splattered mist was slowly lifting
Electric light still struck like arrows, fired but for the ones
Condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting
Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail
For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale
An’ for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Comments on this entry are closed.
🙂
Not to mention o’bongo twice.
Because I’m babyfaced, I’ve been assumed to be a Boomy Baber my whole fucking life, despite having been born during the war to a father who didn’t make it back. Spoiled-brat boomers have been making my (and everybody else’s) life miserable since the ’60s when they decided to do the world a favor and treat everybody to their tastes in “music” via the big stereos bought with their parents’ money. Western culture, through their efforts, has assumed the proportions of a swamp for the least common (and I do mean “common”) denominator. Art and literature have descended to the level of grunts and graffiti.
And now I find their execrable spawn taking up space and blaming me for the fact that nobody taught them how to suck their thumbs.
Je suis not amused.
You know I just love blaming your generation for everything Gerard…but “runs USA economy into ground”?
Perhaps, if ALL of the hippies stayed hippies, kept their jaundiced paws clean of corporate taint, worked themselves into their winter years growing their own lettuce and kale and reefer to “stick it to the man,” they *woulda* run the USA economy into the ground. As it is, the hippies that have overrun Timber Cove and Bodega Bay are vacationing from the senior exec positions down in the bay area after having become what they once swore to spend a lifetime hating. And, I notice a lot of them are making good on keeping-on hating what they now are, which is another story…
But this eighties-boom is because of their investments and such. Have to give credit where it’s due.
Didn’t bother to skim & see if someone else has pointed this out already. Probably so. I’m on the road.
“But me, I’m still on the road
Headin’ for another joint
We always did feel the same
We just saw it from a different point of view
Tangled up in blue”
You folks need to come by the house for dinner one of these day….
“The only thing I knew how to do
Was to keep on keepin’on
Like a bird that flew
Tangled up in blue”
Epic, EPIC Aesop comment at the link.
** “You folks need to come by the house for dinner one of these day….” **
Far out man! Dinner! I’ll be there by ten PM if the rides keep up like they have been. I can just sleep on the floor in the living room.
OH, wow man, is your grill big enough for this road kill possum I just found. He was just dead and there was hardly any flies on him and he don’t stink or nothing.
—No, it wasn’t quite that bad but those were some VERY INSTRUCTIVE days! And not all hitchikers were hippies. I did it when I graduated from the SE Asia campus of the School of Hard Knocks mostly to get AWAY from hippies. I KNEW that wasn’t going to turn out well, and 40-45 years later, here we are!