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Robert Lindner
In response to Marty's comment on my Pome, of course weeding is a metaphor which can mean many more things than simple gardening. So although, I have a Zen garden, it may get weedy from time to time, but the Buddha does not mind. The enlightened one sits where the sun illuminates his meditation and reminds us that nature makes the rules.
Since Marty would like some of my social comment Pomes. Here's one.
In Modern Times
“The soul of man has been given wings, and at last he is beginning to fly.
He is flying into the rainbow — into the light of hope, into the future,
the glorious future that belongs to you, to me, and to all of us.”
Charles Chaplin at the end of his film, The Great Dictator
In nineteen thirty-six, in pantomime,
Chaplin was carried off by a machine.
There was the “Great Depression” at the time,
And there was great madness on the world’s scene,
As madmen set the stage for World War Two,
Charlie was pulled up by the conveyer,
That still moves us with his character through
The madness, building layer by layer,
Into the history that is now past.
Now the machines are better and don’t need
A Charlie in their labyrinth. A vast
Brain that can work much faster than the speed
Of human thought makes Charlies obsolete,
Except in countries where the pay’s so low
That poor unlucky Chucks can still compete.
So into the machines the poor Chucks go,
As the world turns with global marketing,
And great madness returns behind the scenes,
With new madmen doing their madman thing.
And we watch on our electronic screens,
And read the Facebook and the Twitter feed
That tells us that the world’s a mess to fear.
As the few fill their pockets with their greed,
On the backs of poor Chucks, they don’t want here,
Or so they tell the obsolete Charlies,
Who want to return to nineteen thirty-six,
When there were old machines and factories,
That needed them, since there were things to fix.
But in these times, more modern than before,
The world’s now stuck in nineteen eighty-four.
A place, where more is less and less is more.
A place, where war is peace and peace is war.
Orwell’s dystopia in modern times,
But somehow both the same and different,
Than Charlie Chaplin and his pantomimes,
That stopped when his words were spoken and went
Out over the radio at the end
Of his movie in nineteen forty-one.
The words spoke of Chaplin’s desire to send
People hope when the war had just begun.
But things got worse and now in modern times,
His film, The Great Dictator still rings true.
There are still wars and there are still war crimes,
Dictators who do what dictators do,
And machines that chew us and spit out fools.
But we must have hope. Our rainbow and sun
Are still there. So we must pick up our tools
And fix that damn machine! You know which one.
By Robert Lindner 2017 ( Year of the Rooster)
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