Recalling Murfin Verse—From the Sidelines of a Coup

                                            Chicago Seed cover--imagining ourselves as revolutionaries.   

Note—A milestone anniversary and a parade of current calamities and crises have brought up the 2021 Siege of the Capitol.  Here is a more personal prospective from the days immediately after the aborted coup d’ etat. 

From the Sidelines of a Coup  

January 7, 2020 

 

Time was long ago that I imagined myself sometimes 

on the barricades of some great General Strike 

turning the world upside down 

gleefully building that new society 

on the ashes of the old. 

 

It was easy then to be a romantic revolutionary 

to image portrayal on some heroic poster  

splashed in red and black. 

 

Yet in fact I only marched, chanted 

and dodged the occasional baton 

or teargas cloud,   

I came and went unarmed, 

 

After Fred Hampton was perforated on his bed 

and students bled at Kent Stat 

my peeps on the Chicago Seed 

put a mop-head freak raising  

an AK-47 over his head  

in psychedelic color on the front page. 

 

But no one I knew went out to buy one 

or to drill in their Dad’s old GI gear 

in the woods. 

 

Time went on and I never abandoned dreams 

of a fairer world 

but put aside any fantasy 

that it could be won by force of arms. 

 

Decades later that still holds true 

although I have made many  

compromises and accommodations. 

 

Some might say I have gone soft, weak kneed, 

or just plain sold out.   

Maybe yes, maybe no. 

 

Now I watch other revolutionaries, 

White, not Red, 

storm the Capitol and make war 

on Democracy itself. 

 

Like those old Catalonian anarchists  

I find myself to my astonishment 

called to defend a Republic. 

 

I want to do my part. 

But age, a treacherous heart,  

a pandemic, winter, 

and an accident of geography 

that has me far from the likely battle grounds 

have left me on the sidelines 

of maybe the greatest struggle 

of my lifetime. 

 

All I seem to be able to do 

is spill some electronic ink 

that will be seen, at most, 

by a couple of hundred people. 

 

And it hardly seems enough. 

 

—Patrick Murfin 

 

The Old Man in June 2020, seven months before the Insurrection.  I could turn out to carry a sign at Black Lives Matter protests and marches in McHenry County but sometimes couldn't keep up and was often gasping for breath after a few short blocks.  Today I can do less.  This weekend I missed the ICE OUT for Good road-side vigils in McHenry County due to stubborn pain from a recent fall.  I'll still go out again when I can but am not much use on the streets anymore.