The Patriot's Ride

The Patriot’s Ride

(Thanks (?) to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow for the rhyming scheme)

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Listen all citizens and you shall learn
Of the internet ride of patriot Verne.
Nightly he blogs from eight to five
With fire in his passionate drive
To warm the sleeping many to a burn.

He says to himself, “It is my duty,
When evil forces beset our nation
Attacking its rights, law, or beauty,
To lead us away from such temptation.
Neither one within nor two from overseas
Shall slip past me their corrupting sleaze.
For I shall be ready to fight the harm,
Through every website and data farm,
To awake the country folk with alarm.”

Then he bids his patient wife “Good night”
And turns to his laptop armed for the fight.
As the moon through his window peeks,
The first opponent for tonight he seeks.
Perhaps a Giant windbag will come his way
Spouting lies to lead citizens astray,
Full of intent on their minds to prey;
A huge chasm of an information gap
By its own emptiness to entrap.

And thus, the patriot begins to surf,
Wanders and watches with eager eyes,
‘Til in the abundance around him he spies
The thread that will lead him to battle,
A silly invasion of his well-known turf
With foolish conclusions and outright lies
That makes his deepest bones rattle.

Then he prepares to mount his reply
By force of wit or mastery of lore
To reach the spot where he can score.
And to gather to the fray an ally,
Facts and citations he draws from the store
Over which they together do often pore.
Above his keyboard, his fingers pause,
As he relishes the power of the cause,
And, for that moment, he does think
Of those unable to smell the stink
And at them he silently guffaws.

Out there, so unaware, lay the masses
In their blissful sleep until morn,
Ignorant as the day they were born.
May he find how to kick their asses,
And with clarion call stir their sense
That they should look to their defense.
Their complacency he must dispel
And their dreams that “All is well”.
Before the disaster comes and passes,
They must put on their looking glasses.
And suddenly, back from such thoughts intense,
He returns to his urgent task at hand
To spread his warning throughout the land,
And save those who would be saved
From the assault on them so depraved.

He grows impatient to join the fight,
And flexing his fingers, he starts to write.
Out goes tonight’s first post from Verne
To set the flare into all surfers’ sight
That now it is time for their turn.
To fill time until a response comes,
He scans for other trails of crumbs.
But mostly he watches his thread for nibbles
To see what a friend or foe scribbles.
In his head, his next salvo he composes
To what he thinks, mayhap, the answer poses.
And lo! As he looks, the message arrives;
Though hardly dampened, his passion revives.
He springs to laptop to drink it all in,
For it is the food on which he thrives;
Oh, if only it is not just name-calling!

A flurry of strokes on the keyboard,
A text onscreen, a silent shout in the dark,
And within, his guard dog’s warning bark
As bits and bytes on the server is stored.
That is all! And yet, through the wires and waves,
His post triggers both rantings and raves,
Its value measured in the nation it saves
While echoing from mountain to seaboard.
But his night’s work begun still has far to go
For he holds much that others need to know.
And though he has beheaded this first enemy,
Like hydra, they will grow yet another voice.
Focused upon the mission of his journey,
He turns to many topics to make a choice.

It is twelve by the clock in the hall
When he solves the problems of healthcare.
A simple solution for one and all,
So obvious that none can disagree,
Unless they biased idiots be.
For them, there is no pity to spare.

It is one as the grandfather chimes
When gun rights and wrongs are laid to rest.
It is a debate he has had many times;
Though it is clear to him what we should do,
Those more fuzzy in thought still grope and grasp
And bicker their feeble points to the last gasp.
But tonight he has shattered their view
With an argument indubitably the best.

It is two where he sits tapping this night,
(‘Though for readers, both earlier and later)
When he balances the scales of Left and Right.
A bit more weight here and there a lot less
And we can clean up this political mess.
To everyone’s desires, no system can cater;
But with proper pruning of the dead wood,
And some growth where it is most needed,
We will have politicians do what they should
Ere the people from the government have seceded.

You might guess the rest if you too surf the web.
How riders roll in and then out with the ebb --
How the posters come from all sides to debate,
Their ideas in jumbles there to conflate.
Chasing each other in the endless rounds,
Then jumping to the next battling grounds.
Under their pen names, they fight to and fro
And only pausing to find where next to go.

So through the nights rides patriot Verne
And so through the night go his words to us,
To every citizen who sleeps through the fuss --
A cry of alarm, mixed with much concern,
A voice off the mainstream where some never tread,
And a warning of things they never have read!
For, borne on technology we might all share,
Through all our lives, and to our heir,
The freedom to speak, and to hear if you wish,
Is a right with practice, not neglect, we earn.
We must do nothing to extinguish
The patriotic fire of those like Verne.