What's The News ?

 I wrote this song  10 years ago when the "second story songwriters" group would meet in the office space over what is now the Cru Wine Bar. Jim Fodery, Stephen Spitler, and  Lindi Mereness come to mind as being the most prolific. I debuted this song upstairs at Backstreet Pub to an audience of about 20 people while the TV set  downstairs provided an eerie, aural backdrop of bombs and gunfire.  A few days later W made his ill fated announcement of Mission Accomplished. I offer it here as a poem.

What’s the News? 

©2003 Christopher Siegel

 What's the news this year? Come in and sit a spell

 Tune your harp and tell us of the world beyond our keep

Have you seen our sons, gone these weary months

 Off to fight with Saladin, in the terrible Crusades?

What’s the news this month? Come ashore and sup with us

 Have a pint and tell us of the world beyond the sea

Have you any newspapers, lithographs or renderings 

 Of Bonaparte and Wellington, and the fields of Waterloo?

What’s the news this week? Come sit by the fireside

 FDR is chatting on the wireless tonight

Have you seen The March of Time? We had to stand in line

 To see the latest newsreels from the Beach at Normandy

What’s the news tonight?  C’mon  and check it out

 Cronkite’s in our living room on the new color TV

Bouncing off the Satellite, film clips fill the screen tonight

 Death in living color, fresh from Viet Nam

What’s the news right now? Come jog along with me

 Here, put on this Walkman- just listen to those bombs

Have you seen the scenes on CNN? Images of now and then

 Like something out of Hollywood on the far away frontier

Faster than a speeding bullet

Sharper than a two edged sword

Images assault us with a fire that will not cease

And I can’t get a minute’s peace

Since the Dawn of time Mankind has the urge to know

 All that’s going down around town, all around the Globe

If we are Global Villagers, do we need a new Town Crier

 Who doesn't try to tell us what we didn't want to know

For now embedded journalists funded by advertisements

 Spin factoids into info-tainment right before our eyes

And their curiosity over-rides diplomacy

 While overlooking Pulitzers in their own backyard

So what’s your news today? Come out and sit a spell

 I’m weary of the media, and drama that won’t cease

Please tell me something good, right here in our neighborhood

 So I can find some meaning, and we can have a minute’s peace.