Thursday, December 31, 2020

Dostoyevsky Writes to the Coronavirus - weekly column

 The possibilities were good, but this is poor stuff. I hope someone will take the gag and make it funny:


Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Dostoyevsky Writes to the Coronavirus

 

More than one scribbler has re-written the first lines of famous novels as humorous takes on the covid-time. I go them one better in re-writing the first lines of famous Russian novels:

 

 

Alexey Fyodorovich Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, a landowner well known in our district in his own day and still remember among us due to his tragic death when his stockpile of hoarded toilet paper fell and crushed him.

 

-Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

 

 

Reveille was sounded, as always, at 5 a.m. – a hammer pounding on a rail outside Camp Fast-Track Vaccines H. Q.

 

-Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Live of Ivan Denisovich

 

 

On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K Bridge in search of P. P. E.

 

- Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

 

 

“Well, Peter, still no sign of the promised disinfectant aerosols?

 

-Turgenev, Fathers and Sons

 

 

On they went, singing “Rest Eternal,” and whenever they stopped there was a sign reminding them to maintain a distance of six feet from each other.

 

-Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

 

 

I am merely copying out here, word for word, what was printed today in the State Gazette: Glass rooms in glass buildings are not enough – you must also wear your glass masks.

 

-Zamyatin, We

 

 

“Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Microsoft Corporation.”

 

-Tolstoy, War and Peace

 

 

Happy viruses are all alike; every unhappy virus is unhappy in its own way.

 

-Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

 

 

Every day the factory whistle bellowed forth its shrill, roaring, shuddering noises into the smoke-begrimed and greasy atmosphere of the workingmen’s suburb where vaccines were developed.

 

-Gorky, Mother

 

 

The Melekhov farm was right at the end of Tatarsk village, next to Dr. Fauci’s house.

 

-Sholokov, And Quiet Flows the Don

 

-30-


31 December 2020 - Time Out for a Penalty Flag

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

31 December 2020 –

Time Out for a Penalty Flag

 

The old order changeth, yielding place to new,

And God fulfills himself in many ways

 

-Tennyson, “The Passing of Arthur”

 

Change does not lie in calendars or dates

But in the seasonal turnings of the year

And in the ordered ways of God with us

Compassing us truly in spite of ourselves

 

Years are but our usages and measurings

Tools lent us for a time for learning Creation

For balancing the better against the good

And the transcendent against the transient

 

Life is not lived in calendars or dates

But beyond all time, and only in Truth

 

Tuesday, December 29, 2020

First Communion in the Virus-Time - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

First Communion in the Virus-Time

 

For Veronica

 

True Ikon of the Lord

 

A little girl’s mantilla is a crown

A crown an empress might covet for herself

Wore she not her own First Communion mantilla

Forever within the recesses of her heart

 

A little girl’s white cotton dress is a robe

A royal robe of courtly majesty,

Worn in the presence of her Lord and King

 

A little girl on First Communion day

Awes even the angels in her imperium

 

 



Monday, December 28, 2020

Reading is a Suspicious Activity - poem

 

 

Reading is a Suspicious Activity:

Blue-Penciled in Solovetsky

 

“…Soviet writers failed to write about their personal thoughts.”

 

-Yevtushenko

 

Reading is a suspicious activity

Unless it’s a technical book of instructions

Or a hunting magazine with centerfolds

Of seductive semi-automatics

 

Writing is a forbidden activity

Unless it’s a grocery shopping list

Or the code to a new computer game

Of zombie valkyries with swastika tats

 

They’ve only gotten as far as statues thrown down

They’ll destroy the libraries next – and maybe you

 

Sunday, December 27, 2020

Washing-Machine Archaeology - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Washing-Machine Archaeology

 

History passes, and so do washing machines

Rattling and spinning to the end of their span

Their dutiful cleanings cleaned out at last

Whited sepulchers around silent drums

 

The householder as Howard Carter finds

Behind a dead machine “Yes, wonderful things!”

Clothes hangers, metastasized dust bunnies

Inexplicable stains that hiss and spit

 

And in a midden, he discovers with a shock -

Almost embalmed – that famous long-lost sock!

Saturday, December 26, 2020

The Feast of Saint Stephen as Observed at the Truck Stop - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

The Feast of Saint Stephen as Observed at the Truck Stop

 

On the occasion of meeting a friend

for breakfast on the Feast of St. Stephen

 

Now the overpass looked down

On the Feast of Stephen

With some garbage strewn about

Moldy and uneven

Brightly shone the neon light

Though the frost was cruel

When a poor man came in sight

Pumping diesel fuel

 

(This is gonna be one of the Greats, eh!)

Friday, December 25, 2020

Christmas Day in the Covid-Time - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Christmas Day in the Covid-Time

 

There are no children around the tree this year

To make Christmas complete with their happiness

No Barbie dolls, electric trains, or bikes -

We are distanced in everything but love

 

No relatives come and go, not even the one

Who will park his pickup truck on the lawn

No fruitcakes given and received, no hugs -

We are distanced in everything but love

 

But still there is the fire, the dog, and us -

We are distanced in everything but love

Thursday, December 24, 2020

The Turning of the Year - weekly column

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The Turning of the Year

 

It was Christmas night in the Castle of the Forest Sauvage…There was skating on the moat… while hot chestnuts and spiced mead were served on the bank to all and sundry. The owls hooted. The cooks put out plenty of crumbs for the small birds. The villagers brought out their red mufflers. Sir Ector’s face shone redder even than these. And reddest of all shone the cottage fires down the main street of an evening.

 

T. H. White, The Once and Future King

 

From the first Sunday in Advent to Plough (or Plow) Monday after the Feast of the Epiphany we live within the turning of the year.

 

Advent begins the new liturgical year with final harvest activities and customs giving way to preparing spiritually and, through the Incarnation, physically for Christmas. Christmas itself begins at midnight on the 24th of December and concludes with the Feast of the Epiphany on the 6th of January. In England the first Monday after the Epiphany is Plough Monday, when, by tradition, the soil is turned in anticipation of spring, blending the leaf-mould into the soil, enriching it, and becoming part of it.

 

The unhappy Puritans banned Christmas in the English-speaking world for generations, and when it was restored in the 19th century it was an odd  Dickens sort of thing, amusing but pale, not based in the faith or in the annual cycle of nature given to this world by God. The cliché that we must put Christ back into Christmas is inverted; it is the Mass – religious observance – that needs putting back into Christmas, not more noise.

 

Christmas has long been discussed, but not amended, for the tension, unhappiness, and even near-hysteria which attends it – compulsive shopping and forced merriment in which people who don’t much care for each other for the rest of the year are made by the secular liturgies and advertisements of unreasonable expectations and closeness to despise each other.

 

A Christmas which does not end with tears and sulks and slammed doors is an unusual one, but that is the fault of Charles Dickens and his successors, and of ourselves, not of Christ.

 

But all bad things come to an end, and some of the most joyful and peaceful days fall after the 25th, when the gifts have lost their mystery but not their newness and leftover turkey is still on the menu. Even the tree seems at peace, giving us light on dark afternoons while we doze over a new book or perk up with a cup of pinon coffee from New Mexico. Visits from friends – forbidden this year - are free from any expectations other than conversations about the kids and prospects for the new year.

 

Hundreds of thousands have died this year, and the government has collapsed, all because of the New Men – and the New Women - who, unlike Sir Ector, grasp at power and ignore their duties.

 

By the grace of God a great many good, sturdy people in service to humanity are on duty through all this, health care workers from great surgeons to the nice lady who cleans up after them, police officers, firefights, and the watchers of gauges and the wielders of wrenches who keep everything going.

 

Is this, then, a time for anyone to drowse before a warm fire?

 

Well, we can only hope that all will soon be able sit in a comfortable chair and look out their own windows at the cardinals Christmas-feasting at the feeder, and maybe a squirrel loping across the frost for its share of seeds, and with no shopping to be accomplished and no work for a day or two, and no immediate obligations except tending the fire.

 

The year is turning, and for a day or two we may quietly enjoy the mystery.

 

-30-

"Why Can't You Come Home for Christmas, Daddy?" - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Why Can’t You Come Home for Christmas, Daddy?

 

Christmas eve – and the conversation is low

The chaplains have left the men with their blessings

And have in their turn been blessed by the men

Who gather now with powdered coffee, with words

 

Christmas eve – written in a little child’s hand:

“Why can’t you come home for Christmas, Daddy?”

And a crayoned Santa Claus who can fly

Above the razor wire, and far away

 

Christmas eve - midnight’s canvas-pillowed tears

Christmas at home someday - only ten years

Wednesday, December 23, 2020

Christmas Eve Eve Eve - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Christmas Eve Eve Eve

 

Winter arrives, they say, at 8:31

And how do they know? The light doesn’t change

The soft pale light filtering through the fog

Upon the grey-brown fields who have fallen asleep

 

While we speak of lockdowns and rollbacks and deaths

And plan for the least-attended Christmas Mass

The fields and forests hardly speak at all

Only in their prayerful whispers of the Eternal

 

Time is  told to us by the sun, moon, and stars -

And all the seasons arrive in God’s good time

Tuesday, December 22, 2020

Everyone Writes a Drivelly Poem about the Winter Solstice - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Everyone Writes a Drivelly Poem about the Winter Solstice

 And entitles it

 “Winter Solstice,”

And yet Somehow the World Goes On

 

The sun seems to stand still, and too, the world

An Ouroboros of lockdowns and masks

And the increasing divisions of partisans

In yet another republic devouring itself

 

There is an insubstantial Christmas truce

Undeclared, a catching of breath and will

In hopes that two-faced Janus will close his doors

Against the failings of the coming year

 

The sun seems to stand still, and too, the world

We also wait, and search the skies for a Star

Monday, December 21, 2020

Bifocalism for the Masses and, Like, Stuff - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Bifocalism for the Masses and, Like, Stuff

 

Bifocals – the upper lens sees far away

The sun and the moon and the dancing stars

All in their appointed places above

Great mountains and oceans and thunderstorms

 

Bifocals – the lower lens sees the end of your nose

The sweep hand dancing around your Timex watch

The book you are reading, the book you are writing

Your thoughts encoded in orderly lines

 

Bifocals – both lenses balance your sense of vision -

But take the stairs with care and precision!

Sunday, December 20, 2020

And He Liked Really Cool Cars - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

And He Liked Really Cool Cars

 

For George Ebarb

 

Of happy memory

 

Who served God, his family, prisoners,

And all who were blessed in knowing him

With unfailing love and generosity

 

(And he liked really cool cars!)

 

A convention is to say that when we die

God will not ask us about the cars we drove

But we may hope and pray that in George’s case

A happy exception was made for him

 

 

George was my mentor in prison volunteer service. I didn’t know he was a rich man, for he wore his wealthy lightly, and I didn’t know he gave much of his wealth away, for he was also rich, as Chaucer says of the Parsoun, in “hooly thought and werk.”

Saturday, December 19, 2020

Keep a Sharp Lookout - This Fog Won't Last - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Keep a Sharp Lookout – This Fog Won’t Last

 

My country was made for noble hearts such as yours.

 

-Aslan in Voyage of the Dawn Treader

 

When we can’t turn outward, we turn inward

That might not be such a good thing, you know

We are probably out-of-practice, busied

With meetings and work and coffee-shop dates

 

For now our lives are solitude and screens

Pajama feet and emptiness, and if

We call someone, who is it who answers us?

“Be still, and know that I am Internet?”

 

Oh, no. The night is misty indeed, but the stars -

The stars still shine; be brave, and look for them

Friday, December 18, 2020

Do not Clench unto Others - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Do not Clench unto Others

 

Merciful God in His infinite love

Will never clench His fist at us

Thursday, December 17, 2020

Save Christmas with Your Camera - weekly column

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Save Christmas with Your Camera

 

Your children will never show their childhood Christmas pictures to their own children because the pictures won’t exist.

 

Decades ago Kodak, once a great American corporation, boosted their sales of cameras for Christmas with the slogan, “Open Me First.” The ads featured images of perfect families with perfect teeth grinning for the new Kodak camera that someone opened first.

 

After the Second World War Americans took lots of pictures, especially during the holidays, and the drug-store prints and the film negatives found their way into albums and shoeboxes, often to be rediscovered and reprocessed decades later.

 

Today there are steady but slow sales of film cameras and films, because artists and many professional photographers insist that film provides a depth, a richness that for portraiture and art pieces cannot be matched by digital.

 

But most people do not own film cameras and, less and less, digital cameras. Almost all family photography is accomplished on MePhones, and two flaws obtain: (1) the MePhone microprocessors simply can’t compensate for the lack of glass, that is, a real lens, and (2) the pictures are usually lost within months.

 

MePhones are notorious for their built-in obsolescence, and if by mistake a company makes a MePhone that lasts for a few years, recent lawsuits reveal that some manufactures find ways of making them decay so that you have to buy a new one. When the old is traded in for the new, sometimes the pictures are not saved.

 

Beyond that, MePhones and computers are lost or stolen or simply cease to work, and the pictures you meant to save to an external drive never get there.

 

For your children someday to re-visit all their Christmases and adventures you need a camera, a real camera, not one that is tacked onto Maxwell Smart’s shoe ‘phone.

 

The remaining camera manufacturers – none of them American – make nifty little digital cameras that take superior photographs and feature easily changed memory cards.  You will have far better photographs and can share them by connecting the camera to your computer or sometimes plugging in the memory card.

 

Most importantly, take out the memory card with all the Christmas and New Year’s pix, label it, and store it in your safety deposit box at the bank. Your children’s Christmases and graduations and ball games will be safe there for many years (if you bought a quality card – this is not the time for bargains).

 

And, after all, your children laughed at your childhood pictures, so would you want to deprive your grandchildren the opportunity to laugh at their parents’ childhood pictures? I thought not.

 

For artistic work you can still find film cameras new, but a better deal is to hit the garage sales and find a bargain with which to experiment.

 

And whatever happened to Kodak? Well, they invented the digital camera, decided there was no future in it, fumbled the patents, fell into bankruptcy, and destroyed thousands of jobs and the economy of Rochester, New York. Would you like to be remembered as one of the board-room alligator-shoe boys who let that happen?

 

-30-

A Little Child Lacing Her Shoes - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

A Little Child Lacing Her Shoes

 

For Sarah, of course

 

She is as proud, as she can be, and I -

I too am proud, watching her twist her tongue

In thought – the rabbit pops into its hole

To emerge on the other side – hello!

 

She is as proud as she can be, but I

Am a little bit sad as she stands up now

Dancing in place to make the heel-lights twink

Then giggling, “Catch me, Daddy!” as she runs away

 

And I play-chase, knowing that all too soon

There won’t be little lights for me to follow

Wednesday, December 16, 2020

Tin Ears in the Hands of an Angry God - rhyming couplet

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Tin Ears in the Hands of an Angry God

 

-as Jonathan Edwards did not yell

 

If You are good and kind and loving, O Lord

Then why do You permit

                                            The harpsichord?

Tuesday, December 15, 2020

Before the Magi Came - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Before the Magi Came

 

-1 Maccabees 4:36-60

 

Yes, long before the holy Magi came

Judah the Maccabee brought forth his gifts

First scourging the Temple clean of false gods

In prayerful preparation for the True

 

And then presented God with oil and bread

A consecrated Altar of undressed stones

Incense and lamps and songs and grateful hearts

And an octave of inextinguishable light

 

Thus, long before the holy Magi came

Even before the Star, Judah brought a flame

Monday, December 14, 2020

Contagious Disease Unit - Ward 20 Deck 2 - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Contagious Disease Unit – Ward 20 Deck 2

 

Maybe my aptitude for throwing up

My ENT infections, fevers and chills

Hopeless motion sickness and fainting fits

Were the reasons why NavPers posted me there

 

All the diseases in the Fleet called it home:

Infections, syphilis, leprosy, the clap

(Let’s give him a hand), and for reasons not clear

A couple of crewmen from the Pueblo

 

Before I was sent to be sick in Indo-China -

And now they say there’s a virus going around

Sunday, December 13, 2020

Waiting for the Messiah Someplace Else - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Waiting for the Messiah Someplace Else

 

MotelRabbiwe've been waiting for the Messiah all our lives. Wouldn't now be a good time for him to come?

 

Rabbi: I guess we'll have to wait someplace else.

 

-Fiddler on the Roof

 

And so we wait, here where we are, the time

Marked off by calends and by candlelight

Four Gospels in a ring of holy fire

Before the Altar, and before the Throne

 

The Magi journey through space and time

Our journey is in waiting for a star

To shine upon us all, and lead us to

The Temple where all waiting finally ends

 

Beside an Altar of repose in a Stable

A cradle of wood from Eden and the Ark

Saturday, December 12, 2020

Marketing Strategies of the Nazgul - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Marketing Strategies of the Nazgul

 

An email arrived from a dear, dear friend

I was so glad to hear from him…until

Unhappy remembrance – he’s dead and still

And my stitches were torn open again

 

Some Nazgul program had encountered his name

And mine, and smashed them together to see

If some foul poison could be sold to me

Through a counterfeit, the cruelest game

 

But in faith my friend lives, as we have read -

It is the Nazgul who are truly dead

Friday, December 11, 2020

The Rural Electric Co-Op's Giant Christmas Tree - as a poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

The Rural Electric Co-Op’s Giant Christmas Tree

 

Christmas trees are a delight to a child

On the farm, situational poverty

In muck and filth, old coat against the cold

Finishing the milking long hours after dark

 

But to the east a Christmas tree, a hope

The electric co-op’s radio mast

Its guy wires strung with multi-colored lights

The North Pole must be something like that

 

Christmas trees are a delight to a child

And even more when the child becomes a man

Thursday, December 10, 2020

The Rural Electric Co-Op's Giant Christmas Tree - weekly column

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The Rural Electric Co-Op’s Giant Christmas Tree

 

Christmas trees are a delight to a child, and when a man is old and can be a child again, even more delightful.

 

Our family’s farm was about three miles from town. We lived in what would now be called situational poverty, but most folks in the county were worse off. Some kids got bicycles for Christmas, for us it was socks and cap pistols and little tinplate toy trucks, and for many there was almost nothing. The post-war prosperity boom bypassed most of East Texas.

 

A few weeks before Christmas each year Father took us boys into the woods next to our land for the adventure of cutting the Christmas tree. In our informal squirrel hunts in the autumn we had scouted out likely trees, and now returned for the best of them, almost always a pine.  Finding it, cutting it down with the hatchet, and dragging it back to the house through the chill was a great adventure to be savored then and savored now in the remembrance.

 

Father stood the tree in a bucket of wet sand and anchored it with fishing line. He and Mother strung the big Noma™ lights and hung the precious glass ornaments, and then we children were at last given a box of tinsel each and permitted to fling the bright strands any way we wanted. What a mess! I realize now that after we went to bed Mother discreetly arranged the tinsel a little more artistically.

 

Farms in our school readers and in the movies were always bright and cheerful places, with happy cows and happy pigs living peaceful lives of prelapsarian fellowship. In reality a farm, especially in the winter, is brown and grey and mucky and smelly, and after their years of loyal service cows are prodded into a trailer, bellowing in fear, to be driven away to the slaughterhouse. Good ol’ Bessie, whom you raised from a calf, is now lunch.

 

Life on a farm is often grim.

 

Thus, a little pine strung with multi-colored lights and little figures and globes brought out once a year was magic.

 

Another magic Christmas tree was the huge one the local electric co-op built each year by stringing lights on their tall radio mast – tall enough to have red lights all year round lest the town doctor fly his airplane into it.

 

For weeks the far-away tree shone across the dark, frosty fields. A child imagined it to be a magic place, maybe even the North Pole itself.

 

Now the tower is gone, replaced by cell ‘phones and more modern radios, and the co-op decorates only a little tree out in front of the drive-by window. Still, it’s a Christmas tree, and good enough.

 

For Christmas the co-op gives employees, retirees, trustees, and others ham for Christmas. Because I serve on the scholarship committee I get a ham, which is not a Christmas tree but then you can’t eat a Christmas tree.

 

Scholarships for graduating seniors, Christmas hams for some, electricity for all, and a pretty good Christmas tree out front. What a wonderful institution our Rural Electric Co-Op is!

 

-30-

 

 

The Advent of Our Discontent - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

The Advent of Our Discontent

 

-As Shakespeare did not say

 

Everyone accuses everyone else

Of treason; they’d call each other Quislings

If they had any history, but they don’t

Only Hochhuth and Unferth on the air

 

But you and I have wood to split and stack

The garden to level and put to sleep

Cows to get up for the milking at dusk

And in the evening, a cozy fire to watch

 

Oh, listen to the migrating geese, up high!

Unlike us humans, they never learned to lie

Wednesday, December 9, 2020

We Are Afraid for Each Other - Poem

 

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

We Are Afraid for Each Other

 

We do not wear our masks against car keys

Or coffee cups or clocks or coins or books

Nor yet again in fear of paper clips

Or pocketknives or fountain pens or socks

 

We do not wear our masks against the sun

Or moon or stars or air or trees or flowers

Nor yet again in fear of autumn leaves

Or gentle rain or evening mist or dreams

 

We wear our masks because we are afraid

Of being humans, of loving each other

 

NB: This is NOT a plea for unmasking. The fear is of hurting others. Wear your mask. Wearing a mask protects others. Wearing a mask is love. It’s not about you; it’s about protecting MeeMaw.

Tuesday, December 8, 2020

A Midnight Appointment of Shame - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

A Midnight Appointment of Shame

 

“Where greed is an ape and pride is an ass”

 

-Chesterton, The Ballad of the White Horse

 

You poor man –

 

You are not the first to use Truth as a spade

With which to dig for yourself mouth-honors and wealth

A tyrant piped, and now you dance for him

His toy, his poppet, his puppet, his pet

 

You poor man –

 

Who pottage-messed stout honesty for toys

To descend in a brazen elevator

To an evil that didn’t even have to try

For you were so eager to go to it

 

You poor man –

 

You poor, poor man: the cock will not crow for you -

You have betrayed only your wretched self

 

 

https:///www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/President Donald J. Trump Announces Intent to Appoint the Following Individuals to Key Administration Posts | The White House-120320/

Monday, December 7, 2020

The Man Who Delivered the Movies - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

The Man Who Delivered the Movies

 

The Saturday afternoon matinee

Outside the Palace Theatre in a line

Impatient for the hour, the man, John Wayne

Air-conditioning, popcorn, Coca-Cola, escape

 

Then riding to the rescue of the ranch

The man who delivered the reels of fun

Running up the steps with a big grey case

Of Rio Bravo – he brought us our dreams

 

And did he know, speeding to little towns

That he too was a hero of the Golden West?

Sunday, December 6, 2020

Let There be Barbies - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Let There be Barbies

 

Let the children have their night of fun and laughter.

Let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play.

 

-Churchill, Christmas Eve radio address, 1941

 

Some young mothers ban Barbies and Santa Claus

And all such trinkets and dolls and mummeries

Sacrificing childhood to fashionable gossip -

In obedience to the Holy Internet

 

A toy Cochise must never ride again

Or little plastic soldiers defend their forts

Or Maid Marian roam with Robin Hood –

Barbie must never be dressed for success

 

Little children must now sit on the floor

On Christmas morn to play with ideologies

Saturday, December 5, 2020

DaddyPaw's Letters from the CCC Camp - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

DaddyPaw’s Letters from the CCC Camp

                           For George (“DaddyPaw”) Hargrove, Hebo Ogden Hall,

And all Who Served in the Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933 - 1942

He found his DaddyPaw’s young adulthood

In a box of letters from New Mexico

About fighting forest fires and building fence

To the stockyards at Magdalena

 

“The peas must be coming in by now,” he writes

“Are yall getting enough to eat? How’s my dog?

I’ve got swell friends but I sure wish I was home.

And did yall get the five dollars I sent?”

 

We stand in reverence of a generation

Who almost never had enough to eat

Thursday, December 3, 2020

Hospital Waiting Room in Advent - weekly column

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Hospital Waiting Room in Advent

 

“How could I bear a crown of gold when the Lord bears a crown of thorns? And bears it for me!”

 

-Heilige Elisabeth von Thuringen

 

The pre-dawn parking-lot is crowded enough, and almost pretty with the high orange-ish light reflecting nicely on the rainy pavement. The cold wind blows a lonely paper cup along among the puddles and the cars with the more-than-one-family-members dozing or reading their MePhones. It seems as if the world itself is a waiting room for now.

 

In the lobby a queue forms, everyone standing six feet away from each other as ordered by plastic signs on the floors. A cheerful-enough volunteer aims a little plastic gun at each human head as it passes, and asks each owner of a head DO YOU HAVE ANY SYMPTOMS DO YOU HAVE A SORE THROAT HAVE YOU BEEN AROUND ANYONE WITH THE CORONAVIRUS HAVE YOU BEEN OUT OF STATE RECENTLY

 

Does Louisiana count?

 

Pass, friend.

 

A cold and fashionable Christmas tree obscures an image of Saint Elizabeth of Thuringen next to the row of elevators marked ‘B’ along a covid-silent corridor.  She ministers to the poor and ill as she always has, and the medical and support staffs of the hospital do the same, under her support and patronage.

 

A visitor with his mask and his pass can hear his footsteps echoing-echoing as he passes through the silences, and read signs announcing activities scheduled long ago that were canceled long ago because of the lockdowns. Only rarely will he see a masked and gowned figure seemingly scuttling into hiding while carrying a tray of lab specimens or pushing a cart or whispering into an official glowing screen.

 

Doors that used to be open are secured with NO ENTRY or STAFF ONLY signs, and former passages are blocked with new plywood panels or panes of clear plastic in this unclear time.

 

The cardiovascular ICU waiting room is empty – ONE FAMILY MEMBER ONLY, reads a sign scotch-taped to a door, and NO COFFEE BECAUSE OF THE CORONAVIRUS YOU WILL FIND COFFEE IN THE CAFETERIA announces another. Some seats are marked off-limits with yellow crime-scene-ish tape even though there is no one in the room to be made off-limits. The television is dark and silent, the floors and plastic chairs are clean-upon-clean from repeated daily wipings and scrubbings and sprayings although almost no one ever goes to that room now. There are no people, no magazines, no bottles of water, nothing in the litter baskets. It’s like a scene from one of those Star Trek episodes in which an away-team beams down to a deserted space ship, a deserted city, or a deserted planet, only there is no thematic background music in the hospital.

 

This is the block of floors and space given over the cardiac care and surgery; the areas where CV patients are treated are hidden behind doors and walls and faces of appropriate secrecy and discretion.

 

Behind those doors and walls life and death are worked out through the work and thought and education and brilliance and industry of so very many health care workers, from physicians to the nice fellow with the bucket and mop, and through the mysteries of God and His saints.

 

As for our visitor, he can do nothing but take a seat – one without the yellow crime-scene-ish tape – and wait in silent prayer for one he loves.

 

-30-

 

 

Video Mass in Lockdown - Jesus and the 502 Bad Gateway - a poem (of sorts)

Lawrence HallMhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Video Mass in Lockdown - Jesus and the 502 Bad Gateway

 

NOTE: We apologize for the technical

Difficulties. The Mass for today, Saturday,

504 Error, will be available below

at 11:00am ET. In real time

 

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