Thursday, December 30, 2021

6 January 2021: To Ask to be Exempt would be Unreasonable - a poem of sorts

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

6 January 2021: To Ask to be Exempt Would be Unreasonable

 

 

“Death . . . comes for us all, my lords. Yes, even for Kings he comes…”

 

-St. Thomas More in Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons

 

 

A slip of paper which I have since misplaced:

 

“SARS coronavirus 2 RNS

Detected”

                   Detected

                                      DETECTED

Me? But I’m special (my mother always said so)

 

“If you have a question regarding your…”

Well, no, I guess not. Time to pause and think

To ask to be exempt would be unreasonable

But will my corpse be stored in a reefer truck?

 

To ask to be exempt would be unreasonable

And so

What must I do in service to God and man?

 

 

 

I wrote these clumsy lines in January after my daughter recovered from the CV; she almost died of it. My pharmacist was diagnosed at about the same time as I was, 6 January, and died within two weeks. My wife was quite ill for a week but recovered. Some fifteen friends and acquaintances died from it this year. One friend died in a three-hospital shuffle, and because of the paperwork his body was not released to his family for months.

 

Vaccines, as you will remember, were available to Congress in December of 2020 but not to most citizens until March of 2021 (AOC gets coronavirus vaccine on social media, as Congress begins to receive Pfizer injections | Fox News), and  (The Distribution Timeline for the COVID-19 Vaccine | coronavirus (utah.gov)).

 

My symptoms were only something like a prolonged bad cold, an undeserved mercy.

 

The CV is real.

 

May our new year be free from it.

A Child's Garden of Worse(s) - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

A Child’s Garden of Worse(s)

 

Some poets wrote verses which were not meant to charm the reader

but to get them a Stalin prize.

 

Yevtushenko, A Precocious Autobiography, 1963

 

The children who are permitted to live

Are not permitted to read what they want

When they ask for adventures our censors give

Ideology, instead of a jaunt

 

The children who are not submissive to the code

Not following this week’s fashions in science

Or who presume to kick against the goad

Will be inclusively loved into compliance

 

And from the Hippocrene a taste, a drink?

Oh, no! Children are now forbidden to dream or think

Wednesday, December 29, 2021

The Stupidest Metaphor - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

The Stupidest Metaphor

 

Do these camouflage knee-pantsies make my 250-pound ass look too big?

 

He never formed up with a skirmish line

To poop and snoop to some distant trees

Across a death-hot field of weeds and mud

With some idiot yelling, “Dress it up!”

 

He never feared that a 40-mike-mike

Would blow his guts and spine into bloody rags

Which would get his air-conditioned C/O

In Saigon another medal and promotion

 

His PTSD is from watching TV

But he is pleased to claim that he is a warrior

Monday, December 27, 2021

A High-Tuned White Boy and his Come-to-Jesus Moment - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

A High-Tuned White Boy and his Come-to-Jesus Moment

 

Only yesterday he was in control

Of his high-tuned, high-speed, white-boy screaming ride

Race-tracking our pot-holed, beer-canned country road

Without regard for sanity, safety, or sense

 

Today he sits and sulks in the passenger seat

Of the little wifey’s Toyota sedan

Shadowed by his grim-faced mother-in-law

Like maybe they’re off to see the judge

 

In this procession he seems all alone -

His hot sports car is apparently gone

If Good King Wenceslaus Looked Down Today - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

If Good King Wenceslaus Looked Down Today

 

If good King Wenceslaus looked down today

On this Feast of Stephen, he’d see a poor man

Gathering winter air-conditioning

Friday, December 24, 2021

Late in the Evening on Christmas Eve - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Late in the Evening on Christmas Eve

 

After breakfast with a friend

After setting up for a family luncheon

After a family luncheon that never seemed to end

After cleaning up after a family luncheon

          (and that, too, never seemed to end)

After a moment of sitting and thinking with wife and child

After opening gifts (with dachshunds and cats)

After sharing gifts (with dachshunds and cats)

After keeping dachshunds and cats from eating the tree ornaments

After watching Judy Garland sing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”

After sitting exhausted with a therapeutic episode of The Office

You realize

The day wasn’t so bad

Thursday, December 23, 2021

His Name is John - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

His Name is John

 

We plan our lives, we think our thoughts

We name the days, we name the child

We count the oughts, dismiss the naughts

We seek for peace, we fear the wild

 

We dare presume to sort our days

As if we were Creators too

To look upon our works and praise

That which we think is right and true

 

But Zechariah, his old face wan

Corrects us with:

                              “His name is John”

Practicing Mindful Breathing - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Practicing Mindful Breathing

 

We breathe mindfully but with our lungs

This necessity of life has become a trend

Which we study in meditative books

As if our alveoli were rosary beads

 

Even our watches want to instruct us

In the deep mysteries of inhalations

And like masters of postulants and novices

Ring us awake for our morning breaths

 

“Focus on your breathing” – how very odd

If we should respirate to the glory of God

Wednesday, December 22, 2021

Word Sung as Light in the Darkness of Night - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Word Sung as Light

 

Upon hearing a recording of the Orthodox Christian Monks

of the Svetogorskaya Monastery

 

A deep, slow stream of tones, of modes, of chants

Where time and all eternity flow as one

Through voices and dreamlike echoings

Among the Altars of the earth and sky

 

The song begins upon the Bosporus

Ascends up to and beyond the spheres of Heaven

Then gently rains upon the souls of men

Forever and ever, in this world and the next

 

The Word first sung as Light, sung as Creation

And sung again as the Incarnation

 

 

Orthodox Christian Monks chant Christmas Carols - YouTube

 

(I’m not sure “carols” is correct; in their awe and reverence these works appear to be hymns.)

Tuesday, December 21, 2021

Winter Solstice - Two MePhone Photographs, Autumn / Winter, 21 December 2021


The first picture was taken at 0958 in the last minute of autumn; the second was taken at 0959 in the first minute of winter.

A marvel for children and old men.

 

Everyone Writes a Poem about the Winter Solstice - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Everyone Writes a Poem about the Winter Solstice

 

The moon is falling away from the full

The axis of the earth will briefly pause

Planets and stars align as the Maker wills

And we wonder if we can sense our world

 

Our world as she shivers across the night

We must light a hilltop fire for her

So that she will spin the light back to us

While we search the heavens for that star

 

That star that led us to a stable long ago

And now bathes our souls with its silver glow

Monday, December 20, 2021

Decorating for Christmas - "What Can I Do?" - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Decorating for Christmas – “What Can I Do?”

 

A little girl tugged at my arm and asked

“But what can I do?”

I sent her to Senora Anil because I didn’t know

 

She came to me again and sadly asked

“But what can I do?”

I sent her to Miz Bev because I didn’t know

 

She came to me once again and sadly asked

“But what can I do?”

I sent her to Senor Nicho because I didn’t know

 

Some sturdy young men brought in the Creche

And there the little girl knelt and placed the straw

And then each figure in turn; she talked to them

And cautioned them all to keep Baby Jesus warm

 

And that’s what a little girl can do

Sunday, December 19, 2021

Toy Trains, Grandmother's Good China, and Children - weekly column 19 December 2021

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Poetricdrivel.blogspot.com

 

 

Toy Trains, Grandmother’s Good China, and Children

 

As Inspector Barnaby says in one of the Midsomer Mysteries, we can’t recover the past; that’s why it’s the past.

 

Childhood Christmases are often the metaphorical benchmark for our present Christmases, and that won’t do. The magic of opening a package under the tree on Christmas morning is for little children; it won’t work for us and it’s not meant to. And that’s okay. Besides, at some point in all the visiting we’re going to be privileged to watch children open their presents, and we’ll get to share a little of their magic, like a puff of pixie dust.

 

In the run-up to Christmas there was for over a century a little commercial  magic in the Sears & Roebuck catalogue, but that disappeared long ago and after this Christmas the few remaining Sears stores are going away too. Where, then, can little boys go to see the magic of toy trains running on multiple levels through a cotton-wool winter landscape? Where did they go, the tiny little people forever waiting at a rural railway station and the others walking, sawing wood, sitting by a window? Where are all the little houses and stores and barns lit by miniature grain-of-wheat light bulbs?

 

Young adults don’t remember walking and shopping along streets lined with shops, and their children won’t remember shopping malls.

 

Ordering by electrical mail is certainly efficient, but you can’t fit Santa Claus or a junior high choir into a UPS truck.

 

Artificial Christmas trees – bah, humbug!

 

One good thing about a modern Christmas is that no one seems to stage Charles Dickens’ tedious A Christmas Carol much anymore. When I was a child I always hoped someone would kick Tiny Tim’s little crutch out from under him. And maybe someone did.

 

I wonder when someone first said, “Christmas has become too commercialized!” Probably about 34 or 35 A.D.

 

How remarkable that the appearance on the dinner table of Meemaw’s “good” china, probably from Sears or Montgomery Ward, brought out only twice a year, can bring back all sorts of those childhood memories I just now cautioned you against.

 

On Sunday morning after Mass the teenagers assembled the Stable, and then some little children knelt before it to arrange the hay just so, and then place almost every figure – the Infant Jesus is brought on Christmas Eve – just so: Mary, Joseph, the crib, camels, oxen, shepherds, wise men first in this place and then in that, talking to each one of them about how when Christmas comes they must keep the Baby Jesus warm.

 

Magic.

 

Merry Christmas, everyone.

 

-30-

 

 

 

Christmas in Prison - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com


Another Christmas Behind the Wire

 “I was in prison, and ye came unto me”

 -St. Matthew 25:36

 

The hallways of our dormitory echo

God’s holy silence on this Christmas Eve

The only light’s the Star of long ago;

It shines this night for us, whose hearts believe

 

For we are all now at the Manger met

Before the Altar of eternal Light

Such different personalities, and yet

We share our common faith on this rarest night

 

We bring our gifts to Mary’s fair-born Child:

A pen, a broom, a book, a welding rod,

A wrench, a mop, some papers neatly filed –

Our daily labors offered up to God

         

But silence now: offices, hallways, gym -

As silent as the streets of Bethlehem


(In the unit I visit the gym is but a slab of concrete outside; I needed the rhyme.)

Saturday, December 18, 2021

A December Sunflower but No Cigar - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

A December Sunflower but No Cigar

 

While walking in the garden, thinking about things

And wishing I had a cigar, I saw a sunflower

A volunteer, a brave young volunteer

From late summer’s glorious display

 

Most everything around it was brown and down

Except for a few tiny timid weeds

Some withering blades of tenacious grass

And a few scruffy zinnias along the fence

 

In January’s frosts it will disappear

But for now, the little sunflower - and we - are here

Friday, December 17, 2021

Yeah, and the Bad Haircut Too - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Yeah, and the Bad Haircut Too

 

House Panel Subpoenas Author of January 6 PowerPoint

 

-news item

 

The times are so terribly out of joint

With cartoons and sounds replacing words

I’d have anyone arrested for a PowerPoint

For the crime of shooting us lots of birds

Thursday, December 16, 2021

The Curse of Windows 11 - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

The Curse of Windows 11

 

Vista®© Risen from the Grave?

 

Tonight I installed Windows 11

Which scattered my folders and apps to H***

I quickly recovered Windows 10 (not much rhymes with eleven)

Which, as we know, works perfectly well

Wednesday, December 15, 2021

Where Someone Waits for You - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Where Someone Waits for You

 

A plane’s navigation lights chart our dreams

To Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, and the moon

And farther into the mysterious night

To somewhere far away, where adventures begin

 

But we are left here in December’s dark

Wondering when there will be a flight for us

When we can flee this joyless land at last

For that elusive happiness long deferred

 

And maybe someone there is dreaming too

And we down here can happily wonder who

Tuesday, December 14, 2021

Would Robin Hood Steal a Post Office Pen to Give to the Poor? - doggerel

 

Would Robin Hood Steal a Post Office Pen to Give to the Poor?

 

“Oh, he’s so handsome, just like his reward posters!”

 

-Sis in Disney’s Robin Hood, 1973

 

I haven’t seen a reward poster in ever so long

Post-office portraits of men grizzled and mean

Each of ‘em wanted for some felonious wrong

(And living a life uncouth and unclean)

 

Maybe one of ‘em stole a post office pen

$500 or a year in prison

For committing that heinous federal sin

(He told the judge he thought it was his’n)

 

I haven’t seen a reward poster in years

(But still I’d leave that pen alone, my dears)

Monday, December 13, 2021

Prince William Sans Culotte - rhyming doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Prince William Sans Culotte

 

Prince William, Duchess Katherine, and the Children

Pose for a Christmas Snap

 

Is the reason for pants minus

That a pair of trousers itches?

Oh, please, Your Royal Highness -

Put on your britches!

Sunday, December 12, 2021

December Tornadoes - weekly column, 12 December 2021

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

December Tornadoes

 

In this often cynical world we still find people whose greatest joy is to go and help other people without any thought of personal compensation. As soon as the news about the December tornadoes flashed across the news groups of good men and women, often associated with churches, saddled up and rode to the sound of need.

 

They are taking food, water, blankets, and other assistance to the displaced, and bringing their chainsaws, loaders, and other power equipment for clearing debris from roads and property so they can help the locals jump-start the years-long process of rebuilding their homes, businesses, and lives.

 

The rest of us can help by contributing wisely – wisely – to these worthy small organizations.

 

Two unhappy truths require us to be careful about financial aid: (1) some of the large, legendary, famous-name-brand charitable groups are not what they used to be, and (2) any smarmy scoundrel can access the InterGossip, build an attractive, professional-appearing site, and start soliciting dollars that will never buy the first bottle of water or the first blanket for the displaced.

 

The best option always is to contribute through your own church or a small local charity you know well. Indeed, it may well be that your church or club puts together working parties for just such emergencies, and there is where you can give.

 

The need is real. Remember that most of the victims were working the night shift in factories and warehouses, and others were in nursing homes and sometime just at home. They weren’t paying big bucks to take rocket ship rides or for vacations in Biarritz; they were working so their children could have a Christmas. Most of them had little; now many of them have nothing.

 

And, after all, they helped us after the hurricanes. We can do no less.

 

We can all give a little something so that everyone has a hot meal and warm place to sleep, and that the children can have presents under the Christmas tree after all.

 

-30-

Beaten and Shot - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Beaten and Shot

 

To Blessed Stanley Rother, Padre Francisco, Padre Apla’s – a petition

 

Missionaries and martyrs, pray for us

That we may still our anger and intemperance

And listen not to the voices of hate

But rather to the small still voice 1 of love

 

Missionaries and martyrs, pray for us

That we may think before we write in blood

And resolve our differences through God’s peace

With prayer, understanding, and fellowship

 

Missionaries and martyrs, pray for us

That we never state a thesis as death

 

Blessed Stanley Rother – thank you

 

 

1 1 Kings 19:12

Saturday, December 11, 2021

Assorted Broken Saints, Some with Parts Missing - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Assorted Broken Saints, Some with Parts Missing

 

A petition to Saint John Marie-Baptiste Vianney

 

After doing some time in this fallen world

We all are broken, and missing a few of our parts

Having lost some hopes and strengths along the way

But we keep chooglin’ along, making it work

 

And shoveling (life) with us, our parish priest

Just as Chaucer wrote, beginning at dawn

Five of six cylinders from church to church

Ignored by the bishop and unknown to Rome

 

Our daily saint in his well-worn chasuble

His old shoes squeaking to the Altar of God

 

Saint John Vianney, pray for our laborers

Friday, December 10, 2021

Offenders - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Offenders

 

to St. Jude – a petition for prisoners

 

In the system they’re called offenders

No one knows why; the offenses are over

Concrete dorms, three-high bunks, white uniforms

And overhead the sting of fluorescents

 

I’m not going all Pollyanna here

All of them know the poisonous passions of meth

The stench of blood, the sting of fluorescents

In fearing eyes in a gas station at night

 

The stench of cells, the sting of fluorescents

In glaring eyes in the booking area at night

Humiliations, transports, stripped and searched

Form a straight line with hands behind your backs

 

But still, a man’s a man

 

The difference between a man inside the wire

And a man outside the wire

Is often only that one man is inside the wire

And the other man is outside the wire

 

“For all have sinned…”

 

Christmas is coming

 

Will there be a letter from home?

 

St. Jude, help all of us to be better men

 

In spite of ourselves

Thursday, December 9, 2021

You Were in Bethlehem - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

You Were in Bethlehem – Don’t You Remember?

 

Setting up the family Creche

 

When you were a little child you knelt before

The Infant Jesus there in Bethlehem

Among the animals you placed your toys:

Barbie and Buzz, and Woody the Cowboy too

 

Even the Wise Men smiled to hear you sing

To the Holy Family your baby songs

In cold Judaea in the long ago

The Christmas story is true, and you were there

 

And so forever

 

You are a Christmas child and kneel before

The Infant Jesus – here in Bethlehem

Wednesday, December 8, 2021

A Polar Bear's Diet - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

A Polar Bear’s Diet

 

Do polar bears caution each other about

The dangers of eating human livers?

Tuesday, December 7, 2021

When Your Friends Let You Down, Maybe That's a Good Thing - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

When Your Friends Let You Down – Maybe That’s a Good Thing

 

St. Luke 5:17-26

 

Letting a pal down through a hole in the roof

To free him from paralysis and sins

Sounds much like a Larry, Darryl, and Darryl goof

And maybe it is – we are blessed in our friends

Monday, December 6, 2021

He Never Met a Phor He Didn't like - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

He Never Met a Phor He Didn’t Like

 

He never met a phor he didn’t like

Where the dead are always spinning in their graves

A discarded cup looks like a war zone

And poems are unpacked instead of read

 

Or hyperbole ‘WAY OVER THE TOP!!!!!!!!!!!!

OMG! OMG! OMG! OH!!!!!!!!

MY LIFE HAS BEEN CHANGED FOREVER!!!!!!!!!!

NO ONE HAS EVER SUFFERED AS MUCH AS I!!!!!!!!

 

And freighted his lines with adverbs in rank

Until they really actually literally sank

Banners That Fan Our People Cold - doggerel

 Inferior doggerel, not otherwise posted


Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Banners That Fan Our People Cold

 

Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky

And fan our people cold

 

-Macbeth I.i.49-50

 

Banners for sale, strung on lines in the breeze

Not an American flag among the lot

But only parodies and mockeries -

Betray your country with cash on the spot

 

In the name of freedom a tyrant’s face

Falsely imposed over our red, white, and blue

Children will ask, in their innocent grace:

“Mommy, whatever does F*** mean to you?”

 

These are not our good brave flags of old

But only foulness that fans our people cold


Sunday, December 5, 2021

All Children by Nature Have a Desire to Learn - weekly column, 5 December 2021

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

All Children by Nature Have a Desire to Learn

 

“All men by nature have a desire to know.”

 

-Aristotle, p. 3 of Man in the Universe in the 1943 Classics Club edition

 

We would now say “all men and women,” that is, if the fashionable among us will allow Aristotle a voice at all.

 

Once upon a time I was sitting in the car reading, waiting for the spouse-person who was yakking with some other women after Mass. Suddenly I noticed a little boy standing next to me at the window. He said, “You look like Father Brown.”

 

Well, any little boy who reads G. K. Chesterton has certainly been raised right, and I was pleased to meet him.

 

The little boy is now taller than I am, but for me he will always be that kid was a strong reader even when he was so small he was only about car-window high.

 

His name is not Jacques, nor is his little sister’s name Chantel, but give the unhappy temper of our time I will not reveal their true names, the town in which they live, nor the school they attend. Things have just gotten too weird.

 

Because they live far, far away I see Jacques and Chantel only a few times each year when they come to visit their grandparents, but it is always fun to hear what books they are reading, what new music they have learned, and how their summer jobs are going.

 

This is because their parents have given them love not only in food, clothing, and shelter, but in making their home a library, a music studio, an art museum, and a science laboratory. The farm animals are outside.

 

A few months ago their mom posted from their living room a video clip of Chantal singing a solo and Jacques accompanying her on a (viol? viola?). As the song says, if you’re gonna play in Texas you gotta have a fiddle in the band. Big fiddle. [Alabama - If You're Gonna Play In Texas (You Gotta Have A Fiddle In The Band) Lyrics | AZLyrics.com]

 

Well, okay, they’re rich folks who can afford to send their kids to fancy-schmancy schools, right?

 

Nope. Two working parents and an ordinary public school in Texas.

 

Jacques and Chantel, you see, were never permitted to feel sorry for themselves and submit to the Sauron’s eye that is the InterGossip. They have always had to work, study, and try to get along with their fellow humans.

 

Recently their mom sent a video of Jacques (but not Chantel, who was in a different program) in a Christmas presentation by their high school’s madrigal club. All the young folks were in beautiful costumes along the mediaeval-renaissance continuum (I know nothing about fashion) except for one who seemed to be a pirate, but, hey, good fun! The musical presentations of old – as in olde – Christmas hymns and Christmas carols, along with some contemporary just-plain-fun songs were outstanding: professional in voices, professional in musical talent, and professional in stagecraft, and obviously professional through months of disciplined rehearsals. It can only have been difficult.

 

I don’t know who the music teacher is, but she does a fantastic job in leading her students.

 

On this night, the kids got to have some fun, and they certainly did – such energy!

 

We’ve all been to school musical presentations and often suffered through them. We smile through the sixth-grade band’s pieces when what we really want to do is cover our ears. We applaud the children not because the strange noises they’ve made are objectively good but because the children gave it a go at all and we want to encourage them.

 

Okay, sometimes we want to encourage the brass to practice in the next county, but, hey, childhood.

 

However, the Christmas-themed program staged by Jacques and his fellow high school musicians was objectively good. The applause was not aw-ain’t-they-cute applause but real wow-they-are-great applause.  With discipline, practice, and the handing on of civilization from one generation to the next you get something good.

 

Only some hours later did I wonder if all those good, smart, talented, hard-working young people had been patted down for firearms.

 

All men and women by nature have a desire to know; all children by nature have a desire to know. The question for us is this: what do we give our children to know?

 

-30-

Cranky Catholics - and Whose Fault is That? - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

And Whose Fault is That?

 

Then said Jesus unto the twelve, “Will you also go away?”

 

Then Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go?

You have the words of eternal life.”

 

Catholics are much disapproved of these days

And whose fault is that?

Catholics even disapprove of each other

And whose fault is that?

 

Lawsuits and lockouts and altars abandoned

And whose fault is that?

The ‘net all clogged with angry Catholic sites

And whose fault is that?

 

Well, yeah, mine too

 

We are perfectly free to go away

But we won’t – because He asks us to stay

Saturday, December 4, 2021

All the Little Midnight Lights - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

All the Little Midnight Lights

 

To awaken in the middle of the night

Is to realize that this midnight dream

Is a fairyland of points of light

Arcing and soaring like a magic stream

 

The curious visions before your flickering eyes

Begin to focus as strange, blue-lit scenes

In a half-awake haze you realize

The lights are from all your little machines

 

Manufactured by men, mechanical light

And somehow that just doesn’t seem quite right

Friday, December 3, 2021

The Old Sears Store Remains Unsold - rhyming couplet

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

The Old Sears Store Remains Unsold

 

The big Sears store was a happy place

But now it’s only an empty space

Thursday, December 2, 2021

Children and Machine Gun Dreams - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 Children and Machine Gun Dreams

By word and example…parents lead their children to authentic freedom, actualized in the sincere gift of self, and they cultivate in them respect for others, a sense of justice, cordial openness, dialogue, generous service, solidarity, and all the other values which help people to live life as a gift.

-St. John Paul the Great, Evangelium Vitae

 

Do we sing to our children machine gun dreams

Instead of sugar plums? Little sleepyheads

Now tucked away into their little beds

In matching camouflage blankies and sheets

 

Do children code messages to Santa asking him

For Barbie’s Bunker all accessorized

With guns and knives properly pint-sized

And Super Sniper Skipper and Recon Ken?

 

Do children hide bayonets beneath their coats

And measure the distance to their classmates’ throats?

Wednesday, December 1, 2021

All Power to the People's Soviet of Gadgetry - poem

 

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

All Power to the People’s Soviet of Gadgetry

 

1.

 

The servile arts teach us to plan

Wars for sending our children to die

Barbed wire for penning our fellow man

Computers to sneak and snoop and spy

 

2.

 

The liberal arts teach us to ask

 

                                                  Why?

Tuesday, November 30, 2021

Las Vegas, Geographically Speaking - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Las Vegas, Geographically Speaking

 

Upon watching the 1960 Ocean’s Eleven

 

That oasis of Cool no longer exists

Except as road markers and artifacts

All else is gone: cigarette girls, ashtrays

Rotary telephones, Ford Galaxies

 

The glamour of cocktail dresses and tailored suits

Xanadu with electric lights and Scotch

Heliopolis with showgirls and cards

So Cool that no one ever called it Cool

 

And like those fragments of Ozymandias

All of that Cool is lost among the sands

Monday, November 29, 2021

A Man and His Dog at Sunday Mass - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

A Man and His Dog at Sunday Mass

 

And in what landscape of disaster
Has your unhappy spirit lost its road?

 

-Thomas Merton, “For my Brother - Missing in Action 1943”

 

His pilgrimage on earth is in his van

His clapped-out van, his one-man caravan

With an air-conditioner duct-taped in back

And his old dog next to him in the seat

 

At Mass he sits in back with his good old dog

His clothes are warm, he gets enough to eat

And, sure, a man and dog who approach their God

Together are good and faithful servants indeed

 

His pilgrimage on earth is in his van

His clapped-out van, his one-man caravan

 

And there is a dog

Sunday, November 28, 2021

We'll Trade You One Stealth Fighter for a Billion Vaccine Jabs - weekly column, 11,28.2021

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

We’ll Trade You One Stealth Fighter for a Billion Vaccine Jabs

 

A number of sources, including the Guardian (A new Covid variant is no surprise when rich countries are hoarding vaccines | Gordon Brown | The Guardian) are blaming the new Covid variants on “rich countries” (that invariably means you and me) for hoarding vaccines.

 

Poor countries, you see, can’t get any vaccines because Canada, the U.S., the U.K., and France are keeping them all, rather like Gollum clutching that ring while chanting, “My precious! My precious!”

 

I suppose I’d better dig up those sealed barrels of vaccines I buried in my back yard and turn them over to Medicins sans Frontieres (who also blame us) with an abject apology.

 

And you, good friends, need to check your closets and cupboards for all those bottles of vaccines you’ve stockpiled next to pallets of toilet paper, bottled water, and the complete collection of Wheel of Fortune: The Lost Episodes. Gather all those vaccines and turn them over to the INTERPOL officers who will land at the nearest intersection in unmarked UN helicopters.

 

You can tell they’re UN helicopters because they’re unmarked.

 

In truth, I aver that I might be the only man in America who admits he doesn’t know doodlysquat about the coronavirus.  I know only this: I have occasion to sit in the same room with nurse practitioners, nurses, physicians, and physicians’ assistants, all of whom attended real medical schools, not The University of Google, not The University of Gossip, and not The University of Some Loudmouth on Television. I listen to what the nurse practitioners, nurses, physicians, and physicians’ assistants who are in the room with me tell me about all sorts of medical topics affecting my brief life on this earth, and I do what they recommend. They know medicine. I know them. I trust them. As Martin Luther (otherwise not one of my favorite people) said, “Here I stand; I can do no other.”

 

The only other medical thing I know is that the full-body scanner that beamed across me last summer in a room that looked like the bridge of the starship Enterprise had all sorts of pretty little lights on it and made soft, susurrant, soporific sounds that almost put me to sleep.

 

Oh, and I can operate a Band-Aid.

 

But that’s it.

 

Given my trust in professionals with whom I can speak face-to-face rather than screen-to-screen, I tend not to believe the metaphorical medical mudslides on the InterGossip. The idea that a gang of Snidely Whiplashes in Washington, Ottawa, London, and Paris are withholding vaccines from poor nations who don’t seem to be so poor that they can’t afford the latest weaponry appears to be just another variant on blaming others for one’s own failings.

 

Pharmaceuticals are developed and manufactured by companies interested in their profits. They want to sell drugs, not lock them away in a variant (so to speak) of Uncle Scrooge’s money vault. The leaders of companies and countries are not always the most ethical, but it is not in their interests, whether in profits or philanthropy, to withhold vaccines from other nations.

 

Beyond that, those nations who focus on accumulating weapons and Swiss bank accounts could probably vaccinate all their peoples against all sorts of diseases by foregoing a single new jet fighter.

 

But then, prudent budgeting should obtain here too: how many luxury aircraft and armored limousines does ONE president need?

 

-30-

 

The Taste of Covid - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

The Taste of Covid

 

“Never give in…”

 

-Mr. Churchill, 29 October 1941

 

Coffee is metallic, as is my morning toast

Most everything else is vague, fuzzy, and flat

As if the world needed a pinch of salt

And that’s okay; it’s good to be alive

 

They say that there’s another variant or wave

Named Mu or Omicron or maybe Bob

Slithering ashore through Grendelian mists

We take our jabs in defiance because

 

We all have casualty lists of friends we miss

That’s not okay, and so we will never give in

 

(Still, I don’t know why the coffee should be metallic)

Saturday, November 27, 2021

Advent - a Gift of Becoming - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com


Advent – a Gift of Becoming

“The old order changeth, yielding place to new”

-“The Coming of Arthur” and “The Passing of Arthur” in Idylls of the King

 

There is much to be said for Ordinary Time

Its very ordinariness is kind to us

The daily hours that end with the Vespers chime

Free of formation and pageantry

 

But Advent comes as part of the dance

Of seasons wheeling through the universe

And we must shift our thoughts back into time

In anticipation of the Nativity

 

In solitary splendor a wonderful Star

Gives us light for our pilgrimage renewed

Friday, November 26, 2021

Trytophan Dreams after Thanksgiving Dinner - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Tryptophan Dreams after Thanksgiving Dinner

 

(channeling our inner Dorothy Parker)

 

Sleepy now, from excess of meat and cup

But unlike the poor turkey, we will wake up!

Thursday, November 25, 2021

Autumn is Life Writing its Autobiography - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Autumn is Life Writing its Autobiography

 

Autumn is not the end of summer, nor yet

Is autumn the beginning of winter; it is

Itself. Autumn is not between anything

Autumn is the culmination of seasons

 

The seed that slept beneath winter’s cold death

Arose in spring, a resurrection of itself

And grew its summer strength through work and sweat

And in September finished, and mopped its brow

 

Surveying all its cosmography

Autumn is life writing its biography

Wednesday, November 24, 2021

Face Masks and Hippie Hymns - poem

Lawrence Hall

mhall46184@aol.com


Face Masks and Hippie Hymns

 

At Mass I breathe behind and through a mask

My custom still, one of the paper-faced few

Although one might with some good reason ask

If it serves much purpose in a crowded pew

 

Each humid exhalation clouds the lens

Of my eyeglasses so I can’t even read

But I’m sure I know how each lesson ends

Needless to say I’ve memorized the Creed

 

And to mask those sandwich hymns:

 

I make hidden faces when the soloist croons

Another of those awful hippie tunes

 

(Has anyone told the music director that the 1960’s are over?)

Tuesday, November 23, 2021

Book Reviewers Promote Freedom by Giving Orders - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Book Reviewers Promote Freedom by Giving Orders

 

“Obey me and be free!”

 

-Number Six in the Free for All episode of The Prisoner

 

The irony of the imperative in most reviews

Is to make a command that the reader must heed

Keeping in chains the literary muse:

You must read this must-read which you need to read

 

(now back to weaving tapestries of this and that)