Lawrence Hall
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
Monday, December 27, 2021
If Good King Wenceslaus Looked Down Today - poem
Friday, December 24, 2021
Late in the Evening on Christmas Eve - poem
Lawrence Hall
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
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
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
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
A marvel for children and old men.
Everyone Writes a Poem about the Winter Solstice - poem
Lawrence Hall
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
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
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
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Another Christmas Behind the Wire
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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)
Monday, November 22, 2021
The Number of the Beast is .556 - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
The Number of the
Beast is .556
“This is my rifle. There are many like it”
Because they fall off assembly lines everywhere
Probably even in the Khyber Pass
And frankly, son, you don’t need the damned thing
A rifle is not your friend; it is a mechanical thing
A rifle is an engine of destruction
It is made for killing your fellow humans
The last one alive wins madness and guilt
You never made the first day of boot camp
(neither
did John Wayne)
You need to know what John Wayne never knew:
A .556 disintegrates a child
A .556 vaporizes your soul
A variant:
The Number of the
Beast is .556
“This is my rifle. There are many like it”
Because they fall off assembly lines everywhere
Probably even in the Khyber Pass
And frankly, son, you don’t need the damned thing
A rifle is not your friend; it is a mechanical thing
A rifle is an engine of destruction
It is made for killing your fellow humans
The last one alive wins madness and guilt
You never made the first day of boot camp
(neither
did John Wayne)
You need to know what John Wayne never knew:
A .556 disintegrates a child
A .556 vaporizes your soul
If you
finish recruit training and A.I.T.
And
have your orders in hand
then I’ll listen
But
if you come back
you’ll not want to talk
Sunday, November 21, 2021
Giving Thanks for all Our Thanksgiving - weekly column, 21 November 2021
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Giving Thanks for
all Our Thanksgivings
For a child Thanksgiving is sort of like Christmas only
without any toys. It’s interesting enough: lots of relatives come to dinner,
and there’s turkey and “the good china,” but without Santa Claus and toys it’s
not that big a thing.
Thanksgiving is also probably not a big thing among the
First Nations.
The absence of toys and their distraction makes Thanksgiving
a time when a child can more easily focus on the behavior of the adults in his (the
pronoun is gender-neutral) life.
For one, there is always an uncle, sometimes a
grandfather, who is convinced that everyone at the table is eager to hear about
his latest symptoms and diagnoses.
Another helping of irritable bowel syndrome, anyone?
And there comes a Thanksgiving when the child realizes
with a shock that some of the adults he has loved all his life don’t really
like each other, or that an aunt or uncle who was here last year is “visiting
friends” this year, and that topic is not mentioned further.
A painful moment is the remembrance of a beloved MeeMaw
or PawPaw who was laughing and joking around the table last year and is now in
Heaven with Jesus. And, yes, we spare a moment for happy memories and an
awareness of the transitoriness of life.
The matter of the children’s table is awkward. A little
kid loves it – it’s a rare occasion when the children sit together as a peer
group with somewhat less adult supervision than usual. An occasional crepe-y
arm hands across more turkey or rolls, and that’s close enough.
At the age of twelve or so a kid perceives that the
children’s table now reflects a lower social status. A girl cousin of the same
age gets to sit at the adult table and the boy is stuck with the rug-rats and
an admonition to “watch” them.
Humiliation.
After the dessert, when the adults are enjoying their
coffee and the heart-valve replacement stories arc through the air in one
direction while the hip-transplant narratives are flying the other way, the
young ‘uns can escape outside (“Don’t forget your coats!”). The little ones
fling leaves and little plastic balls around, and the older ones share school stories
and, perhaps, confess an attraction to a cute girl or guy in the sophomore
class.
Once upon a time a child would never have left the table
without asking the appropriate parent or grandparent for permission to do so.
The last time this occurred was in Gatineau, Canada in 2005. The occasion was
read into Hansard at the next Parliament.
And again, once upon a time a child would never have
rejected the turkey, ham, several kinds of dressing, sweet potatoes, mashed
potatoes, new potatoes, rolls, biscuits, pecan pie, apple pie, and other
wonderful gifts of food prepared by loving hands with a plaintive cry of, “Can
we go to town for pizza?”
Nor would an adult have asked about vegan options.
Such would have been dismissed as ungrateful by those who
grew up hungry during the Depression and the Second World War.
But that generation is mostly gone now, and with them the
core of that post-war world of industry, optimism, thrift, progress, a new
openness among peoples, and wonderful hopes for the future.
For them, simply to have survived and now at last to have
work and enough food to eat would have been among their many reasons for giving
thanks.
We do well to remember that, and to give thanks for them.
May your Thanksgiving be a happy one!
-30-
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