Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
I Have No Words
The commentator
Says she has no words, and so
She writes a paragraph
Friday, January 7, 2022
I Have No Words - poem
Wednesday, January 5, 2022
Anticipating a Root Canal Tomorrow - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Anticipating a Root Canal Tomorrow
Sometimes you
don’t need anesthetics to be goofy -
Anticipating a
trip to the dentist will do
To confuse today’s
plans into nothingness
And scatter
all focus from a favorite book
People have such
dentistry every day
You tell
yourself, only your self is not listening
Should I go to bed early, or get up late
What will it
be like in The Chair tomorrow?
A sigh, a
whisper, a desperate wheeze –
Just a little
more nitrous oxide, please!
A Snow Globe and a Discarded Child - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
A Snow Globe and a Discarded Child
A dreaming child
peers into a little glass dome
Where snow
falls upon a tiny world:
A mountain, a
forest, a tunnel, a village, a train
A kingdom
where there is safety and love
He cradles it
in his hand lest it be lost
Among the
emotional wreckage of lying adults
Cold pizza,
unexplained screams from the other room
300 channels
of satellite tv
A beaten child
peers into that magic dome
And wishes
that somehow it might be his home
Tuesday, January 4, 2022
Overserved - doggerel
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Overserved
New Year’s Eve 2021
Oh, TV guy, we
most clearly observed
That in your
speech you swiveled and swerved
But in the
dawn’s clear light you’re now unnerved
An apology,
yes, that’s well deserved
But please
don’t tell us you were overserved
Monday, January 3, 2022
On my 74th Birthday - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
On my 74th Birthday
The
eternal magic of eternal things
sends the dreamer out into the world
-Rod McKuen, “January 2”
I didn’t mean
to be 74
That wasn’t
part of my master plan
To be young
forever, cooler each year
But suddenly
I’ve become invisible
Once upon a
time and long ago
I drove my old
MG to California
A sleeping
bag, a few books, a few poems
A portable
typewriter, some portable dreams
I remember
breaking down in Tucson
But best of
all, I remember the dreams
Sunday, January 2, 2022
Statues and Time Capsules - weekly column, 2 January 2022
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Statues and Time
Capsules
“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand
in the desert. . .
-Shelley, “Ozymandias”
The past few years have witnessed a purge of statues,
which while ahistorical in an immediate sense is historical in another: as
cultures rise they raise statues to themselves, and as they decline the statues
are destroyed or recycled by a new rising culture. In their turn, those statues too are
eventually destroyed by yet another rising power.
But it’s all neatly told in Shelley’s clear and
cautionary “Ozymandias.”
A statue almost never tells us much about history as it
was lived, but rather as the mythology held by whoever had the power to tax
people to set it up.
Movies are much the same. Gettysburg is a fine
movie with great staging (except for the fake beards) and a great musical
score, but, gosh, all those fat Confederates don’t match the reality of a time
when no one had enough to eat.
The soundtrack to Sam Peckinpah’s chaotic Major Dundee
sounds like a bunch of drugged-out hippies turned loose with tin pans and car
parts, communicating nothing about the Civil War in the American Southwest; the
racket reveals only that the film was made in the 1960s.
An irony about all the Confederate statues coming down is
that they were bought mostly from northern businessmen. Those of well-known
figures, such as Lee and Jackson, were specialty items, but the famous “standing
soldier” who, well, stands on the courthouse squares of many southern towns
also stands on the courthouse squares of many northern towns. They were
mass-produced, and a USA belt buckle or a CSA belt buckle and a hat change made
a grey stone or zinc statue either an American soldier or a Confederate
soldier, whichever way a town council wanted it.
Confederate, Union Soldier Statues Look the Same. Here's Why
| Time
Why those Confederate soldier statues look a lot like their
Union counterparts - The Washington Post
I suppose now they’d come from Shanghai.
Indeed, the likeness of Martin Luther King on the
national mall was made in China. There was some controversy about that because
apparently no American artists, quarries, or stonemasons were permitted to bid
on it.
MLK Memorial: From China, with love? - CSMonitor.com
I don’t know if there is a time capsule somewhere within
it.
If someone were to raise a statue to you some day, what
items would you like to see included in its time capsule?
These things needn’t be especially durable because in a century
or two someone’s going to knock your statue down too.
…boundless and
bare
The
lone and level sands stretch far away.”
-“Ozymandias”
-30-
A Time Capsule for our Noblest Soldier - poem
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
A Time Capsule for our Noblest Soldier
“In war I do
not like to take sides”
-Sergeant
Schultz
If there must be
time capsules buried beneath
Statues of bold
men wearing uniforms
As a remembrance
of man’s noblest ideals
Let us have one
for dear ol’ Sergeant Schultz
A recipe for Hans' apple strudel
A bottle of his
favorite Pilsner beer
A Cuban cigar
from Colonel Klink’s stash
And a menu from
the Hofbrau House
But especially
the strudel
If we must honor
soldiers, as some assert
Then let us include their favorite dessert
Saturday, January 1, 2022
We'll Write a New Idyll This Year - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
We’ll Write a New Idyll This Year
The
old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And
God fulfils himself in many ways
-Idylls of the King, “The Passing of Arthur,”
8-9
Janus faces both ways, and so do we
A last, lingering look at the year that was
And then a turn to the year we must meet
Marching to it through Janus Pater’s doors
We will most remember about the past
Our friends whose pilgrimages came to their ends
We joy in the remembrance of their happiness
Their stories and songs, their unfailing kindness
Janus faces both ways, and so do we;
But now our friends, our happy friends, they see
Light
And
the new sun rose bringing the new year
-Idylls,
“The Passing of Arthur,” 469
Thursday, December 30, 2021
6 January 2021: To Ask to be Exempt would be Unreasonable - a poem of sorts
Lawrence Hall
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
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
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
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
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
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
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