Thursday, February 15, 2018

4,000 More Light Casualties (a Russia series, 24) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

4,000 More Light Casualties

A group of journalists arrived from Moscow and were told that the Afghan National Army…had taken the ridge. (They) were posing for victory photographs while our soldiers lay in the morgue.

-Svetlana Alexeivich, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War

A touchy old man who never went to war
Now poses with his decorative generals
In their tailored Ken-and-Barbie battle dress
All prepped for combat in the officers’ clubs

New president, same as old presidents
And generals, awarding each other medals
And promotions for their golden resumes’
For sending not-their-children off to die

While they prosper on defense industry bids,
Afghanistan is the graveyard of our kids

(Shhhhhhhhhh…Don’t disturb Congress;
they’re fast asleep.)







Many incidents detailed in Zinky Boys parallel incidents in the lives and deaths of American enlisted men in Viet-Nam.

Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Pensees' for an Ash Wednesday - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com


Pensees’ for an Ash Wednesday

Today is also Valentine’s, and so
For the schoolchildren little candy hearts
As we remember from our happy youth
Teenagers like them still, and so they should

Now lessons follow: the four elements
Of Anglo-Saxon poetry, history
Chemistry, a turn in the auto shop:
Yeats’ happy “ceremonies of innocence”

And in the afternoon, Mass, and ashes,
And the cleaners tidy up candy wrappers

                                                  Instead of corpses

Astrid-the-Wonder-Dachshund, ca 10 weeks old - MePhone photo



Article 58 (a Russia series, 23) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Article 58

“We can’t go arresting people for what they say in a private conversation…I’ve no doubt we shall come to that eventually, but at the present stage of our struggle for freedom, it just can’t be done.”

-Evelyn Waugh, Put Out More Flags

Our leaders now investigate silences
And threaten imprisonment casually
For thoughts unknown and acts never considered
Under secret indictments alien to law

Star Chambers assemble in conclaves dark
Special prosecutors instruct their Cromwells
To find a law, or interpret one so
To make each midnight knock a work of art -

Mind what you don’t say, and how you don’t say it:
Our keepers now investigate silences

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

The First Lenten Penance - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com


The First Lenten Penance

The first Lenten penance is being told:
Lent is not just about giving up things
Lent is not just about giving up things
Lent is not just about giving up things

Lent is not just about giving up things
Lent is not just about giving up things
Lent is not just about giving up things
Lent is not just about giving up things

Lent is not just about giving up things…
But did anyone ever say it was?

Machinery, Jefferson, Texas - photograph


The Revolution is a Corpse (a Russia series, 22) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Revolution is a Corpse

The revolution is a stinking corpse
And spreading Walter Duranty all over a corpse
While chanting “It’s alive!” won’t make it so
Because a revolution is only death

Artists are never revolutionaries
Because artists work up the good and true
From the foundation of Creation
While revolutionaries obey diktats

Rearranging a corpse is never art
And revolution is always a corpse

Homage to Pascal - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Homage to Pascal

For Thomas V. Morris and William J. Bennett
In gratitude for a wonderful summer at Notre Dame

O, thou dry Jansenist! A night of fire
Left in your pocket like a shopping list
Sitting quietly in a room, will never burn
To set your sere and withered soul alight

And one might wager that your calculator
In brass, for counting brass, touches not the heart
Which has the reasons which the mind knows too
Pensees which never make a night a day

Forgive thou, then, this lettre provinciale
And count it as a friend’s memorial

Monday, February 12, 2018

General Store, Jefferson, Texas - photograph


Who was Stalin's Barber? (a Russia series, 21) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Who was Stalin’s Barber?

So who was Stalin’s barber? Did he joke
About mass starvation, and did he bet
Stalin five kopecks on footer matches?
“The Spartaks are sure looking good this season.”

“Ya think? I’m betting on the Dynamos;
They’ve got a forward like you wouldn’t believe.”
“But, Comrade Boss, you had him shot last week.”
“Oh, yeah, after the Lvov game. I forgot.”

“Sometimes you just kill me, Boss; you really do.”
“That reminds me - just leave your keys after work.”

Sunday, February 11, 2018

Beeler Bible Class, Methodist Church, Kirbyville, Texas. Date unknown.

Hebo Hall, 2nd row, 3rd from left

You Russian Poets (a Russia series, 20) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

You Russian Poets

You Russian poets must write your lines in blood
For often that is all that is left to you
By invaders, revolutionaries, and
“The briefcase politician in his jeep” 1

Perhaps every Russian is a Pushkin
In frost and heat, in every deprivation
Plowing in the face of the enemy
Building civilization with frozen hands

And always shaping noble tetrameters
Into an eternal song of a Russian spring

1 Yevtushenko, “Zima Junction”

Napoleon and His Poached Egg - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Napoleon and His Poached Egg
 
“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”

-Father Zossima in The Brothers Karamazov

I am Napoleon now. I want to be
Napoleon, and it is so. I can be
Anything I want to be – isn’t that
The cleverness you’ve always taught to me?

My truth is the truth, and it must be yours
My self-determination - it obscures
Your bogus science and reality
Fiat and fashion my truth thus secures

I am a poached egg 1 now. That’s what I want –
It’s illegal to argue that - so don’t!

1 The allusion to an argument in C. S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity is well known.

Saturday, February 10, 2018

Softball Field at Night - photograph


Sorting Out Russian Poetry (a Russia series, 19) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Sorting Out Russian Poetry

Avant-garde post-modernism ego
Futurism symbolism acme
Ism constructivism cosmopol
Itanism formalism neo

Formalism futurism imag
Inism proletarian real
Ism absurdism maximalism

Socialist realism, nothingism -
Poetic beauty, in spite of the Isms

Friday, February 9, 2018

Sunlit Alley with Bicycle, Jefferson, Texas - photograph


Something of a cliche' composition, but this was as found.
Tap for the complete image.

Alexander Pushkin and the Poker-Playing Dogs (a Russia series, 18) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Alexander Pushkin and
the Poker-Playing Dogs

We can have our Pushkin, all thinky and sad
And our poker-playing pups, cheating at cards
Ruslan and Ludmylla dancing on ice
At the Houston Airport Holiday Inn

Did Pushkin paint the poker-playing pups
Or carve tetrameters while in his cups?
That green baize poker table, a samovar
And the Big Giant Head, who needs an ace

We can have our Pushkin, all thinky and sad
And too those kitschy dogs, being real bad!

Reading the Morning Newspaper at the Coffee Shop - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Reading the Morning Newspaper at the Coffee Shop

The fresh death notices a reader eyed
“Who was this woman, who recently died?”
“My ex,” he replied, not breaking his stride
With bacon and eggs, and toast on the side

The Olympics and Cruella De Vil - column

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Olympics and Cruella De Vil

The squabbling and politics began before the first competition of this year’s purported Olympics (which are not on Mount Olympus at all).

A male American athlete is reportedly suffering a wall-eyed hissy-fit because a woman will carry the national flag in the processional march and he won’t. After a tie vote the issue was decided by a coin toss. In an anti-social media posting of presidential dignity the male athlete said the coin toss was dishonorable.

The North Koreans will be permitted to compete in the games in South Korea, and South Koreans despise the U.S.A. as much as the Norks do. Don’t expect a tribute to the thousands of Americans who died protecting ungrateful South Korea.

The Korean peninsula is, well, Korean, divided in the middle between Koreans who don’t like each other except when they do, and then they both hate Americans. Let the Koreans sort it all out. Further, Chinese imperialists are strutting around in the area with their shiny new navy, so the Koreans should talk them into choosing sides and paying for the privilege, instead of our depleted Navy and Air Force. There are precedents - no American seems to miss funding bases in Viet-Nam and the Philippines.

The Koreans have promised to stop selling dog meat for the duration of the Olympics. How nice. Dachshunds will be off the menu for a month. If Charles Schultz’s Peanuts is printed in the newspapers in Korea, the appropriate and of course respectful cultural adaptation would be to have Charlie Brown, Lucy, and the other kids slaughter, dismember, and barbecue Snoopy.

According to http://koreandogs.org/ (I do not know how reliable this site is, but other sites concur), Koreans, north and south, prepare pooches for supper with the little things being “electrocuted, hanged, beaten, have their throats slashed, or are boiled or burnt to death.”

Just imagine a television cooking show in the Koreas: “Today, folks, we’re going to take this adorable little beagle with the cute, waggly tail and the big trusting eyes, put him through the blender, and then braise the beagle bits to a nice golden brown…”

The mascot for the Korean Winter Olympics is the Korean white tiger. Perhaps after the games he, too, will be eaten.

Another public relations issue and plumbing challenge at the Korean Olympics is the norovirus is spreading among staffers and possibly competitors. Norovirus, as you remember, is a Latin medical term which means “puking your guts up.”

The source of the current strain is unknown. Perhaps the puppies weren’t cooked properly.

Oh, yes, let us all be enlightened by the spirit of the Olympics.

-30-