"The days are gone / When the kingdoms of earth flourished in glory" - SEAFARER, Anglo-Saxon, anonymous, trans. Burton Raffel

Among Jacobins - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Among Jacobins

“…the thoughts and feelings of each individual who really exists

are unique and cannot be duplicated.”

-Yevtushenko

A connection is not a surrender -
When we connect we exchange, we give 
     and receive
Ideas, jokes, poems, questions, a bit of 
     gossip
Cheesecake recipes and garden vegetables

But to deny the self is to cease to be
And nothing is left but an echoing, hiving 
     We
Galvanic responses instead of thoughts
Useful, obedient, disposable

Among the Jacobins there are no ideas
No poetry, no questions – only obedience

Virtual Candidate Drop - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Virtual Candidate Drop

There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission...For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear.

-The Outer Limits, 1963-1965

The Party faithful gather together as one
Because there is only one; I am alone
In unison roaring with the comrades who
Except as Zoomies may not even exist

Conventions meet in the aether this year
On glowing screens in isolation rooms
Not much point to a funny hat or tie
Or a drop of flickering CGI balloons

The candidates are chosen! O let me sing
And party with a solo pierce-and-ping!

We now return control of your television set to you…

Colonel Klink and his Gonculator - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Colonel Klink and his Gonculator

Colonel Klink’s machine was the very first
But not the last; the twentieth century
Bequeathed unto us The Gonculator
An electronic curse to blight our lives

With beepings and rumblings and flashing 
     lights
It wants our thoughts, our words, 
     our dreams, our souls
Twisting and misshaping our imaginings
With vaporous fantasies of packaged gods

It calls us from our work and recreations
And bids us stare into it, and believe…

Believe, believe…
We believe, O Gonculator, and we obey!


The story of Colonel Klink, that classic Miles Gloriosus, and his primitive prototype can be found on the gonculator that possesses you:

https://hogansheroes.fandom.com/wiki/Gonculator

Evening Thundercloud 16 August 2020, MePhone Photograph

And Now Four Fingers of House Scotch - a Diptych or a Dipstick or something...

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Two Fingers of House Scotch – 

a Diptych or a Dipstick or Something

1. Two Fingers of House Scotch

A bartender should be paunchy and 
     middle-aged
His oldest kid in college, the youngest in 
     jail
Cigarettes in five ashtrays down the bar
His name is Blue; nobody knows just why

If there must be a woman behind the bar
Let her name be Sophie or Maud or Toots
Makeup slapped-on, her hair dyed 
     trash-fire red
She misses stripping at the Flamingo

Frank Sinatra once bought her a drink, 
     yeah, true
But now she kinda has a thing for Blue


2. Six Centimeters of House Scotch

A bartender programmed by MicroPlop
Prototype to a braking system that failed
Disposable batteries smoking, on fire
Its model number is Hey You B-52

It remembers a third-party vendor by 
     name
What is the gender for a robot bartender?
Hey, big spender, is that a credit card?
Or maybe you’re just happy to code me

And the programmer who hacked it out of 
     plot
It’s rather like a lust-crazed coffee pot

https://www.heraldmailmedia.com/news/nation/goodbye-to-bartenders-robots-could-soon-make-your-drink/article_e24e2abf-0b1f-51df-b6b5-b79da01e0ff1.html

Two Fingers of House Scotch - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Two Fingers of House Scotch

A bartender should be paunchy and 
     middle-aged
His oldest kid in college, the youngest in 
     jail
Cigarettes in five ashtrays down the bar
His name is Blue; nobody knows just why

If there must be a woman behind the bar
Let her name be Sophie or Maud or Toots
Makeup, her hair dyed trash-fire red
She misses stripping at the Flamingo

Frank Sinatra once bought her a drink, 
     yeah, true
But now she kinda has a thing for Blue

But is it True? - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

But is it True?

How was it possible for even gifted and intelligent people to be deceived?

-Yevtushenko, A Precocious Autobiography, p. 74

Then:

Proletariat bourgeoisie egotistical
Calculation labor capital revolutionary
Theory freedom of speech people’s army
Specter of Metternich capitalist hyenas

Now:

Visual aesthetic frank discussion
Defund decolonize decommission
Assumptions unpack the conversation
Re-imagine emerging non-profits

Transcendent:

The Good, the True, the Beautiful

Mi Corazon - weekly column

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Mi Corazon

A friend and I were enjoying a now rare lunch occasion at Flying J / Denny’s-Limited-Menu-Wear-a-Mask along the interstate. The food was fine, as always, but the place was corona-time dreary, with tables spaced far apart, half the booths marked off with yellow plastic CAUTION tape, old acquaintances among the staff now missing, few patrons, and sadly quiet, but then, much of life is dreary just now.

As we were finishing our meal and our catching-up, the restaurant manager walked by slowly with an elegant, elderly lady on his arm.

“This is my son,” the elegant lady said to us. “Don’t you think he is handsome?”

We agreed that he was, and he smiled proudly, patted his companion on the arm, and said, “Mi Corazon.”

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“My heart,” he replied.

And she said to him, “My heart too.”

Gentle readers, you may now say, “Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.”

The elegant lady told us that she and her husband had come to this restaurant often, and now that he had died she would have to go live with her sister in Mississippi. In the meantime, she visited the restaurant as often as she could to take a meal and visit with all the staff, whom she happily claimed as her children.

As her favorite child, the manager was granted the honor of escorting the elegant lady to her car after her meal.

The elegant lady looked at my friend and said, “You would make a great son.”

She did not say anything about me.

And then she gently chided my friend with, “You need to finish your lunch.” With children of the Depression and the Second World War, finishing your meal is not only a patriotic duty but a religious one.

Gentle readers, when was the last time your mom told you to finish you lunch?

We wished the elegant lady every happiness, and with great dignity and pride the restaurant manager carefully walked her to her car, with everyone on staff telling her “Good-bye” and “See you tomorrow.”

I just thought you would want to know.

Yes, much of life is dreary just now, but there are those elegant souls – and their adopted favorite sons - who have a gift for un-drearying things and reminding us how good life is, how good people are.

-30-

A Statue of our Favorite War Hero - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

A Statue of our Favorite War Hero

Let us build a statue of Sergeant Schultz
Standing bravely at the door of Baracke 2
With a bouquet of flowers in one mighty 
     hand
And a slice of apple strudel in the other

And on the base let there be deeply 
     engraved
“In war I do not like to take sides”
On the reverse we will write, “I see 
     nothing!”
And then perhaps on the sides, 
     “Ach du liebe!”

Let us build a statue of Sergeant Schultz
On earth’s last ever battlefield

Children in Clear Plastic Cages - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Children in Clear Plastic Cages

“I tell you, schools are a very appetizing opportunity. I just saw a nice piece in The Lancet arguing the opening of schools may only cost us 2 to 3 percent, in terms of total mortality.”

-Dr. Mehmet Oz

A child
Is not a herd immunity parameter
Nor is she a working hypothesis
A flatten-the-curve probability
Or a distribution of antibodies

A child
Is not an appetizing opportunity
Nor is she a 2 to 3% tradeoff
A deceived Darwinian’s variable
Or the it in “It is what it is”

A child
Is the small, still voice of God calling to us


https://www.marketwatch.com/story/dr-oz-slammed-for-suggesting-it-may-only-cost-us-2-to-3-of-american-lives-to-reopen-schools-2020-04-16

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/it-what-it-trump-interview-covid-19-death-toll-u-n1235734

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Poetry - Ideas Dressed up with Some Place to Go - a poem about poems, but not a poem about poems about poems, or maybe it is...

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Poetry – Ideas Dressed up with Some Place to Go

A poem need not be so overdressed
That it embarrasses free-verse poseurs
Awash in self-absorbed, self-pitying tears
The sound of one first-person pronoun clapping

But still they should be instructed

That a poem is not about the poet
It is about the reader who has turned
His attention and the writer’s pages
To the existential questions of life

And so is properly dressed for its work

Poetry and Hamburgers - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Poetry and Hamburgers

Only in Russia is poetry respected –

it gets people killed. Is there anywhere else

where poetry is so common a motive for murder?

-attributed to Osip Mandelstam

Only in America is a hamburger respected -
It gets people killed. Is there anywhere else
Where not making a ‘burger fast enough
Is so common a motive for murder?


https://www.businessinsider.com/fast-food-industry-attempts-to-address-shootings-threat-training-2019-8?op=1

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2011/04/fast-food-crime-why-is-there-so-much-violent-crime-at-fast-food-restaurants.html

When We Arrive in Saint Petersburg - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

When We Arrive in Saint Petersburg

When the Paris plane lands at Pulkovo
We will be groggy from traveling through time
But we must drop our bags at the Nevsky 88
And report to the Emperor on Senate Square

Two coffees from a kiosk, and a bench
We’ll probably buy a postcard or two
And watch passing lovers on that summer day
And make no plans beyond that moment

The Horseman in the sun will be enough
For we will have arrived in Saint Petersburg

A Reflection on Choices Made - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

A Reflection on Choices Made

“…they have failed to tell the truth, preferring a safe distance”

-Yevtushenko

Maybe I disappoint, but now I prefer
That safe distance Yevtushenko condemned
Because in media res all is chaos
The immediacy of emotion and pain

The best of intentions, sodden with blood
Conflicting condemnations stinging with pain
Choosing to be involved, and then condemned
The sneers and scorn of an ungrateful nation

Only in reflection, with confusion crossed
Does a man learn whether he won or lost

Just Drop the Deck - a poem about lawnmower repairs (caution - strong asterisk usage)

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Just Drop the Deck

When the lawnmower goes CLUNK – and it often
     does –
I burrow into the InterGossip to find
One of those fixit videos by some fellow
Named Darryl or Wayne or Red or Mitch who
     spends
The first five minutes on exposition:

“Like, you know, this is my garage, like, you know, and this is my mower, and there’s the kids’ bicycles, you know, and I was mowing the yard, you know, you can see where I stopped (shaky video shift), ha ha, when the machine went CLUNK, you know, and, well, here it is, you know, as you can see it’s a classic Snarkwell-Guppy, like, you know, and they sure don’t build ‘em like this anymore, like, you know, so today I’m going to show you how to diagnose the CLUNK, like, you know, so first you take your wire cutters, you know, because they cut wires, you know, and you cut all these wires here, you know, like and you take your tester, you know, and, like, oh, I need to change the 9-volt battery, like, you know, okay, so we know the CLUNK is from the PTO, so now you just drop the
     deck…”

Why do ALL lawnmower repairs begin
With “…just drop the deck?” Yeah, an
     hour of heat
And sweat and barking your knuckles
With three sizes of wrenches and searching
For that last little nut hidden in some
Inaccessible place and then the
Heavy-*** deck falls on your hand and you
Yell the sort of thing that got your mouth washed
     out
With soap by Mom when you were little

But I no longer drop the ***-**** deck
I take that ***-****ed mower to the shop

My mower is about two inches too wide
For the pickup truck, so I borrow my brother
And a trailer and we heave that ***-**-*-*****
Mower onto it and haul it away

Uh, oh…is that tire flat…? ***-**-*-*****!

Then we take the mower to the good ol’ shop
That has changed hands ‘cause Old Bubba retired,
And they promise the mower in twelve days
And they don’t call and they don’t answer the
     ‘phone
And when you finally go in to check on it
The girls their sweet time looking up
From their take-out burgers and fries and shakes,
And then look at you as if you have interrupted
Their leisurely day of eating, snickering
And making personal ‘phone calls. Then one goes
To the back while the other keeps giggling
And spraying food on her ‘phone,
And the other one returns to say
They lost a mechanic and they’re sorry
They’ll get right on it tomorrow, yessir,
Which means another two weeks at the least

I got the mower home yesterday
And after a half-hour it laid down and died

Thus endeth the lesson

A Spring Harvest, Geoffrey Bache Smith - a Review

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

A Spring Harvest, Geoffrey Bache Smith – a Review

I bought my copy of Geoffrey Bache Smith’s A Spring Harvest from That Company via the InterGossip, and caution those wishing to read Smith’s poems to verify the quality of what they are buying.

There is a contemporary problem with all sorts of people cobbling together all sorts of drivel and finding a way of tacking the names of C. S. Lewis or J. R. R. Tolkien to these mashups in order to make a sale.

Shameful borrowers lacking any creativity of their own, for instance, often write pastiche letters from Screwtape, an unfortunate practice even with children, who at least can plead youthful ignorance, but adults, who should demonstrate a sense of ethics, have gotten away with looting Lewis’ works for profit.

The recent film biography of Tolkien is universally condemned, and rightly so. One hopes the fine young actors’ careers aren’t stalled, and that the producers’ careers are.

A more recent misfortune is a crudely glued-together pamphlet of the poems of Geoffrey Bache Smith, a friend and schoolmate of Tolkien’s who was killed in France in 1916.

After the war, as a tribute to his boyhood friend and as a kindness to his grieving mother, Tolkien edited some of Smith’s poems into a little book, A Spring Harvest, and had them printed.

Undoubtedly the original edition was thoughtfully set out by the publishers.

This 2020 printing is a mess. The only identifying information is inside the back cover, probably because the perpetrators do not wish to be known:

Made in the USA
Coppell, TX
07 July 2020

Presumably Smith’s poems are out of copyright; even so, this shabby “Coppell, TX” treatment should never have happened: the typeface is inappropriate, the layout is crude, and the cover is a greasy, fingerprint-y sheet of cardboard. The copy of a copy of a copy of a photograph shows us that in the anonymous editor’s mind Lieutenant Smith should be depicted in an unhappy shade of aqua.

And now to the poems: Smith was only 22 when he died of his wounds, and so his work can fairly be regarded as juvenilia, with some good exceptions. He was the product of the middle class and a good education (not simply staring into a screen and pushing buttons), and was an inheritor of Romantic and Victorian usages and traditions. His formal diction can seem stilted, but such was common in the days of parlour poetry. Smith was just out of boyhood, and so was learning his way through language and poetry. His usage and content is formed on Celtic mythology, King Arthur, and knights and their ladies fair, and a sense of loyalty to nation, king, and empire that seems wholly alien now: “Sonnet to the British Navy,” for instance, is painful to read.

Smith’s structure, though, is excellent. “Sonnet to the British Navy” is certainly derivative in wording and style, but the artistic discipline of his precise Shakespearean sonnet form is much to be praised. In a time when most poetry is nothing more than insipid, undisciplined, self-obsessed, me-me-me-poor-me free verse, Smith’s command of meter and rhyme is to be praised.

One of the most delightful poems in the pamphlet is “Pure Virginia,” a tribute to American tobacco. This is a well-crafted Petrarchan sonnet in which Smith forgets to be too formal and lets himself have a little fun.

The most touching poem is “Domum Redi Poeta” (the poet returns home). The Latin is not an affectation; like all carefully brought up children until fairly recently, Smith, Lewis, and Tolkien were quite at home in the language of ancient Rome, even in making jokes and writing poetry.

This little two-stanza piece in rhyming iambic tetrameter expresses the poet’s desire to return to the innocent joys of his boyhood home, and knowing as we do that he didn’t, the pathos is very real.

A Spring Harvest shows us the unfulfilled promise of a life ended young in yet another futile war. Geoffrey Bache Smith died well, though, and in his brief life accomplished more than taking selfies and watching television.

For those who are fond of the Inklings (Lewis, Tolkien, Williams, and their friends), A Spring Harvest will be a worthy edition to their libraries - in another edition.

-30-

Moonlight and the Transfiguration - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Moonlight and the Transfiguration

Up before dawn; the dogs would have it so
Demanding to be taken for their first patrol
Snuffling and barking mysteries along the ground
While we consider the mysteries of the stars

The moon is full, and Venus anticipates the dawn
Dogs know nothing of the Transfiguration
And I don’t really understand it myself
And that’s okay

Up before dawn, for God will have us so
Savoring the beautiful mysteries given us

But He Had a Pre-Existing Condition - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

But He Had a Pre-Existing Condition

Foul smoke, yellow and sour from rubbish fires
Spasms like a snake with a broken back
Twisting among our crumbling Qumran caves
Wherein our scrollies might someday be found

Rumors as well as smoke patrol our roads
Each contradicting the other with absolutes
The eternal verities of this hour
Which must be obeyed until they must not

The death of your friend is irrelevant:
He had a pre-existing condition

It is what it is

The Divine Office at Night - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

The Divine Office at Night 1

Even if those happy spheres are sentient beings
We need not pray for the abbess moon and her
     stars
For they never rebelled in the gardens of space
For there they found space enough, beyond time

Perhaps they wonder if we are sentient beings
And much in need of their sung prayers instead
We, with our ancient hatreds and endless wars
As soon as formed disobedient to God

We need not pray for the abbess moon and her
     stars
But be most grateful if they pray for us


1 Cf. The Rule of Saint Benedict