Bumper Cars, Airlines, Soldiers, Alligators, Children, and You - second attempt

Lawrence Hall, HSG Mhall46184@aol.com Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com Underground Bumper Cars, Airline Employees, Soldiers, Alligators, Children, and You According to Observer.com, A subsidiary of Elon Musk is constructing tunnels under Las Vegas so that people may be shuttled via robotic cars from one shuttered location to another shuttered location. The first part of the route is to open in 2021, but only virtually. I suppose “virtually” means you can watch it on television, so what’s the point? The subsidiary is named The Boring Company, which seems appropriate. And if you ever get to be shuttled around beneath the earth, what about the danger from giant radioactive worms and the Lizard People? + + + The Wall Street Journal reports that beginning in October airlines will have to start laying off thousands of employees. I suppose after that they will show up at your door and charge you $25 for each extra suitcase you own. But if they ask for something to eat you can tell them that you ran out of lunch entrees 20 rows back and coffee 10 rows back, just like Air Canada. + + + So far this year 28 soldiers have died or been murdered at Fort Hood. And still there are people who think conscription should be reinstated. They mean your children, not theirs. + + + Numerous sources have reported on a 12- or 13-foot alligator swimming through someone’s yard in Pensacola during the recent wild rains. There is a remedy for an alligator in one’s yard, but you’ll go to prison for it. After all, alligators were here first (chant it as a mantra). If the alligator eats your child, someone will dismiss your baby’s life with, “Oh, well, the kid had a pre-existing condition.” Everyone has a pre-existing condition; there are no flawless humans. The way some people say “pre-existing condition” seems to infer that the victim had it coming. + + + Far away and long ago I had occasion to wear a steel helmet to help protect my life. I did not complain about it or say that it made me look silly (I look silly anyway), and I did not feel that my 1st Amendment rights were being violated. True, the helmet would not have protected me from a 40-mike-mike. It wasn’t meant to. Far away and long ago I had occasion also to wear a flak jacket. True, the flak jacket would not have protected me from a mortar round. It wasn’t meant to. When I worked offshore I wore a nifty plastic helmet. True, the hard hat would not have protected me from a falling beam. It wasn’t meant to. When I worked my way through school as an LVN (I was the first male LVN I ever knew; I suppose there was a glass ceiling or glass floor or something) I sometimes had occasion to wear a mask to help protect patients. And you can bet that I made sure that protection happened. And now I wear a patriotic Texas Lone Star mask in order to help protect others. True, it is no defense against rocket grenades, mortar rounds, or falling beams, but it is a part of one’s personal defensive perimeter, along with good hygiene and distancing. Wear the mask. It’s not about you; it’s about the vulnerable. -30-

Bumper Cars, Airlines, Soldiers, Alligators, Children, and You - weekly column, and I have no idea how the formatting will work

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG Mhall46184@aol.com Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com Underground Bumper Cars, Airline Employees, Soldiers, Alligators, Children, and You According to Observer.com, A subsidiary of Elon Musk is constructing tunnels under Las Vegas so that people may be shuttled via robotic cars from one shuttered location to another shuttered location. The first part of the route is to open in 2021, but only virtually. I suppose “virtually” means you can watch it on television, so what’s the point? The subsidiary is named The Boring Company, which seems appropriate. And if you ever get to be shuttled around beneath the earth, what about the danger from giant radioactive worms and the Lizard People? + + + The Wall Street Journal reports that beginning in October airlines will have to start laying off thousands of employees. I suppose after that they will show up at your door and charge you $25 for each extra suitcase you own. But if they ask for something to eat you can tell them that you ran out of lunch entrees 20 rows back and coffee 10 rows back, just like Air Canada. + + + So far this year 28 soldiers have died or been murdered at Fort Hood. And still there are people who think conscription should be reinstated. They mean your children, not theirs. + + + Numerous sources have reported on a 12- or 13-foot alligator swimming through someone’s yard in Pensacola during the recent wild rains. There is a remedy for an alligator in one’s yard, but you’ll go to prison for it. After all, alligators were here first (chant it as a mantra). If the alligator eats your child, someone will dismiss your baby’s life with, “Oh, well, the kid had a pre-existing condition.” Everyone has a pre-existing condition; there are no flawless humans. The way some people say “pre-existing condition” seems to infer that the victim had it coming. + + + Far away and long ago I had occasion to wear a steel helmet to help protect my life. I did not complain about it or say that it made me look silly (I look silly anyway), and I did not feel that my 1st Amendment rights were being violated. True, the helmet would not have protected me from a 40-mike-mike. It wasn’t meant to. Far away and long ago I had occasion also to wear a flak jacket. True, the flak jacket would not have protected me from a mortar round. It wasn’t meant to. When I worked offshore I wore a nifty plastic helmet. True, the hard hat would not have protected me from a falling beam. It wasn’t meant to. When I worked my way through school as an LVN (I was the first male LVN I ever knew; I suppose there was a glass ceiling or glass floor or something) I sometimes had occasion to wear a mask to help protect patients. And you can bet that I made sure that protection happened. And now I wear a patriotic Texas Lone Star mask in order to help protect others. True, it is no defense against rocket grenades, mortar rounds, or falling beams, but it is a part of one’s personal defensive perimeter, along with good hygiene and distancing. Wear the mask. It’s not about you; it’s about the vulnerable. -30-

Jesus 'n' Me 'n' My Cartoon Tee - just an old man being grouchy. And why can't I single-space on the new but not improved format?

Lawrence Hall

mhall46184@aol.com

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Jesus ‘n’ Me ‘n’ My Cartoon Tee

 

Ecclesiastical reforms begin

When we begin to dress like adults for Mass

Blighted Sepulchers - poem

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

Blighted Sepulchers

Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them

shall not fall on the ground without your Father.

-Saint Matthew 10:29

One cannot die without permission from the state

A man enters a hospital, and waits
He is dusted off to another, and waits
He is ambulanced to a third, and dies

But he does not have permission from the state

A man cannot be buried without paperwork
There is no paperwork; no one knows what to do
With so many corpses fallen to the ground

One cannot die without permission from the state

No permission is required for refrigeration
No permission is required for a family to grieve
No permission is required to wait for permission

One must not die without permission from the state

But in the beginning, and in the end
At play in the nursery, at work in the fields
In all that follows the generation of a man

God freely grants the joys of eternal life


(In context, “a man” is gender-neutral, and anyway this narrative is one of a specific man, Paul Evdosuk, of happy memory. As Marc Anthony says of Caesar, “He was my friend, faithful and just to me.”)

Ever England - a poem for Battle of Britain Day

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

Ever England

Brave Hurricanes and Spits still claw and climb
Far up into the English summer sky
At the lingering end of a golden time
As wild young lads and aging empires die

The Hood and Rodney still the Channel guard
Against the strident Men of Destiny
Then shellfire falls; the helm is over hard
But the brave old ships keep the Narrow Sea

Dear Grandpa and the boys sport thin tin hats
In Sunday afternoon’s invasion drill
Gram says he’s too damned old for all of that
But she too smells the smoke of Abbeville

Faith does not pass with ephemeral time:
Brave Hurricanes and Spits still claw and climb



Previously published in longbowsandrosarybeads.blogspot.com and The Road to Magdalena (amazon.com)

Each Carrying a Holy Book - poem

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

Each Carrying a Holy Book

Most people carry a vade mecum
Bound in leather, or in cloth-covered boards
Sometimes in paperback, the words being all
In a portable portal to the transcendent

For President Lincoln it was Macbeth
For Fermor The Oxford Book of English Verse
For some a Bible, for some the bad news of Marx
(For Yevtushenko, well, he carried himself)

And what is your book, in pocket or purse –
Dostoyevsky, perhaps, or a bit of verse?

The Haikuza - a weak haiku

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

The Haikuza

The Haikuza leaps
Silently from concealment
And steals your iambs

From Paleo-Hippies at Work and Play, 2014, available through amazon.com

Death in an Unfashionable Zip Code - poem

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

Death in an Unfashionable Zip Code

“The care of those who are sick…is an absolute priority...”

-Saint Benedict’s Rule, Ampleforth Abbey, 1997

Seventeen more cases, another death
They say the mortuary is full up now
Friends go to friends’ funerals, then die in their turn
And more funerals follow, and more friends die

The utilitarians rattle on
Like crumbling bones, about herd immunity
Until the ghost of Darwin comes for them
As a spectral ideologue in the night

Empty seats at the table, and in the pew
And a refrigerated room full of corpses

A Waiting Room in a Time of Waiting - poem

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

A Waiting Room in a Time of Waiting

Every other chair is a virus chair
Made sacred by a yellow crime scene tape
Reserved for that little man who isn’t there 1
A sad unflattened curve in its drooping shape

The walls are all covered with warning signs
Our positions are marked two meters apart
And we must follow cheerfully painted lines
Any other decision is less than smart

We wisely obey, and live another day
But…
We wish, we wish the Covid would go away!

1 cf. “Antigonish,” William Hughes Means

Just What Does "Hunker Down" Mean? - doggerel

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

                       Just What Does "Hunker Down" Mean?

“We need to hunker down…”

-Dr. Fauci, quoted in NBC News, 10 September 2020

Doctor Fauci tells us to hunker down
And I really don’t know what that means
Can we hunker up instead, or maybe around
Or is it something naughty we do in our jeans?

And what exactly is that which we hunker -
A foot, a nose, a leg, a trouser seat
Is it something we do in a toilet or bunker
At home, at work, or in a busy street?

I don’t mean to sound even a little bit rude
But speaking of hunkering seems somewhat…crude

Handwashing Tips from the English Department (Miss Robinson in Newfoundland)

A Review of Hugh Lofting's VICTORY FOR THE SLAIN

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

A Review of Hugh Lofting’s Victory for the Slain

“Perhaps my very thinking’s out of step.”

-Hugh Lofting

This month is the 100th anniversary of Hugh Lofting’s Doctor Doolittle yarns, which I have never read. When it comes to talking animals I prefer Donald Duck and Bugs Bunny and the wonderfully selfish, grasping Uncle Scrooge.

However, there is much more to Mr. Lofting than conversing with rabbits and squirrels – after all, everyone does that.

Lofting was a civil engineer working in Africa, the West Indies, and Canada as a surveyor, prospector, and builder of railways, but lived most of his life in the USA. In 1916 Lofting returned to England to volunteer at the age of 30, and was wounded in France.

While in the Army he wrote letters to his children with little animal stories and pictures, not wanting to share the horrors of warfare. These letters were the beginning of Doctor Doolittle.

In 1942 Lofting wrote his one adult work, Victory for the Slain.

Recently I finished a first reading of Victory for the Slain, and then, immediately, read it a second time, slowly and carefully, savoring each line and each cultural and historical allusion.

Mr. Lofting, famous for the Doctor Doolittle stories for children, was wounded in body and soul in the First World War, and in 1942 wrote this deeply-felt and deeply-thought poem as a rebuke to the keyboard commandos who in every generation are eager to sacrifice the lives of young men and women (not their own children, of course; their children are sent to serve our nation bravely at university) in wars, most of them undeclared.

Mr. Lofting’s Catholic upbringing and solid education are obvious; Victory for the Slain is a work built upon a life of faith, study, thought, prayer, and bloody experience. It is a message poem, all right, but a brilliant and disciplined one. One often reads the tired old weak defense of a poor piece of work with, “But it’s from the heart” – well, this poem is from the heart, certainly, but it is also from the head and from the careful consideration of the thousands of years of civilization.

Walmer is a small press (but not literally a press; the book was printed in the USA) in Shetland (http://michaelwalmer.com/index.html. They have taken this neglected poem and printed it on beautiful, cream-colored paper in a beautiful, accessible typeface.

Inexplicably, the cover is a mess. The design bridges the aesthetic gap between Hammer Studios and a Big Brother poster for 1984, made worse by incorporating that long-cliched ban-the-bomb thingie from the 1950s and made yet worse again with a greasy / finger-printie surface that is repulsive to the touch. The stiff boards are too much for the thin volume, which should have been bound in paper for ease of handling, and while coping with this reader-hostile thing I was repeatedly tempted to rip the boards off and burn them. As it is, I hope I can find a bindery to recover the book with something worthy of Mr. Lofting’s poem and the quality of Walmer’s paper and type; Victory for the Slain is brilliant.

-30-

A Wheel is a Wonderful Thing - via "legacy" - meaning it works - dashboard

A Wheel is a Wonderful Thing

A wheel is a wonderful thing: it goes

Around-around-around-around-around

Until it doesn’t. And then you are sad

Because your little wagon is tripedal now

And so you dismount the wheel and tire

And take them to Mr. Shannon at his shop

He repairs the tire with a brand new tube

And your father sighs, “A tube cost that much?”

A wheel is a wonderful thing: it goes

Around the world with your little wagon

And with you

Blogger.com, WHY have you MADE A MESS? The previous dashboard was clean, neat, user-friend, accessible, and professional. This one is NOT.

A Wheel is a Wonderful Thing; this botched new dashboard is not.

A Wheel is a Wonderful Thing

A wheel is a wonderful thing: it goes

Around-around-around-around-around

Until it doesn’t. And then you are sad

Because your little wagon is tripedal now

And so you dismount the wheel and tire

And take them to Mr. Shannon at his shop

He repairs the tire with a brand new tube

And your father sighs, “A tube cost that much?”

A wheel is a wonderful thing: it goes

Around the world with your little wagon

And with you

On the First Day of School, the Smell of...Disinfectant - poem

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

On the First Day of School, the Smell of…Disinfectant

“Attention, comrades! This is disinfectant – use it.”

-Railway official in Doctor Zhivago

Cedar pencils, fresh packs of notebook paper
A new vinyl notebook with a shiny brass zipper
New shoes, new socks, new jeans, new everything
All with the scents of optimism, of hope

But this year all your friends fit into cubes
On the computer screen at your kitchen table
And you hope your stupid brother won’t dance
Across the room in his Captain Marvel underwear

But you can still take comfort in remembering
That Robin Hood remains free in Sherwood Forest

The Chainsaw Days of September - Poem and MePhone Photograph

The Chainsaw Days of September

As mandated by the recent hurricane

These are the chainsaw days, humid and hot

Wind-blasted shingles and wind-blasted trees

And clearing windfall in the gasping heat:

Litter to the burn-piles, firewood to the stacks

Even the bees seem tired, but the hummingbirds

Around the feeders form flittery clouds

As if they have suddenly received orders

For their long autumn flights to Mexico

But as for me, I work and sweat and stink

Pausing sometimes to watch the sky, and dream

(As Freud did not say, sometimes a chainsaw is just a chainsaw. Don’t grasp at metaphors that aren’t there; people will stare at you. And if you grasp at a chainsaw you will lose your hand. And then people will stare at you even more while taking MePhone pictures of you in your agony. They won't do anything for you, of course.)

Not Burning the Books That Aren't There - poem

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

Not Burning the Books That Aren’t There

In Eastern Europe the [Nazis] burned…375 archives,

402 museums, 531 institutes, and 957 libraries.

-Molly Guptill Manning, When Books Went to War, p. 13

In America books are neither burned
Nor banned - the State does not execute poets
Mostly because the mutual writers of grants
Move no one with their me-verse free-verse bleats

In America books are usually ignored
Robert Frost is a mystery to the president
James Baldwin means nothing to the DNC
And doesn’t Ernie Pyle play for the Jets?

Statues have been pulled down, each in its turn
As for the books – there aren’t many to burn

Destry Rides No More - poem

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

Destry Rides No More

The Long Branch Saloon became a Goodwill
And then a souvenir shop, before it burned
The Santa Fe Trail is a two-lane blacktop
Lined with peep shows, tattoo parlors, and KFC

Boot Hill features clean restrooms and a gift shop
Curly the Cowboy cooks at the Dairy Queen
And lives in a trailer next to the pueblo fence
He owns a complete set of Louis L’Amour
                           (In hand-tooled leather)

John Ford filmed the Duke riding into the sunset
Where the tribal president parks her 250 Ford