Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Our Fearless Leaders / Have Got / The Shot
But as for us, well, we
have not
Wednesday, December 30, 2020
Our Fearless Leaders / Have Got / the Shot - doggerel
Tuesday, December 29, 2020
First Communion in the Virus-Time - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
First Communion in the Virus-Time
For Veronica
True Ikon of the Lord
A little girl’s mantilla
is a crown
A crown an empress might covet
for herself
Wore she not her own First
Communion mantilla
Forever within the
recesses of her heart
A little girl’s white
cotton dress is a robe
A royal robe of courtly majesty,
Worn in the presence of her
Lord and King
A little girl on First
Communion day
Awes even the angels in
her imperium
Monday, December 28, 2020
Reading is a Suspicious Activity - poem
Reading is a Suspicious Activity:
Blue-Penciled in Solovetsky
“…Soviet writers failed to write
about their personal thoughts.”
-Yevtushenko
Reading
is a suspicious activity
Unless
it’s a technical book of instructions
Or
a hunting magazine with centerfolds
Of
seductive semi-automatics
Writing
is a forbidden activity
Unless
it’s a grocery shopping list
Or
the code to a new computer game
Of
zombie valkyries with swastika tats
They’ve
only gotten as far as statues thrown down
They’ll
destroy the libraries next – and maybe you
Sunday, December 27, 2020
Washing-Machine Archaeology - poem
Lawrence
Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Washing-Machine Archaeology
History
passes, and so do washing machines
Rattling
and spinning to the end of their span
Their
dutiful cleanings cleaned out at last
Whited
sepulchers around silent drums
The
householder as Howard Carter finds
Behind
a dead machine “Yes, wonderful things!”
Clothes
hangers, metastasized dust bunnies
Inexplicable
stains that hiss and spit
And
in a midden, he discovers with a shock -
Almost
embalmed – that famous long-lost sock!
Saturday, December 26, 2020
The Feast of Saint Stephen as Observed at the Truck Stop - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
The Feast of Saint Stephen as Observed
at the Truck Stop
On the occasion of meeting a friend
for breakfast on the Feast of St. Stephen
Now the overpass
looked down
On the Feast of
Stephen
With some garbage
strewn about
Moldy and uneven
Brightly shone the
neon light
Though the frost was
cruel
When a poor man came
in sight
Pumping diesel fuel
(This is gonna be one of the Greats,
eh!)
Friday, December 25, 2020
Christmas Day in the Covid-Time - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Christmas Day in the
Covid-Time
There are no children around the tree this year
To make Christmas complete with their happiness
No Barbie dolls, electric trains, or bikes -
We are distanced in everything but love
No relatives come and go, not even the one
Who will park his pickup truck on the lawn
No fruitcakes given and received, no hugs -
We are distanced in everything but love
But still there is the fire, the dog, and us -
We are distanced in everything but love
Thursday, December 24, 2020
The Turning of the Year - weekly column
Lawrence Hall
The Turning of the
Year
It was Christmas night in the Castle of
the Forest Sauvage…There was skating on the moat… while hot chestnuts and
spiced mead were served on the bank to all and sundry. The owls hooted. The
cooks put out plenty of crumbs for the small birds. The villagers brought out
their red mufflers. Sir Ector’s face shone redder even than these. And reddest
of all shone the cottage fires down the main street of an evening.
T. H. White, The
Once and Future King
From the first Sunday in Advent to Plough (or Plow)
Monday after the Feast of the Epiphany we live within the turning of the year.
Advent begins the new liturgical year with final harvest
activities and customs giving way to preparing spiritually and, through the Incarnation,
physically for Christmas. Christmas itself begins at midnight on the 24th
of December and concludes with the Feast of the Epiphany on the 6th
of January. In England the first Monday after the Epiphany is Plough Monday,
when, by tradition, the soil is turned in anticipation of spring, blending the leaf-mould
into the soil, enriching it, and becoming part of it.
The unhappy Puritans banned Christmas in the
English-speaking world for generations, and when it was restored in the 19th
century it was an odd Dickens sort of
thing, amusing but pale, not based in the faith or in the annual cycle of
nature given to this world by God. The cliché that we must put Christ back into
Christmas is inverted; it is the Mass – religious observance – that needs
putting back into Christmas, not more noise.
Christmas has long been discussed, but not amended, for
the tension, unhappiness, and even near-hysteria which attends it – compulsive shopping
and forced merriment in which people who don’t much care for each other for the
rest of the year are made by the secular liturgies and advertisements of unreasonable
expectations and closeness to despise each other.
A Christmas which does not end with tears and sulks and
slammed doors is an unusual one, but that is the fault of Charles Dickens and
his successors, and of ourselves, not of Christ.
But all bad things come to an end, and some of the most
joyful and peaceful days fall after the 25th, when the gifts have
lost their mystery but not their newness and leftover turkey is still on the
menu. Even the tree seems at peace, giving us light on dark afternoons while we
doze over a new book or perk up with a cup of pinon coffee from New Mexico.
Visits from friends – forbidden this year - are free from any expectations
other than conversations about the kids and prospects for the new year.
Hundreds of thousands have died this year, and the government
has collapsed, all because of the New Men – and the New Women - who, unlike Sir
Ector, grasp at power and ignore their duties.
By the grace of God a great many good, sturdy people in service
to humanity are on duty through all this, health care workers from great
surgeons to the nice lady who cleans up after them, police officers,
firefights, and the watchers of gauges and the wielders of wrenches who keep
everything going.
Is this, then, a time for anyone to drowse before a warm
fire?
Well, we can only hope that all will soon be able sit in
a comfortable chair and look out their own windows at the cardinals
Christmas-feasting at the feeder, and maybe a squirrel loping across the frost
for its share of seeds, and with no shopping to be accomplished and no work for
a day or two, and no immediate obligations except tending the fire.
The year is turning, and for a day or two we may quietly enjoy
the mystery.
-30-
"Why Can't You Come Home for Christmas, Daddy?" - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Why Can’t You Come Home for Christmas, Daddy?
Christmas eve – and the
conversation is low
The chaplains have left
the men with their blessings
And have in their turn
been blessed by the men
Who gather now with powdered
coffee, with words
Christmas eve – written in
a little child’s hand:
“Why can’t you come home
for Christmas, Daddy?”
And a crayoned Santa Claus
who can fly
Above the razor wire, and
far away
Christmas eve - midnight’s
canvas-pillowed tears
Christmas at home someday
- only ten years
Wednesday, December 23, 2020
Christmas Eve Eve Eve - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Christmas Eve Eve
Eve
Winter arrives, they say, at 8:31
And how do they know? The light doesn’t change
The soft pale light filtering through the fog
Upon the grey-brown fields who have fallen asleep
While we speak of lockdowns and rollbacks and deaths
And plan for the least-attended Christmas Mass
The fields and forests hardly speak at all
Only in their prayerful whispers of the Eternal
Time is told to us
by the sun, moon, and stars -
And all the seasons arrive in God’s good time
Tuesday, December 22, 2020
Everyone Writes a Drivelly Poem about the Winter Solstice - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Everyone Writes a Drivelly Poem about the Winter
Solstice
And entitles it
“Winter
Solstice,”
And yet Somehow the World Goes On
The sun seems to stand
still, and too, the world
An Ouroboros of lockdowns
and masks
And the increasing
divisions of partisans
In yet another republic
devouring itself
There is an insubstantial
Christmas truce
Undeclared, a catching of
breath and will
In hopes that two-faced
Janus will close his doors
Against the failings of
the coming year
The sun seems to stand
still, and too, the world
We also wait, and search
the skies for a Star
Monday, December 21, 2020
Bifocalism for the Masses and, Like, Stuff - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Bifocalism for the Masses and, Like, Stuff
Bifocals – the upper lens
sees far away
The sun and the moon and
the dancing stars
All in their appointed
places above
Great mountains and oceans
and thunderstorms
Bifocals – the lower lens
sees the end of your nose
The sweep hand dancing
around your Timex watch
The book you are reading,
the book you are writing
Your thoughts encoded in orderly
lines
Bifocals – both lenses
balance your sense of vision -
But take the stairs with
care and precision!
Sunday, December 20, 2020
And He Liked Really Cool Cars - poem
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
And He Liked Really Cool Cars
For George Ebarb
Of happy memory
Who served God, his family, prisoners,
And all who were blessed in knowing
him
With unfailing love and generosity
(And he liked really cool cars!)
A convention is to say
that when we die
God will not ask us about the
cars we drove
But we may hope and pray
that in George’s case
A happy exception was made
for him
George
was my mentor in prison volunteer service. I didn’t know he was a rich man, for
he wore his wealthy lightly, and I didn’t know he gave much of his wealth away,
for he was also rich, as Chaucer says of the Parsoun, in “hooly thought and werk.”
Saturday, December 19, 2020
Keep a Sharp Lookout - This Fog Won't Last - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Keep a Sharp Lookout – This Fog Won’t Last
My country was made for noble hearts
such as yours.
-Aslan in Voyage of the Dawn
Treader
When we can’t turn
outward, we turn inward
That might not be such a
good thing, you know
We are probably
out-of-practice, busied
With meetings and work and
coffee-shop dates
For now our lives are
solitude and screens
Pajama feet and emptiness,
and if
We call someone, who is it
who answers us?
“Be still, and know that I
am Internet?”
Oh, no. The night is misty
indeed, but the stars -
The stars still shine; be
brave, and look for them
Friday, December 18, 2020
Do not Clench unto Others - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Do not Clench unto Others
Merciful
God in His infinite love
Will
never clench His fist at us
Thursday, December 17, 2020
Save Christmas with Your Camera - weekly column
Lawrence Hall
Save Christmas with Your
Camera
Your children will never show their childhood Christmas
pictures to their own children because the pictures won’t exist.
Decades ago Kodak, once a great American corporation, boosted
their sales of cameras for Christmas with the slogan, “Open Me First.” The ads
featured images of perfect families with perfect teeth grinning for the new
Kodak camera that someone opened first.
After the Second World War Americans took lots of pictures,
especially during the holidays, and the drug-store prints and the film
negatives found their way into albums and shoeboxes, often to be rediscovered
and reprocessed decades later.
Today there are steady but slow sales of film cameras and
films, because artists and many professional photographers insist that film
provides a depth, a richness that for portraiture and art pieces cannot be
matched by digital.
But most people do not own film cameras and, less and less,
digital cameras. Almost all family photography is accomplished on MePhones, and
two flaws obtain: (1) the MePhone microprocessors simply can’t compensate for
the lack of glass, that is, a real lens, and (2) the pictures are usually lost
within months.
MePhones are notorious for their built-in obsolescence, and
if by mistake a company makes a MePhone that lasts for a few years, recent
lawsuits reveal that some manufactures find ways of making them decay so that
you have to buy a new one. When the old is traded in for the new, sometimes the
pictures are not saved.
Beyond that, MePhones and computers are lost or stolen or
simply cease to work, and the pictures you meant to save to an external drive
never get there.
For your children someday to re-visit all their Christmases
and adventures you need a camera, a real camera, not one that is tacked onto
Maxwell Smart’s shoe ‘phone.
The remaining camera manufacturers – none of them American –
make nifty little digital cameras that take superior photographs and feature
easily changed memory cards. You will
have far better photographs and can share them by connecting the camera to your
computer or sometimes plugging in the memory card.
Most importantly, take out the memory card with all the
Christmas and New Year’s pix, label it, and store it in your safety deposit box
at the bank. Your children’s Christmases and graduations and ball games will be
safe there for many years (if you bought a quality card – this is not the time
for bargains).
And, after all, your children laughed at your childhood pictures,
so would you want to deprive your grandchildren the opportunity to laugh at
their parents’ childhood pictures? I thought not.
For artistic work you can still find film cameras new, but a
better deal is to hit the garage sales and find a bargain with which to
experiment.
And whatever happened to Kodak? Well, they invented the
digital camera, decided there was no future in it, fumbled the patents, fell
into bankruptcy, and destroyed thousands of jobs and the economy of Rochester,
New York. Would you like to be remembered as one of the board-room
alligator-shoe boys who let that happen?
-30-
A Little Child Lacing Her Shoes - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
A Little Child Lacing Her Shoes
For Sarah, of course
She is as proud, as she
can be, and I -
I too am proud, watching
her twist her tongue
In thought – the rabbit
pops into its hole
To emerge on the other
side – hello!
She is as proud as she can
be, but I
Am a little bit sad as she
stands up now
Dancing in place to make
the heel-lights twink
Then giggling, “Catch me,
Daddy!” as she runs away
And I play-chase, knowing
that all too soon
There won’t be little
lights for me to follow
Wednesday, December 16, 2020
Tin Ears in the Hands of an Angry God - rhyming couplet
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Tin Ears in the Hands of an Angry God
-as Jonathan Edwards did not yell
If You are good and kind
and loving, O Lord
Then why do You permit
The
harpsichord?
Tuesday, December 15, 2020
Before the Magi Came - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Before the Magi Came
-1 Maccabees 4:36-60
Yes, long before the holy Magi
came
Judah the Maccabee brought
forth his gifts
First scourging the Temple
clean of false gods
In prayerful preparation
for the True
And then presented God with
oil and bread
A consecrated Altar of
undressed stones
Incense and lamps and
songs and grateful hearts
And an octave of
inextinguishable light
Thus, long before the holy
Magi came
Even before the Star,
Judah brought a flame
Monday, December 14, 2020
Contagious Disease Unit - Ward 20 Deck 2 - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Contagious Disease Unit – Ward 20 Deck 2
Maybe my aptitude for throwing
up
My ENT infections, fevers
and chills
Hopeless motion sickness
and fainting fits
Were the reasons why NavPers
posted me there
All the diseases in the
Fleet called it home:
Infections, syphilis,
leprosy, the clap
(Let’s give him a hand),
and for reasons not clear
A couple of crewmen from
the Pueblo
Before I was sent to be
sick in Indo-China -
And now they say
there’s a virus going around
Sunday, December 13, 2020
Waiting for the Messiah Someplace Else - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Waiting for the Messiah Someplace Else
Motel: Rabbi, we've been waiting for the Messiah all our
lives. Wouldn't now be a good time for him to come?
Rabbi: I guess we'll have to wait someplace else.
-Fiddler
on the Roof
And so we wait, here where
we are, the time
Marked off by calends and
by candlelight
Four Gospels in a ring of
holy fire
Before the Altar, and
before the Throne
The Magi journey through
space and time
Our journey is in waiting
for a star
To shine upon us all, and
lead us to
The Temple where all
waiting finally ends
Beside an Altar of repose
in a Stable
A cradle of wood from Eden
and the Ark
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