Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Soft, Skin-Sensitive Vegan Leather
Is vegan leather
(The grim question must be
asked)
Made from real vegans?
Wednesday, March 24, 2021
Soft, Skin-Sensitive Vegan Leather - poem
Tuesday, March 23, 2021
The Men of the Bible Class Pose for a Photograph on the Steps of the Methodist Church in 1968 - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
The Men of the Bible Class Pose for a Photograph
on the Steps of the Methodist Church in 1968
My grandfather once threatened
some other old man
With his pocketknife just before
the ten o’clock
Maybe it was over a point
of theology
That’s surely as exciting
as Bible class ever got
The Baptist men were the
city council
And most of the school’s
board of trustees too
But the Methodists somehow
had more self-assurance
You can see it in their
bearing and their suits
They seem to be their
fathers in 1898
With railroads and
sawmills – great times ahead
Monday, March 22, 2021
Poetry as a Form of Prayer - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Poetry as a Form of Prayer
(not an original observation, but let
it stand)
Poetry is like prayer
A lifetime of study
and a study of life
You never get it right
The only miracle
is that you get it at all
Sunday, March 21, 2021
"Mate, There's a Mouse in me Billy Tea!" - weekly column
Lawrence Hall, HSG
“Mate, There’s a
Mouse in me Billy Tea!”
Australia is suffering a plague of mice said to be of
“biblical proportions” ('You can't escape the smell': mouse plague grows to
biblical proportions across eastern Australia | Rural Australia | The Guardian).
Presumably the biblical proportions bit refers to the
plague, not to any given mouse.
The ten plagues of Egypt were water being turned to blood,
and then frogs, lice, flies, sick livestock, boils, hail, locusts, darkness,
and then the deaths of the firstborn.
No mention of mice, though.
Apparently a long drought resulting the many deaths of
natural predators has given Australian mice, as in the old adage, lots of play,
and play they have, reproducing like, well, mice and infesting homes, shops, cars,
restaurants, and crops, causing millions of dollars’ worth of damage.
Mice are cute only in Disney cartoons; in reality they,
their urine and feces, and the parasites they host transmit lyme disease, the
plague, the hantavirus, salmonella, meningitis-inducing bacteria, other lethal
diseases, and a catalogue of allergens.
Mice are of the order Rodentia (not unlike motivational
speakers) and must chew. If they don’t chew they die, and if they do chew (and
they must) then you might die. Their biting strength is such that they can chew
through electrical wiring, causing shorts that can burn down your house. They
can chew through residential gas lines, which also can burn down your house.
They chew and infect food in your pantry. They chew through plastic pipes, your
car’s wiring harness, wooden walls, and drywall. They might be living in the
sofa where your children nap and play and read.
When mice chewed into my car’s wiring – the insulation is
tasty to them, and useful for nests – I got myself a few barn cats to patrol
the area. They keep the mice population away and, unfortunately, enjoy the
occasional robin. A pet cat will in the same way provide security inside your
home. If in the autumn you see or smell signs of a mouse infestation, just
leave the pantry and closet doors open for a few days and nights – Tom will do
his job.
Sorry, kids, but Jerry and Tuffy need to die. It’s your life
or theirs. Like brushing your teeth, doing your homework, eating properly, and
receiving an occasional light touch of MeeMaw’s hairbrush, a mouse-free house is
good for you.
-30-
Colonial Rule from Low Earth Orbit - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Colonial Rule from Low Earth Orbit
Telling lies to the young is wrong
-Yevtushenko, “Lies”
Corporations and nations orbit
the earth
Colonial rulers as
satellites and drones
Enneagramming through our
attic beams
Their mad, malevolent multi-wave
streams
Ideas not our own – they
coil and writhe
As sinister blue lights
through days and nights
Device calling silently to
device
In unheard hissings of infogoguery
We rattle our electronic
chains about
And proclaim our freedom
Saturday, March 20, 2021
I was Hangin' with Miss Marple Last Week - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
I was Hangin' with Miss Marple Last Week
“I think, my dear, we
won't talk any more about murder
during tea. Such an unpleasant subject.”
-4:50 from Paddington
I visited Miss Marple this
past week
In her little home in St.
Mary Mead
Fluffy in her appearance
and pink of cheek
Troweling with vehemence another
garden weed
Kindness itself, she asked
me to sit down
On a wooden bench near the
hollyhock
A warm soft evening with
the bees around
And the hourly chime from
the old church clock
Tea and scandal at four, soft-scented
soap –
And in Pentonville, forlorn of any hope
A murderer awaiting the
hangman’s rope
Friday, March 19, 2021
Hey, I Really am a Neanderthal! - poem
Lawrence
Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Hey, I Really am a Neanderthal!
The
spit-into-a-cup DNA folks
Advise
me that 742 strands
Of vintage
Neanderthal DNA
Are
roaming loose in the tunnels of my being
It’s
good to be descended from a fine old family
Maybe
that’s why my ideas drag the ground
As I
lope along following the science
Live
chicken tastes a lot like rattlesnake
Why
don’t you join me for dinner with the neighbors?
Their
brains will go well with hyena blood
Thursday, March 18, 2021
Select All Images with Traffic Lights - doggerel
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Select All Images with Traffic Lights
When the ink on his Gospel
had barely dried
Saint Matthew was
interrupted by angelic sights
And then to him a Voice
from Heaven cried:
“Select all images with
traffic lights!”
Old William Shakespeare
was a poetic bloke
Who wrote his metered
verse within the lines
But his editor demanded, with
a voice that broke:
“Select all images with highway
signs!”
So if, dear reader, you
wish to have your say -
Forget it; you won’t pass
the test anyway
Wednesday, March 17, 2021
Prison - A Song of the Lord in a Foreign Land - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
A Song of the Lord in a Foreign Land
“How could we sing a song of the Lord
in a foreign land?
-Psalm 137
By the waters of the
common sinks and stinks
They sat and wept,
remembering their homes
Upon the razor wire they
hung their hopes
(Let my tongue be silent during roll call)
Their captors asked of them
throughout the hours
Straight lines to the chow
hall, well made-up bunks
On time to their classes
and work details
(Let my tongue be silent during roll
call)
The lyrics of their songs were
written by night
The notes and tones well-tuned
to concrete walls
How could they sing songs
of the Lord?
How
not?
(Let my tongue be silent during roll call)
We all are exiles in a
foreign land
(Let our tongues sing praise after roll call)
After
over a year of lockdowns, volunteers were allowed back in Texas prisons on Wednesday,
Saint Patrick’s Day, 17 March 2021. Saint Patrick, too, was a prisoner.
Tuesday, March 16, 2021
Grandpa and the Kid - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Grandpa and the Kid
Grandpa gives his boy a
toy truck
Or better yet a clanking
army tank
Or maybe a plastic shovel
and pail
Or a real Roy Rogers cowboy
hat
And the little boy’s hovering
mother clucks:
“Now what do you say to
Grandpa? Tell me!
Say to Grandpa “Thank
you.” We say “Thank you!”
No, don’t just run away;
say “Thank you!”
[Extended Form for Certain
Feasts and Seasons:
And Grandpa smiles and
lights his favorite pipe
(His daughter rolls her
disapproving eyes)
She sees tonight’s bath in
the sand and grass
But Grandpa sees beyond
this time and place
His boy builds a road, a
fort, a castle, a corral
And Grandpa thanks God for
his little pal
Monday, March 15, 2021
Robin Hood and Jacques Derrida - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Robin Hood and Jacques Derrida
As the first stars came
out above the leaves
Of Merry Sherwood, the
lads in peaceful repose
Put away their
after-supper mending of gear
And idled over their ale
of October brewing
Then Robin Hood spoke to
Allan-a-Dale:
Don’t sing to us of
Neo-Post-Colonial White Supremacist Patriarchal People-of-Color Matriarchal
LGBTQTY Non-Binary Feminist Chomskian Existentialist (existentialist – how
quaint) Hegelian Post-Structuralist Logocentric Sausurian Psychoanalytical
Post-Modern Marxist Jungian New Critical Cognitive Scientific Neo-Anarchic Canon-Repudiationist
Neo-Informalist Catarrhic De-Constructionism.
Sing to us
a story.
Sunday, March 14, 2021
His Name was Mudd - weekly column
Lawrence
Hall, HSG
His Name was Mudd
First, an
important scientific, cultural, and civic note: the first hummingbirds have
returned and more are arriving. After their incredible flight across the Gulf
from Mexico and because of the scarcity of flowers after the ice and snow they
need our help. Feeders up!
And now: once
upon a time there were television reporters who respected the truth and the
viewer. A young reader may shake his or her head in disbelief, but it’s true.
Last week
Roger Mudd, of happy memory, died at 93. The reader can find his biography on
the InterGossip, and the young among us can marvel that once upon a time
reporting the national news was a highly ethical vocation.
Indeed, there
are many reasons why the viewership of evening news on the formerly big three
networks has decayed, including the reality that no thoughtful young man or
woman will waste time on shrill, biased, and ill-mannered poseurs projecting
the emotional fashions and groupthink of their eastern undergraduate days. Participants
in our national conversation want news professionals who will report the news
as best they can without prejudice, ideology, snarks, and incessant
self-reference.
Early
television newsies were old-school, shoe-leather street reporters, some of whom
had also been combat reporters. Their editors wanted the news yesterday, of
course, with an eye on the hovering deadlines, but they also wanted it right,
and so did the reporters themselves. The wrath of the green eyeshade gods would
fall upon a reporter who faked a story or sources, or who let his or her
personal biases skew the narrative.
Among
the best of that generation was the professional, thoughtful, dignified, and
wryly humorous Roger Mudd. For Mr. Mudd the news was about the facts
as could best be determined, and about the reader and viewer, not about
himself.
Possibly
it was his failure in 1979 to coddle a party-anointed candidate with fulsome
praise, and to carry and pet him through the interview with only poofy
questions that cost him his well-earned promotion at Famous Name Brand network.
Instead
of recognizing Mr. Mudd’s excellence the network jumped up to the anchor desk a
Fisher-Price Play Reporter who was obsessed with projecting himself instead of
getting the facts. His antics and errors and biases, poorly anchored, scuttled
the network’s reputation. Trenchcoat-man was also the first to pose all look-at-me
look-at-me look-at-me how-brave-I-am outside in the wind and rain during
hurricanes. This stunt became a fashion
which seems not to have a needed end.
One
never wishes anyone harm, but surely it would do no harm if some of the weather
reporter-poseurs were hurricane-skidded a block or so on their a(postrophe)s
for not having enough sense to come in out of the rain.
Roger
Mudd never patronized us by indulging in low-prole trick-pone stuff for ratings.
He didn’t have to, and he wouldn’t have done so in any event. In his own dignity
he respected ours.
“Eternal rest grant unto him,
O Lord, and make perpetual Light to shine upon him.”
-30-
Socrates on the Courthouse Lawn in Liberty, Texas - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Socrates on the Courthouse Lawn in Liberty, Texas
“Strong
minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.”
-attributed
to Socrates, but no one knows
Imagine if you will old
Socrates
On an old wooden bench on
the courthouse lawn
Playing checkers with all
the other old men
On an old picnic table
throughout the day
He lifts his old straw hat
in the leafy shade
With his old bandana he wipes
his old bald head
And sagely asks the old
questions of us
And through his dialectic
dismantles old cant
And that must be why, as
the ages pass
They’ve made for him a
monument here in the grass
(While
passing through Liberty, Texas I saw on the courthouse lawn a marble slab engraved
only with “Socrates”.)
Liberty County Courthouse -
TexasCourtHouses.com
Saturday, March 13, 2021
Penguin-Random House Sends me a Survey...poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Penguin-Random House Sends me a Survey
and Then Rules Me Unqualified to Respond
Survey Completed - Thank You / We're sorry.
You do not meet the
qualifications
for this survey. We
sincerely thank you
and appreciate your time
and participation
You will be redirected in
3 seconds;
please click here to continue now.
Thursday, March 11, 2021
An Unskilled Rotor-Tiller Tiller of the Soil - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
An Unskilled Rotor-Tiller Tiller of the Soil
Plough Monday was by-passed
some weeks ago
The Virus of Many Names
kept me abed
And then the snow and ice
kept me inside
And then – indolence, indolence,
okay?
But today, oh, today!
The morning was fresh and cool
and damp and still
I wheeled the tiller into
the garden patch
Fresh gasoline, then primed
the little bulb
And turned the red plastic
lever just so
And pulled the cord
And pulled the cord
And said bad words
And pulled the cord
And pulled the cord
And pulled the cord
And snarled bad words
And pulled the cord –
Pow!
For smoke and fire
And noise – hooray!
Then forward the tines
The tines at first bounced
off the new green grass
I pulled the smoke and
noise machine back, back
And held the smoke and
noise machine in place
And wrestled it, pinning
it to the earth until
It bit into the grass, the
bright spring grass
And hurled it back, and
then some earth, and more
And still more earth, sweet
earth, the nourishing earth
Flung up and out and back
again, and down
And there the earth must rest
for a few weeks
Then to be turned again, sweet
and warm
To receive the ready seeds
of happy new life
And join in the miracle of
Creation
And in the summer when the
soft breezes blow
Zinnias and sunflowers and wild marigolds
Will lift their heads and sing hymns to the sun
And bees and hummingbirds hum the “Amen”
And in those days I will
speak kind words
To them all, and study rotor-tillers
no more
Cavafy's Slight Angle to the Universe - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Cavafy’s Slight Angle to the Universe
“…a Greek gentleman in a straw hat, standing absolutely
motionless
at a slight angle to
the universe.”
-C. S. Forster re C. P. Cavafy, quoted
by Daniel Mendelsohn in
C. P. Cavafy: Poems, Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets
Maybe
Cavafy stands at an angle to the world
The universe presumably
built aright
In order serviceable, as
Milton says,
All of creation as a liturgy
We all stand at an angle
to the world
Which wobbles in its orbit
more than it ought
We altar servers tripping
more than we ought
When we forget the angle
of Consecration
Oh, yes, Cavafy stands at
an angle to the world
And he is right to do so –
and so
are we
Wednesday, March 10, 2021
Being an Eloi - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Being an Eloi is
Okay,
But Make Sure the
Smoke Alarms Have Fresh Batteries
Some poets are Eloi, deconstructing this
And disconnecting that in weak free verse
Between the reiki and the pilates
Trying to find an existential voice
And other poets are grim Morlocks, almost,
Through muscling chaos into meaning and light
Between the night shift and the morning cup
Trying to build a voice that speaks with strength
To shape lack of meaning into meaning
That is neither this nor that, but itself
Tuesday, March 9, 2021
Try to Look Like a Young Republican - poem
Lawrence
Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Try to Look Like a Young
Republican
Whenever
a student told me of his night in jail
And
that he had to go to court next week
I
always suggested that he wear his church suit
Or at
least a new white shirt and a tie
“Try
to look like a young Republican,”
Was my
advice
But I got over that
Monday, March 8, 2021
The Bishop Speaks of Lent as Basic Training - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
The Bishop Speaks
of Lent as Basic Training
“Rise and shine and greet the new day, **** ****s!”
“Roll your socks to look like little p*****s!”
“Byda leff, byda leff, byda leff right leff…!”
“Shoulder-fired, gas-operated, semi-automatic…!”
“My gramma was slow but she was old!”
“SIR! I am a cockroach, SIR! Cockroach, SIR!”
“Don’t let your piece fall to the ***-**** deck!”
“Get up! You ain’t got permission to faint today!”
“You call this clean!? My ****’s cleaner than that!”
“You don’t **** until I tell you to ****!”
“Step over that *** ***** son-of-a-*****;
I didn’t give no one permission to die!”
And the ancient liturgical El chant:
“This is my rifle;
this is my gun!
This is for
fighting; this is for fun!”
His Grace speaks of Lent as recruit training -
Maybe, with a nice white wine and the dover sole
If not the soul,
He thought that up in his first-class from Rome
Sunday, March 7, 2021
The Grinches Who Steal Childhood - weekly column
Lawrence Hall, HSG
The Grinches Who
Steal Childhood
He
recoiled from the group-think of many of his fellow writers. “Don’t yell at
me,” he said to his peers at one public meeting, where he was heckled for
asserting that writers should not be given orders. “But if you must yell, at
least don’t do it in unison.”
-Pasternak, quoted by Finn and Couvee’ in The
Zhivago Affair
I have never read anything by Dr. Seuss. The covers look
stoopid (as in “stoopid,” not merely “stupid”). And, yes, I will judge a
book by its stoopid cover. I don’t care if Horton Hears the World Health
Organization or if the Grinch steals Arbor Day; the covers look stoopid. So
there.
But then, I’ve always thought that the best reading
lesson is predicated on a child, a fishing pole, a pond, and an old copy of
Howard Pyle’s Robin Hood on a quiet summer afternoon before it’s time to
get the cows up for the evening milking.
Still, a great many parents whom I know to be good, kind,
loving, thoughtful, intelligent, and discerning read Dr. Seuss’ books to their
children and the kidlets seem to enjoy the books and have not been persuaded to
become ax murderers, arsonists, terrorists, or motivational speakers.
And yet the Miz Grundys of the world are becoming shriller
in finding evil – perhaps they are only reacting to the evil within their own
cold, shriveled hearts and ossified brains – in the most innocent and most
needful of childhood joys, good books. From a casual perusal of the newspapers,
the InterGossip, and television anyone could list of his or her (not “their;”
one man or woman cannot be “their”) own childhood books now faulted or even
unavailable for not being comradely enough.
Technically this is not censorship, which is practiced by
governments. Our national government, grounded in the First Amendment, has
almost – almost – always protected our freedom to read the books we want.
When on an outing to Barnes & Noble a parent chooses
a book for his (the pronoun is gender-neutral) children instead of another book,
he is not censoring; he is making wise parental decisions as to what books will
be appropriate for his children in their formative years.
If, however, any government entity were to forbid the
publication of, say, Robin Hood, Little House on the Prairie, The
Once and Future King, or Hank the Cowdog, or, more sneakily, bully
the publishers into surreptitiously changing bits of the text, that would be censorship.
That would be illegal.
That would be uncivilized.
That would be un-American.
Alas for freedom, a functional censorship can be
exercised by a mob, even by a mob of the purportedly educated. One infers that most
of the censorious are not educated at all, but merely credentialed. There is a
difference.
Publishers don’t appear to show much courage in the
matter, so we will have to. No, no, don’t form mobs and yell at people and burn
books – that’s what the credentialed do – simply make good books a part of your
budget for your children, and do some comparisons to see if the writer’s original
wording has been changed for recent editions.
As for those awkward or clumsy or maybe just plain wrong
stereotypes or assumptions that date from the past, then this is when the
parent enlightens the child with solid teaching about the fallibility of all
people in all times.
Martin Luther King was not the first to remind us that
the arc of history points toward the truth, but his witness enhances the
lesson. We do not teach our children about the concepts of the good, the true,
and the beautiful (attributed to Plato, but, again, he was not the first) by tossing
books into the flames of the Orwellian Memory Hole.
Just think of what some future Miz Grundy will find
wrong, bad, evil, and un-comradely in the book you're writing for your
children.
Finally, for the sake of your child’s proper upbringing,
don’t forget the fishing pole, the pond, and the quiet summer afternoon.
Here is a brief list of easily available books about
propaganda and censorship:
Fahrenheit 401, novel, Ray Bradbury
The Book Thief, novel, Markus Zusak
The Guernsey Literary
and Potato Peel Pie Society, novel,
Mary Ann Shaffer
and Annie Barrows
The Zhivago Affair: The
Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle Over a Forbidden Book,
non-fiction, Peter
Finn and Petra Couvee’
Cold Warriors: Writers
Who Waged the Literary Cold War,
non-fiction,
Duncan White
The Politically
Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature, non-fiction,
Elizabeth Kantor
When Books Went to War:
The Stories That Helped Us Win World War II,
non-fiction, Molly Guptill Manning
-30-
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