Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
A Polite Response to an Invitation to a Crawfish Boil
Aquatic roaches
Foul, malodorous decay
Exoskeletons
Friday, April 23, 2021
A Polite Response to an Invitation to a Crawfish Boil - poem, but not a good one
Thursday, April 22, 2021
"Dear Valued Customer..." - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Poetry
Magazine Responds
Dear Valued Customer We
have received
your email and it has been
assigned
to one of our e-commerce
team members.
Should we require
additional information
we will contact you.
Otherwise please be assured
that your request will be
processed in a
timely fashion. Sincerely,
Customer Care Department
Wednesday, April 21, 2021
Online Certificate Program in Novel Writing - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Online Certificate Program in Novel Writing
“…that led me to answer an advertisement in the Sunday Times
and
take a job…with a correspondence school…”
-Elizabeth Bishop, “The U. S. A. School
of Writing”
And a certificate!
The ad presented as a
joke, only it wasn’t:
(Famous Name Brand School)’s
Continuing Studies Program
Will make you Hemingway
for eighty dollars
And there is a student
testimonial
And a certificate!
Embrace the tools solidify
develop
Accomplished authors craft
tutorials
Dedicated dynamic cohort
peers
Passionate instructors prestigious
fellows
And a certificate!
Achieve the goal for which
you have been aiming!
(And a certificate,
suitable for framing)
Only eighty dollars
“The U. S. A. School of Writing had been raided by the police
shortly after I left…”
-Elizabeth Bishop
Elizabeth
Bishop’s poetry is rightly praised, but her prose, less often noted, is equally
delightful in its construction and content.
Tuesday, April 20, 2021
Oath Peepers Security Cameras - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Oath Peepers Security Cameras
The security cameras
around the house aren’t much
The cheapest available on Yarmuk.com
They take dim pictures of
the UPS guy
And fuzzy grey shots of
‘possums at night
A problem is that they
think they’re Army cameras
That the batteries they
took never expire
That the science of optics
has been betrayed
And that light is whatever
they want it to be
Along the windowsills they
belch and *art:
“Tina Modotti is a traitor
to art!”
Monday, April 19, 2021
A Morning Cup of Coffin: No Straight Lines in Nature - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
No Straight Lines in Nature
That commonplace of art
instruction is true:
From the rainbow to the
tomato worm
And in the rhythms of our
chambered hearts
Creation curves itself
around our lives
A straight line is of the
imagination
Repudiated even by that
famous crow
Who flies as he will and
not according
To the abstracts of
mathematicians
Nothing in nature chooses graphed
confines -
Of course the man-made coffin
– that features straight lines
Sunday, April 18, 2021
Spring in the Air, Springs in the Air, and a Brick - weekly column re spring wind and hail and wreckage
Mack Hall, HSG
Spring in the Air,
Springs in the Air, and a Brick
There will be no firewood shortage this coming winter. A tree-shaded
lawn is a homeowner’s dream, a tree in repose across the lawn less so, along
with trees across the roads, trees taking down power lines, trees fallen across
the children’s swing sets, trees crushing the lawn chairs where the old people
sit on pleasant mornings, trees, trees, trees, and shoals of hail that did not
thaw until evening, all set picturesquely among a landscape litter and debris.
Along the highway I saw a trampoline upside down, blown
through the air at least hundreds of yards because there are no houses nearby.
It was an occasion not only of spring in the air but springs in the air.
Among all the debris at my country estate was a brick on
the lawn. A brick. It had been blown about thirty feet from a pile of brick and
concrete bits.
A heavy steel chair of the sort one used to see in barber
shops (along with those delightful pictures of poker-playing dogs) was blown
about forty yards into the field, although small, light objects on a patio
table at the chair’s point of departure had not been disturbed at all.
And there was the loss of two of my apple trees. Well,
more firewood.
The song of the chainsaw is heard again in our land,
following nature’s rhythms of winter ice storms, spring hailstorms, and summer
tornados. It’s how we live; it’s what we do. These rhythms keep us humble, and remind
us how aesthetically pleasing are the words “JASPER-NEWTON ELECTRIC
COOPERATIVE” spelled out in a festive green or “PRECINCT 3” in subdued black on
the sides of bucket trucks and pole trucks and crew trucks and truck-trucks.
Their dignified progress along our mucky roads is as joyful as a religious
procession.
Here along Beer Can Road and County Dump Extension the
power was out for about seventeen hours because the winds and trees took down
at least one pole and transformer and any number of lengths of power line. And
that was just one or two miles of the hundreds of miles of lines in our service
area.
As in February’s ice storm, Mr. Bialetti served our
morning coffee.
The Bialetti coffee maker is a work of Italian genius in
function and art, and still made in Italy. Designed almost a hundred years ago,
the Bialetti is elegant in thick aluminum, and consists of only three parts. The
base is the water chamber, and when the water is just the right heat the
physics of the matter bubble it up through the aluminum coffee filter and into
the upper chamber, which is the coffee pot proper.
The Bialetti is not decorated with “PRECINCT 3” OR “JASPER-NEWTON
ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE”, although those would be nice too, but with a picture of natty
little man with a natty little moustache, Signor Bialetti himself.
The Bialetti is designed for a stove top, of course, and
it works fine on a camp stove (OUTSIDE; OPEN FLAMES INSIDE ARE NEVER A GOOD
IDEA).
Before you start cleaning up the windfall, you need a cup
of coffee served by Mr. Bialetti.
-30-
Morning Coffee with Signor Bialetti - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Morning Coffee with Signor Bialetti
Wreckage is everywhere,
two apple trees down
Limbs and leaves and
litter, shingles and wood
The lawns are white with
shoals of springtime hail
The lines are down and the
power is out
But Signor Bialetti from
Italy
A super-hero in aluminum
Is pleased to take his
place on the camping stove
Twirl his moustache and
stride through Sterno fire
Singing songs from his
favorite libretti
While making us coffee – O
brave Signor Bialetti!
Thursday, April 15, 2021
Afghanistan, Graveyard of 19-Year-olds - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Afghanistan, Graveyard of 19-Year-Olds
“You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.”
-Holmes’ first words to Watson in
A Study in Scarlet, 1887
Ghosts shriek in the wind from the Hindu Kush
Falling upon the lowlands in despair
Of any reality beyond death
In the blood-sodden sands where sinks all good
Walls, monuments, souls, hopes – all blow away
In the wreckage of long-fallen empires
Their detritus trod upon by tired men
Whose graves will be the howling dust of time
And yet the empire masters will return
And leave fresh offerings of more young men:
A British Enfield, a Moghul’s lost shoe,
A cell phone silent beside the Great Khan’s skull
From The
Road to Magdalena, Lawrence Hall, 2012, available via amazon.com
“Afghanistan,
graveyard of empires” is a common saying whose source is unknown.
Wednesday, April 14, 2021
Awarded the Chair of Poetry - poem (he said without irony)
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Awarded the Chair of Poetry at a Leafy Rural Tree
Among its ancient gifts
are acorns and leaves
But the most generous stipend
is peace
Oh, sure, we have our
academic rivalries –
Just last night a raccoon
occupied the chair
And the cardinals and jays
squawk a bit
Mostly about seeds, seldom
about verse
For arguing with Keats and
Yevtushenko
Is my great pleasure and
duty, not theirs
Who knew –
That an old steel chair
dragged onto the lawn
Could be a center of
civilization?
Tuesday, April 13, 2021
Moo. Herd Immunity. Moo. - poem (of a sort)
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Moo. Herd Immunity. Moo.
"I don't know what
herd immunity is, but when you add that to the people who have acquired
immunity, it looks like it could be very close to herd immunity.”
-Texas Governor Greg Abbott,
as quoted by the Washington Post
via The Houston Chronicle
Moo. Herd immunity. Moo. Simple
math.
Moo. Very close. Moo. Vigilant.
Moo. Proactive.
Moo. Efficacy. Moo.
Calculation.
Moo. Dashboards. Moo. Trackers.
Moo. Asymptomatic.
Moo. 70% Moo. 80%.
Moo. Fourth surge. Moo.
Waves. Moo. Gaps. Moo. Pockets.
Moo. Complications. Moo. Misunderstandings.
Moo. Factors. Moo. Threshold.
Moo. Duration
Moo. Emerging. Probable.
Moo. Data.
Moo. Equation. Moo. Very
close. Moo. Died.
“I don’t know what herd
immunity is…”
Moo.
Monday, April 12, 2021
Our Antikythera Mechanisms - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Our Antikythera Mechanisms
Chariots of the odds and
ends of life
Wooden boxes of bronze mechanisms
By which we navigate the
memories
Of all the golden islands
of our youth
The hidden anchorages of lost
love
And barefoot beaches of youth’s
innocence
Beneath bright sunlit hills
of wild must grapes
That taste of our desires
in dreaming hours
All lost, alas, fallen
into the sea
The sea of remembrance,
eternally
Sunday, April 11, 2021
On the Necessity of Merry Old Scoundrels - weekly column
Lawrence Hall, HSG
On the Necessity
of Merry Old Scoundrels
Whenever the topics of England or the royal family arise,
newsies with limited vocabularies are sure to employ two of the most tiresome
and pointless fillers, “fairy tale” and “across the pond.”
The English monarchy is arguably 1500 years old. There have
been dynastic changes and of course the interregnum of that genocidal maniac
Cromwell, but always the monarchy continued. Even those New Men, those Progressives,
those Men of Destiny, those Modernists Napoleon and Hitler, with all their up-to-date
engines of destruction, could not topple the purportedly out-of-date monarchy. The
continuance of stable government against satanic evil is not a fairy tale.
Further, the Atlantic Ocean is hardly a pond, and the
metaphor sank into the depths of obscurity long before the Titanic.
In sum, fairy tales are for Disney, and the pond is out
back (watch out for the snakes). Adult
reporters should know these things.
The
loss of Prince Philip is very real – he was a survivor of national and family
instability in his youth (it’s never good when your grandfather is murdered and
your father barely escapes a death sentence), a hero of the Second World War, a
patriot, and, essential to all of this, he was a right merry old soul.
Any
institution needs a merry old soul, and they feature in most of Shakespeare:
Bottom the Weaver, Falstaff, the Prologue in Henry V, Macbeth’s doorkeeper,
the cobbler and the soothsayer in Julius Caesar, Constable Dogberry and
the lads in Much Ado About Nothing, and others. Prince Philip’s great
sense of incorrect fun, which never degenerated into mere buffoonery, added a
bit of spice to the necessary seriousness of the monarchy. And he was a loving husband,
father, grandfather, and great-grandfather upon whom all in his life depended.
Harry
could have learned all this from his grandfather, and could have taken his needful
place as Jolly Old ‘Arry, a bit of scandal and naughtiness around him, but
always kind and loving and loyal to the nation and his family.
But
he didn’t.
The
difference is that Prince Philip chose a life of duty to his Queen, his family,
and his nation, and despite a good beginning Harry has not yet found anything
more interesting than his own self-pity.
-30-
On Divine Mercy Sunday - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
On Divine Mercy Sunday
Above all, don’t lie to yourself.
-Father Zossima in The Brothers
Karamazov
On Palm Sunday a shortage
of palms
On Divine Mercy a shortage
of mercy
An onion, a candle, a
moment, a prayer -
We’d better give something
of ourselves away
Saturday, April 10, 2021
Squirrels Without End, Amen - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Squirrels Without End, Amen
Whenever I take my book to
the front-yard oak
The squirrel stretched
from the feeder to the trunk
Flees in a seed-strewn
panic across the lawn
To a farther tree, free of
human menace
This is a young squirrel;
its predecessor
Arched from feeder to
trunk in exactly the same way
But held its ground, or,
rather, its rough old tree
And chittered defiance in contempt
of me
By summer’s end this
squirrel too will stare me down -
I wonder what Pasternak
wrote about squirrels
Friday, April 9, 2021
A Doom of Impending Sense - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
A Doom of Impending Sense
When you are driving away
for the daily run
Of errands, appointments,
disappointments
You know you’ll enjoy the
company of your MePhone –
Which you have left upon your desk at home
You buy a magazine in the
checkout line
Or find a book in some
cold waiting room
Or read an editorial in
the local wipe
Or remember a poem from
seventh grade
You glory in words, words and
images dense
And feel a doom of near, impending
sense
Thursday, April 8, 2021
Every Poem is a Translation - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Every Poem is a Translation
Wordsworth considered his
rainbow up on high
And what he saw and felt
through it, he wrote -
Translating an arc of refracted
light
Into a transcendent vision
of life
But his considerations
through paper and ink
Are but darkness and silence
without readers
Because the rainbow needs our
vision, our joy
Without which there is no
rainbow at all
We open the book, the
page, the words, the light
To find the rainbow that
he wrote to us
Wednesday, April 7, 2021
Send Not to Ask for What the Vulture Seeks - doggerel
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Send Not to Ask for What the Vulture Seeks
or
Try not to Look Like a Dead Cow
Coragyps atratus, with wings spread wide
In narrowing circles
menacingly
Soars in malignance above
the countryside
I think it seeks…I think
it seeks…for me!
Tuesday, April 6, 2021
"What's Holding us Back!?" - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
“What’s Holding us Back!?”
A video clip from Natuashish
Two little children on a
snowmobile
Which smokes and sputters,
going nowhere
“What’s holding us back!?”
is their merry squeal
Frozen-breath frosty in
the springtime air
Two little children both
ready for a ride
Realize they are held back
by a third
But only for a moment (at
least he tried!)
Three little children, each
a happy snowbird
And off they go, following
their own chosen track -
Dear little children, nothing
will ever hold you back!
Monday, April 5, 2021
What I Learned at Breakfast this Morning, Mannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn! - poem (of a sort)
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
What I Learned at Breakfast this Morning
A café’ scene
for one flat, nasal, abrasive, loud Voice and any number of Bobbing
Heads:
V:
I’VE GOT A MASK WITH JOE
BIDEN ON IT, MAN!
‘CAUSE THEY BOTH AIN’T NO
GOOD FOR NOTHIN’!
(Heads bob)
V:
THE ‘TTORNEY GENERAL OF
TEXAS SAYS HE’S GON’ SUE
ANY STORE THAT REQUIRES
MASKS, MAN, YEAH, MAN!
(Heads bob)
V:
THEY GON’ TRY THAT
SOCIALISM ON US, MAN
AN’ YOU KNOW THAT AIN’T
NEVER WORKED, MAN!
(Heads bob)
V:
I AIN’T TAKIN’ THAT ****IN’
SHOT, MAN, NO
THAT’S JUST THE FLU AND
SOCIALISM!
(Heads bob)
V:
I’D LIKE TO SEE TH’ SUM B****
TRY TO MAKE ME
WEAR NO ****IN’ MASK, MAN,
YEAH, MAN, MAN!
(Heads bob)
V:
THESE HERE PUBLIC SCHOOL
NEED TO BEAT THEM KIDS
‘CAUSE THAT’S IN TH’ BIBLE
AND I AIN’T-A GONNA HAVE NONE OF THIS COMMUNIST MOHAMMEDAN LGBT **** TAUGHT TO
MY KIDS NOSSIR THEY JUST NEED TO LEARN. TO. CODE AND SHOOT AND BUTCHER A HOG SO
THEY CAN SURVIVE THE TIME OF TRIBULATION THAT’S COMIN’ AND **** ANYONE WHO SAYS
IT AIN’T BY GOD ‘CAUSE IF IT’S AIN’T IN THE BIBLE I WON’T HAVE IT IN THE HOUSE
AND WE DON’T NEED ALL THIS HEATIN’ AND AIR-CONDITIONIN’ ‘CAUSE GOD MADE THE AIR
THE WAY IT IS AND WE JUST NEED TO TAKE IT THE WAY IT IS INSTEAD OF MAKING THIS
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENT **** MAN…
(Heads continue to bob as curtain
falls)
Sunday, April 4, 2021
Snowmobiles, Horses, and Chocolate Bunnies - weekly column
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Snowmobiles,
Horses, and Chocolate Bunnies
Midway through his journey of life a friend in
Newfoundland did not find himself in lost in Dante’s darksome wood or even in a
darksome St. John’s television studio, but at age 50 for reasons best known to
himself took a hiatus from reporting news for the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation and flew to Natuashish on the east coast of Labrador to teach
school children for the winter term.
Anthony keeps the twooter interesting with his posts. One
of my favorites (or favourites) is a recent posting with children launching a snowmobile:
AnthonyGermain (@AnthonyGermain) / Twitter
The three-year-old piloting the thing asks, in her
language, “What’s holding us back?”
In truth, I don’t think anything will ever hold that
child back.
The video clip was made within the last week; winters in
Nunatsiavut are loooooooooooooong.
An argument can be made that the snowmobile is not part
of the Inuit heritage, but that would be an error – no people or culture exists
in stasis, as a sort of museum.
Labrador Inuit (Labradormiut) (first-nations.info)
There were no horses in North America until the Spanish
brought them. Within a short time the Comanche, more than any other First
Nation, adapted to the technology of the horse and became possibly the world’s
finest light cavalry.
The Comanche – Horsemen of the Plains – Legends of America
How Horses Transformed Life for Plains Indians - HISTORY
For the Inuit the snowmobile is now as essential to travel,
commerce, and hunting as the horse became to the Comanche.
The essential thing is that after the Comanche the Inuit appropriated
and adapted the technology of others they did not then passively hold it in
their hands and stare at it. Okay, neither a horse nor a snowmobile can be held
like a MePhone, but the point stands – technology properly used does not
disconnect any culture from its heritage, but rather enriches it and pushes it
forward.
And there are chocolate bunnies for all.
Life is good.
-30-
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