Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Schrodinger’s
Bullet
Is there a bullet in the cylinder?
The armorer thinks not
The assistant director thinks not
The actor thinks not
The dead…will know
Monday, October 25, 2021
Schrodinger's Bullet - poem
Sunday, October 24, 2021
The Duchess of California and Schrodinger's Bullet - weekly column, 24 October 2021
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
The Duchess of
California and Schrodinger’s Bullet
“There is no such thing as an unloaded weapon.”
-generations of parents, drill instructors, weapons
instructors, range safety officers, company commanders, company sergeants, chief
petty officers, armorers, hunting guides, hunters, competition shooters, and law
officers
Following recent events in New Mexico we are all eager to
hear the Duchess of California give us a stern lecture on gun control and, doubtless,
global warming.
We are not likely to hear Her Grace mention the fact that
gentlemen should not shoot ladies. But perhaps a decaying society that has
concluded that murdering babies is now a social obligation will not see it that
way.
Still, in most jurisdictions even in these regressive
times, when a gentleman kills a lady with a firearm the gentleman makes at
least a brief acquaintance with whatever prize awaits him on the other side of
the door of a holding cell.
But apparently in New Mexico, the Land of Enchantment, if
the gentleman in question is special enough, a warm hug makes everything okay.
You and I weren’t there for the shooting, gentle reader, but
a number of other people were, and as of now, assuming (always a questionable
thing to do) that all of these people are correct and that the national news
reports got it right (stop laughing), then at least three people handled the
fatal revolver before the killing of an innocent woman and the wounding of an
innocent man:
1. The armorer, who set out the revolver on a table or tray
along with several other weapons (what was this – a salad bar of death?)
2. The assistant director, who removed the revolver from
the table or tray and then gave it to:
3. The actor
The actor then discharged the weapon, killing one person
and wounding another.
If – one must always say “if” – all of this is factual,
then at least three people handled the same weapon in turn and all three
assumed (there’s that assuming thing again) that the weapon was not loaded.
And some say that Americans are not a people of faith.
At least three people played a game of Schrodinger’s
Bullet with the revolver.
Schrodinger’s Bullet, analogous to Schrodinger’s Cat, is
a mental exercise in which a number of people think about whether a bullet is
in a revolver’s cylinder, but no one bothers to open the cylinder to see if
in fact there is a bullet.
As your ol’ daddy taught you, over and over, there is
a bullet. Even if you take the bullet out of the weapon, it’s still in the
weapon. The bullet is always there. If the wisest, smartest, most thoughtful,
most loving, most trustworthy man or woman you ever met tells you there isn’t a
bullet, in this matter he’s wrong. The bullet is always there.
-30-
"Parole," He Replied, "I'm Afraid of Parole." - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
“Parole,” He Replied, “I’m Afraid of Parole.”
What are you
most afraid of?
“Parole,” he
said, and the others agreed
“I don’t like it
in here; I don’t have any choices
But no one
expects anything much of me
I can’t make any
choices, so I can’t fail
“But out there –
there – I have to make choices
I have to live up
to my kid’s expectations
I have to live like
a man, show some initiative
Get up and go to
work without being told
“Most of all, I’m
afraid of letting my kid down
I might fail him,
like I did before
And that’s the
scariest thing of all”
Saturday, October 23, 2021
Ode on a Flintstones Tumbler - doggerel
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Ode on a Flintstones
Tumbler
John Keats helped with this but refused to take any
credit. He must be modest
Thou still unmoving car of wood and stone
Forever carrying the Flintstones and the Rubbles
Off to the movies – Rock Hudson to be shown?
And a childhood half-hour of comic troubles
Heard yabba-dabbas are sweet, but those unheard
We’ll have to speak ourselves over milk and cereal
Wilma, of course, always has the last word
But we’ll contribute to the writers’ material
Fred’s feet are truth, not beauty, - but off they go
Taking us with them – so on with the show!
Friday, October 22, 2021
Generation Whatever - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Generation
Whatever
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed,
debriefed, or numbered.
My life is my own.
-Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner
Be not defined by dates and stereotypes
The endless clutter of cliches and cant
Generating generic generations
Of worthless weasel words of wanton waste
WHO are you?
Who ARE you?
Who are YOU?
That’s usually no one’s concern but yours
(The cop writing you a ticket gets to ask)
Thanks to Patty M at
patty
m - Hello Poetry for lending me the consonant “W.”
Thursday, October 21, 2021
Where Danger Lurks - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Where Danger Lurks
You must be careful about your surroundings
Not overly tense but ready for anything
Balanced on your feet, looking around
Paying attention to everyone’s hands and eyes
Always ready for an unexpected punch
Some long-ago resentment coming to boil
Or a random stranger who doesn’t like your face
Your voice, your shoes, your shirt, your tie, your coat
In a fetid cesspool of drama and divorce –
I allude to a Christian funeral, of course
Wednesday, October 20, 2021
A Cloud of Unknowing for Ordinary Time - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
A Cloud of
Unknowing in Ordinary Time
Sometimes life doesn’t make any sense
You’d think that hurting like an adolescent
Would end with adolescence
But it doesn’t
Maybe we can find some good in the hurt
That when we hurt we’re carrying someone else’s hurt
It sounds awfully thin
Maybe it’s enough
Tuesday, October 19, 2021
Parish Consolidations and Rumors of Parish Consolidations - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Parish
Consolidations and Rumors of Parish Consolidations
“I'm
a beast, I am, and a Badger what's more. We don't change.
We
hold on. I say great good will come of it.”
-Trufflehunter in C. S. Lewis’ Prince Caspian
I don’t suppose Saint Peter sent surveys
Or that Saint Paul politely polled the people
But that’s how bishops do such things these days
With an access code on the InterThing
502 Bad Gateway
Rumor Control and Gossip Central say
That our parish is for the chopping block
(maybe
re-purposed as a shopping block)
Worse things have happened; we’ve been pilgrims before
So as the Lord leads us, we will follow Him
Again
The Altar, Sacrifice, and Word are Truth
And where we are sent to serve, there we will serve
Monday, October 18, 2021
The Tiger Cages of Ben Luc - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
The Tiger Cages of
Ben Luc
In which there were no tigers, only boys
Locked in barbed-wire cages in the tropical sun
Teenagers in their country’s uniform
Unable even to stretch or stand or move
Punished for some minor infraction or other
Locked in barbed wire cages in the tropical sun
We were forbidden to talk to them, or even look
They waited in silence, they waited, and they thought
Locked in barbed-wire cages in the tropical sun -
And those poor lads are why the Communists won
Sunday, October 17, 2021
THE POETS OF RAPALLO - a Review
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
The Poets of Rapallo, a Review
The
Poets of Rapallo,
Lauren Arrington, Oxford University Press is a brilliant first draft; one looks
forward to reading the completed work.
As
it is, Dr. Arrington has accomplished brilliant research on the poets - Yeats, Bunting, Pound, Aldington, MacGreevy,
Zukofsky - and their acquaintances who happened to be in the Italian resort
town Rapallo (they were not a coterie) in the 1920s and 1930s. The notes alone run
to 54 pages of too-small type, and the bibliography to 8.
Unhappily,
the text appears to have been rushed, possibly by an impatient publisher, and
along with numerous small mistakes there are some serious failures in stereotyping,
hasty generalizations predicated on little evidence, and a few condemnations more
redolent of Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor than a scholar.
One
of the best things about The Poets of Rapallo is the exposition
explaining why a great many intellectuals were attracted to Italian Fascism as
it was idealistically presented through propaganda early on and not as the
moral and ethical disaster it soon proved to be.
Mussolini
cleverly promoted his program as primarily cultural, a reach-back to the
artistic and architectural unities of an imagined ancient Rome restored and
enhanced with modern science and technology. He promoted the arts for his own
purposes, of course, but deceptively. In almost any context the construction of
schools, libraries, museums, theatres, and cinema studios would be perceived as
a good, and absent any close examination accepted by everyone. But in Mussolini’s
scheme these cultural artifacts, like Lady Macbeth’s “innocent flower,”
concealed the lurking serpent: wars of conquest, poison gas, bombings of undefended
cities, death camps, institutionalized racism, mass murders, and other
enormities.
The
Fascist sympathies of W. B. Yeats and other influencers (as we would say now)
in the Irish Republic, including Eamon de Valera, are certainly revelatory. That
the new nation came close to goose-stepping through The Celtic Twilight might help
explain Ireland’s curious neutrality during the Second World War.
Professor
Arrington explains all this very well, and initially is professionally
objective. Most of the Rapallo set were not long in learning what Fascism was really
about and quickly distanced themselves from it in some embarrassment. Some were later even more of an embarrassment
in their denials and deflections; few seemed to have been able to admit that,
yes, they were suckered, as we all have been from time to time
But
with the exception of the unrepentant and odious Pound, who was himself a
metaphorical serpent to his death, Professor Arrington seems to lose her objectivity
with the others.
And
why Pound?
As
with Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, it is difficult to take seriously someone
who considers Pound’s pretentious, pompous, show-off word-soup Cantos to
be literature. Pound is now famous only for being famous, and while Arrington
appears to forgive Pound for his adamant and malevolent anti-Semitism and his pathetic
subservience to Mussolini, in the end she is ruthless toward anyone else who, under
Pound’s influence, in his or her naivete even once told an inappropriate joke,
appreciated Graeco-Roman architecture, or perhaps saw Mussolini at a distance.
This is inexplicable in a text that is otherwise professional and compassionate
in avoiding what C. S. Lewis identifies as chronological snobbery.
One
also wishes the author had discussed Pound’s post-war appeal as a fashionable
prisoner adored or at least pitied by a new generation (Elizabeth Bishop, how
could you?).
The
book ends abruptly, as if the author were interrupted by a demand by the
printers for it now, and so, yes, one hopes for a complete work to
follow.
The
Poets of Rapallo
is not served well by the Oxford University Press, who appear to have been more
interested in cutting costs than in presenting a work of scholarship to the
world. The print is far too small, the garish spine lettering is more suited to a
sale-table murder mystery, and the retro-1930s holiday cover would be fine for
an Agatha Christie yarn but not for a book of literary scholarship.
A
question outside the scope of this book but more important is this: why, in a
free nation, do so many people feel the desperate need almost to worship a
leader? Yes, of course we have presidents and chiefs of police (some of whom love
sport shiny admiral’s stars on their collars, and what’s that about?) and
bosses and so on, and we depend upon their wise leadership. But why do people
wear pictures of some Dear Leader or other on their clothing and chant his name?
I
think the president or the famous movie star should wear YOUR name on his shirt
and pay YOU for the privilege.
-30-
Church of Our Lady of the Perpetual Garbage Sale - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Our Lady of the
Perpetual Garbage Sale
It’s for the youth
Our parish hall is now a re-sale shop
All full of junk that never goes away
Boxes of videotapes and castoff slop
And smelly clothes that have had their day
It’s for the youth
The Mass no longer ends with “Ite, missa est”
But rather, “After Mass would some of the men…”
Shift the same old debris without let or rest
Sisyphean labors for original sin
It’s for the youth
Fellowship after Mass is tired and pale -
The one eternal is the garbage sale
But it’s for the youth
Saturday, October 16, 2021
They Say Young Men Have No Ambition These Days - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
They Say Young Men
Have No Ambition These Days
The poetry section is the most remote:
The floor where the staff sneak away for lunch
Or lovers rendezvous for lovers’ arguments
A few eccentrics who want to read poetry
A young man sees it as his corner office
Reposing in a chair, feet up on the glass
Wielding two ‘phones, negotiating sex
And drugs, and his efficient deliveries
A pimp among the poets, playing the world -
Who says young men have no ambition these days?
Friday, October 15, 2021
A Disembodied Hand Doomscrolling on the Wall of Tia Maria’s Barbecue - rhyming doggerel
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
A Disembodied Hand
Doomscrolling on the Wall of Tia Maria’s Barbecue
- not Daniel 5
Tiffany was treatin’ the girls to barbecue
The merry ol’ girls from her bowling league
(Their bold team colors dazzled in pink and blue)
She had made herself captain through cruel intrigue
When suddenly a disembodied hand
Appeared with a smartphone by the restroom door
And keyed strange lines that in flickerings scanned:
“You’ll be sacked this evening - your team’s 0 to 4”
That very night Tiffany’s custom ball was taken
And she cried in her trailer, her heart a-breakin’
Wednesday, October 13, 2021
Seven Haiku for the Pleiades
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Seven Haiku for the Pleiades
The seventh poem – think of
the Subaru badge – is not seen. That thoughtful poem is the one you will write.
1. Two Goddesses and a God Come to Visit
All in the same sky:
Luna, Venus, Jupiter
While the soft winds sigh
2. Barefoot in the Stilly Dawn
Barefoot in the grass
Eyes to the east, the stilly dawn
The stars have withdrawn
.
3. Dachshunds on Their Dawn Patrol
Every dachshund thinks
That she is a timber wolf -
Perhaps it is so
4. Summer Lingers
Yes, summer lingers
Crickets sing throughout the night
Their October hymns
5. A Prison Visit
The horizon has no meaning
If the prisoners look up -
Concertina wire
6. The Prayers of Planets and Stars
The planets and stars
Need not our prayers; they never sinned -
Do they pray for us?
Why I Wear a Boonie Hat - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Why I Wear a
Boonie Hat
Mostly to try to avoid speeding tickets
And maybe someone will say, “Thank you for your service”
And pay for my coffee in gratitude
But they just stop at “Thank you for your service”
Sometimes I meet some other old man
And we ask each other where we were
Memories – some of them surprisingly good
Others dark enough
And we
were so young
My boonie hat keeps the sun off my head
And the fluorescents in the Social Security office
It makes me look like John Wayne in The Geriatric
Berets
Not really. Maybe a different angle…how’s that?
And young women come up to me to say
That their grandfathers were in Viet-Nam
Tuesday, October 12, 2021
The Carrier Picked Up the Package - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
The Carrier Picked
Up the Package
The carrier picked up the package, this says
Whoever the poor carrier might be
This Sunday morning, at work before dawn
While I sit with a coffee and read the note
The world of packages is dark out there
Tired loaders and drivers hope for coffee too
It the schedules and supervisors permit
But otherwise, the bosses send them out
I am up early because I cannot sleep
Workers are up early - they have little choice
Monday, October 11, 2021
Not the Throne He Anticipated - poem
Lawrence
Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Not the Throne He Anticipated
Callow
and young, a man begins his life
Thinking
great thoughts of empires and of kings
Of how
in a few years he will awe the world
With
the achievements of his mind and strength
The
books he will write must astound the age
His
businesses will corner out Wall Street
His
ships will sail the seas to India
His
planes will fly tourists around the world -
But many
years later
He
writes a doubtful check upon his bank
At the
hardware store for a toilet tank
Sunday, October 10, 2021
The Governess of California Censors Toys - weekly column, 10 October 2021
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
The Governess of
California Censors Toys
The
briefcase politician…
A
man enthroned as if (he) were a committee
-Yevtushenko, “Zima Junction”
The perfectly coiffed Ken Doll governorissimo of
California, Gavin Newsom, has with his obedient, (hand)-kissing legislature commanded
his / their loving and obedient subjects in the Glorious Workers’ and Peasants’
Republic that his / their wisdom and benevolence empowers him / them to control
how toys will be sold.
In a state suffering from water shortages, power shortages,
riots, wildfires, high unemployment, homelessness, a high murder rate, punitive
taxes, and out-of-control crime the freely-elected government finds little to do
except regulate the gender of toys. In
California as in all the coolest states it’s okay now to murder little boys and
girls but not to allow the survivors ever to know that they are little boys and
girls.
The law does not (yet) forbid girls’ interest and boys’
interest sections but does mandate that there must also be a gender-neutral
section.
I don’t know how they do that – maybe they turn each Ken
and Barbie upside down to see what’s underneath?
Attention, comrades: the fine for the first violation is
$250; the fine for each subsequent violation is $500.
Governments are elected to rule, for without rule there
would only chaos; we have this from no less an authority than Saint Paul. We
elect governments so that we may be free from the unrestrained violence of
warlords and cartels.
But when a government elected by the people neglects its
duties and intrudes on areas of innocent joy then that government needs to be brought
up sharp in the next election cycle. The corollary is that if the people forget
their duty in voting in every election, then there is no hope of responsible
self-government.
I have known parents who forbade their daughters to play
with dolls and toy kitchens and their sons to play with cap pistols and toy
trucks because they did not want their children to be gender-stereotyped. I think
that’s unrealistic but I know that it’s none of my business. Now we must
make sure that our governesses and legislators also know that the healthy play
of childhood is not any concern of theirs.
And, anyway, Gavin is a boy’s name, a variant of the
Celtic Gawain, one of the knights of the Round Table. Under California’s new
genderish laws His / Their Excellency should fine himself / theirself $250 each
day until he / they changes / change it to something gender-neutral.
-30-
a;th4fiothei545’ - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
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Poet and poem form
chaos into meaning
Saturday, October 9, 2021
From Vespers to Compline This October Night - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
From Vespers to
Compline this October Night
How peaceful it is to sit outside
In the cooling dusk as the stars appear
In the healing dusk as the busy-ness fades
Through unspoken Paters and Aves
How peaceful it is to sit outside
In the Vespers night of crickets’ hymns
In the Compline night of one last prayer
Whispered up to God through the dome of Heaven
How peaceful it is to sit outside
And be still
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