https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Thanksgiving Essentials are out of Stock
-Thus saith
the news
A house, a book,
a dog, a good warm coat
A job, a ride, a
friend, someone to love
A dream, a hope,
a plan, coffee with you
A family around
the table, something to eat
And gratitude - all
the essentials are in stock
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Upon Reading
Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita
Margarita flying naked over Moscow
She might have caught a cold doing that, you know
A big ol’ cat shooting a Browning Hi-Power
He was certainly amusing for an hour
The Secret Police were like the Keystone Kops
Not to be trusted even with traffic stops
And Pontius Pilate ordering a death
Almost with every other tortured breath
There were two burnings of the Master’s book
But yet at the end someone gave it look
The Master’s book…hmmmm…
I have finished this book; I thoughtfully read it
And I must confess that I just don’t get it
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Ten Knots along a
Cord
A
trewe swinkere and a good was he,
Lyvynge in pees and parfit charitee
-Chaucer’s Prologue
See the plowman walking home from the fields
He plods along with the pace of centuries
There is no haste, for time hardly exists
Only the seasons, rolling like cosmic tides
And in his hand, ten knots along a cord
To count each Ave as it passes his lips
And through his heart and hopes and gratitude
His soul secure along the links of being
See the plowman dreaming home from the fields
His feet upon the earth, his head among the stars
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
It’s Not Really an
Assault Rifle ‘Cause It’s only Semi-Automatic
Once upon a time there was a stupid boy
He was seventeen. Someone gave him a gun
His mumsy drove him to another state
So he could hunt other people with his gun
See the boy hunt. Hunt, hunt, hunt
And he did. Be very quiet. He’s hunting Commies
But bullies wanted to take away his gun
And the boy was sad. So he shot the meanies
Bang, bang, bang. Take that, you rascally Liberals
Empowered, empowered, empowered
He had to go to court. He began to cry
Because they took away his big bang-bang
And his mumsy cried.
But the
dead can’t cry
Smith & Wesson™ – Empowering Americans since 1852©
Lawrence Hall
Wood Stoves and Thinking
About Stuff
Every winter our old cast-iron wood heater was useful
both as a source of heat and of conversation. During the long freeze of last
winter, after we missed our flight to Cancun, the wood-burner was a necessity.
After the worst of the cold passed the good old Birmingham heater, after some
sixty years of service to several families, failed. A leg (the stove’s leg, not
mine) crumbled, which led to a cascade effect, more pieces of iron falling to
the brick base.
I bought a new stove, a small one I could afford, and friends
Gary and Mickey worked a few hours heaving the old one out and the new one in.
The most interesting part was fitting the stove pipe. Anyone who works with
sheet metal and can keep his language clean is a champion.
The guys dollied the old heater to a concrete slab out
back to replace the cheap chimenea that lasted something less than sixty years.
Later I installed a remaining stove pipe segment to the
Birmingham to help the draft and to keep more of the smoke up and away while
sitting outside. Joining this one section to the heater required precision
adjustments and careful fitting, which I skillfully and methodically
accomplished by beating the (snot) out of it with a fence post.
There was no one around to hear me speak…plainly…to it.
Friend Jake at American Firewood advised me where I could
find a small grate, and on a cold evening I lit the new stove’s first fire in
accordance with the instruction. The coating needs three different burnings for
bonding with the iron, and I’m following that carefully. I also checked the
fittings for smoke-leaks, and all is well. The new heater features a tight
glass door and a clever new way of fluing the air, which results in a very
efficient small fire that lasts for hours and whose heat lasts even longer.
Nice.
Birmingham Stove and Range Company was in business from
1902 until 1903, and made lots of different cook stoves, wood heaters, and
cast-iron cookware. One source (Birmingham Stove Company - Easy Access To Information
Company (ninan.org)) says they invented the corn-shaped cornbread skillet.
Birmingham Stove and Range did not have the cachet of, say, Vermont Castings™,
but their products were less expensive and so more common in homes and railway
stations and businesses all over America.
A properly installed wood heater is a good thing. It
provides auxiliary heat and, in case of a power failure, it would make your
house safely warm. You really do need to know something about the different
kinds of wood and how they are dried and stored, and basic physics for lighting
a fire safely. Beyond that, a wood heater does not require programming, cannot
be hacked, and does not send you annoying messages about new software.
A wood heater smells of wood, one nature’s many types of
incense, and the flames give you a center for thinking about stuff while
sitting before it with a cup of coffee as the early winter night falls.
-30-
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Okay, So It’s the
End of the World
“What
do ties matter, Jeeves, at a time like this?”
“There
is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter.”
-P. G. Wodehouse
Okay, so what if this is the end of our world
Windblown sands where Ozymandias once ruled
Or dying like Charn in The Magician’s Nephew
Pale and sere under a fading red sun
Let us not meet it pajama’d on a couch
Videogaming upon a telescreen
And suddenly marveling that the power has failed
As a moving hand writes across the skies
If the world is going to end today
Let us dress properly for the occasion
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
DeafCon 1
She said existential
I thought she said transcendental
She said she didn’t like her dentist anyway
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
An Executioner
Feels Bad
One of the state’s executioners
Is feeling bad about what he does
He’s speaking out about PTSD
Sleeplessness and thoughts of suicide
Speaking out
Lethal drugs, poison gas, maybe firing squads
Hands as skillful as those of an abortionist
“None of us wanted to do it,” he says
But he does it. A ticket to promotion
Don’t do drugs, kids
The chief executioner gets to be a Commander
He doesn’t tell his children about his work
It’s for the children
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Afghanistan,
Graveyard of
19-Year-Olds
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, remnants of the young:
A British Enfield, a Moghul’s lost shoe,
A cell phone silent beside the Great Khan’s skull
2012, The Road to Magdalena
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Maslow’s Hierarchy
of Nerds
Okay, I’m the nerd, not part of the hierarchy
But you are core of my hierarchy of needs
Where do I place you on the pyramid?
But I don’t place you at all – you are
You are a hierarchy of, well, you:
‘Way up around self-actualization
And definitely among belonging and love
And the base, and the peak, and the center -
You are my hierarchy of truth
You are my pyramid of love
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
I Dry My Armpits
for No Man
They gather in their thousands, the obedient, the passive
To stand submissively before their master
And wave their arms in orgasmic submission
To leather and braids and electronic erections
They gather in their thousands, the obedient, the passive
Marked with the Sign of the Capitalist Credit Card
Eager to buy their overlord’s livery
To yield themselves to his contempt for them
They gather in their thousands, the obedient, the passive
-
And cease to be
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Boat!
“The fares are fixed, sir.”
-Boatman to St. Thomas More in A Man for All
Seasons
If I don’t give the Boatman Charon a tip
Do I get out of going on that final trip?
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Oh, Yeah, Kids
These Days
We can be reasonably sure that in 1939 parents in Canada
and England and the rest of the Empire and the Dominions dismissed their
teenaged children as lazy good-for-nothings without values or ambition. Kids
these days, eh?
Similarly, we can be reasonably sure that in 1941
American parents wrote off their young’uns with much the same words. Kids these
days, eh?
And that’s okay; those who survived the war dismissed
their own children as idlers and slackers (which in my case was accurate). Kids
these days, eh?
Last week a couple of sixteen-year-olds in Iowa were
arrested for murdering a middle-aged woman, and the reactions on the InterGossip
were both immediate and predictable, variations on the old “kids these days,
eh?”
First of all, the thoughtful citizen will bear in mind
the wisdom and logic in the Constitution – the two boys have been arrested, but
an arrest is only a formal accusation, not a conviction. By the Grace of God,
the InterGossip is not God, nor is it a court; it is mostly a bunch of grouchy
old people yammering.
And second, even if these two boys committed the murder,
they define nothing but their own errant behavior. They definitely do not define
a generation because, Tom Brokaw notwithstanding, a generation cannot be
defined. It can be stereotyped, but not defined. As Margaret More asks in A Man for All
Seasons, “What’s the man?” And we can add, “What’s the woman?”
Let us consider thirteen young Americans who are far more
representative of the rising generation, thirteen young Americans who were
killed last summer while serving humanity in helping refugees escape from
Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
We have all seen the photograph of Marine Corps Sergeant
Nicole Gee cradling an infant amid the chaos at the airport in Kabul when
everything fell apart. The picture is
not a government propaganda photograph; if it were it would be of better
quality. This is just a snapshot one of her fellow Marines forwarded to
her. She sent it by email to her parents
with the words, “I love my job!”
“I love my job.”
Those may have been the last words this United States
Marine - with her hair tied back in a ponytail - said to her mom and dad.
She was only 23. Some of her fellow Marines were only 20.
Kids these days, eh?
They might have been on the same bus route with our kids.
On the 26th of August Sergeant Gee and the
others who were killed with her almost surely did not think of themselves as
great Americans; they were too busy BEING great Americans. They would
have thought of themselves as only doing their jobs in the heat and dust and violence
of Afghanistan, helping civilians escape being murdered by the Taliban.
That’s what almost all young people would do. No one
should dismiss any generation with cheap and shabby stereotypes. Your teenager and
the goofy kid next door and the pimply oaf who can’t get your hamburger order
right would risk their lives – and someday may well have to do so - to carry a
baby amid the screams and terror and dust and heat to safety and then return to
the perimeter for another child or young mother or old man or anyone who needed
their help.
That’s what these thirteen young people did.
The oldest by far was Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Darin T.
Hoover, 31, of Salt Lake City, Utah. 31
might seem old, but, yeah, he was young.
Marine Corps Sgt. Johanny Rosariopichardo, another woman
Marine, 25, of Lawrence, Massachusetts
Marine Corps Sgt. Nicole L. Gee, 23, of Sacramento,
California
Marine Corps Cpl. Hunter Lopez, 22, of Indio, California
Marine Corps Cpl. Daegan W. Page, 23, of Omaha, Nebraska
Marine Corps Cpl. Humberto A. Sanchez, 22, of Logansport,
Indiana
Marine Corps Lance Cpl. David L. Espinoza, 20, of Rio
Bravo, Texas
Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Jared M. Schmitz, 20, of St.
Charles, Missouri
Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Rylee J. McCollum, 20, of Jackson,
Wyoming
Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Dylan R. Merola, 20, of Rancho
Cucamonga, California
Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Kareem M. Nikoui, 20, of Norco,
California
Navy Hospitalman Maxton W. Soviak, 22, of Berlin Heights,
Ohio
Army Staff Sgt. Ryan C. Knauss, 23, of Corryton,
Tennessee.
Now there is a generation. They were killed in a
scene of horror by a mad bomber who chose hate instead of love. His hate killed
those 13 young Americans and wounded some 30 others who were saving lives,
and killed and wounded possibly 200 or more Afghans.
One unhappy young man chose hate. That poor (wretch) doesn’t define (poop).
But our young people chose love, the love Jesus spoke of
when he said, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life
for his friends.”
And these young Americans gave up their lives for people
they didn’t even know.
No greater love indeed.
We have spoken of these 13, but let us remember this:
every young American in Kabul that day was saving lives – they were helping terrified
people get to the airplanes, helping them to safety.
That is also the story of just about every American
soldier, sailor, airman, Marine, or Coast Guard who ever served.
We absurd old people were once young – maybe when
dinosaurs roamed the earth – and we know that every veteran and almost every
American at some time has given up some of his own poor rations to help feed
children, given up some of his time and sleep and effort in helping those who are
hungry or displaced.
But that’s every generation’s story, to serve humanity.
The exceptions are irrelevant. Dang it, we’re good, and we don’t allow idiots
to define us.
In some way, in some place, in some time – as a soldier,
a police officer, a volunteer firefighter, a paramedic, or as a good American
civilian who stands tall when needed and helps the community in some way, all
of us serve humanity. We may not be called to carry a child to safety from
Kabul Airport or from a wrecked car or from a burning building, but we will
surely be called to help feed children or teach children in Sunday School or
kick in a little something for the Kirbyville Christian Outreach food pantry or
help out with the elementary school’s reading program.
There’s an old Army National Guard recruiting slogan that
says:
It wasn’t always easy
It wasn’t always fair
But when freedom called we answered
We were there
That’s who you are, and that’s who the kids are. Don’t
dismiss them. Don't stereotype them.
Don't underestimate them.
-30-
Lawrence
Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Pontius Pilate and His Dog
When a
man’s worked all day in signing off
On
having any number of his fellow men
Imprisoned,
flogged, branded, imprisoned, or chained
He’s
happy to come home to his good ol’ dog
The
master whistles, his happy dog barks
Man
and beast in happy concord meet
Playfully
tussling in their mutual love
While
the servants cringe and cower in fear
What
difference if a man executes his brother
As
long as he and his dog have each other?
The curious idea of Pontius Pilate having a dog to love is in
Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, p. 311 in the Penguin edition. The
paragraph is almost as touching as Senator Vest’s courtroom speech, “Tribute to
the Dog.”
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
WHITE BREAD! I
NEED SOME WHITE BREAD OVER HERE!
Pancake House on Crack Street II
With a Chorus of One Cook in Need of Some White Bread
A cold and dreary morning along Easy Street
The comforts of coffee and cholesterol
The senior special two fresh eggs your way
Farm fresh bacon or sausages your way
I NEED SOME WHITE BREAD OVER HERE! WHITE BREAD!
Down-home hash brown potatoes your way
Whole wheat toast with farm fresh butter your way
Fresh brewed Colombian coffee your way
“I’ll be with you in a minute, honey, okay?”
OVER HERE! I NEED SOME WHITE BREAD OVER HERE!
There aren’t any newspapers anymore
“In a minute!” So I studied my MePhone
WHITE BREAD! I NEED SOME WHITE BREAD OVER HERE!
I don’t think the cook was yelling about me
I don’t know, of course
The beggar at the door shivered quietly
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Highway 96 – Dead
Dogs and Shredded Tires
U.S. 96 is paved from north Texas to the Gulf
With fragments of dead dogs and re-capped tires
We love to let our doggies run wild and free
And save ourselves some money with unsafe tires
“That’s a big 10-4, good buddy!”
U. S. 96 is paved with articles of faith
For in spite of all the evidence we believe
WE BELIEVE! CAN I HAVE AN “AMEN!”
That a paint stripe will keep cars from hitting each
other
“I’m gonna take me a selfie!”
Corpses of rotting dogs and shredded tires -
But the dead humans are scraped up and hauled away
“Can you hear me now?”
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Guilted to the
Cemetery Next to the Sewage Plant
The dead with charity enclosed in clay
-Henry V IV.viii.121
I did not want to go to the cemetery today
And do things with Hobby Lobby flowers
Made in China plastic $8.95
And floral foam in chemical green blocks
The streets of my youth are rubble and weeds
The woods of my youth are now trailer parks
The church of my youth is a hollerin’ place
For even they have lost all dignity
The soft wind sighs over our people’s graves
The stench from the sewage plant sweeps in waves
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Election Day in
Texas: Proposition 3
Pastor’s gotta have his collection coming in
No matter how many of the faithful must die
Vaccination-free for Jesus and America
It’s God’s will (so no one cares when the orphans cry)
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Putting All the Hearts
Back Together
A child who takes a clock apart to see
Just how it works can easily be forgiven
Someone who takes a heart apart to see
Just how that works is justly unforgiven
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
The Culture Wars
We’ve Been Hearing About
Corporal Keats flung himself into the trench
“It’s no good,” he gasped, lighting a cigarette
“The Free Versifiers have ta’en our outposts
We spiked our sonnets but our blank verse is lost”
“And there’s an end on’t,” cried Corporal Johnson
“You will hear thunder,” sighed Corporal Ahkmatova
“Maybe we took the wrong road,” said Corporal Frost
“Where is Yevtushenkko?” asked Corporal Tsvetaeva
“Back in Moscow, awarding himself the George Cross
And promoting himself to field marshal”
