The Russia Project - short poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

The Russia Project

 

I will give up my copy of The Brothers Karamazov

When they pry it from my cold, dead hands

Or Just Sit in the Car and Die - short poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

“Or Just Sit in the Car and Die”

 

(overheard among the books)

 

Call Mom

Call Josh

Call an ambulance

Or just sit in the car and die

Pipe Tobacco and Memories - poem

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Pipe Tobacco and Memories

 

Today I smelled tobacco from a pipe

Although there was no one around except

Perhaps the ghost of the hardware store savant

Whose wisdom filled the air along with smoke

 

That honest, manly incense from long ago

When the thinking man smoked a Peterson’s pipe

Dunhill could brag of a royal warrant

And Dr. Grabow was a sovereign cure

 

No, no, we must not smoke anymore

But we can remember those golden days

Thanks to the Dim Bulbs - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com  

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/ 

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                            Thanks to the Dim Bulbs

I needed a light bulb from the hardware store

And for a gadget three D-cell batteries

The light bulb was nine dollars (I passed it by)

But bought the batteries for eight dollars each 

I think we’re all going to be shopping more now

In the recesses of closets and kitchen shelves

And maybe behind the dryer for an errant sock

And stretching the sell-by dates a week or two

But let us be thankful that we do have light bulbs

And rooms in which to enjoy their glow

Yevtushenko and Ukraine - weekly column, 6 March 2022

 

(I apologize - this one’s a mess. Vehemence is no excuse for poor craftsmanship.)

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Yevtushenko and Ukraine

 

Upon returning home from a boomer-privileged visit to Viet-Nam I bought at the San Francisco airport a copy of the Penguin edition of Yevtushenko: Selected Poems. That little paperback, which cost me 75 cents in 1970, is on the desk beside me as I type. 

 

A new copy of that book is now $16.00. In 1970 a cup of airport coffee was maybe 25 cents and now would be most of a tenner, so the book is about the same price in terms of purchasing power.

 

Upon recently hearing the name Yevtushenko in connection with Ukraine I looked on the InterGossip and learned that it is a common Ukrainian name although Yevgeny was from Siberia. His family was part of a forced resettlement generations ago and so Yevtushenko identified as a Russian. He annoyed his fellow Russians as a Russian, not as a Ukrainian, but, hey, good enough.

 

Yevgeny Yevtushenko was a poet, a biggie in his time, and had he been born ten years earlier Stalin would have had him shot for his criticism of Communist policies and of Russian anti-Semitism.

 

Yevtushenko’s best-known poem, “Babi Yar,” is the one that would have won him a literary prize made of lead in the basement shooting range of the Lubyanka.

 

Babi Yar is a huge ravine that in in 1941 was outside Kiev / Kyiv and is now inside the city limits. In two days, 29-30 September 1941, the Nazis murdered approximately 30,000 area Jews there, and over the next two years murdered more Jews as well as Poles, Gypsies / Roma, partisans, Red Army and Soviet Navy prisoners, writers, artists, musicians, psychiatric patients, nationalist Ukrainians, and others.

 

After the war there was no monument in honor of any of the victims. Given that the Jews were a substantial number, maybe half, of all the dead at that one site the USSR wanted no memory of Babi Yar at all. Yevtushenko’s poem, memorializing the massacres of Jews and other prisoners, somehow bypassed the censors (no one did cancel culture like the Soviets, although it’s becoming a fashion here), greatly annoying the regime but by then Yevtushenko was so famous that killing him was not an option.

 

The USSR finally put up a vaguely-worded monument to all the Russian dead but, given the anti-Semitism embedded in both Czarist and Soviet times, any mention of Jews was pointedly avoided. Upon independence Ukraine remedied this and there are numerous memorials to all the peoples massacred at Babi Yar.

 

Yevtushenko, whose ego was even greater than his skill, still managed to make much of the “Babi Yar” about himself, anticipating the me-me-me-ness of what now passes for poetry in our culture of artlessness, ideology and incessant self-pity, but it’s good anyway. And we should always remember that Yevtushenko while writing had to consider the possibility of a ten-year prison sentence or even of being “disappeared” for it.

 

Babi Yar is only one instance of the terror Ukraine suffered in the 20^th century. That land, the size of Texas, was a giant battlefield among the armies of the Austrian Empire, the Russian Empire, local militias, and Bolsheviks. After the revolution the Bolsheviks inflicted genocide on Ukraine, transplanting some of the population to Siberia and starving millions more to death in the Holodomor of 1932-1933.

 

During the Second World War the Nazis occupied Ukraine and murdered more millions, and after the war the Communists returned to continue their accustomed mass murders despite the reality that Ukrainians had served in the Red Army in their thousands.

 

And then the Russians built poorly-designed nuclear power plants in Ukraine and staffed them with good comrades instead of real engineers, dumped wrecked nuclear submarines on the coast, and in general made a further mess of things.

 

Let’s not do the gallant-little-Belgium thing here: Ukrainians are sometimes a mess themselves, and the nation has had lots of problems transforming itself from a Soviet penal colony to a free nation. Still, Ukraine is a sovereign nation recognized by the otherwise useless Merovingians in the United Nations and shouldn’t be subject to the sustained terror of a neo-Soviet invasion ordered by Dobby-the-House-Elf and his harem of silent, terrified fly-girls. Further, Ukraine is one of the few food-exporting nations, and the war has already affected supply and costs here and everywhere else. Ukraine also exports iron and oil and gas, and is an east-west pipeline corridor for the transfer of energy.

 

I am the only man in America without a plan for the Ukraine. I do not know what we should do or can do. This nation abandoned some of its own citizens in Afghanistan as well as tanks, artillery, airplane, radar systems, small arms, drones, bombs, fuel, transport vehicles and other weapons in great quantities that could have been more than enough to provide Ukraine the power to repel the Russian invasion.

 

And yet little help is being offered to Ukraine.

 

We’re paying for those bad choices with cash and Ukrainians are paying with their blood. Our well-fed and well-protected generals in their tailor-made pinks and greens are pleased to appear at government functions in D. C. while Ukrainian children are either terrified refugees or rotting fragments of flesh in bombed-out streets.

 

We need to do some serious thinking. Those in power in this nation need to get off the golf course and do even more thinking and then accomplish some of that metaphorical heavy lifting.

 

What will some future Yevtushenko write about how we responded when millions of suffering people - hungry, cold, bombed-out, blown-out, constantly under fire, standing to their posts in the snow against the cruel Russian army, air force, and navy - asked us for help?

 

-30-

 

The Ashes of Lent Fall Upon Ukraine - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

The Ashes of Lent Fall Upon Ukraine

 

“Remember, man...”

 

In Ukraine this year, grey ashes fall

Grey ashes of Lent that fall on everyone

Whether they will have them or not -

The still-warm ashes of our fellow man

 

“That thou art dust...”

 

In Ukraine this season, grey ashes fall

There is no line; the ashes wait instead

Among the swirling smoke to present themselves -

This tiny speck of ash was someone’s child

 

“And unto dust thou shalt return”

 

In Ukraine this season, grey ashes fall

And cover civilization as its funeral pall

A Non-Religious Jew - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

A Non-Religious Jew

 

“Well, he may be a good man but he’s certainly not Christian. Zelensky

is the first Jewish president of Ukraine, even if he is non-religious...”

 

-The Remnant, 2 March 2022

 

He stands in rubbled streets during bomb attacks

And takes a selfie to show us he’s alive

Our tee-shirted leader of the free world

He stands among the wreckage and reassures us

 

He stands in rubbled streets; he needs a shave

He needs some sleep; he does not need a ride

But The Remnant - O infallible Remnant! –

Dismisses him as just a Jew

 

If only we were all that Jewish

If only we were all that non-religious

The Fog of What? - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

The Fog of What?

 

“Russian Attack Sets Ukraine Nuclear Plant on Fire”

 

-BBC, 3 March 2022

 

The radiation from Zaporizhzhia

Might slither across our poor dying earth

Like serpents bringing our sins back home to us

That we might meditate upon them in death

 

And all our unpaid bills, our ungiven thanks

The cars we meant to fill with gas today

Like Bible pages rustling in the nuclear wind

Will have to be completed by a different hand

 

But this fog of war, that’s what they call it -

In truth it’s only the fog of ****

The State of the Union and an Undisclosed Location

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

The State of the Union and an Undisclosed Location

 

The truth is at an undisclosed location

That firm guardian of the Republic

Surrounded by functionaries and bodyguards

Blue-glowing screens set forth on polished oak

 

The truth is at an undisclosed location

And so am I, an old man musing his dreams

Surrounded by Yevtushenko and Shakespeare

Lord Byron, Shelley, Keats - Miss Marple too

 

The truth is at an undisclosed location

But we can discover it if we try

 

(Begin with the sale table at Barnes & Noble)

A Pillar of Fire - Weekly Column 20 February 2022

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

A Pillar of Fire

 

I heard the fire before I saw it, an inexplicable roaring hiss. I turned toward the sound and saw a pillar of fire along the road at the corner of the field. Rushing to the scene I did not find the children of Israel following the fire but I did find a roadside fire burning along the road from where, presumably, someone tossed a cigarette.

 

I hit 9-1-1 and the neighbors rolled into their fields with trailers, prepared to evacuate their tractors and hay equipment if necessary.

 

The first-first responder was Kirbyville City Police Officer Richard Goins, who scoped the scene quickly and got on the radio to give the approaching fire department details about the extent of the fire.  When I complimented him on his knowledge about fires he modestly said that he knows only a little, but in fact he does.

 

Maybe two minutes behind him came several vehicles of the Kirbyville Volunteer Fire Department crewed by some young men I didn’t know, followed by Fire Chief Greg Ellis.

 

Putting out a fire is not simply a matter of spraying water randomly from a hose; it requires organization and training and constant attention to where everyone is and what is happening at numerous points along the fire lines and in depth.

 

And, happily, because of the professionalism of the KVFD and the KPD there is little more to tell. Several firemen dragged hoses into the trees and weeds and along the ditches, and all was over within an hour.

 

It could have been much different. If I had not happened to be outside changing the bulb in a porch light I would not have known of the fire until it had spread into the fields and woods. Houses and tractors and hay equipment could have been lost, and there would not have been a happy ending.

 

I did not get to meet all the firemen because even while they were finishing up on this fire they received a call for another and had to roll on a controlled burn that was not controlled. It was a busy day for them.

 

A reality is that there is no such thing as a controlled burn because the physics of combustion – heat, oxygen, and fuel supply – don’t pay much attention to our wishes. Winter and spring are even more dangerous for wildfires because no matter how wet the ground it, the accumulation of dead summer grasses and weeds and leaves are dry. Even if there is a rain, dead vegetation does not absorb moisture and so within an hour or two after the rain stops the fire danger returns.

 

When a pleasant day presents itself there is a temptation to clean up the yard (good) and burn litter and debris (bad). The air might be still when the fire is lit, but then a little breeze stirs up and carries sparks far beyond the reach of the garden hose and sets new fires among even short grass in spots too numerous to control with the shovel.

 

It's best to wait for a still, damp day for such work, and a plan to live with that fire all day with a water hose, a shovel, and another fire tender to help watch.

 

Thanks again to the Kirbyville Fire Department, the Kirbyville Police Department, and all first responders for their professionalism and their vigilance.

 

-30-

A Failure to Connect Thoughts in a Coherent Fashion - Weekly Column 13 February 2022

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

A Failure to Connect Thoughts in a Coherent Fashion

 

I heard something about a football game on Sunday night.  Now, now, don’t tell me, because I can guess: one team lost the game, the other team won, a mob burned some cars and looted liquor stores, and the world is now a better place.

 

I also heard a rumor about some winter sports competitions in China, but no one seems to be able to confirm it.  In truth, see if you can view CBC’s Anthony Germain from Beijing. And if he doesn’t stop telling the truth about the bleakness of the scene and the heavy-handedness of the Communists he might suffer the same smacking-around a Dutch journalist got.

 

Elon Musk plans to launch 30,000 Elon Musk satellites so that the entire planet will have Elon Musk InterGossip service. I thought the only place that didn’t have the InterGossip was Death Valley.  A problem with any satellite is that someday it will fall to earth. Maybe we’ll be given Elon Musk umbrellas.

 

If Mr. Putin’s soldiers do invade Ukraine this week we might not have to worry about football mobs or falling satellites. In this too-connected world and with all those nuclear weapons piled up here and there every war affects everyone on the planet now. Russia and Ukraine are both energy exporters, and when all the oil wells and pipelines go BOOM! the worldwide shortage of energy will affect not only the price of gas and electricity for us, but the prices of all manufactured goods and food, if they are available at all. In Shakespeare’s Henry V the King says to his victorious army, “Do we all holy rites. / Let there be sung “Non Nobis” and “Te Deum,” / The dead with charity enclosed in clay.” The dead now will be enclosed in rubble, dust, and maybe clouds of radioactivity. This is an appropriate occasion for re-reading Mark Twain’s “The War Prayer.”

 

Two years ago I forgot to put on my mask when I entered a Denny’s and was scorned with an accusatory chorus of “MASSSSSKKKK!!!!!”  Two months ago I remember to put on my mask when I entered the same Denny’s and was scorned with silent looks of disapproval.  Happily, no one cried out “FAAAAACE!!!!!”

 

Last week my family received four made-in-China Covid test kits. Appreciate the irony. And they’re a little late, eh?

 

According to the American Embassy in Poland [Message to U.S. Citizens:  Poland/Ukraine Border Open to U.S. Citizens - February 12, 2022 - U.S. Embassy & Consulate in Poland (usembassy.gov)] Americans fleeing  Ukraine through Poland (there is no other way by land – the Russians are on all the other sides) need proof of a Covid jab. Well, their country, their rules. Poland didn’t start this mess, Mr. Putin did, and in giving assistant to Americans they are defying a great big bully of a nation that has on numerous occasions attacked and occupied Poland.

 

And I don’t understand any of it.

 

Let us pray to God that these next few weeks are boring.

 

-30-

MRE Left Over from a Hurricane - Weekly Column 6 February 2022

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

MRE Left Over from a Hurricane

 

The other day I found a couple of MREs left over from some hurricane or other, and enjoyed one of them for lunch.

 

In Viet-Nam’s sunny clime, where I used to spend my time (I gave that rhyme to Kipling, and he said he thought he could make a poem from it), we were occasionally given C-Rations. That they were “C” suggests that there was an “A” and a “B,” but I never came across any such alphabetical offerings

 

C-rats came in in little cans and packages packed into small cardboard boxes.  If you were going to make a day of fun in the sun you stuffed the various components into your pockets and threw away the box. About every fifth box contained a little can opener called a P-38, and no one knows why. You could also open a can with your pocket knife, and of course no man is completely dressed without his pocket knife. That’s a rule.

 

C-rats were pretty good except for the ham-and-lima-beans; whoever invented that mess committed a war crime.

 

I was curious about the successor rations, Meals-Ready-to-Eat, or MRE, and how they differ from C-rats.

 

MREs are packaged in noisy wrappings that even a deaf Communist could hear and target from a klick away. They are a bit fussy to handle and open, and I imagine that would be a real problem in cold weather.

 

The little heater is more amusing than functional, and you don’t really need it. As with C-rats, all the items in an MRE are already cooked and edible right out of the many bags.

 

As for taste, the spaghetti and meatballs in my MRE were just like those in the C-rats, so probably there is the same bland consistency among all the menu items.

 

C-rats contained a little packet of three cigarettes; MREs don’t. You are still permitted under very restricted circumstances to kill your fellow man and he, having hard feelings in the matter, will try to kill you, but you’d better not have a cigarette.

 

C-rats also offered a little packet of powdered coffee, cream and sugar, salt and pepper, and a little plastic spoon. The custom was to share and swap out these these things and the main menu items with your pals.

 

My one MRE did not contain coffee, cream, or sugar, but it did include crackers, Skittles, Kellogg’s Fruity Snacks, and a couple of fig bars.

 

The military and FEMA do not manufacture MRE’s; they contract for them with private suppliers. The menus and health concerns change frequently, so you know what you’ve got only when you read the labels.

 

When you look up MRE’s on the InterGossip you’ll find, as always, all sorts of conflicting verbal noise. One brief video was very useful in showing the viewer how the heater works, but the information was bracketed by some unhappy politics.

 

But then everything’s political now, even the weather and brushing your teeth.

 

C-Rations and MREs are not as tasty as the afternoon senior special at Denny’s, but the point is that you can enjoy them and get some needful nutrition from them when there is no Denny’s due to power failures or hurricanes or tornadoes.

 

As for expiration dates, what you eat or feed your children will require your wise judgment. In that as in many matters the InterGossip is unhelpful.

 

MREs – what would Martha Stewart say?

 

-30-

 

The Bank That Used to Be - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

The Bank That Used to Be

 

This temple dedicated to work and thrift

Is mostly empty now; its marble floors

Feature sticky yellow feet to keep

Errant capitalists away from each other

 

The offices are vacant; the lights are dim

A lonely teller in chemical-purple hair

And painted, rhinestoned, clawlike fingernails

Counts not deposits but her MePhone keys

 

There is no line along the yellow feet

Only one communicant with a deposit slip

You Russian Poets - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

You Russian Poets

 

Only in Russia is poetry respected. It gets people killed. Is there

anywhere else where poetry is so common a motive for murder?

                              -Osip Mandelstam, murdered by the Soviet state for his poetry

 

We have gotten into trouble over you

Back in the Cold War and now this hot one

But maybe the investigators’ fear

Was not Communism, but mere literacy

 

O Mandelstam, you died for words and truth

They say, dear Tsvetaeva, that you hanged yourself

And Gumilyov, they simply had you shot –

The Silver Age in truth was one of lead

 

In America no one dies for poetry

Working fast food can be a death penalty, though

Are We Looking Through Sauron's Eye? - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Are We Looking Through Sauron’s Eye?

 

Through our glowing palantiri we watch

Dark images, shadowy and flickering

Ghostly men gathered around machines –

Are we looking through Sauron’s eye?

 

A silent flash, and structure disappears

Enveloped in blackness and liquid flame

Arcing bits of metal and bits of men -

Are we looking through Sauron’s eye?

 

Are we looking through Sauron’s eye?

And is that eye now turned on us?

James Arness - He Made his Life an Adventure - weekly column 27 February 2022

 Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

James Arness – He Made his Life an Adventure

 

James Arness: An Autobiography

James Arness and James E. Wise, Jr.

McFarland and Company: 2001

 

In his young adulthood James Arness was a blonde-haired surfer dude, which is difficult to reconcile with his film and television persona, but it’s true, and one of the many fascinating aspects of the life of this genuine American hero and natural blonde.

 

James Arness made his life an adventure, and he loved ranching, sailing, surfing, and flying. He tells of his war experiences with modesty, and how his combat injuries, requiring frequent surgeries as he aged, helped him appreciate life. He frequently alludes to his young comrades who were killed, and you can well infer that the tears fell as he wrote of them.

 

Mr. Arness served in the army in the Second World War, and because of his 6’6” height he was ordered to be the first off his platoon’s landing craft at Anzio. He was to serve as the marker – if the water was too deep and he drowned, the boat would come closer to the shingle to discharge his fellow soldiers. He was also given two large packages to take ashore. They contained dynamite for blowing obstacles.

 

Some weeks later shell fragments shattered his foot, and he required occasional surgery throughout his life. When in a story, especially later in his career, you see James Arness limping, it’s for real. And he never complained. Because of the wound he was evacuated; most everyone in his company was killed in the fighting that followed.

 

This book is not a tell-all, and so reflects the honor and dignity of Mr. Arness. He has nothing bad to say about anyone, and his wry humor is a joy. When a tv movie with Raquel Welch gained a larger audience than one of his Gunsmoke sequels he asked, with his usual sense of fun, “What has she got that we haven’t!” Great fun.

 

Mr. Arness writes as much, maybe more, about others than he does about himself, and these mini-biographies are a joy.  Further, the lengthy list of Gunsmoke’s guest stars is a catalogue of Hollywood at its best.

 

I enjoy Gunsmoke, and very much appreciate the quality of acting, writing, and cinematography. I don’t suppose there is a bad episode, but for me the best are the half-hour episodes of the first few years. Working with a small budget and limited time, each is a brilliant, compact story, and the characterizations, plot elements, and photographic composition and lighting indicate that the producers learned their craft well from John Ford and other great filmmakers.

 

Even if you aren’t much for cowboy films the story of James Arness’ life is interesting; if you enjoy his movies from the 1940s and 1950s, Gunsmoke, The McCahans, and his other television productions you will find this autobiography especially entertaining and informative.

 

James Arness loved surfing and sailing and the sea so much that he closes his book with a quote from Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812):

 

There is a rapture on the lonely shore,

There is society, where none intrudes,

By the deep sea, and the music is in its roar;

I love not Man the less, But Nature more

 

                                                -30-

The Loneliest Man in the World - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

The Loneliest Man in the world

 

Those he commands move only in command,

Nothing in love: now does he feel his title

Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe

Upon a dwarfish thief

 

-Macbeth 5:2

 

His palaces and dachas are Dunsinanes

With polished floors and television maps

With whining voices in empty uniforms

With woods that come against him in the night

 

His life, his dreams are sere and crumbling leaves

Waiting only for the broom to sweep them away

Waiting only for the dead to summon them

Waiting only for the final hour to come

 

He does not hang his banners on reality

He only pushes buttons on remote controls

Preparing my Wordle for the Third World War - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Preparing my Wordle for the Third World War

 

I would have said that the Cold War was the Third

Viet-Nam was hot enough for me

But the old men rattling their dentures in anger

Assure us that this new war is the one

 

Today I withdrew some cash from the bank

Topped off the gas tanks and the lawnmower cans

Bought water, toilet paper, and batteries

And propped my walking stick beside my bed

 

My daughter says that tomorrow we start WORDLE

With “PEACE” - her warfare is the best of all

The President of the United States Addresses the World - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

The President of the United States Addresses the World

24 February 2022

 

Let me be perfectly clear the bottom line

Is this flagrant violations unilaterally

Create make no mistake stained by association

People’s hearts and hopes with every tool more purposeful

 

Vision assault on the very principles

Every tool at our disposal rising prices

At the gas pump American gas and oil

Companies my administration sanctions

 

Package monitoring energy supplies consuming

Countries actively working feeling coordinating

At the gas pump stand up to bullies we

are prepared to respond additional moves

 

Sanctioned to amplify the joint impact...

 

While the brave young are shot down in the streets

"The Result was Silence" - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

“The Result was Silence”

 

"Today I initiated a telephone conversation with the President of the

Russian Federation. The result was silence.”

 

-President Volodymyr Zelenskiy

 

There is no silence in Kiev this dawn

Morning commutes, intermittent news feeds

Explosions. Power failures. How many will die

Without finishing their WORDLE today

 

Old men rattle their dentures in outrage

Sky News reports a couple of police officers

In the street below, smoking cigarettes

Which makes more sense than most things just now

 

Kharkov’s air-raid sirens are deeper than Kiev’s

There is no silence in Kiev this dawn