Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
After Fifty Years It’s Time to Change the Linen
One does not wish to live
in a culture where crowds
Have persuaded themselves
that “Imagine”
Is worthy of the hearing
Tuesday, April 19, 2022
After Fifty Year's It's Time to Change the Linen - very short poem
Monday, April 18, 2022
I Did Not Leave the Local A.M. Radio Station - doggerel
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
I Did Not Leave the
Local A.M. Radio Station –
The Local A.M.
Radio Station Left Me
-As President Reagan did not say
The guys on the local talk radio used to be fun
Witty and charming, with good stories to tell
Through example, narrative, joke, and pun
They really made the early morning swell
But of late they’ve withered into the stereotype
Of geezery, wheezery, close-minded old men
Whose sole purpose now is to grump and groan and gripe –
They’re somewhere to the right of Original Sin!
Since all they do now is but scorn and scoff
I begin my day with the radio off
Sunday, April 17, 2022
Ukrainian Children Can't Do This Just Now - weekly column, 17 April 2022
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Ukrainian Children
Can’t Do This Just Now
While on errands last Saturday I saw something marvelous:
little children in spontaneous play. They were not organized in teams nor had
they been set a goal or purpose by others. They were barefoot and in jeans and
tees, and were happily playing about in the mucky water of a roadside ditch.
Their only toy was an old bucket.
The two basic activities could be clearly clearly in the
few seconds it took to drive by.
The first activity was carried out by a little boy making
a little girl squeal in mock terror by holding a frog or a minnow to her face.
The second activity was the little girl dishing out retribution
by taking the bucket and sloshing the little boy with water from the ditch.
Merriment ensued among all present.
And, really, what better sport on a Saturday?
There was surely retribution at home by moms and dads: “Why
are you all wet!?” and “Get those muddy clothes into the washing machine and go
bathe! How many times have I told you...!?” But, gosh, what happy memories for
the kids, who someday will in their turn fuss at their own kids for the very
same offenses remedied only by detergent and bath soap.
Yes, there are many reasons not to play in muddy ditches:
bacteria, snakes, bacteria, snapping turtles, bacteria, pesticide runoff, bacteria,
broken glass, bacteria, and on and on. Children should not play in muddy
ditches.
Ukrainian children must sometimes hide in muddy
ditches, but it’s not the same thing at all.
Still, it’s somehow reassuring that in our increasingly
complicated, dangerous, and electronicalized world there are moments of the same
gloriously messy childhood play that our ancestors, all the way back to the
Garden, indulged in.
There are no leagues for unstructured play, no teams, no
uniforms, no scores, no officious adults with clipboards, no grades, no
fund-raisers, no meetings, no media drama, and no bullet points for resumes’. Those
will come later; for now, let’s have a little merry chaos.
Childhood is more joyful and more meaningful when not
filtered through little Orwellian telescreens. Minnows and mud and fireflies
and silly songs around a campfire at night are much better.
-30-
Children Playing in a Roadside Ditch on Holy Saturday - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Children Playing
in a Roadside Ditch on Holy Saturday
Happy children playing in a roadside ditch
Barefoot and laughing in shorts and tees
A boy grabbing up a frog to frighten the girls
A girl sloshing the boys with a bucket of muck
They pause to peer through a magnifying glass
A worm or a minnow the passerby can’t see
Because to adults, as with many things
The waterways of Fairyland are closed
Happy children playing in a magic fountain
Just as we did when we were very young
Saturday, April 16, 2022
Send Them Your Dawn, O Lord - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Send Them Your
Dawn, O Lord
We repudiate Putin and all his works
And all his pomps and all his engines of death
And all his malignant servile orcs
Who crucify humanity with lies
We are both Marys, Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea
We bring the holy bodies of the sacrifice
To Your Garden Tomb; we await Your dawn
Baptizing with our tears this darkest night
We have nothing to offer in our desolation
Only our murdered children and blighted lives
Our brothers and sisters in Moses and Christ
Our mothers and fathers who were disappeared
The neighbor boy who played his tunes too loud
The pharmacist who tried to stop a tank
With her
fists
The traffic cop who gave us speeding tickets
MeeMaw in the bombed-out nursing home
Our cousins in the bombed-out railway station
Our brothers, they say, in some bombed-out trench
Ambulance drivers, nurses, physicians, technicians
Farmers, janitors, electricians, schoolgirls
Teachers, bankers, cleaners, grocery clerks
A woman cooking thin soup over a fire
Abandoned little house pets fighting over
A severed hand in the center of the road
Send them Your dawn, O Lord, Your Easter dawn
Send them Your dawn, O Lord, at long last -
dawn
Friday, April 15, 2022
We Have No Enemies Among the Dead - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
We Have No Enemies Among the Dead
For the Young
Crew of the Moskva
14 April 2022
Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave...
O hear us when we cry to thee
For those in peril on the sea
-The
Navy Hymn
Proud admirals
and presidents rattle their medals
The young - in screams
among burst steam lines die
Explosions and
darkness and seawater and hatches sealed
The bulkheads
blown, there is no up, no down
Only pain and
horror and throat-torn shrieks
Proud admirals
and presidents jing-aling their medals
Training
manuals, pocketknives, and comic books
Naughty pinups,
letters from Mom, wrenches, and boots
Toolboxes, ball-point
pens, and coffee cups
Fall with the
young deep down into the sea
Proud admirals and presidents dazzle the room with their medals
Mothers and
fathers grieve in emptiness
Our Leaders caution
them to mind their attitude
Proud admirals
and presidents – to Hell with their medals
Thursday, April 14, 2022
A Man with a Broom - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
A Man with a Broom
Leaving his broom in the corridor
He came into class and sat for a while
He was worried about anger management
He had shot up a nightclub after all
That was after his brother was murdered there
He gets out in twelve days, and he is worried
He has passed over half of his life in prison
He hasn’t seen his son in over nine years
He said he has learned to place God first
Some of it might be true
Wednesday, April 13, 2022
Flute Solo Through a Scratchy Record - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Flute Solo Through
a Scratchy Record
From a tiny speaker in a tiny radio
From a broadcast fifty miles away
From a scratchy record some fifty years old
From the lips of a flutist no longer alive
An artist whose parents and teachers long ago
Spoke of embouchures and possibilities
Of lessons for however many dollars each
Saved from a job down at the shop or mill
And from the people, hardworking and strong
Someone worked those lives into a song
Tuesday, April 12, 2022
Confederate Crackheads Flying a Kite - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Confederate
Crackheads Flying a Kite
Barefoot and shirtless, pounding the sand with their feet
Old men running about in front of their trailer
In and out among the lawn-art debris
Launching a kite above their Confederate flags
Above the Trump flags, pine trees, power lines
Beer cans and broken toys and engine blocks
Marijuana rolled in an overdue electric bill
A Second Amendment sticker on a clapped-out Ford
Hollering through their few remaining teeth
A celebration of something beyond themselves
Monday, April 11, 2022
I Didn't Check with Hank the Cowdog - weekly column, 4.10.2022
Lawrence Hall
I Didn’t Check
with Hank the Cowdog
Imagine a children’s book in which, in the first five
pages, a teenager:
1. Shoots an animal dead simply to win a bet
2. Is threatened with torture and death by fifteen men,
most of them drunk
3. Is attacked with a deadly weapon
4. Shoots his attacker dead and becomes a career criminal
Who would make such a violent book available to young,
impressionable children?
My parents. At Christmas.
These violent scenes begin The Merry Adventures of
Robin Hood of Great Renown, in Nottinghamshire, by Howard Pyle.
Whitman Publishing now prints specialty books for coin
and stamp collectors, but for most of the 20th century sold children’s
books of all sorts. They were printed on the cheapest sort of paper and
featured simple, two-tone illustrations and were bound in full-color laminated
covers.
Whitman books were a childhood staple for generations,
and I still have Robin Hood, Roy Rogers King of the Cowboys, Gene
Autry and the Golden Ladder Gang, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s
Court, Assignment in Space with Rip Foster, and The Last Trail.
And they are violent. Assignment in Space could be
subtitled Killing Communists in Space.
The spouse-person still has some of her childhood books,
including some Annette stories and Five Little Peppers and How They Grew.
One does not imagine Annette blasting Commies with ray guns, but a young
Annette now could become a fighter pilot and do so.
This leads us to the recent national yellings – hardly
debates – on what books are appropriate for children. In the past, when more moms
and dads were readers and made sure their children were too, the shared
experience and a common culture heritage kept things steady. Children tended to
read the same books their parents did when they were young.
When my parents gave me Robin Hood they weren’t
handing me some sort of cultic anti-government propaganda and encouraging
violence. The episodic tales – Robin and Little John, Robin and Friar Tuck,
Robin and Will Scarlett, Robin and Marian – are good adventure tales which
build on and reinforce themes of good citizenship, responsible government, the
duties people owe each other, and faith in a complex, hierarchical society.
I just don’t think Captain Underpants gets that
done.
Good parenting is not censorship. Good parents know what
their children are reading and know when to step in gently and say, “we need to
talk about that.”
Censorship occurs when any government, local, state, or
federal, determines what books a rational adult may or may not read. In some
limited instances, yes, a government quite reasonably forbids adults of
questionable intellect to access, say, manuals on bomb-making. This butts up
against the First Amendment and rebounds on the second paragraph of the
Declaration of Independence, and on such matters good citizens and proper
magistrates work these matters out in intelligent discussions.
Pitching scripted hissy-fits definitely doesn’t get that
done.
And the matter of care in what people read is ironic anyway
since few people read anymore. Vetting a
book that the kid isn’t reading means nothing, and even less than nothing when feral
viewer choices are flickering across the giant Orwellian telescreen in the
living room and across the tiny Orwellian telescreen apparently superglued to
most hands.
-30-
After St. Petersburg, St. Giles' Street - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
After St.
Petersburg, Saint Giles’ Street
Today we’re visiting Russia with a friend
Perhaps a Russia that never really was
Ideas, tea, and holy earth; just now
We’re asking a blessing from Father Zosima
Tomorrow we’re off to England, all of us
Perhaps an England that never really was
Ideas, tea, and holy earth; and soon
We’ll stroll through Oxford with poems on our lips
And exchange Shakespearean bon mots
With the Commie barmaid at the Eagle and Child
Can W- Writ- Anything Without th- L-tt-r –? - frivolity
Lawr-nc- Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Can W- Writ-
Anything Without th- L-tt-r –?
Irritabl- Vow-l Syndrom-
Th-y say that-nglish is a difficult languag-
I wouldn’t know; it’s th- only on- I know
-nglish, that is, and it’s a lif—long study
But that’s okay; it k--ps m- out of the b--r joints
In -nglish w- hav- only six or so vow-ls –
A, -, I, O, U, Y, and that vagu- “ih” sound
Which m-ans that rhym- is a chall-g- in tim-
Though “How now, brown cow?” works out okay
That is, if on- wants to gr--t a cow at all
I s-ldom do, but how about you?
Saturday, April 9, 2022
Palm Sunday without Air-Raid Warnings - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Palm Sunday without
Air-Raid Warnings
Palm Sunday is easy for the rest of us
A procession with palms from the parking lot
Praising God through an asphalt Jerusalem
A Subaru on His right hand, a Dodge on His left
Palm Sunday is easy for the rest of us
The front of the procession out of tune with the back
Or is it the other way around? Someone’s MePhone
Beeping during the Elevation - Catholics, eh
Palm Sunday is easy for the rest us -
No burning streets, no screaming wounded, no death
Friday, April 8, 2022
President Doctor Jill's Really, Really Secret Service Beefcake Boys - vulgar abuse in rhyming doggerel
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
President Doctor
Jill’s
Really, Really
Secret Service Beefcake Boys
O
that he were here to write me down an ass! But, masters, remember that
I
am an ass; though it not be written down, yet forget not that I am an ass.
-Dogberry, Constable of the Watch, Much Ado About
Nothing, IV.ii.76ff
Swimming-pool chums, closer than a brother
Flexing their guns and tats at each other
Nobody know who the new agents are
(Wanna ‘phone, wanna flat, wanna shiny new car?)
Want some shiny new tech toys, loads and loads?
What’ll you take for those nuclear codes?
Hunter’s good buddies living large on the beach
One says he misses his Colombian peach
$30K a month down in Malibu
To protect an artist (but not me or you)
Nothing to see here; now don’t get nervous
For we are the party-hearty Secret Service!
(Say, babe, what’s your sign? You come here often...?)
Thursday, April 7, 2022
Old Codger with a Confederate Face Mask - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Clinic Waiting Room
Voices:
Morbidly obese old codger
wearing a Confederate-flag face mask
Old codger with a My Pillow
moustache
Old codger wearing a
camouflage baseball cap
Old codgeress #1
Old codgeress #2
Auctor:
Old codger (me)
I been here
since 1020 the longer we wait
the more
money they get they’re just in it
for the money
what’s your Medicare supplemental?
America ain’t
what it used to be
there ain’t
no doubt about that I done had
the covid and
the shots these people
been in and
out and I’m still here
THANK YOU FOR
YOUR SERVICE thank you I SAID
‘THANK YOU
FOR YOUR SERVICE!’ Yeah he’s kind of
hard of
hearing THANK YOU FOR
YOUR SERVICE!!!!
Yeah okay HOO-RAH!
yeah HOO-RAH! you was
a Marine too?
29 Palms it raining there too?
my (something)
levels was up my m.o.s.
kept me out
of Viet-Nam I was in Parris Island
thank you for
your service I blame George Bush
George Soros
and these here public schools...
Wednesday, April 6, 2022
Communists Didn’t Build the DeSoto - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Communists Didn’t Build the DeSoto
The tailfins of a rocket protruding from the sand
We
offer international standard rocket systems
Out back where we stored the oxygen tanks
in
service in more than 30 NATO
Maybe thirty feet away from ICU
and
other countries (2.75’’ calibre
Thank God for poor Chinese quality control
also
called 70 mm) Operational on
Lots of countries in the rocket racket now
more
than 500 aircraft and helicopters
“Hi, honey; so how was your day at work?
this
rocket system is equipped with maintainable
The children have been waiting eagerly for you
lightweight
composite launchers with removable detents
And how nice it is that our children aren’t dead!”
This
rocket system provides full range of rocket types
The tailfins of rockets protruding from our souls
offering
extended range and terminal efficiency
I haven’t an answer for any of this
Associated
large portfolio of ammunition
Tuesday, April 5, 2022
Jacques Says Little About Lingering - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Jacques Says
Little About Lingering
Reflections after a Nuclear Stress Test
A youth almost rushes to throw his life away
In questing Shakespeare’s bubble reputation
An old man wants to cling to life a little more
Another year, please, or another day
But mortality lies within the man
A metaphorical battery that doesn’t last
In shipping and handling contents may have settled
There may be a penalty for early withdrawal
But life is not for our casual disposal
For it is an eternal summer dawn
Monday, April 4, 2022
No Howling, Please - poem
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
No Howling, Please
A rebuke to Ginsberg
While acknowledging that the typewriter is indeed holy
I saw the best of my generation
Refuse to howl, not in the situational poverty
Of their birth, not in others’ noise and drugs
Not in their elders’ go-fight-our-wars-for-us
I saw the best of my generation
Doubling up in unfurnished rooms
Doubling up on the day and night shifts
Making each sweated-out life into a poem
I saw the best of my generation
Work
and thus rebuked for their privilege
Sunday, April 3, 2022
Who Invaded Us? weekly column, 3 April 2022
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Who Invaded Us?
A few disconnected
thoughts
Sunflowers are one of my favorite plants and they are
easy to grow. If you buy a package of natural seeds – not hybrids – they will
reseed themselves and you can have two crops of them in a season.
I save the heads for storing in paper bags – plastic
destroys them – in that famous Cool Dry Place (refrigerator) for sharing out
with the birds and squirrels during the winter.
Sunflowers are heliotropic, which means that they follow
the sun. Biologists employ long, polysyllabic words like “circadian” and “evolutionary
development” to explain why they do, but I still maintain that sunflowers
follow the sun because they want to. So there.
A fun fact, as Young Sheldon would say: sunflowers originate
in the Americas, and they were and are important to the First Nations as a
source of food, for the oil in them, and for medicine.
The Russians acquired sunflower seeds in trade, and
developed them as a commercial enterprise because of their nutritional value. The
Americans picked up on that and so sunflowers have become a big part of our
agriculture. Kansas is The Sunflower State and the sunflower is a symbol of
Ukraine.
If you till around in the InterGossip you can find methods
for processing sunflower seeds and using them for cheap, healthy snacks. Those packets
of sunflower seeds in the store are awfully expensive.
+ +
+
In my little garden I have a child’s wading pool which not
only refreshes the bees but also serves as a nursery for frogs. In season you
can see the thousands of little frog eggs, each swaddled in its little bubble.
They progress from eggs to tadpoles and finally to frogs. Only a few make it to
adulthood, which is in the nature of the species.
A fun fact – the Old English / Anglo-Saxon word for tadpoles
is “polwygles,” which survives as “pollywogs.”
Bees can’t launch from water; they need a sturdier
surface and a leafy branch, changed every few days, is perfect.
Remember that small children can drown in only a few
inches of water, as can small pets, so be very careful.
+ +
+
One of the many features of the Apple watch (made in Communist
China) is the flashlight. Really! If you skid the face up twice a number of
little symbols appear, including that of a flashlight. It’s not much of a
light, but if you’re in a (euphemism) when the power fails it’s enough of a
light for finding the roll of paper and then for finding the sink for
handwashing and then finding your way out. Further, because the light is already
strapped to your wrist it’s not going to fall into The Sacred Bowl of Our
People.
+ +
+
A news service functionary in a rush to meet a deadline
could be forgiven for mixing up a picture of Ukrainian street dead with a
picture of American street dead.
We understand that the tyrant and never-got-over-it KGB
clerk Putin has conscripted thousands of poorly trained Russian kids to invade
neighboring Ukraine. And more than that, he has hired foreign mercenaries to
murder Russian kids if they fail to murder Ukrainians.
We don’t understand the why but we understand that this
is so.
But as for the American dead in our streets and schools
and parks and businesses, day after day, what is that about? Who invaded us?
-30-
Tea with Just a Hint of Blood - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Tea with Just a
Hint of Blood
Now comes an infusioning teafluencer
Armed with catalogues of adjectives
Herbaceous hyperbole cloying the page
With promises of transcendental bliss
The holy vessels of the altar shining bright
In glass and steel, accented with bamboo
In rooms green-lit by shaded window light
Unlike my best-remembered cuppa long ago
A beat-up canteen cup of Constant Comment
Along the Cambodian border that unhappy day
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