Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Upon Reading W. B.
Yeats
I am not a Celt;
I am English, and my gods
Are more logical
Tuesday, May 10, 2022
Upon Reading W. B. Yeats - haiku (Which Yeats would not have written)
Monday, May 9, 2022
Is "Poetess" Acceptable? - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Is “Poetess”
Acceptable?
But of course
Just take it
And wake it
Remake it
Empower it
And it’s yours
Sunday, May 8, 2022
Who Possesses a Poem? - poem (and a poem about poetry is a bit like Ouroboros)
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Who Possesses a
Poem?
Just as a father passes on to his child
The popular music of his long-lost youth
A teacher passes on to those in his care
The ‘way-cool poetry of his own lost youth
Where once we hid McKuen behind Millay
Young people today hide – but we don’t know what they
hide
That is the nature of hiding and hidden
But they’re hiding something, and that’s good
We celebrated the verse of our youth
For youth celebrate their own private verse
An Essential American Institution - weekly column, 5.8.2022
Lawrence Hall
An Essential American
Institution
The American people may speak (or shriek) about the three
branches of the government as essential for defending the people and the
Constitution of our Republic, and they’d be right. They may speak of the power
of our Navy and those other services, the pediments of power in our electoral
systems from the precinct to the federal, our various courts, the genius of our
Bill of Rights (ALL of those rights), and the willingness of some, not nearly
all, Americans to sacrifice for the greater good. And they’d be right about all
that too.
I think, though, that we tend to ignore that bastion of
popular sovereignty, the rustic yet majestic institution of the country store.
The senators of Rome met among marble splendor, and the
senators of our nation meet in luxurious offices paneled in expensive wood and
once in a while in their softly-carpeted, well-lit, air-conditioned Chamber.
But at its core our democracy (yeah, yeah, I know, republic,
but the voting is democratic) meets first and most effectively on the
wooden-planked porch of the old-time country store beneath that great symbol of
our freedom, a metal NEHI sign, with a Pepsi-Cola thermometer nailed next to
the door and a solitary gas pump out front.
The wise ones in our capitol meet to discuss raising their
salaries, sending our kids (not theirs) to wars, raising their salaries, the
national budget, raising their salaries, the dispersal of our armies and fleets,
raising their salaries, who gets a new SUV, raising their salaries, spending
taxpayer dollars for votes, raising their salaries, gerrymandering for power,
raising their salaries, who gets a personal Air Force jet plane to swan around
in, raising their salaries, and who gets a free ride to Ukraine for photo ops
and showing off.
But on the porch the farmers and workers meet to chaw a
little Red Man and discuss seeds, their tax burden, crops, their tax burden, the
price of fertilizer, their tax burden, the price of fuel, their tax burden, the
new baby, their tax burden, the price of farm equipment, their tax burden, maybe
getting the dirt roads graded, their tax burden, how’re things down at the mill
/ shop / store, their tax burden, I don’t much care for that boy my baby-girl’s
been talking to, and their tax burden.
Some barefoot kids come by with their fishing poles and
discuss the eternal choices between a Moon Pie (won’t melt in the heat) and an
Eskimo Pie (it’s good and cold, and a Royal Crown Cola (tastes better) or a
Coca-Cola (no it doesn’t!).
“Hey, kids, did y’all catch anything?”
“Nossir, but we seen this snake that was THIS big around!”
In the District of Columbia there are fine buildings and
statues and memorials and reflecting pools (or is that reflecting fools?) and
offices and the fleshpots of the new Babylon, but I submit to you, worthy citizens
of the Republic, that there is more honest discussion about the affairs of
state on the front porch of the old country store than just about anywhere else.
-30-
Saturday, May 7, 2022
At the Hissing Electric Eye Doors - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
At the Hissing
Electric Eye Doors
An old man shuffles his walker to the doors
The
sanitary wipes are to the left
A gum-chewer brushes by with a plastic sack
Ranks of
shopping carts rust to the right
A child skips through; her mother yells, “Wait! Wait!”
A
three-color circular blows by
An angry woman flings her cigarette down
Right
there beneath the NO SMOKING sign
Another old man growls, “Son of a *****!”
Because
he’s pulled the cart with a wobbly wheel
Friday, May 6, 2022
Soft-Pop-Rock-Country Song from the 1960s - poem (of a 60-ish sort)
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Soft-Pop-Rock-Country Song from the 1960s
He wrote a song and swore he’d come back to her
And he did
He wrote a song and swore he’d marry her
And he did
Then he divorced her and married someone else
And he didn’t write a song about that
And then he divorced her
And then he died
And no one wrote a song
Thursday, May 5, 2022
Anti-Tarnish Silverware Container - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Anti-Tarnish
Silverware Container
“Anti-Tarnish Silverware Container”
-a sticker inside the box
A cheap wooden box nailed together long ago
All scratched and patched with mismatched nails and screws
And lined inside with stained, decaying felt
With slots for long lost knives and forks and spoons
Part of someone’s treasure in the Depression time
A dollar or two a month on a layaway plan
At Montgomery Ward or Penney’s or Sears
The “good” silver for Thanksgiving and Christmas
The silverplate has been garage-saled and lost
But there was love, and somehow love remains
Wednesday, May 4, 2022
I Envision a World... - doggerel
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
I Envision a
World...
I envision a world in which the death penalty
Is never again
Used against woman or man
Except for journalists who write “iconic”
(For them old
Socrates’ hemlock tonic)
And poets who write “cerulean”
(And for
them the serpents that stung St. Julian)
Tuesday, May 3, 2022
We Too Are Authors of All the Books We Have Read - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
We Too Are Authors
of All the Books We Have Read
I still read books just as I did when young
With pen in hand (no longer pipe in mouth)
For underlinings, arrows, and marginal notes
Mapping out the adventures as I go along
And we give God thanks for
Writers and artists and craftsman with clever hands
Uncredited loggers and tanners of hides
Makers of glue and thread and blocking machines
And the white-capped printer with inky hands
Books have many authors, and the Author of All
Blesses them and us with their waves of words
Monday, May 2, 2022
Upon Reading WHO BY FIRE: LEONARD COHEN IN THE SINAI - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Upon Reading Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai
Cohen took his soul out into the desert
He may have left part of it there to burn
Upon the sands of war and the sands of time
A chord that echoes in an Egyptian wind
As with a corpse-like tank in hull defilade
Or an Uzi rusting among the rocks
The prayers of Yom Kippur in whispers sung
The desert waits for us to worship there
Cohen took his soul out into the desert
We should gird our loins and go look for it
Sunday, May 1, 2022
You've Reached Your Limit of Free Articles - rhyming doggerel
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
You’ve Reached Your
Limit of Free Articles
Much of life now flows through little screens
News of the day about sad foreign wars
And of
course
Gossip about famous actors and great queens
And advertisements for electrical cars
If we are more than Darwinian particles
Whom bishops teach electronically
Then maybe
“You’ve reached your limit of free articles”
Is a marker of one’s mortality
Your Trousers Might be Racist - weekly column, 1 May 2022
Lawrence Hall
Your Trousers Might
be Racist
Augustine Sedgewick has written a wanders-off-the-trail
essay purportedly demonstrating that the khakis you wear for work are actually
proof of your imperialism / racism / sexism / white supremacistism / oppressivism
/ whateverism. (The
American Scholar: Ku Klux Khaki - <a
href='https://theamericanscholar.org/author/augustine-sedgewick/'>Augustine
Sedgewick</a>).
Professor Sedgewick saw a photograph of a group styling
itself The Patriotic Front blocking traffic while wearing blue jackets, khaki
trousers, and a festive selection of boots. Their attempt at appearing menacing
succeeds only with themselves and the professor; to anyone else they are as comically
pathetic as Sir Roderick Spode’s Fascist Black Shorts in several of the Jeeves
and Wooster stories.
From this photograph Augustine Sedgewick has constructed a fantasy
neo-post-colonial (and, like, stuff) thesis about khaki as the preferred costume
of imperialists / racists / sexists / white supremacists / oppressivists /
whateverists. His thesis does not see trousers as trousers, but wicked in
themselves, just like swastikas and fasces.
As Jeeves might say to the excitable Bertie Wooster, “The
continency is remote, sir.”
Khakis originated in the sub-continent as cotton cloth, comfortable
in a hot climate and tightly woven to make it practical for physical work and
as (gasp) military uniforms. Some sources suggest that khaki (an Urdi word) was
commonly worn before colonial times and that this excellent cloth was adopted
by the English (cultural appropriation). Professor S, however, maintains that
the British invented the material and took it to India (cultural oppression).
The practicality and durability of khaki as workwear and
military wear, along with its several neutral colors, led it to migrate to the
office and to leisure activities. In our informal times a blazer (also of
British origin) worn with khakis is acceptable almost anywhere in places that
once expected, if not required, a coat and tie or even a dinner jacket.
As a fashion khaki comes and goes, but it remains immensely
useful in hard, sweaty, knuckle-busting work. Blue jeans (denim originated in
France) are sturdier but khaki is more flexible for crawling under cars, climbing
into the cab of a big rig, building fence, milking cows, and nailing joists.
I interrupted scribbling this to go feed the cats and dogs,
and as I walked through the den I saw on the Orwellian telescreen some young
women dancing through a clothing advertisement. One of them, who happened to be
black (and presumably still is), was wearing (gasp!) khakis. I suppose
Augustine Sedgewick would stereotype her as a white male neo-Nazi for doing so.
As for the khaki-oppressed citizens of India, their army
wears khakis (Khaki
Indian Uniform - Bing images), as does Pakistan’s army (Khaki
pakistani army Uniform - Bing images). They invented khakis and they will
wear them with or without Professor Sedgewick’s approval.
Augustine Sedgewick earned his PhD at Harvard and is a
professor at the City University of New York.
He is the author of numerous scholarly works and has won numerous
scholarly awards. Presumably he does not wear khakis.
Khakis – they’re just britches and shirts, okay, Professor?
The Origin
of Khakis - Levi Strauss & Co : Levi Strauss & Co
A
History of Khakis - Dockers Shoes
-30-
Saturday, April 30, 2022
Mercenaries Off Down That Road - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Mercenaries Off
Down That Road
Their medic got killed and I was sent
To stabilize their wounded and ignore their dead
And mind my own business in all other things
Because they weren’t who we were
Someone said that they were C.I.A.
And they were okay to me; didn’t talk much
Our C.O. told me to stay away from them
After the unmarked dust-off lifted away
I got to thinking that the war I was assigned
Shouldn’t have been any of my business either
Friday, April 29, 2022
Two Little Girls Grew Up Here - poem
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Two Little Girls Grew Up Here
Two little girls
grew up here in this happy place
Trees and lawns
and puppy dogs and peace
From sandals and
shorts to graduation gowns -
Sometimes when
gardening I find their little treasures:
A plastic watch
face whose bright colors remain
The broken handle from a toy teacup
A cap pistol
with a rusted mechanism -
I don’t know
what belonged to my own child
Or to that
little girl from long ago
Who, when she
was grown, drank herself to death
When a Government Goes Bust(ier) - doggerel
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
When a Government
Goes Bus(tier)
Representative Cawthorn with his big old gun
Representative Cawthorn in his lingerie
North Carolina voted him their Number One
But as for us we’ll vote some other way
Wednesday, April 27, 2022
To be Released from Prison Tomorrow - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
To be Released from
Prison Tomorrow
Tomorrow his mother and his little girl
Will meet him at the gate and take him home
No more white suits and big boondocker boots
No wire, no bells, no lining up for counts
Yes, all of us congratulated him
We cheered, we wished him well, we said a prayer
Prisoners and volunteers and a passing guard
We clapped his back and said goodbye to him
Al took his hand; he looked at him and spoke
The sternest, wisest, kindest words of all:
“I never want to
see you here again.”
Tuesday, April 26, 2022
The Stopping Power of the American Incel - Angry Rhyming Doggerel
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
The Stopping Power
of the American Incel
“I’m giving all my grandchildren AR rifles.”
-my brother-in-law
And if my nieces and nephews fire their guns
To kill their classmates or some passers-by
Or maybe the neighbors’ little pre-school sons
They’ll still love the Second even as they fry
The killings in our streets we continue in jail:
Electrocution, drugs, shooting, or gassing
Or maybe by hanging – note how they choke and flail -
And the Ballcap Church will bless their passing
We’re such a shining city on our high hill
Compensating for our loser-ness with each patriotic kill
Monday, April 25, 2022
We Can't Cash in Our Chips Because We Don't Have Any Chips - weekly column, 24 April 2022
Lawrence Hall, HSG
We Can’t Cash in Our
Chips Because We Don’t Have Any Chips
For much of human existence technology was based on wood.
A few thousand years ago metallurgy kicked in with bronze and small amounts of
crude iron, but the primitive techniques and limited fuel meant that we were
still The Wood People. Not until the 19th century did a sort of
dialectic of coal, iron, steel, and steam make the industrial revolution
possible.
Petroleum for fuel, chemicals, fertilizers, and a
catalogue of plastics later enhanced industry and thus civilization. When I
consider the debris on my old wooden desk I see books in a row made from wood
and glue and chemicals, pens made from plastic and chemicals, scissors of steel
and plastic, screwdrivers of wood and plastic, and a lamp made from steel,
plastic, glass, and a bulb combining electricity and odd metals. The computer
on which I type is made mostly of plastic with some few metal parts and
microchips.
I don’t understand microchips at all, but without them we
would not have computers, MePhones, clever little watches, thermostats, radios,
Orwellian telescreens, credit cards, and hundreds of other devices as we know
them now.
Without microchips we would have no military defense, no
radar, no air travel, no electricity, no cars, no industry, no medical care, no
economy, and no food, and so of course this nation has surrendered almost all
the manufacturing of microchips to countries who don’t like us.
In the past few weeks numerous news articles have discussed
the recycling and even theft of microchips from older devices so that we can
have newer devices because we don’t make chips ourselves and can’t buy them.
Apparently most microchips can be programmed and
reprogrammed for all sorts of purposes, and thus – I read it on the InterGossip
so it must be true – some car manufacturers are buying new and used household
appliances in order to recover the microchips for making their cars go.
If your car has developed a shimmy and a shake don’t
worry; it’s the rinse cycle.
That burglar on your security camera (which also needs
microchips) might be the president of General Motors whose dead-on-the-line
Cadillacs need some Whirlpool microchips to make them varoom, varoom.
Shady characters on street corners whisper, “Hey, buddy,
wanna buy a thermostat? Like new, I promise.”
We can truthfully say that in the past we didn’t need
microchips. This nation ran railroads and drilled oil wells and built
interstates and generated electricity and designed jet planes and dug coal with
slide rules, pencils, paper, thoughts, machine tools, and skilled, muscled
hands. That might have been a better way of doing things – after all, no North
Korean or Chinese Communist could lurk behind a little glowing screen on the
other side of the planet and program a Baldwin steam locomotive to
self-destruct.
I don’t know about microchips, but I do know that
Communist China is quietly but busily colonizing Africa (they call it their
Belt-and-Road Initiative, which sounds ever so much nicer than imperialism) and
expanding its newer-than-new Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere to the
Solomon Islands. Australia is next.
Chanting “Learn. To. Code.” and arguing about rainbow
flags in Disney World won’t help.
-30-
Gang Activity - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Gang Activity
It wasn’t about the motorcycles
It was never about the motorcycles
The motorcycles were never a problem
It was about the Fall of Man
Sunday, April 24, 2022
Fifty Shades of Community College Night Class - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Fifty Shades of
Community College Night Class
She was always early, sat in the front row
A middle-aged lady trying for nursing school
She had to take English 1301
Everybody did, but they were cool, you know
She was reading a book, Fifty Shades of Grey
I conversationally asked her, “Is it good?”
And conversationally she replied, “It is”
It was very popular by the end of May
The old ladies found the book full of pants-down treats -
I was the only one excited about John Keats
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