Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
A Theological
Wristwatch
At bedtime my watch suggests to me
That I should meditate with gratitude
For someone who is important in my life
Who gives a deeper meaning to each day
And so I stare at the lava-lamp effect
On the face of my watch, as if it were
An artifact from McGoohan’s The Village
Wanting information, not meditation
And I am grateful; it’s just that the watch
Suggests only For What, and not To Whom
Lawrence Hall, HSG
The World Wide Wordle-Word
WORDLE has become as essential to the morning ritual as a
washup and a cup of coffee. Thought up
by Welsh software engineer Josh Wordle in 2001, in 2002 he sold the game to the
New York Times for lots and lots of money.
WORDLE is entertaining, thoughtful, and usually brief,
although you can leave it at any time and come back to it throughout the day. Many
people enjoy word games, and crosswords, scrambles, word searches, and other entertaining
mind exercises have long been a popular feature in newspapers and magazines. Although WORDLE is played on an Orwellian
telescreen via a desk computer or a MePhone and so is technically a video game,
it continues the intellectual tradition of other word games.
Playing WORDLE is so simple that even a liberal arts
major can learn it in a few minutes. The screen presents six rows of five blank
spaces. The player’s challenge is to discover, without any initial clue, the
five-letter word assigned for the game of the day. There is only one WORDLE
word around the world, making each day’s word the World Wide Word.
Thus, on the first line the player types in any common
five-letter word and then the little boxes change colors to indicate that any
given letter is (1) part of the answer and in the right place, (2) part of the
answer and not in the right place, or (2) not part of the answer.
The results of the first word, which is a guess, provide
useful information for the second word, which provides more useful information
for subsequent words.
The game begins with a guess and then become really thinky.
The official WORDLE offers only one game each day,
although there are many unofficial imitators if you want another match with
another word.
Friends often agree upon a beginning word for the next
day’s WORDLE in order to generate a friendly competition. The first competitor
to find the word of the day wins the match. For me, I choose to make my own
rule for winning – the higher number is the winning number. In using this rule
I win lots of games.
-30-
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Where the Fairies
Hide
In the dreary weary heat I crawled
Burrowing deep within a thickety bush
To saw and cut and clip away the growth
That had long formed a formless cloud of green
There might be little elves or fairies, I hoped
Long hidden away among broken bits of pots
In a childhood world of secrets and dreams
Among dappled shadows dizzying me
I thought I heard soft giggles and soft feet
But maybe it was only the dreary weary heat
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
I Never Met a
Harvard Graduate in Viet-Nam
“Now, soldiers, march away...”
-Henry V IV.iii.140
I wasn’t the first to notice that salient fact
For except in matters of feed, seed, and soil
Farm boys weren’t aware of critical thinking -
We trusted our government to get things right
And still...
The children of oligarchs play in law school
Or sun themselves while on perpetual holiday
While the much-deceived children of the poor
In their patriotic obedience die
And still...
Now, soldiers, march away
Your betters are at play
On Daddy’s yacht today
Blessed by a
Former Student
Adveni fui in terra aliena
-Exodus 2:22
A smiling young man I didn’t know
Hugged me with enthusiasm, almost in tears
And told me with joy how I had inspired him
When I was his teacher some years ago
I was some moments realizing that
He was Amanda. I hope she is happy
For she was a joyful child, tho’ I confess
That I can sort out neither the pronouns
Nor the century – I am a stranger here
But the folks are friendly, and the coffee’s good
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
A Finely Crafted
Swiss Frog
Its crystal is the windowpane
Through which its tiny heart is seen
And its splayed and spatulate toes
Grasping securely the eternal
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Untied Healthcare
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am able to conceptualize the issue
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is important to us...
(Can anyone who spells “Health care” as “healthcare”
Be trusted with anything?)
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Corporate-Speak Inquisitors Meet with the
Faithful
They do not wear
dark robes or sinister hoods
Nor even Roman
collars with their Izod shirts
In fetching
pastel shades of harmlessness
They rule with
legal pads and plastic pens
They question us
about our parish and priest
And rattle the
matter of closing the church
Though it’s
difficult to take seriously pasty old men
Who seem to be a
bench of Miss Marples
They do not wear
dark robes or sinister hoods
But menace us
with evasive can’ts and coulds
Lawrence Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com
Yes, There was a
Manifesto
In
the midst of a world of light and love, of song and feast and dance, he could
find nothing to think of more interesting than his own prestige.
-C. S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost
This scribble began as a consideration of the sad sack of
s(lop) – hardly a man – who murdered mostly elderly shoppers and a stand-up
retired police officer.
Aaron Salter, Jr., 55 and recently retired after thirty
years with the Buffalo, New York police, surely understood that with only a
pistol he would not probably survive his defense of his fellow Americans against
an orc wearing body armor and armed with a .556 semi-automatic rifle.
There are still heroes among us, and Officer Salter was
one of them.
In the event, last weekend featured numerous other murders and
woundings of ordinary Americans by other Americans in church, at sports events,
and at community festivities. No other nation needs to bother attacking us; we’re
destroying ourselves.
The speculations we all still have about the sad sack of s(lop)
murdering old people in a supermarket extend now to all the sad sacks of s(sop)
who, in a world of possibilities, found nothing more to do with their weekend
than compensate for their inadequacies by shooting unarmed people.
Let us anchor the discussion in the first orc:
Grandpa’s old single-shot for rabbit hunting and secured
with a trigger lock with the key kept by Dad when not in use – we get that; it’s
a piece of Americana. But a semi-automatic
rifle in a combat calibre and a G. I. Joe dress-up play-soldier suit – that’s
pathological.
About the wannabe soldier thing - did he make the first day
of recruit training? Or did he just know about video games?
Did he ever consider joining the volunteer fire department
or some other worthy cause?
Did he play football, join the band, belong to the FFA, take
a shop class, join the Scouts, help with the little kids at Sunday School, or
belong to a club?
Did he ever have a job – sack boy, fast-food, mechanic’s
helper, anything? Who paid for the three weapons he is reported to have been carrying?
And the body armor? That’s not cheap.
Did he ever mow the yard?
Could he cook a simple meal?
Did he ever help wash dishes, vacuum the floors, wash the windows,
or do the laundry?
Did he ever change the oil and hit the lube points in a
tractor, pickup truck, or car?
Did he ever help build fence? Did he even know what a carpenter’s
hammer is for?
Did he ever wrestle a rotor-tiller around the garden?
Did he ever have to take care of little brothers and
sisters?
Did he ever question the illogical, immoral, and
unscientific race theories fed to him?
If you were to ask him about his favorite book, would the
response be a blank stare or even a sneer of disapproval?
Did he have a purpose, a life-plan, a cause beyond whatever
nonsense was programmed into his little brain from the InterGossip?
In the end, it’s not that we ask such questions about him;
we ask them about ourselves and about how we raise our children and
grandchildren.
Peace.
-30-
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
A Few Kind Thoughts for Roman Soldiers
If you have
stood your watch throughout the night
To guard a clothesline
of national importance
Dug foxholes
only to fill them up again
And then
patrolled through long days in the heat
If you have
enjoyed Cinderella Liberty
And talking
about poetry and girls
With a few mates
down at the coffee shop
Because that’s
all your poor pay can afford
You will then
understand the conscript guards
Posted to keep
order on Calvary
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
A Pasty Boy in Knee-Pantsies
Lectures on the Supremacy
of Gun Ownership
Over Access to
Baby Formula
You say our baby’s starving?
Don’t bother me with that
As long as I got me my gun
To rat-a-tat-tat!
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Leaving the Party Early
for Some Fresh Air and a Smoke
Our host was oozy one moment, threatening the next
The drinks were watery, the hors d’oeuvres nothing more
Than pigs in blankets of cruelties and cliches
Among guests likely to call them horse doovers
Through the bottom of my glass I could see
Only a few weak industrial fizzings
Recirculating from Tammany Hall until now
Pasting new labels over unoriginal sins
Unoriginal sins to file and shelve -
I left the Party in 2012
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
An After-Market
Warranty for my Catholic Space Laser
“...tremulous
little people of dim intellect and hyperactive imagination...need that Wondrous
Explanation that will quiet all their fears, thrill them with villains to
revile, and never tax their feeble powers of intellection.”
-John D. MacDonald, Reading for Survival
The Great Texas Emu Bubble, crop circles
Power crystals, cryptocurrency
Jewish space lasers, messages from Q
Lizard people abducted by aliens
Enron, obey the science, the settled science
Chloroquine, tulips, herd immunity
Your Norton has expired, buy magic beans
Invoice #666 needs to be paid today
Your uncle in Nigeria is in lots of trouble
And don’t forget the South Sea Bubble
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
The March of the Triumphalist
Electrons
“Forward, Electronics, your victory’s achieved!
In all
communications, progress is our creed!”
-Communist youth song in
Solzhenitsyn’s “For the Good of the Cause”
In all obedience learn to code, to code
For in obeying orders you think for yourself
And rebel by chanting and clenching your fist
As an individual just like everyone else
Now burn your poems, your notebooks, and your pens
And slaughter your thoughts wherever they hide
We will send you your soul through a little screen
Unisize, unisex, one soul fits all
And then, like Moloch and Herod, turn your wild eyes
Your burning eyes
Upon your children
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
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
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
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-
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
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
