This is Texas
This is Texas
Where books are banned
And weapons are not
Where we pray for our land
And our children are shot
Saturday, June 11, 2022
This is Texas - poem
Friday, June 10, 2022
A Grim Quatrain on Mortality
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
A Grim Quatrain on
Mortality
A dog sees birds with its malevolent eyes
And puts the poor feathered creatures to rout
But one day in the field the old dog dies -
The poor birds then will have the dog’s eyes out
(I blame the heat. And fluoride. And George Bush. And public schools. And the mysterious crystals beneath New York City. And the Mormons. And th' Cath'lics. And the Masons. And France. And the Commie spy chips implanted in us with the Covid vaccine. And the hamsterpox. And rock 'n' roll.)
Thursday, June 9, 2022
A Violation of the First Law of Thermodynamics - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
A Violation of the
First Law of Thermodynamics
A day so hot that ordinary tasks
Exhaust the body and the soul; to grasp
The handle of a water tap wearies the mind
To grasp a simple thought eludes one’s will
The day is in violation of childhood summers
When little bare feet scampered across the grass
Those days have in adulthood have been stolen
The victims lie abandoned in the dust
Who will lay these charges, and against whom?
And in what court should this strange case be placed?
Wednesday, June 8, 2022
My Bourgeois Leanings - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
My Bourgeois
Leanings
One
day, at a meeting of the Komsomol…he was accused of bourgeois leanings just
because he happened to wear a tie.
-Yevtushenko, A Precocious
Autobiography, recounting an anecdote by his father
I am the only man who wears a tie
With proper coat and trousers (inspection pass)
Properly kitted like a proper guy
To weddings, funerals, dinners, and Sunday Mass
I am the only man who does not wear
Sneakers or baseball caps, gas-station shades
Knee pants, tee shirts, jeans with a built-in tear
Or plastic jackets shaped like hand grenades
If we are facing civilization’s end -
One’s trousers touch one’s oxfords with a quarter-inch
bend
Tuesday, June 7, 2022
A Poem is its Own Studio - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
A Poem is its Own
Studio
Words lift themselves from the canvas of life
The iambs are open so that the light drifts in
On the artist’s favorite smiling verb
Posing on a dais draped with flowing dreams
Before a canvas of possibilities
Words lift themselves from the canvas of life
A splash of adverb might go here – or not
Maybe a subtle conjunction instead to join
The thesis and the antithesis
In a loving reconciliation
Embraced by silent interjections of love
Words lift themselves from the canvas of life
Monday, June 6, 2022
Do Not Forsake Me, Oh, My Dushen'ka - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Do Not Forsake Me, Oh, My Dushen’ka
In honor of Dimitri Tiompkin
When we learned that a
Russian wrote the score for High Noon
And another for John
Wayne’s Rio Bravo
It made some of the
populist faithful swoon
(Alas that nothing much
rhymes with Bravo)
Given that Tiompkin was a
Russian critter
We’ll just have to cancel
John Wayne and Tex Ritter
When the Last Catholic Church is Seized and Sold - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
When the Last
Catholic Church is Seized and Sold
When at the Last Supper Jesus lifted Himself
Someone at table criticized the servers
For not getting some detail right (“Kids these days…”)
When the last Catholic church is seized and sold
When the bailiffs and deputies are given the keys
(The judges and
lawyers will be laughing over single-malt at the country club)
When the vessels of the Altar are sold for scrap
When the windows are stacked at a re-sale shop
When the last Mass is ended and the people dispersed
When the processional cross is taken from the last altar
server
Grumpy old Catholics will fault the poor child
For not holding it right (“Kids these days…”)
Sunday, June 5, 2022
Her Majesty the Queen and Her Good and Faithful Bear - weekly column, 5 June 2022
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Her Majesty the
Queen and Her Good and Faithful Bear
Okay, in his humorous novel Decline and Fall (nothing
to do with that doorstop by Gibbon) Waugh was joking about education and the
price of whisky, but let the gasoline stand. And we might have to; we can’t
afford much of it just now.
Last week I took my few gas cans to the station to fill them
up after the first round of summertime mowing. The pump stopped at $100.01. The
pump’s computer program is set for $100 for each purchase; I suppose the extra
cent was a “so there” at my expense.
Another topic of discussion at the pumps was the large dead
rat next to Pump #4. Perhaps the critter died when it saw the price of
gasoline.
But it is curious that topping off some vehicles can cost
more than a semi-automatic .556. Although our nation can be said to float on a
metaphorical sea of oil, our President is apparently begging Saudi Arabia for
more of the stuff.
And then there’s the matter of other nations sending us
infant formula because that’s another thing not being processed here.
Thus, we have lots of guns but not enough oil for our
industries or formula for our babies.
Until this week I did not know what a platinum
anniversary is. I watched only a little of the merriments, the best part being
the Queen’s tea with our dear friend Paddington Bear. Paddington is from Peru,
but his English is quite good, don’t you think?
Among the images there were pictures of H.M. when she was
Princess Elizabeth and served in the A.T.S., which was the British equivalent
of our WACS. She was a driver and
mechanic, and although one of my sources says “rare historical photos,” they
are not rare at all, just as war service was not rare among teenagers; it was mostly
by teenagers. You can drive
around the InterGossip and see pictures of HRH as a teenager changing a tire,
checking the oil, and adjusting a carburetor.
Can your kid do any of that?
Elizabeth’s father was against her serving, but teenagers
can be persistent and she got her way. Queen Elizabeth’s service means that she
is the last Second World War veteran who is a head of state.
It is still true that almost all teenagers are good and
thoughtful, and serve their communities in so many ways. They aren’t appreciated
as much as they should be; it seems the rotten ones get all the attention. We old people can do better in praising the
good kids.
Photographs of Queen Elizabeth when she was a truck
mechanic, 1945 - Rare Historical Photos
Queen Elizabeth's Surprising Military Role in World War II -
Biography
-30-
Saturday, June 4, 2022
My Friend Joined the NRA and Received a Communist Pocketknife - doggerel
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
My Friend Joined
the NRA and Received a Communist Pocketknife
To prove your patriotism there’s nothing finer
Than to sport an NRA knife made in China
Friday, June 3, 2022
The Great Replacement Theory - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
The Great Replacement
Theory
But of course we will all be replaced
We sit outside at dusk with single-malt and cigars
Low voices remembering the challenges we’ve faced
Our loves and losses, children, careers, and wars
Yes, of course we will all be replaced
Others will sit on this lawn and watch the stars
Perhaps in these same chairs, carelessly spaced
And ask each other: Is that Venus? Or Mars?
For you and I will return to dust, old man –
As must everyone in God’s great Plan
Thursday, June 2, 2022
Your Hair is Like a Flock of Goats - a wheezy bit of doggerel
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Your Hair is Like
a Flock of Goats
(Y)our
hair is like a flock of goats
Frisking
down the slopes of Gilead
-Song of Songs, 4:5-6
Even in a farming community
That awkward compliment you’d better keep
So ask her this joke (if she grants you immunity):
Do goats have mohair than sheep?
(“Do goats have mohair than sheep?” is an old, old, old
joke.)
Wednesday, June 1, 2022
The Natural Voice of Poetry - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
The Natural Voice
of Poetry
The
modern kings will throttle you to greet
The
piping voice of artificial birds
-Claude McKay, “To a Poet”
We love the natural voice of poetry
Sung through parking lots and lonely rooms
In low, soft winds that sigh through empty cans
Discarded on the banks of the River Lethe
But we must suffer those artificial birds
Against whom we were cautioned by friend McKay
Who landed in New York and made it Jamaica
There through the natural voice of poetry
By him the artificial birds were set to flight
And the songs of exiles given harmony and light
Tuesday, May 31, 2022
The Last Literary Magazine I Will Ever Buy - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
The Last Literary Magazine
I Will Ever Buy
A weighty enough tome for fourteen dollars
Guest-edited by a famous visiting poet
For that much money there should be more hollers
But it’s mostly free verse, wouldn’t ya know it
Self-pitying free verse (oh, how I have suffered)
First-person pronouns shattered and scattered about
From each other with white space well buffered
Each polemic a sustained, censorious pout
The thesis of each yelp in this literary gong?
All that we say and do and think is wrong
Monday, May 30, 2022
The Road, The Tao, The Way - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
The Road, The Tao,
The Way
“The road goes ever on and on”
-Tolkien
There is of course the Road, the Tao, the Way
And traveling it grows difficult with age
Or maybe now it travels more for us
But still the Road, the Tao, the Way leads on
When I was young over my shoulder I slung
A canvas bag with a toothbrush and a book
A pen, some poems, and dreams that wrote themselves
And I smoked my pipe and sang as I marched
Some have walked with me, and I with others
Most of them have walked ahead, and are gone
I think they are waiting for me among those stars
Who lighten and brighten as the sun sails away
At dusk Yeats and I talked about the Road
He said he thought there might be a poem
Sunday, May 29, 2022
Donnie and Wayne Celebrate the Massacre of the Holy Innocents - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Donnie and Wayne Celebrate
the Massacre of the Holy Innocents
While Donny dances for Wayne, dances upon the dead
Celebrating
The latest Massacre of the Holy Innocents
We sit and try to write away the pain
And can’t
We try to shape this chaos into words
And can’t
We are determined to protect the children
And will
We will repudiate the worship of death
We will
While Donny dances for Wayne, dances upon the dead
Celebrating
The latest Massacre of the Holy Innocents
Civilization Begins at the Barn - weekly column, 29 May 2022
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Civilization
Begins at the Barn
A large truck stopped in front of my country estate here
along Beer Can Road and County Dump Extension. The big red tractor was pulling
a big long trailer carrying lots of wood and prefabricated roof trusses. I
visited with the driver, who was trying to find an address that apparently did
not exist. The bill bore little more than the first name of the seller, the
items on the truck, and the Neverland address.
With my mental acuity that would impress even Detective
Monk I suggested that we switch around the physical address and the county road
number and plug those into the electrical map on the MePhone, and that did
indeed give us an address that exists, a farm only a few fields over. I gave
the driver directions and we shook hands, though I don’t know how his adventure
ended.
But the cargo was interesting: roof trusses, probably for
a barn, and a miscellaney of milled wood.
Barns are good. In our times of destruction and violence
the idea of raising a barn is a vote for civilization.
The barn is the heart of a farm, the world headquarters
of the business and the art and liturgy of growing crops and animals. The day’s
work begins there, almost always before dawn, and ends there, almost always
after dark. The good old tractor spends its nights there, along with plows,
rakes, mowers, tillers, barbed wire, rope, pulleys, machine tools, gardening
tools, carpentry tools, sacks of feed, mineral blocks, hay, feed, animal
medicines, a work bench, fertilizer, and lots more impedimenta, all of it
expensive, necessary for raising animals, prepping the fields, establishing plantings
and pastures, sowing, maintaining, and harvesting.
Depending on the animals and seasons, the barn also hosts
critters large and small with the various pens and stalls necessary for their
shelter and safety.
Other life forms, not at all welcome, reside there too:
rats, mice, snakes, and maybe a skunk burrowing under the foundations for the
winter. Raccoons, ‘possums, and coyotes regard the barn as a midnight diner.
Thus, the farmer will establish a resident dog, probably named Hank, and a cat,
probably titled Simba, King Cat and Killer of Rats. With fresh water and just
enough good animal food they will strike at the unwelcome intruders with fang
and claw, and in return expect only an occasional scratch behind the ears. A barn owl might find a cozy spot among the
rafters and from there he too will wing silently to prey upon rats and mice and
the occasional careless bunny.
If the farm is blessed with children they will work their
4H and FFA projects from the barn: gardens, rabbits, chickens, goats, pigs, and
other crops and critters in any combination.
The adults and the kids will post calendars with lots of
penciled-in information about crops and seasons, and the business cards of
veterinarians, farm supply houses, and tractor dealers will grow around it. A
feed store thermometer and a barometer on the wall will do their duty for years
to come, along with a rain gauge on a fence post, although there are only four
categories of farm weather: (1) too darned hot, (2) too darned cold, (3) too
darned wet, and (4) too darned dry.
Just inside the big door, or perhaps outside if there is
some shade, a bench and some old chairs will be positioned for those rare
occasions when folks will be able to rest from their labors a while with a
meditative chaw or cigar to sit and think and talk, and sometimes just to sit
and think, and sometimes, as the old saying goes, just to sit. The setting sun
and the sweet scent of a new-mown field are the light and the incense for that evening
hour of Vespers.
Anyway, that’s where I think that truckload of wood and
the friendly driver from Louisiana were going. I hope so. We need more foresters
and truck drivers and farmers, and fewer strident men of destiny who wear
expensive suits and uniforms while giving their underlings orders to destroy
the land and kill foresters and truck drivers and farmers for the greater glory
of whatever.
-30-
Saturday, May 28, 2022
Kenneth Branagh Attempts to Murder Agatha Christie - doggerel
Lawrence
Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Kenneth Branagh Attempts to Murder Agatha Christie
Mr.
Branagh, we’re watching your reputation die
Garishly
coloured in the worst CGI
In
your first Poirot you made a formless mess -
It was
the audience who died on the Orient Express
And
then you continued without any style
And
lost the plot on your sad cartoon Nile
Do
whatever you want; have it your way
But we
are sticking with David Suchet
For it
is obvious to our great sorrow
That
you are a flop as Hercule Poirot
Friday, May 27, 2022
President Trump Splits Two Infinitives and Botches a Number of Subject, Verb, and Adjective Constructs While Proposing the Arming of Teachers - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
President Trump
Splits Two Infinitives and Botches a Number of Subject, Verb, and Adjective Constructs
While Proposing the Arming of Teachers
“...it's
time to finally allow highly trained teachers to safely and discreetly
concealed carry, let them concealed carry.”
-Former
President Donald J. Trump to the National Rifle Ass., 27 May 2022
All teachers trample the Constitution
All teachers promote contempt for the Flag
All teachers should be in an institution
All teachers are weird (and that one’s a f*g)
All teachers despise the military
All teachers should be slowly microwaved
All teachers hate meat; they’re vegetary
All teachers hate Jesus; they can’t be saved
All teachers are evil; the children are harmed:
And thus, they say, all teachers should be armed
Previously published as “Texas’
Proposed Concealed Carry Law” in Dispatches from the Colonial Office,
2018, available from amazon.com.
Thursday, May 26, 2022
Will No One Friend Me on MyFaceSpaceBookToc? - poem
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Will No One Friend Me on MyFaceSpaceBookToc?
“Hitherto at least I have stood in the front ranks of
all that is progressive in Europe,
and here the new generation positively ignores me.”
Pyotr Miusov
in Part I, Book II, Chapter V of The Brothers Karamazov
Oh, let it go,
Miusov; we are the old men
We used to laugh
about when we were young
Though getting
old was not part of my master plan
I seem to have
grown old – and you did too
We attended
secret meetings and scribbled free verse
Whispered “What
is to be done?” to each other
Pitied the Proletariat
over our wine and cigars
And scorned our
elders – we thought ourselves clever
Yes, let it go,
Miusov; we are the old men
Left here remembering
what might have been
Wednesday, May 25, 2022
Guns 'N' Babies - Doggerel for our Third-World Country
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Guns ‘N’ Babies
Racks of guns and shelves of ammunition
But almost no formula for our babies’ nutrition
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