The Secret Service Says: Our Computers Ate Our Homework - doggerel

 

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

The Secret Service Says: Our Computers Ate Our Homework

 

Grown women in Colombia, little girls back home

Beating up a woman in a Jerusalem bar

Drunk and disorderly wherever they roam

(Say, Mr. Pence, just step into our car…)

 

A funny thing, those messages gone missing

And wanting to take the VP - for a ride?

Maybe it was Dear Leader’s *** they were kissing

So what has our SS got to hide?

 

So, yes, we’re all a little bit nervous

About the weirdos and drunks in our Secret Service

Kleenex Goes in the Top, Right-Hand Drawer - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Kleenex Goes in the Top, Right-Hand Drawer

 

They don’t talk about Kleenex in teacher-prep

But it is an essential for adolescent tears

The hissings of mean girls, heartbreak, mis-matched socks

The deaths of schoolmates

 

Kleenex goes in the top, right-hand drawer

Immediately to hand when the world goes wrong

Rejections, failing a test, no date from the prom

The deaths of schoolmates

 

Kleenex goes in the top, right-hand drawer

Sometimes it’s all you have

When Caesurae Go Bad - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

When Caesurae Go Bad

 

The dramatic pause-dash that - holds its breath

Is meant to create a – sense of tension

For dramatic effect; that’s what they - say

John Wayne uses the - caesura a lot

 

But since neither writers – nor editors – know

How to employ the worthy – caesura

They just - shoehorn it in any old place

Dramatic effect even in a - recipe

 

Stop using those dashes for pointless pauses

And save them for really important - causes

Patient Intake: Mis'ries - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Patient Intake: Mis’ries

 

When I was a young LVN I didn’t understand

Mis’ries as a complaint or a diagnosis

From Viet-Nam I well knew GSW

Pneumothorax, traumatic amputation

 

But in the civilian ER I met old people

And when I asked what was wrong they said

Mis’ries, you know; I got me my mis’ries

Doctor Junior, he’ll know what I mean

 

It isn’t in the texts, but now that I’m old

I know about all about th’ mis’ries myself

 

(I was the first male LVN I ever knew)

The People of America Stand Tall - a sort-of poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

The People of America Stand Tall

 

When the American people are faced with a crisis

They buy toilet paper and semi-automatic rifles

 

And so are wiped out either way

Poetry in the Desert - weekly column, 10 July 2022

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Poetry in the Desert

 

A story told about Field Marshal Wavell is that while throwing some things into a bag for a field tour of soldiers defending India from invasion by the Japanese he asked if anyone had seen his Browning.

 

When someone pointed out that he was wearing it – his Browning 9mm – he said that he was looking for his copy of the poems of Robert Browning. In all his campaigns Wavell always carried poetry with him.

 

The life and career of Field Marshall Archibald Wavell has been the subject of numerous biographies, and rightly so. He campaigned against the Boers in South Africa, was arrested by the Russians as a spy (and he was) in 1912, was badly wounded and lost an eye leading his soldiers against the Germans in the First World War, served in the inter-war Palestinian Mandate, won Britain’s first victories in the Second World War, was admired by Rommel (who carried Wavell’s book on leadership with him in the desert) and despised by Churchill, and was the next to last Viceroy of India. Wavell was no Call of Duty keyboard commando; he was the real thing.  Archibald Wavell: Britain's first wartime victor | National Army Museum (nam.ac.uk)

 

Most of what passes for poetry now is self-obsessed, self-pitying wailing scribbled in free verse, which of course is not poetry at all.  But this was not true in Wavell’s Victorian youth, when poetry was written and read as a literary art, not therapy.  After the disasters of the First World War, the ‘flu epidemic, economic collapse and the deaths of millions poetry generally ceased to be structured, artistic, aesthetical pleasing, or encouraging, but many individuals resisted the chaos and maintained the strength and determination of their upbringing.

 

Indeed, for millennia almost all literature in all cultures was poetry. The greats we studied in school were soldiers, statesmen, businessmen, and agriculturalists first; writing poetry was a leisure activity but also something expected of every man or woman of substance. Prose as art comes to humanity late; the argument has been made that Cervantes’ Don Quixote is the first prose novel.

 

Thus, Wavell’s love of poetry was an inheritance of 10,000 or more years of civilization. One cannot imagine him spending an evening staring at a glowing screen.

 

Like Patton, Rommel, and other military leaders Wavell wrote scholarly articles and books on the practices of war, but reading poetry was his after-hours hobby and late in his life he edited a volume of his favorite poems entitled Other Men’s Flowers. One can only regret that his editor did not change that unfortunate title, for this is a volume of poetry mostly by men and mostly for men. The book, after all, is an anthology of a soldier’s personal favorites while on campaign and not a compendium of quota-driven scribbles.

 

Because this is an anthology one simply opens the book and finds a poem (they are all short ones). If one poem won’t do, then another one will.  Best of all, Wavell chose poets who respect the reader.

 

Both the hardback and the paperback are out of print, but they are still available cheap on Brazos de Dios.com (or is it some other river?). We spend much of our lives waiting for others or riding in the passenger seat, and it’s going-against-the-stream fun to be the only one in a waiting room with a book of instead of the omnipresent little Orwellian telescreen made in Shanghai. We might as well catch up on the eternal wisdom of our ancestors instead of obeying the transient lights and noises of programmers.

 

-30-

The Great Big Russian Doomsday Submarine - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

The Great Big Russian Doomsday Submarine

 

As with Leviathan or Moby Dick

Or Captain Nemo’s Nautilus, perhaps

The Belgorod haunts the darkness of the seas

And it haunts our minds, our darkest fears

 

We scorn shabby Russian gimcrackery

The wreckage of tanks, the ashes of men

Whose feeble aircraft flame down from the sky

But this thing – it needs to work only once

 

What if it’s real, so very real

That we don’t finish…

Another Student. Another Funeral - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Another Student.  Another Funeral

 

Another former student. Another funeral.

A folder with a photograph and a prayer

No one gave the cause of death - I only know

We’re not supposed to be burying our children

Builders of Empires - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Builders of Empires

 

Great men of thought, of character and strength

Have built from time to time empires of industry

Empires of soldiers and sailors forcing conquests

Of ancient lands and nations for their own purposes

 

Great men have built ziggurats and stood upon them

Mapping the Dance of the sun, moon, and stars

Great men have written books, pondered the arts

And given us the empires of the mind

 

But a man alone in his cell telling his beads

Builds better and forever, for all of us

 

(In context “man” is gender-neutral. As Samuel Johnson would say, “And there’s an end on’t.”)

 

(“Empires of the mind” references a speech by Churchill at Harvard in 1943.)

Man vs. the Awful Majesty of the Hummingbird

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Man vs. the Awful Majesty of the Hummingbird

 

In the sun-soured heat of dusk I stood

Harvesting a few midsummer sunflower seeds

Tough prairie stock that the First Nations knew

A little sack of them to share with others

 

Under the half-moon a god appeared

A green-necked hummingbird of august mien

A tiny little god, but a god indeed

For it judged me a trespasser, and glared at me

 

And I withdrew respectfully

 

I wished I had a picture of the moment

But the moment was, and the moment is

What if the Banker Had to Stand in Line at Your House? - poem

 

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

What if the Banker Had to Stand in Line at Your House?

 

HOURS 1000-1100 and 1400-1500

 

What if the banker had to stand in line

          (six feet apart, please)

While you stared blankly at a computer screen

And finally mumbled, “Howc’nIhelpyoutoday”

While chewing gum and hardly looking up

 

What if the banker asked you a question

          (a mask is recommended)

And after a long, unproductive silence you mumbled

“notatthishouseyoucoulddoitonline”

Or “that’snothowyournameisinthesystem”

 

What if the banker actually did her job

          (WHAT!?)

Instead of balancing out her resume’?

Upon Reading C. S. Lewis' THE ABOLITION OF MAN - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Upon Reading C. S. Lewis’ The Abolition of Man

 

For Grace

 

“…the doctrine of objective value…”

-p. 29

 

At least I think I read it, did I not?

The book exists and was read, but by whom?

I’m beginning to feel that I’m the trousered ape

Who feels that a slide rule is for scratching one's back

 

But reality obtains – if a tree falls

That tree forever falling in the forest

In 7^th grade science, and no one hears it

It sends a sound into the universe

 

I think I understand about truth and space

But if I’m confused, I’ll simply ask Grace!

Sunday Morning: A Dead 'Possum and Broken Glass - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Sunday Morning: A Dead ‘Possum and Broken Glass

 

After the buzzards pluck the ‘possum’s eyes

Like businessmen at the airport Holiday Inn

Choosing olives for their plates at the buffet

It will still be grinning at the sun

 

After the beer bottle’s empty promises

And the powderings of broken glass have worn away

Along with the tire-tread promises of ads

A cardboard temptress will still be grinning at drunks

 

“We moved 84,000 cases this month”

The latest life-partner pukes on the trailer floor

Independence Day and a Government of Merovingians - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

A Government of Merovingians, by Merovingians, and for Merovingians

 

John LeCarre’ asks what you owe to your country when you no longer recognize it.

 

-cover blurb, Silverview

 

Inadequate klansies in gas-station shades

Bullhornistas polluting the civic peace

Q-Anonsters lurking behind their screens

Purported patriots hiding behind their masks

 

Doxers sneaking and spying like Milton’s Satan

Gollums clutching their “My Precious!” black rifles

Censors memory-holing literature and art

Anti-Communists Communisting our lives

 

Drug gangs and firebombs, looters and spies:

This is a nation no one can recognize

(So work, vote, volunteer, and, as Mr. Churchill said, never give in.)

Summer on the Lake - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Summer on the Lake

 

Children slosh noisily about on a catamaran

While lovers in the shade sit with crosswords and drinks

Or barefoot stroll along the lakeside sand

Each wondering what the other thinks

 

Minnows hover in the amber shallows

Dragonflies search among bright waving flowers

Sheltered beneath wind-trembling Chinese tallows

Throughout the drowsy, dreamy summer hours

 

This is early July, soft winds in the dales -

Which means it’s time for back-to-school sales

Q - doggerel (or perhaps sheeperel)

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Q

 

Where they go one, they go all

Just like sheep in a rented U-Haul

(Bah, bah, bah!)

Come Laughing Home at Twilight - for Canada Day

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

 

A repost for Canada Day:

 

Come Laughing Home at Twilight

 

Beaumont-Hamel, 1916

 

And, O!  Wasn’t he just the Jack the Lad,

A’swellin’ down the Water Street as if –

As if he owned the very paving stones!

He was my beautiful boy, and, sure,

The girls they thought so too: his eyes, his walk;

A man of Newfoundland, my small big man,

Just seventeen, but strong and bold and sure.

 

Where is he now?  Can you tell me?  Can you?

 

Don’t tell me he was England’s finest, no –

He was my finest, him and his Da,

His Da, who breathed in sorrow, and was lost,

They say, lost in the fog, among the ice.

But no, he too was killed on the first of July

Only it took him months to cast away,

And drift away, far away, in the mist.

 

Where is he now?  Can you tell me?  Can you?

 

I need no Kings nor no Kaisers, no,

Nor no statues with fine words writ on’em,

Nor no flags nor no Last Post today:

I only want to see my men come home,

Come laughing home at twilight, boots all mucky,

An’ me fussin’ at ‘em for being’ late,

Come laughing home at twilight.

An Exercise in Humility and Colombian Coffee - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

An Exercise in Humility and Colombian Coffee

 

I once saw one of those slogan coffee cups

(I’m sure it would have served as well for tea)

Which read something like this:

 

                                                   The beginning of faith

Is to realize that you are not

The ruler of the Universe

 

And it is so – I am not very good

At ruling even myself

A Chewing-Gum Girl Waiting for the Sunset Limited - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

A Chewing-Gum Girl Waiting for the Sunset Limited

 

Long, long ago

 

In the station at Tucson we waited

Someone said the locomotive had burned in the desert

A girl with earphones chewed gum through the hours:

Roundy-CHOMP, roundy-CHOMP, roundy-CHOMP-CHOMP

 

Her eyes were closed, her music was her god

She clutched a leatherette case of tapes

Just as some clutch a Bible, and chewed:

Roundy-CHOMP, roundy-CHOMP, roundy-CHOMP-CHOMP

 

Her mechanical chomps could have been the rhythm

Of the passenger train that wasn’t there

My paperback novel never joined in:

Roundy-CHOMP, roundy-CHOMP, roundy-CHOMP-CHOMP

 

I don’t remember her boarding the train

That in the evening finally arrived

She might be in the Tucson station still:

Roundy-CHOMP, roundy-CHOMP, roundy-CHOMP-CHOMP

 

Fashionable Death Cults Then and Now - poem

 

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                 

Fashionable Death Cults Then and Now

 

After the June 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union and Einsatzgruppe mass shootings of civilians, the Nazis experimented with gas vans for mass killing…

 

-Gassing Operations | Holocaust Encyclopedia (ushmm.org)

 

Dozens of migrants were found dead in an abandoned big rig in San Antonio on Monday in what appears to be the deadliest human smuggling case in modern U.S. history.

 

 

-At least 50 migrants found dead inside a truck in San Antonio, officials say (cnbc.com)

 

We have our death vans too, not well-organized

But rolling down the American road

Unseen by our leaders in their personal jets

Flying to Frisco or maybe Cancun

 

Bombings and shootings on the street and in church

Job lots in hospitals, by the dozens in schools

For we too specialize in genocide

And may Moloch and Herod bless our AR-15s

 

If any children survive, we’ll call them Generation Something

And tell them each day how inadequate they are