Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
April is not the
Cruelest Month – July Is
Across the oily gravel the scrabbling of weary feet
As if life itself were burning in the heat
Wednesday, July 27, 2022
April is not the Cruelest Month - rhyming couplet
Tuesday, July 26, 2022
The School Superintendent Gives a Speech - poem
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
The School Superintendent Gives a Speech
You can’t just
throw money at the problems
you have to
think outside the box education
for the 21st
century my door is always open
words have
meanings professional passionate
mission
statement child-centered striving exceptional
make a
difference you can’t just throw money
at the problems
you have to think outside
the box education
for the 21st century
my door is
always open words have meanings
professional
passionate mission statement
child-centered striving
exceptional make a difference
you can’t just
throw money at the problems
you have to
think outside the box education
for the 21st
century my door is always open
words have
meanings professional passionate
mission
statement child-centered striving exceptional
make a
difference you can’t just throw money
at the problems
you have to think outside
the box education
for the 21st century
my door is
always open words have meanings
professional
passionate mission statement
child-centered striving
exceptional make a difference
Monday, July 25, 2022
The Junior Woodchuck Manual - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
The Junior
Woodchuck Manual
The Junior Woodchuck Manual is online now
But there it loses some of its magic
I’m keeping the tattered hardback of our youth
The trusty companion of our childhood days
When every summer oak concealed a dragon
And paths through the woods led to Neverland
The cattle pond was a mysterious sea
With a magic kingdom on the other side
Worlds better than this one, and far more true -
Oh, yes, I know that you remember too!
(Thank you, Uncle Walt, for everything.)
The Russian Chess Computer of Lingering Death - weekly column, 24 July 2022
Lawrence Hall, HSG
The Russian Chess
Computer of Lingering Death
In Ian Fleming’s novel Live and Let Die, the main
villain, Mr. Big, orders a minor villain, Tee Hee, to break the little finger
of James Bond’s left hand.
Ouch.
“Do you expect me to talk!?”
“No, Mr. Bond; I expect you to type only with your right
hand!”
Building on Tee Hee’s digital expertise, contemporary
Russia has developed a computerized hand which will break fingers and win chess
matches [Chess robot breaks finger of seven-year-old boy during
tournament in Russia | Daily Mail Online].
In an exhibition match in Moscow last week a
seven-year-old boy was playing against the mechanical Tee Hee when the machine,
perhaps in fear of losing, grabbed and crushed the child’s finger.
Naturally the adults blamed the child. Sergei Smagin, VP
of the Russian Chess Federation, said, “There are certain safety rules, and the
child, apparently, violated them.”
Safety rules. In chess. Yep, the rooks are especially
prone to mechanical breakdown and explosions if you don’t follow all safety
procedures.
If in Russia a player can lose a finger playing chess, then
the Go To Jail card in a game of Monopoly could be a ten-year sentence to the
Lubyanka.
Mr. Smagin averred that the finger-lickin’-good chess arm
is “absolutely safe.”
Sergei Lazerev, the President of the RCF, blamed the kid
for playing chess too fast, thus confusing the computer.
For embarrassing the computer and the State the
seven-year-old might be conscripted to drive a tank in Ukraine, where thousands
of young Russians are sent to die.
If a computer is so vindictive about losing a chess
match, imagine how dangerous it would be while driving home afterward,
especially if it stops off at the pub for a few boilermakers of WD-40 and Mr.
Clean.
Or maybe the chess computer wanders the lonely streets of
Volgograd at night, mumbling about how he lost to a seven-year-old: “I coulda
been somebody. I coulda been a contender. Instead of an itinerant chess bum.
Which is what I am.”
And so, parents, be advised: don’t let your innocent
children hang around dens of sin where chess is played. If your children start whispering
suspicious words and phrases like “en passant,” or “queen’s pawn to
queen’s pawn four” or “castling,” refer them immediately for psychological
counseling. Don’t be afraid to check your children’s room for such contraband
as chessboards. After all, you want your children to be normal, well-adjusted
Americans staring blankly into glowing Orwellian telescreens.
-30-
Sunday, July 24, 2022
A Certain Bipedal Species (us) Returns to the Primordial Muck - self-censored poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
A Certain Bipedal
Species (us) Returns to the Primordial Muck
(The Self-Censored
Version)
A visit with old friends from long ago
The conversation soon turned to ___ and ___
They compared their ___ head to toe
___ ___ and ___ ___
___ ___ ___ ___ ___ embrace
A ___ that never ___ – oh, ick, that ooze!
The price of each ___
___ ___ disgrace
Discussed in ___ grunts and ___ moos
So I left early for fear
The next topic might be (this is just a hunch)
About which visiting human to cook for lunch
Saturday, July 23, 2022
Fitted with an Ankle Monitor - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Fitted with an
Ankle Monitor
No one wants to be fitted with an ankle monitor
Except for this man, selecting an ankle
No one wants to sign all sorts of government forms
Except for this man, signing those forms
No one wants to wait for hours in a lobby
Except for this man, waiting for hours
No one wants to pack three years into a paper bag
Except for this man
Who is one steel door, one concrete path, and two wire
gates
Away from his mom in the parking lot
Friday, July 22, 2022
An Armada of Black Escalades - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
An Armada of Black
Escalades
…detailed lists of disloyal government officials
-Inside Trump '25: A radical plan for Trump’s second
term (axios.com)
A shadow government just like
The new government just like
The previous government -
And just whose names are inscribed on Schedule F?
Those black Escalades
Armored Mariahs carrying functionaries
And their lists to secret meetings in the night
The Party faithful planning a new Lubyanka
And cultural suicide through electronic noise
Those black Escalades
The escort has a warrant for your obedience
You can see Siberia from the passenger seat
Thursday, July 21, 2022
Famous Name Brand Literary Magazine Gives Us Only Four Commands Today - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Famous Name Brand Literary Magazine Gives Us
Only Four Commands Today
Famous name brand literary magazine
Gives us all only four commands today:
You should be watching
Reviews You Need to Read This Week
Start Listening Now
Start Reading Now
To which we who are obstinate respond:
No
Wednesday, July 20, 2022
Bugging Gentlemen of a Certain Age - poem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Bugging Gentlemen of a
Certain Age
For Tod
Who Waits for a Microchip
Oh, isn’t it awkward
being passed along
Up and down
confusing, fluorescent-lit corridors
From receptionist to
nurse-practitioner
To technician to
physician and back again
And given a little
card with a clever graphic design
On one side and an appointment
with
A different
receptionist / nurse-practitioner / technician /
Physician in another
time and place
The passings of time
and people concluding with
A ruling from a venerable
medical sage:
“Your heart is in
good condition -
for a man your age.”
Tuesday, July 19, 2022
For Protestors in All Causes - rhyming doggerel, with an emphasis on armpit hair
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
For Protestors in All Causes
Please –
Stop pumping
your fisties up in the air
I’m tired of seeing
your old armpit hair!
Oh, yes, you
believe in this week’s cause
But that grotesque
growth would give a lawnmower pause
And one more trifling
thing (so please take note):
You shout and clench
your fist, but do you vote?
Monday, July 18, 2022
The Dachshund and the 'Possum - doggerel, with emphasis on the dog
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
The Dachshund and
the ‘Possum
I let the dog out for her night patrol
To sniff the boundaries and take a stroll
But out in the dark, beyond the cat
That was where an old ‘possum was at
The dachshund stiffened; she was filled with rage
She charged the enemy; she snarled, “ENGAGE!”
I commanded the dachshund to let it go
With bark and bite and snap her answer was “no”
The fierce dachshund growled; the old ‘possum hissed
I grabbed for the dog but obviously missed
I went back inside to take a shower
Thinking to give the stupid dog an hour
And so it passed; her allotted time is up
The standoff continues ‘tween ‘possum and pup
At dawn it may be that one is dead –
I’ll find out then; for now I’m off to bed!
Sunday, July 17, 2022
Time for the Secret Service to be Reformed - weekly column, 17 July 2022
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Time for the
Secret Service to be Reformed
One wonders if the Secret Service has become a Streltsy,
a palace guard answerable to no one.
Not so long ago the Secret Service was one of the most
honored organizations in the United States, and had earned that respect through
duty and sacrifice.
The Secret Service, so secret that it has its own
website: (Home | United States Secret Service),
is tasked with ensuring “…the safety of the president, the vice president,
their families, the White House, the vice president’s residence, visiting
foreign heads of state, former United States presidents and their spouses, and
events of national significance” (ibid).
The Secret Service is also involved in national security,
public safety, protecting the integrity of our decaying currency, and fighting
cybercrime.
We can conclude that under those titles and with an
acknowledged 7,000 members and an acknowledged budget of $2.44 billion [Secret
Service Director Calls for More Staffing, Retention and Cybersecurity
Funding - Government Executive (govexec.com)] the Secret Service is
one of the biggest, baddest boys on the metaphorical block and can do pretty
much whatever it wants to do.
But is the Secret Service in the 21st century doing
what it ought to do?
Setting aside the Service’s catalogue of world-wide party-hearty
scandals there are now serious questions about the Service’s actions on 6
January 2021 and a possible coverup.
The then-president at one point on 6 January tasked the
Secret Service with transporting him from one place to another within the
national capital, well within the scope of their duties. The Service refused.
We can argue until the emus come home about whether the president’s thoughts or
intentions were good or bad. That’s not the point. The point is that the
President of the United States gave a lawful order to the Secret Service, and
they did not follow it.
Later the same day the vice-president was moved by the
Secret Service from the House chamber, which was being attacked, to a place the
Service deemed safer, a loading dock in the basement. At some point the Secret Service wanted the
vice-president to seek further refuge within the purported safety of an armored
vehicle. While in the area of the
loading dock Mr. Pence was in view of dozens of people and cameras; inside the
armored car it would be a different matter. Apparently / it seems / maybe /
kinda / sorta that the vice-president felt that if he obeyed the Service and
got into the isolation of the interior of the armored car he would no longer
have any control over his movements and thus could not fulfil his
constitutional duty in certifying the election results. After all, given that
the Secret Service had earlier chosen to control the president’s movements,
controlling the vice-president’s movements would be easier.
And now we read that the not-so-secret Secret Service’s
communications for the 6th of January are suddenly secret after all
– like Mrs. Clinton’s communications [Why
Hillary Clinton Deleted 33,000 Emails on Her Private Email Server - ABC News
(go.com)] they have reportedly disappeared.
The point, remember, is not whether we like or dislike
Mr. Trump or Mr. Pence, or whether we are satisfied with the results of the
election. The point of these few paragraphs is that some of the 7,000 employees
of Secret Service, whose duties include protecting the president and
vice-president and by extension the safety of the nation, may have overreached their
authority for purposes best known to themselves, and may be concealing their
activities from oversight.
We need a stable organization protecting the presidency,
not a Streltsy controlling the presidency.
-30-
Non-Profit, NGO, and a Yo-Ho-Ho - a weak, unrhymed couplet
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Non-Profit, NGO, and a Yo-Ho-Ho
The status of my bank
account tells me
That I too am a non-profit
organization
Friday, July 15, 2022
The Secret Service Says: Our Computers Ate Our Homework - doggerel
Lawrence Hall
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
Thursday, July 14, 2022
Kleenex Goes in the Top, Right-Hand Drawer - poem
Lawrence Hall
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
Wednesday, July 13, 2022
When Caesurae Go Bad - poem
Lawrence Hall
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
Tuesday, July 12, 2022
Patient Intake: Mis'ries - poem
Lawrence Hall
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)
Monday, July 11, 2022
The People of America Stand Tall - a sort-of poem
Lawrence Hall
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
Sunday, July 10, 2022
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
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…
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