Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Ridin’
it Out
You see him on tv: “I’m ridin’
it out”
He sneers, “I been through lotsa
hurricanes
Ain’t never needed to leave, not
gonna now
I’m protectin’ my own; I know
what I’m doin’”
Ridin’ it out
You see the turtles eating the
man’s eyes first
They’re soft and delicious, a
scavenger’s treat
They’ve already eaten his
children’s eyes
Except for the little girl, taken
down by a ‘gator
Ridin’ it out
Lawrence Hall, HSG
A Court Order from
the County Judge?
Some years ago, after one of our many hurricanes, a young
woman complained to a local television reporter that she did not have any food
or water in the house, or any milk for her baby. She concluded, in a burst of
outrage, “They should have been better prepared!”
Whoever the “they” might have been, it hadn’t occurred to
this adult that she bore any responsibility for the health and safety of her
child and herself.
Similarly, after last week’s Hurricane Ian, some few
residents of Florida are complaining that the “they” had not ordered an
evacuation in a timely fashion.
One supposes that a rough equivalent would be residents of
Montana sobbing to PBS that the state government hadn’t warned anyone that
Montana gets lots of snow.
For weeks the weather services watched this storm, quite
accurately predicted its landing in Florida, and warned and warned and warned. Among
the many warnings was the well-known reality that hurricanes can shift
positions and thus pin-pointing a landing before it happens is impossible. We
must always remember the cone of uncertainty.
I’m not going Darwinian here when I say that we adults are responsible
for our own behavior, and with the big-boy / big-girl pants come big-boy /
big-girl responsibilities. Public safety
is a significant part of the duties of government, but it is not the sheriff’s
job to come around each evening and remind me to lock my doors. The governor is
not mandated to remind me to see my excellent nurse practitioner every six
months. The several fire departments should not need to tell me not to burn litter
with this autumn drought desiccating all the grass, weeds, and brush. The
Department of Public Safety should not have to ticket anyone for not safety-seating
the rug-rat.
This past Sunday evening the weather dude on the telescreen
advised the audience of a “disturbance” out in the middle of the Atlantic that might
develop through the levels of danger and which might enter the Gulf of
Mexico in two weeks. As of the publication of this fine newspaper, that’ll be
ten days.
That “might” and our adult experience with rough weather
constitute the warning. Yes, we have been warned. Two Sunday evenings from now
we will probably be sitting in the front yard enjoying the cool autumn air, but
we might – might – be suffering the stings and buffetings of a
hurricane.
We know these things, and so as we go about our daily
endeavors this week we add to our pantries and shelves another case of bottled
water, another few cans of stew or Spam, some more crackers, some condensed
milk and other necessaries for the babies, and so on. We top off the gas tanks
in the cars and add a few jerricans for the generator if we have one. We make
some plans, we mark a map, we ask someone without resources if he or she will
need a lift out, we talk to people, and we’re ready to go when we make that
decision for ourselves.
Remember – no one needs a court order from the county judge
to come in out of the rain.
-30-
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
A
Poetry Tool Kit and a Small Sack of Concrete Verbs
The sorting trays hold syllables
and rhymes
While heavy-duty meter is stowed
below
With a chisel and file for
shaping rough lines
And wire cutters for merciless
editing
Iambs are tightened with the
box-end wrench
The ball-peen hammer is a strong
accent
A few loose screws might constitute
free verse
If they will bother to sort
themselves out
At the end of his shift a worthy
artisan
Picks up the excess adjectives
and adverbs
And burns them
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Something
Slithers Across the Dripping-Damp Walls
It – that vague, nebulous,
amorphous “It” -
Often feels like a prison or a
trap
Or a trap that seems like a
prison wrapped
All around in Milton’s darkness
visible
As walls and bars of adamantine
lies
And gates all frozen to the
floor and the soul
Secured with locks of one’s own careless
decisions
Engraved by others into
immutable laws
It – that vague, nebulous,
amorphous “It” -
To Hell with It
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet. What a ride! Love
affairs, riots, murders, corruption, conspiracies, Copts, Muslims, Christians,
Jews, British colonials, French Colonials, Arabs, Egyptians, revolutionaries, Zionists,
existentialist angst, and family intrigues, written in the late 1950s and set
in Alexandria in the 1930s and during the Second World War. This would make a
great mini-series. There was a movie made in 1969 of the first book, Justine,
and while the casting is good the film is poorly reviewed. I'll look it up on
the Orwellian telescreen.
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
In
a Second-Hand Copy of Durrell’s Clea:
A
School Photograph of a Little Girl
She has obviously been commanded
to smile
And so she projects a dutiful
grin
But she seems to be a happy
child anyway
Proud of her new red shirt with
polka-dots
We send our children to school
to learn to read
To add, subtract, multiply, and
divide into groups
For P.E. class, to line up
nicely for lunch
To pass notes, giggle, and plant
seeds in eggshells
We don’t know how this child’s
image found its way
To an Alexandria that never
really was
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
The
New Moon
The new moon hovering
Over the trees is a surprise
And a happy one
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
You
are not Bi-Polar
You are not bi-polar
‘Tis the planet that’s bi-polar
You are doing fine
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
The
Hunting Camp
He yaf nat of that text a pulled hen,
That seith that hunters ben nat hooly men
-Chaucer, Prologue, 177-178
Friday evening
The merry fellowship of the hunting
camp
In the golden time is one of autumn’s
joys
Unpacking by the light of a kerosene
lamp
Where men for a weekend are once
again boys
Saturday morning, I
Up before dawn, already the
coffee’s made
The ground seems harder than it
did last year
Is that poison ivy where my head
was laid?
Pour me a cuppa that caffeinated
cheer!
Saturday morning, II
With my ancient Enfield I walk
the trails
I really don’t want to see Bambi
today
Along the creek as the mist
unveils
Folk memories and idylls are my
only prey
Saturday afternoon
I rest in the shade of the
forest eaves
Quite at peace, here where I want
to be
The smoke from my pipe drifts
through the leaves
I hope the First Peoples’ spirits
will sit with me
Saturday night
No one got a deer today – that’s
good hearing
I think we were all okay with
that
Cards and jokes and talk in our
little clearing
The occasional flythrough by a
Mexican bat
Sunday morning
As it was in the beginning of
boyhood
As it is now that we are old men
Our world must end, but for others
great good
In the sacred woods of the Lord
- amen
Note:
My
concept of hunting is a stroll through the woods with my 1905 Lee-Enfield.
I have never shot a
deer.
I
have never shot at a deer.
I
will never shoot at a deer.
If
God had meant me to eat a deer He wouldn't have invented Denny's.
Feral
hogs are a different matter.
Camping
with the guys and sitting around the fire with pipes and cigars and tin cups of
Jack Daniel's (AFTER EVERY FIREARM HAS BEEN CLEANED AND STOWED AWAY) and
swapping old stories and bad jokes - that's one of the best things in life.
Lawrence Hall
On the Topic of
Russia
“I have seen the future, and it works.”
Letter to Marie Howe, 3 Apr.
1919, quoted in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
The problem is that Mr. Steffens saw only what the
Soviets wanted him to see, not the reality of censorship, oppression, forced
labor, and millions of Russians, not to mention their victims, dead through genocide
– the Holodomor in Ukraine comes to mind – wars of conquest, mass starvation, mass
imprisonment, disease, and 70 years of economic collapse.
And let us hear everything about Stalin’s pact with his
student Hitler, how the Soviets fed, armed, and supported Hitler’s armies and
Hitler’s ambitions for years until Hitler, like Capone, decided his buddy was
disposable.
Yes, millions of Russians died in Hitler’s invasion of
the Soviet Union, but that invasion was possibly only because of Stalin’s economic
and technological support and through his collusion with Hitler in the conquest
and division of Poland and Czechoslovakia. The Nazis committed genocide in the nations
they conquered, and the Communists committed genocide in all of those lands and
within Russia.
The Soviet Union lasted seventy years by floating on a
sea of its own people’s blood. The last
Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, is wrongly remembered as a liberalizer, but he
granted limited freedoms only in order to maintain the Soviet Union, not to
free the Russian people. President Reagan, Prime Minister Thatcher, St. John
Paul II, a number of uppity Polish shipyard workers, and a few young Germans
young gave the several pushes that brought down the rotten construct.
From 1905 until 1918 Russia was a constitutional monarchy
and then for a few months a democracy before the Bolsheviks infected everything.
After seven decades of horror Russia was in 1989 positioned to form a
functional representative government and rejoin civilization. Russian families,
business people, workers, scientists, artists, engineers, musicians, writers, manufacturers,
dancers, film-makers, and the Russian Orthodox faithful would be free to
determine their own lives and the life of Russia.
But after some sputtering attempts at self-government
Russia is again ruled by a degenerate madman whose concept of parliamentary
procedure is having people who even appear to disagree with him murdered. Lots
of people.
The 21st century could have been the Russian
Century, for Russia, even with the loss of its subject states, is still a huge
land with great wealth in precious metals, oil, gas, coal, agricultural land, a
rich cultural heritage which remains a witness to the world, and a diverse and industrious
population which could out-work and out-produce any other people in the world if
only they were free to do so, free to keep the profits from their own labors, and
free of corrupt central and local administrations, false judges, and grasping
oligarchs.
But thousands of the best young Russian men and women have
been killed in insane colonial wars, thousands are in the new gulags for
presuming to think for themselves, and yet more thousands have fled, taking
their talents and their youthful energy with them to enrich their host nations.
Yes, this could have been the Russian century, but
neither Mr. P nor his oligarchs nor his jingling generalissimos appear ever to
have read Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov with
fictional Fr. Zosima’s most famous words: “Don’t lie. Above all, don’t lie to
yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point
where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him…”
-30-
I have visited
Newfoundland only once, crossing from Nova Scotia to Port aux Basques in June 2005 on the elegant but now-scrapped MV Caribou. Such beauty!
The 18th
century archaism of “New-Found Land” is deliberate.
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Port
aux Basques in September
“Only a fish storm, no
threat to anyone…”
- a weather guy south of the 49th
To our weather guy there is
nothing north of Maine
He has never seen Port aux
Basques
With summer snow still bright along
the hills
Above pot-holey Canada 1 (mind
the moose)
(“Only a fish storm, no threat
to anyone…”)
He has never heard of Cape Ray
or the Newfie Bullet
Or seen the little fishing boats
tacking in at dawn
Or the astrolabe that says to
the voyager
“Now here at last is your dear New-Found
Land”
(“Only a fish storm, no threat
to anyone…”)
He will never mourn the wreckage
and loss
Because for him there is nothing
north of Maine
(“Only a fish storm, no threat
to anyone…”)
Town of
Channel-Port aux Basques | Canada's Ferry Gateway to Newfoundland
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Interrogating the
Text
She says she wants to interrogate the text –
Is she the literary Gestapo, then?
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
All
Students are Safe and Accounted For
School administration says:
We take any and all threats
made regarding our campuses
and students very seriously as
the safety
and security of everyone in
our buildings
is a number one priority the
safety and security
of our staff and students is
a top priority
for the District as such ////
takes any and all threats
made regarding
our campuses seriously and
responds
as if the threat is real /////
and // High Schools
are currently sheltering in place due to information
received via phone involving a threat
the // ISD police department
along with other local agencies
are currently assessing the situation
and additional information will be forthcoming
We ask that visitors avoid coming
to the campus, as no one will be allowed
in or out of the buildings we want to assure
you that all students are safe and accounted for
we will advise when an all-clear is given
for each campus thank you for your patience
and understanding…
The district attorney says
I’m sick of this…no sympathetic
juries
scared, frustrated, and angry we
will hunt you down
Kurt Vonnegut says
So it goes
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
You Must Tell the
Bees
The royal beekeeper…has
informed the hives kept in the grounds of Buckingham Palace and Clarence
House of the Queen’s death.
-U. K. Daily Mail
But of course someone must tell
the bees
Those wing’ed messengers among
the realms
Who pass along the news of
marryings and buryings
According to their proper place
in the order of being
(or of bee-ing)
But of course someone must tell
the bees
For their own health and ours
they mourn the loss
Of master and mistress, and then
welcome the new
With blessings of health and
honey and blooms
But of course someone must tell
the bees -
And they want to hear these things
from you, if you please!
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
“You Did It!”
As Colonel Pickering might say
On occasion my wristwatch reads, “You did it!”
At first I appreciated the congratulations
Though I wasn’t sure of the diddly-did I did
Until I sinked or synched the watch to something else
Whereupon I learned that my watch was praising me
For somehow managing to stand on my feet -
High praise for a drunk or an invalid (may I say so?)
But since so little praise comes to me, I accept it
I imagine standing before the King of Sweden
Who awards me the Nobel for standing at all
Lawrence Hall, HSG
The Queen’s
English and a Strong WiFi Signal
When I was young I was curious about the cover of my big
brother’s high school English book. On it was a color photograph of a young
woman whom I knew to be the Queen of England (you mustn’t say “England” now;
you must say “Britain”). She was very small in the picture and was visually overwhelmed
by the throne and by a huge assemblage of red tapestries that took up most of
the picture.
Eisenhower was our president, the United States was the bestest
nation in the world, God was a Methodist, and children were taught that the
English were the baddies (you may still use “English” and “baddies” in the same
sentence) from whose oppressive rule we (although I had nothing to do with it) had
rightfully freed ourselves.
And yet here was an American high school literature book with
a picture of the Queen on its cover and entitled Adventures in English
Literature. What was all that about?
Although I was a wide reader from the third grade I was
never a disciplined one and read any book that appealed to me: Robin Hood,
Christopher Columbus, Assignment in Space with Rip Foster, all the
Robert A. Heinlein boys’ books, Zane Grey, King Arthur, all the Tarzan yarns, hot
rod stories, hunting and camping tales, Walden, Kipling, Hemingway, J.
Frank Dobie, Nordhoff and Hall’s sea stories, pirate stories, The Red Badge
of Courage, and other books once commonly read by American boys.
I would not have touched poetry with a ten-syllable line
of blank verse. The twelve-year-old-me would have disapproved of the
cough-cough-old me and my fondness for Byron, Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, Coleridge,
and Yevtushenko, but, hey, old men are boring.
And I still like the adventure yarns of my youth.
I did not care about national origins, identity politics,
gender-obsession, or neo-post-whatever-colonialism, and I still cringe at any
obsession with Deeper Meaning, even when it’s there. I liked a good story, and
still do.
Yet here was (and is; I have a copy) a book of poems,
essays, short stories, biographies, hymns, excerpts from the King James Bible,
excerpts from novels, ballads, sermons, speeches, letters, and plays (Macbeth,
Pygmalion, Riders to the Sea, and The Old Lady Shows her Medals).
All of this book’s contents are in some way English.
Although there are selections from Scotland, Africa, Wales, Ireland, and India,
everything centers on England. People of English ancestry were never a majority
in what would come to be the United States, but English organically became the
Ur-culture for the first two centuries of our history. Because of the Empire (shall
we pause for an Orwellian two minutes’ hate?) English literature was an
academic and popular culture core in the U.S.A., Canada, India, Kenya,
Australia, New Zealand, the Caribbean, and wherever else the sun famously never
set.
All civilizations fail, but the collapse of England /
Britain within a generation was stunning. With the failure of power came the
failure of influence, and though the Beatles and James Bond briefly made England
cool, that’s mostly over. The Anglo-centric world is in decline everywhere. “With inky
blots and rotten parchment bonds / That England that was wont to conquer
others / Hath made a shameful conquest of itself” (Richard II). Adventures
in English Literature was published in America for some three decades, and
now it is merely a historical curiosity.
For all its flaws, some real but most merely perceived,
English literature was a unifier. If a man from Zimbabwe was seated next to a
woman from New Zealand and topics of conversation lapsed they could always talk
about whether modern readings of Henry II’s Band of Brothers speech are literal
or ironic. Now they probably would discuss only whether the plane had WiFi
access.
The Soviets meant for the Russian language to be successor
world language, which didn’t work, and now Xi and his un-merry men are re-colonizing
Africa and planning for Mandarin to be the world language.
Domestically, language and literature have become politicized,
weaponized, and even demonized, and one dare not write even a brief note on the
InterGossip (“Stop by the store for a gallon of milk on your way home.”)
without vetting it carefully for fear that even a grocery list will someday subject
its author to prosecution for some offense against sensitivity, inclusiveness,
and the rights of Holsteins to sustainable grass.
We might miss that picture of the Queen.
-30-
