Lawrence Hall
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Logosophiamag.com
Hellopoetry.com
Fellowshipandfairydust.com
The Axis of
Petulance
The North Pole and the South Pole refused to speak –
They accused each other of being polarizing
Saturday, January 14, 2023
The Axis of Petulance
Friday, January 13, 2023
A Village for Our Exile - poem
Lawrence Hall
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Logosophiamag.com
Hellopoetry.com
Fellowshipandfairydust.com
A Village for Our
Exile
Far is that City of God for which we hope
Here the cities of man in which we live
Glorious, but still only refugee camps:
Constantinople, Athens, London, Rome
Give us for our exile a village instead
A pub, a library, a shop, a little
school
Cows and sheep grazing on the grass
of the commons
A hay wain lumbering through the summer stream
Draught horses drinking from the little rill
In the ford below the slow-clacking mill
(Cf. John Constable, “The Hay
Wain”)
Wednesday, January 11, 2023
Subverting Poetic Convention - poem (maybe subversive...)
Lawrence Hall
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Logosophiamag.com
Hellopoetry.com
Fellowshipandfairydust.com
Subverting Poetic Convention
Given that
the convention
Is to subvert
convention
Then to
subvert convention
Is to follow
convention
Or we could craft
poetry
With honesty
and wit
And as for
convention
Give not a
thought to it
Tuesday, January 10, 2023
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Moderated Commentator - doggerel
Lawrence Hall
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Logosophiamag.com
Hellopoetry.com
Fellowshipandfairydust.com
Sinners in the Hands
of an Angry Moderated Commentator
How comforting to know that at the end of this plod
Despite each fault and flaw and fall and fail
We will be judged by our loving God
And not by the readers of the Daily Mail
(Cf. “Sinners in the Hands of
an Angry God,” Jonathan Edwards)
Sunday, January 8, 2023
Raymond Massey in a Funny Hate - weekly column 8 January 2023
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Raymond Massey in a
Funny Hat
Recently I was a bit under the weather and so was confined
to quarters.
I don’t know why we say “under the weather”; we all live
with weather. We can’t be under or over or beside the weather; the weather
simply is.
Anyway, while I was under the same weather as everyone else and
serving as a warm pillow for the dachshunds I found myself idling before the
Orwellian telescreen and marveling at the images and sounds.
I hadn’t watched Rawhide since I was a rug-rat and
was happy to ride again with Mr. Favor, Rowdy, Wishbone, and all the lads
herding sophomores to Sedalia, Missouri.
Rawhide was one of the most popular television shows
from 1959 to 1965, and with its quality production values and writing attracted
some of the best American and international actors as guest stars.
We remember Frankie Laine’s full-voiced, high-octane, yee-haw
rendering of the theme song but tend to forget that the music for the series
was written by Dimitri Zinovievich Tiomkin. Tiomkin was either Ukrainian or
Russian, depending on contemporary politics and borders, and wrote the music
for a generation of Hollywood films, including many for John Wayne.
Wagon Train, 1957 - 1965, in many ways parallels Rawhide
as a pilgrimage or quest featuring a solid core cast and a brilliant series of
guest stars.
One of the stranger Wagon
Train episodes, Princess of a Lost Tribe, has scout Flint McCullough
(Robert Horton) encounter a lost tribe of Aztecs and the requisite beautiful
princess on a mysterious mountain. Montezuma IX (Raymond Massey in a funny hat)
is a descendant of Montezuma and he and Flint have several clunky discussions
on the nature of faith and sacrifice. The dialogue is groan-worthy, but Massey
and Horton manage to keep straight faces throughout.
In the end Flint wins the
princess’s heart but some bad Aztecs rip it out as a sacrifice to the gods
after killing the good Montezuma. Flint escapes down the mountain mourning the
most beautiful woman he has ever known.
Now all of this sounds silly and cheesy
and impossible, like a lesser Edgar Rice Burroughs story or a Star Trek
episode, and it is. One simply accepts it as a yarn.
But then for something truly silly
and cheesy and impossible on television, there was the House of
Representatives.
-30-
Saturday, January 7, 2023
An Accident in the Scriptorium - doggerel
Lawrence Hall
An Accident in the
Scriptorium
One of the monks fainted, and bruised his head;
“This copier is broken,” Brother Armarian said
Wednesday, January 4, 2023
The Machine Pauses (and then Restarts) - Three Days in ICU
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
The Machine Pauses (and
then Restarts)
Within a Dark-Lit Egg
Mechanical Air
Mechanical Light
Electronic Beepings
Procrustes is a Short, Bitter Man Who Doesn’t Like Anyone
Mechanical Air
On the day Papa Benedict died
I lived
And so prayed with him
As the electronics beeped in the new year
Mechanical Light
A crucifix on the wall faded away
And gas was silent in a tube
And when the haze was gone
The crucifix was still there
Electronic Beepings
BeepBEEPBEEPBLEEP beep beep
beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep
I turned to my wristwatch
But it was dead
Procrustes is a Short, Bitter Man Who Doesn’t Like Anyone
Tubes in both arms, and arms must not be bent
Hard plastic bubbles beneath
weary sheets
A plastic paddle of obscure call
buttons
There is no time within no time
All made better
Heilige Elisabeth von Thuringen
And those who serve with her
Quiet voices beyond the door, beside the bed
Soft footfalls hastening to come to us
With baskets from the Lord’s table
(Cf. The Machine Stops,
E.M. Forster)
Wednesday, December 21, 2022
We Haven't Had to Bury Anyone in the Garden - poem
Lawrence Hall
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
We Haven’t Had to Bury Anyone in the Garden
Hands shivering while
insulating the pipes
Extra cover and food for
the animals
Antifreeze for the car;
are the neighbors okay
Some of the store shelves
are empty, but we’ll make do
We have a generator if the
power fails
And lots of wood for the
stove in the den
A good camp stove and a
coffee pot
A roof over our heads and intact
walls
Because we’re on this side
of the ocean
No gunfire, air-raid
warnings, or bombs
Monday, December 19, 2022
A Komboskini for Christmas - short poem
Lawrence Hall
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim’s Journal of Life, Literature
and Love
Fellowship & Fairydust
(fellowshipandfairydust.com)
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
A Komboskini for
Christmas
For Christmas I gave my
friend a komboskini
The seller said it was
made on Mount Athos
Though I in my modern
cynicism suggested Shanghai
But I might have been wrong
Sunday, December 18, 2022
And This the Happy Morn - weekly column 18 December 2022
Lawrence Hall, HSG
And This the Happy
Morn
This is the month,
and this the happy morn,
Wherein
the Son of Heav'n's eternal King,
Of wedded Maid, and
Virgin Mother born,
Our
great redemption from above did bring
-From
“On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity,” John Milton
The Bee Lady and her helper visited the other day, bringing
jars of honey to help us celebrate Advent, Christmas, and breakfast. We host some
of her hives, and it is a joy to see those bees working the seasons of
flowering plants and trees and sipping from the pools of fresh water we keep
for them. Bees are essential for our lives, for without their industry in
pollinating crops we would not eat. Flowers and honey are a happy bonus.
No one has yet messed up Advent (aka “The Christmas Season,”
which it is not), and so we are spared Advent sales and Advent gifts and Advent
movies and news stories babbling about The True Meaning of Advent. Advent is a
season that points to the Nativity, not to itself.
But this liturgical season of quiet anticipation is blessed
with quiet joys anyway: gifts of local honey, for instance, and folks sending
each other homemade cookies and homemade pies and homemade rum cake. A neighbor
gave us a bundle of lightered-pine kindling, now relatively rare. I’m not going
to start a fire with it anytime soon; simply to smell the scent, the East Texas
incense of lightered-pine is to be taken back to childhood on the farm.
Advent and Christmas are seasons in the liturgical calendar,
of course, but culturally they are also seasons of remembrance. This part can
go wrong because of the unreasonable expectations in our cargo-cult
sub-culture. Things are nice (I’m open to a Rolex, a Leica, and a new car,
okay?), but as an old saying goes, God is not at the end going to ask any of us
how much our car cost. I’m a
sentimentalist – I think that years from now a man or woman will remember
happily a childhood doll, train, Christmas dress, fire truck, or first purse
much more than expensive, look-at-how-much-I-spent, battery-powered gimcrackery
that was outdated even as it was manufactured.
I have such a happy Christmas remembrance of my Uncle Bob
giving us boys lengths of small, kid-size rope which he had worked into real
cowboy lassos. I was never good at lassoing anything other than fence posts and
my father’s deer-dog (and I got into trouble for that), but that bit of hand-worked
line is the sort of memory that stays with a man in a way that expensive,
plastic, made-in-Shanghai landfill cannot.
And then there was Aunt Lola’s divinity candy. And
Grandmama’s teacakes. And a Christmas tree from our own patch of woods. Bing
Crosby on the pickup truck radio. The Rug-Rat playing with her new Barbie in a
sunlit window. Sigh.
As Mr. Milton says, the center of Christmas is “the happy
morn,” but all the other joys are wonderful too.
Merry Christmas.
-30-
Friday, December 16, 2022
Here May You See the Tyrant - poem
Lawrence Hall
Here May You See the Tyrant
And live to be the show and gaze o’ th’ time.
We’ll have thee, as our rarer monsters are,
Painted upon a pole, and underwrit
“Here may you see the tyrant.”
-Macbeth V.viii.28-31
Once upon a time he strutted across
the stage
Peering into a cauldron
presented to him
And stirring it about for a
viler taste
Soul-sickness for sale from a
poisoned chalice
But now he lurks in his dime-store
Dunsinane
Conjuring magic baubles that
do not exist
Comic-book ikons of himself for
sale
To sucker the intellectually
innocent
He cannot admit that his life was a lie
A non-fungible token to its end
Thursday, December 15, 2022
Children Following the Star on Christmas Eve - poem
Lawrence Hall
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim’s Journal of Life, Literature
and Love
Fellowship & Fairydust
(fellowshipandfairydust.com)
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Children Following the Star
on Christmas Eve
For Jack and Cate
Who aren’t exactly children now
Except to us old folks who love them
Good children dress warmly to watch for
the star
The star of Bethlehem, the shepherds’
star
The star of the magi, true-guiding star
And more than all of these, the
children’s star
If children fall asleep during the royal
night
It is fitting and just; they wait for the
Light -
The star has led them in its arcing
flight
To worship God in Christmas’ ancient rite
Then home to a late supper, and so to
their beds -
The Infant Jesus blesses our dear little sleepyheads!
Wednesday, December 14, 2022
A London That Never Was - poem
Lawrence Hall
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim’s Journal of Life, Literature
and Love
Fellowship & Fairydust
(fellowshipandfairydust.com)
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
A London That Never Was
The London of Boswell
never truly was
And yet it is the truest London
of all:
Coffee at The Turk’s Head,
beer at The Mitre
Not much minding either
bishops or Turks
A pipe and a pint with
Johnson and the greats:
Oliver Goldsmith, Reynolds
and Garrick
Hester Thrale, and
Boswell, of course
Books and papers and arguments
and poems
If we are going to visit London
someday
We had better visit
Boswell and Johnson first
Tuesday, December 13, 2022
Why Should I Always Fly with a Tennis Ball? - poem
Lawrence Hall
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim’s Journal
of Life, Literature and Love
Fellowship & Fairydust
(fellowshipandfairydust.com)
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Why Should I Always Fly with a Tennis Ball?
The ad is served like a
tennis ball
Across the net and just out
of bounds
A tennis ball wouldn’t hog
the armrest
But I’d much rather travel
with a friend
You, perhaps, if you bring
along a book
Or maybe a crossword, but not
a video game
We could look up from the
page and ask
The attendant for a pot of
tea for two
Traveling with you would be ever so grand
Because
A tennis ball could never hold your hand
Monday, December 12, 2022
Universal All-Purpose InterGossip Post Response for The Year of Our Daily Mail 2022
Lawrence Hall
Universal
All-Purpose InterGossip Post Response
for The Year of Our Daily Mail 2022
Tinder box iconic cannon
fodder
iconic clown show iconic
clown circus
iconic clown car iconic
clown train
iconic absolute clown show
train iconic
he didn’t get the memo
iconic
you had one job iconic I
have no words
iconic new and selected
iconic
subvert iconic at its best
iconic
I’m getting the popcorn
iconic much
iconic subversive iconic
witch hunt
iconic fairy tale wedding
iconic
unsung iconic what could
possibly go wrong
iconic there, there fixed
it for you iconic
FACT I’ll wait iconic oh,
wait iconic
snake-oil salesman iconic
taking the world
by storm iconic all aboard
the crazy train
iconic you could google it
iconic
tightknit community iconic
worst
case scenario iconic Tinder
box
iconic cannon fodder iconic
he didn’t get the memo iconic
you had one job iconic I
have no words
iconic new and selected
iconic
subvert iconic at its best
iconic
much iconic subversive
iconic
witch hunt iconic fairy
tale wedding
iconic unsung iconic what
could
possibly go wrong iconic there,
fixed it for you iconic FACT
iconic
I’ll wait iconic oh, wait
iconic
snake oil salesman iconic taking
the world
by storm iconic you could google it
iconic tightknit community iconic
worst case scenario iconic end of
iconic quelle surprise
iconic wheelhouse
iconic dog and pony show
iconic
iconic in the crosshairs
iconic
jaw dropping iconic supply
chain iconic
decolonize iconic
post-colonial
iconic neo-colonial iconic
just dropped iconic unshackled
writers
iconic quagmire iconic not
out of the woods
just wow iconic facepalm
iconic
LOL iconic pulled out all
the stops
iconic systematic racism iconic
systemic racism iconic
structural
racism iconic RINO iconic
Demoncrat iconic
Republicrap
iconic bombshell iconic game
changer
iconic wow iconic just wow
iconic
end of story iconic tight knit iconic
field day iconic perfect
storm iconic
winter wonderland iconic
Setting a Cat Among the Pigeons - poem
Lawrence Hall
Setting a Cat Among the Pigeons
After two months
I filed a complaint with
the insurance company
After four months
I filed a complaint with
the state insurance board
Neither the cat nor the
pigeons are much moved
Except to disapprove of me
for noticing
That nothing much has
moved
The Decline of the British Empire - doggerel
Lawrence Hall
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim’s Journal of Life, Literature
and Love
Fellowship & Fairydust
(fellowshipandfairydust.com)
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
The Decline of the British Empire
Whatever happens
We have got
Milton and Shakespeare
And they have not
But this is what
They have got:
A strong economy
And we have not
(Based on a bit of 19th
century triumphalist doggerel, attributed to Hilaire Belloc and others, about
the Maxim gun. And let The People shout, “Decolonize these lines!”)
Sunday, December 11, 2022
The Second and Most Efficient Memory Device - weekly column 11 December 2022
Lawrence Hall
The Second and
Most Efficient Memory Device
The concept of the free public library with access to all
is, like rural electrification programs, public roads, untaxed airwaves, public
schools, university agricultural extensions, and other outreach plans, an
expression of the burst of genius and energy that helped make this nation great.
The idea that all citizens, rich or
poor, should have access to learning, freedom of movement, the exchange of ideas,
and possibilities for self-improvement does not originate in America but this
is the nation that made it work.
For most of human history access to learning, to the
ability to read and write and measure the world and map the stars, to
participate freely in what the Romans called the res publica (the
republic, that is, the public life), was limited to a relatively small upper
class. England, for instance, gave the
world the genius of Shakespeare; America saw to it that everyone had access
to Shakespeare.
The stunning and inexplicable failures of access via
racial, gender, and class biases demonstrate the point that possibilities must be
available to all, and that a universally literate citizenry makes life better
for all of us.
Books have always been expensive, but the American
invention of pulping wood for paper in the 19th century made them
less so. The free public library meant that those still-pricey volumes would
circulate among the people as does the air, the air of freedom.
Libraries have changed, and in many ways not for the
better. In our time the successful and stabilizing repositories of knowledge
and aesthetics have been seen by some as weapons of ideology, with the
promotion of limited points of view and the attendant suppression of others.
Public libraries have sometimes been required by the governing authorities to
serve as non-emergency homeless shelters and as centers of political activity.
In times of crisis, yes, a library or any other building
can be used for shelter. A great many libraries in Ukraine, for instance, are
of necessity helping keep the dispossessed housed. But housing is not what a
library is otherwise for.
The freedom to assemble peaceably is an essential value of
our republic (with its very democratic systems of voting), but serving as the
headquarters of a political party or ideology of any kind is not what a library
is for.
Adult men and women are free to attend certain entertainments,
but those entertainments are not what a library is for. No one ever entered the Cheyenne Social Club
or Miss Kitty’s Long Branch Saloon to demand that the girls cover up and the
boys put down their beers for an hour’s discussion of the Wife of Bath and Lady
Macbeth as symbols of feminist empowerment.
All things to their proper venues.
And let’s get real – news features about some guy
costuming himself as Elsie the Cow in makeup for a function staged in a public
library are news because they are as rare as they are inappropriate. It doesn’t
happen here, and it won’t. Librarians are guardians of civilization; posturing loudmouths
with bullhorns are not.
On the other hand, there’s all the unhappy content in the
MePhones parents provide their children.
You think the kid walking down the street with the little Orwellian
telescreen in his hand is reading Plato’s concepts of the good, the true, and
the beautiful?
Back to the books, everyone.
-30-
The Objective Correlative of the Construction Trades - poem
Lawrence Hall
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim’s Journal of Life, Literature
and Love
Fellowship & Fairydust
(fellowshipandfairydust.com)
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
The Objective Correlative of the Construction Trades
A builder takes a vision
of a surface
A vision of place,
stability, and horizon
Connections
between a bookcase and a window
Smooth
transitions from sitting room to bath
And
pours them all out as concrete indeed
The Cat as an Argument Against the Concept of Evolution - poem
Lawrence Hall
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim’s Journal of Life, Literature
and Love
Fellowship & Fairydust
(fellowshipandfairydust.com)
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
The Cat as an Argument Against the Concept of
Evolution
On the sixth day God made
the animals
The cat generally
disapproved of the others
And in a superior fashion
licked its paws
In the springtime shade of
the very first oak
The very first cat looked
upon the very first bird
And ate it
And the cat said that the bird was good
Chewy in musculature and
crunchy in bone
Then when the Creator
rebuked the cat
The cat ignored Him
And in a superior fashion licked
its paws
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