If a Bee Stings Me - rhyming couplet

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Hellopoetry.com

 

If a Bee Stings Me

 

If a bee stings me, pity the poor bee

If a wasp stings me, then pity me!

"A World of Light and Love" - weekly column 7 May 2023

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

 

“A World of Light and Love”

 

This past weekend was laden with possibilities for joy and exercise and merriment with friends: Cinco de Mayo (okay, probably not a big occasion in France), watching the first coronation of a British king since 1937 and of any British monarch since 1953, attending softball games, baseball games, picnics, high school proms and after-parties, digging in the garden, and ordinary family gatherings.

 

And why do old folks slam dominoes down so loudly?

 

These happy occasions are celebrated by us when we think of others instead of ourselves. We don’t want to be the King of Great Britain but we do want him to be “happy and glorious.” We want our kids to win their games and, more than that, build themselves physically and ethically. We host a picnic and hope that we have served something everyone wants. We take snapshots of our graduating seniors and share in their hopes and dreams. We sit in lawn chairs and talk about old times while the little children chase lightnin’ bugs in the gathering dusk. Yes, we enjoy these celebrations of innocence but most of our delight is in giving moments of joy to others.

 

Some, however, find this difficult. Problems obtain in everyone’s life: disappointments in relationships or career, jealousies, resentments, waking up at 0200 replaying in one’s mind the things that appear to have gone wrong during the day.

 

There’s an old saying that when things are bad the most courageous thing you do each morning is to get up out of bed and face the day. Most people in the worst of times manage to do so.

 

Tragically, some don’t. The false images of success beamed at us through advertisements and popular entertainment, the cycles of hate blaring from talk shows, the politicization even of weather and health care – all these external drag-downs are difficult to resist.

 

And we are left wondering why a trip to the mall for a new swimsuit and maybe a set of beach towels arouses murderous hatred in some twisted soul. We wonder why an after-prom party involves a casualty list instead of a guest list. We wonder why folks waiting for a city bus are targeted for death. We wonder why a male – one could hardly refer to him as a man – shoots a small child.

 

C. S. Lewis, in his A Preface to Paradise Lost, reminds us of the pointlessness of Satan’s rebellion against God, and of our own potential for rebelling against God by focusing on ourselves:

 

No one had in fact done anything to Satan…In the midst of a world of light and love, of song and feast and dance, he could find nothing to think of more interesting than his own prestige. (P. 96)

 

-30-

 

A Dream About Birdcage Walk - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Hellopoetry.com

 

A Dream About Birdcage Walk

 

In the perfection of an impossibility

I was tagging along behind Margaret Thatcher

And Saint Thomas More; they were speaking

Of great and transcendent ideas

 

I asked them if we could go to Victoria Station

And look at the trains

President Grant's Speeding Ticket - Weekly column 4.2.2023

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

But First There was President Grant’s Speeding Ticket

 

I’ve never been arrested, but, hey, I’m still young; there’s a chance.  Some of the nicest people I know have spent the occasional weekend at the county sheriff’s resort and spa, some opting for longer stays, so I wonder if I’ve been missing something.

 

If someday I receive a stainless steel invitation to jail I can’t imagine that a private jet and a motorcade will be part of the intake process, or that extra police and the Secret Service will escort me, or that barriers and blocked-off streets will ease my way inside to the receptionist, concierge, complimentary cocktails, a fingerprint manicure, souvenir photographs, and all the other amenities I’ve been reading about with regard to the anticipated indictment of a former president this week.

 

I don’t recall any stories about law officers or attorneys general sending courtesy notes to wanted men to turn themselves in, pretty please, but then I am behind the times in so many ways. Perhaps soon all arrests will be prefaced by formal courtesies:

 

 

5 April 2023

 

Dear Mr. Percival “Snake Eyes” Thorpe-Ponsonby,

 

You are cordially invited to a reception hosted by

The Sheriff and the District Attorney

At the County Courthouse on

 

17 April 2023

2:00 P.M.

 

Valet Parking

Dress: Afternoon Business Casual

 

RSVP

 

In 1872 William H. West, a D.C. city police officer, did not send then-President Ulysses Grant an invitation or a ticket-by-mail; he collared him in the streets of the Capitol for speeding in his one-horse buggy. Officer West, who was a Civil War veteran and black, is reported to have said to the President:

 

 

"I cautioned you yesterday, Mr. President, about fast driving, and you said, sir, that it would not occur again…I am very sorry, Mr. President, to have to do it, for you are the chief of the nation, and I am nothing but a policeman, but duty is duty, sir, and I will have to place you under arrest."

 

-Ulysses S. Grant Was Arrested 151 Years Before Trump's Indictment (businessinsider.com)

 

The President did not pull the vulgar “Don’t you know who I am!?” thing, paid his $20 fine, and was apparently a more careful driver thereafter.

 

And that, dear readers, is a wonderful remembrance of one of those moments when this nation got things just right.

 

-30-

But His Airplane Features Gold Seatbelt Buckles - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Hellopoetry.com

 

 

But His Airplane Features Gold Seatbelt Buckles

 

Trump calls for removal of every top official investigating him

-The Hill

 

Article II, Section 2

 

Before he enter the Execution of his office

 

“District Attorney Bragg is a danger to our Country,

 

He shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:-

 

and should be removed immediately,

 

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will

 

along with Radical Lunatic Bombthrower Jack Smith,

 

Faithfully execute the Office of President

 

who is harassing and intimidating innocent people

 

Of the United States, and will to the best

 

at levels not seen before, ‘Get Trump’ Letitia James,

 

Of my Ability preserve, protect, and defend

 

the worst Attorney General in the United States,

 

The Constitution of the United States.

 

and Atlanta D.A. Fani Willis, who is trying to make PERFECT phone calls

into a plot to destroy America, but reigns over the most violent Crime

Scene in America, and does nothing about it!

Censoring the Books No One Reads Anyway - weekly column 3.26.2023

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Censoring the Books No One Reads Anyway

 

The not-so-grand inquisitors are now coming for Agatha Christie – Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple are decreed insensitive and the narratives of their adventures, which began during the First World War, are to be recalled and rewritten for the delicate sensitivities of a population that mostly doesn’t read at all.

 

Maybe even the titles will be Orwelled:  Lord Edgeware Retires, Unpleasantness on the Nile, The Absence of Roger Ackroyd, Unhappiness on the Links, Awkwardness on the Orient Express, Mrs. McGinty’s Moved Away, and Inclusive Values Under the Sun.

 

Roughly 80% of Americans are literate. This skews higher for those born in the U.S.A.  [48+ US Literacy Statistics 2023 - Percentage by State (thinkimpact.com)]. The problem is not that Americans can’t read; the problem is that often they no longer do so because they no longer perceive a need for it. Once upon most households subscribed to a daily newspaper and several news or general interest magazines, but that is rare now. The news comes mostly by noise on screens, and even when there are words they are usually displayed in very short sentences and seldom with any paragraphing.

 

Much newswriting is so simplistic that one might think it was carefully limned on a Big Chief tablet, which is something else that has been made to disappear.

 

The dumbing-down of language and timorous self-censorship affects the national discourse. It is embarrassing to view an elected national leader calling out one word at a time from a prompting device. It is also embarrassing to see a television newsie stumble over simple vocabulary while employing the same old filler language we’ve heard for years. And what  has led news writers to refer to one person as “they?”

 

And now almost anything one chooses to read can be a matter of fear. In an unhappy era  when even the weather has become politicized, a village cozy crime yarn like Murder in the Vicarage can hardly escape censorship by the sort of Miz Grundys who seek only for outrage, not for enlightenment.

 

In an Agatha Christie yarn the murder is the crime; now the police inspector might arrest Dame Agatha for a failure to refer to the suspect by their (cough) preferred pronouns.

 

Imagine what the busybodies are going to do with Louis L’Amour and your favorite authors.

 

-30-

Nguyen and Tex - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Logosophiamag.com

Hellopoetry.com

Fellowshipandfairydust.com

 

Nguyen and Tex

 

The receptionist calls loudly for Nguyen

Mispronouncing the name Nuh-Goo-Yen

Which is what some Americans still do

Although the patient is an American too

 

Some usages we need to narrow down

Some usages we need to broaden a bit

This is a medical office waiting room

Where all may diversify on the guest wifi

 

An Irrelevant Observation:

 

The thought occurs that calling for Nguyen in Saigon

Would be like calling for Tex in Abilene

China Beach Spring Break - as a poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Logosophiamag.com

Hellopoetry.com

Fellowshipandfairydust.com

 

China Beach Spring Break

 

“Remember we are special guests here;

we make no demands and seek no special treatment.”

 

-A Pocket Guide to Viet-Nam, 1969

 

We called it China Beach; I don’t know why

Those wonderful beaches are in Viet-Nam

But apparently no Vietnamese were allowed

Behind OUR wire along OUR beach, OUR surf

 

Shabby little snack shacks and latrines

And in his shabby little tower a guard

In his striped helmet and aviator shades

Yawning through his moment in history

 

The beaches of Fort Lauderdale; I don’t know why -

That’s where the young go now to die

China Beach Spring Break - weekly column 19 March 2023

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

China Beach Spring Break

 

Long, long ago in a land far, far away, Rasmussen, Mueller, Schutrumpf, I, and a few others sometimes took a few hours away from the dispensary at Camp Tien Sha for a swim at China Beach.

 

The beach itself was a designated recreational area with barbed wire, firepits, barbed wire, picnic tables, barbed wire, some basic sheds for toilets and changing, barbed wire, someone in a tower with a firearm, barbed wire, beautiful white sand, barbed wire, the impossibly blue South China Sea, and barbed wire.

 

And we had firearms too; we took turns sitting on the tailgate of a pickup or in the front seat of a Jeep with an M-14 (which always worked; the M-16 was the pouty Princess Phone of weaponry) or a .45 pistol.

 

And we didn’t like that part. No one wanted to take a weapon to the beach; we wanted to swim and kick at a soccer ball in the sand and forget for a while.

 

We didn’t think about looking like John Wayne or showing off or, most absurd of all, “accessorizing” a weapon. Weapons just had to be because there was a war on.

 

And now our American beaches of happy memory feature body counts [https://www.bing.com/search?q=spring+break+violence&qs=ds&form=QBRE]  while Viet-Nam’s China Beach is a peaceful resort area [china beach vietnam - Search (bing.com)].

 

Going to the beach for spring break is associated with university students – the ones not working their way through college on the night shift – but it is difficult perceiving the future engineers, attorneys, writers, architects, philosophers, mathematicians, physicians, nurse practitioners, and other professionals in those unhappy scenes of shown on the telescreen.

 

A reality is that many students double up their work shifts during spring break and others, more comfortably fixed, volunteer with all sorts of worthy causes because that’s how their parents raised them and it’s the right thing to do.

 

I wish the networks would feature the CNA taking extra shifts during spring break to put herself or himself through RN school, or the future architect or engineer taking a week with Habitat for Humanity.

 

Yes, yes, “if it bleeds it leads,” blah-blah-blah, but it doesn’t have to be so.

 

-30-

Wake Up, Back Yard! - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Logosophiamag.com

Hellopoetry.com

Fellowshipandfairydust.com

 

Wake Up, Back Yard!

 

Wake up, back yard! The day is warm and bright

The water hoses are stiff, the nozzles are fouled

And I’m stiff too, but we are called by the morning light

To celebrate this spring-before-spring day

 

Brave seedlings from last year’s sunflowers arise

Among the tiny wings of zinnia buds

And the pushy skunk cabbages who hang around

Like playground bullies who ought to go find jobs

 

The yellow pollen teases through my nose

And everywhere this happy new year grows!

Trains Well Trained - weekly column 3.12.23

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Trains Well Trained

 

Long, long ago my great-uncle of happy memory, who shall remain nameless, drove high-speed freight trains for one of America’s great railroads, which will also remain nameless although it was long ago absorbed by a series of other railroads and investment companies.

 

Uncle Nameless wore Coke-bottle glasses at home and was far too old and visually-impaired to be driving a Studebaker Hawk much less a high-speed freight.  But every year he passed his physical exam because he had memorized the official company eye chart. And in all his years with the railroad he never had a wreck.

 

Once upon a time railroads bore real names, not simply strings of consonants, and each promoted its own romance of the rails through its flagship passenger trains: the Santa Fe Chiefs and Super Chiefs, the New York Central 20^th Century Limited, the Milwaukee Road Hiawatha, The Missouri-Kansas Texas Southern Belle, the Illinois Central City of New Orleans, the Southern Pacific Arcadian, the several Missouri Pacific Eagles, the CB&Q Zephyr, and on and on.

 

But beginning in the 1950s with the development of commercial air travel through vast government subsidies, a failure of government to encourage the improvement of rail infrastructure, and possibly a failure of the corporate alligator-shoe boys to update service and marketing, the vestigial passenger rail service is now mostly a subsidized government-travel perk for the northeast and the California coast through the indifferent Amtrak scheme.

 

The remaining freight services have been bought, sold, resold, renamed, absorbed, and degraded to little more than a confusing mix of utilities. Possibly some of the owners live in other countries, immune from American laws.

 

We are all aware of the recent wrecks of freight trains with the loss not simply of timber or cotton or cars or machinery, but of weird chemicals that poison the air, water, and soil.  These trains and the tracks carry the latest electronics for safety, and yet they sometimes fail.

 

In Uncle Nameless’ time a train did not leave the yard without a full crew: engineer, fireman, conductor, and the appropriate number of brakemen. The railroads and unions were conflicted over the concept of “featherbedding,” that is, the notion that most of the crew were expensive and pointless.

 

But all those crewmen were watching the train and everything around it all the equipment, and all the signals. They keep the train and thus everyone along the line safe.

 

Now the crews have been minimized and instead of a caboose with a human observer watching the train for “hot boxes” (failing wheels) and other threats, all there is at the tail of a freight train is a computerized box.

 

I’m only speculating in wondering if modern American freight trains are adequately crewed.

 

I am not speculating when I assert that any train needs a full crew, including the good old caboose and its wide-awake human observers watching up the line of travel for equipment problems. Any locomotive needs at least two crew in the cab at all times. This is not feather-bedding; this is good safety practice, and good safety practices are, in the end, also good economic practices: an observer in a caboose is much less expensive than months of rescue, restoration, and lawsuits.

 

-30-

 

Waiting for the Surgery 'Phone Call - not technically a haiku

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Logosophiamag.com

Hellopoetry.com

Fellowshipandfairydust.com

 

Waiting for the Surgery ‘Phone Call

 

Waiting for that call

Like waiting for my draft notice

All those years ago

King Charles Invited the Wrong People - weekly column 5 March 2023

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

King Charles Invited the Wrong People

 

-Saint Matthew 22:3

 

In the British monarchy (1,500 years and still in business) the successor becomes monarch by the Grace of God, not by the gracelessness of a caucus or a TV network poll, immediately upon the death of his or her predecessor. The coronation changes nothing, but is instead a religious occasion reminding the king or queen that he or she is nothing without God. There are crowns and robes and processions and blessings, but “uneasy lies the head that wears the crown”(King Henry IV, Part II) because the theme inherent in the coronation liturgy is “Man, thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return” (Genesis 3:19).

 

A king or a reigning queen is not an oligarch; the job comes with observable perks but also with twenty-four-hours of usually unseen obligations to the people for the rest of the monarch’s life. Some nice sets of wheels come with the gig but as we learn from history (you know, one of those irrelevant liberal arts), the king might ride in a nice carriage today but in a tumbril tomorrow.

 

A constitutional monarchy is not a Disney movie.

 

After the solemnities of the coronation itself, though, there are merriments and parties and parades and entertainments throughout the kingdom. King Charles invited a number of fashionable entertainers for some of the more fashionable parties, but most of them have refused the invitation. Somehow the cool kids J.K. Rowlinged them.

 

And that is probably a good thing. The City traders, three-passport-holders, cinema stars, three-chord commandos, transient oligarchs, and wealthy exiles from other nations have no loyalty to anything but their next business deal. And make no mistake, the musician in ragged jeans wailing comradely counter-cultural songs is Mr. Big Business indeed.

 

King Charles might learn from this embarrassment that the choristers of St. Michael’s Church in Chesterton are loyal to the kingdom and to the person of the king; a famous chanteuse paid millions to entertain at an oil sheik’s wedding might be less interested.

 

The United Kingdom and the Commonwealth nations are rich with church choirs, Girl Guides, Boy Scouts, amateur theatrical troupes, veterans’ clubs, dance classes, marching bands, soloists, military bands, sea chanties from Newfoundland, the music and arts of Australia, the Bahamas, Belize, Canada, Grenada, Jamaica, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Antigua and Barbuda, Scots pipers, Irish dancers, Welsh singers, and whatever it is that Cornishmen do.

 

These are people from all over the world who get their hands dirty working proper jobs and on weekends practice and celebrate their arts because they love what they do. They would be honored to share their gifts with their king.

 

The invitations to entertain at the coronations should have gone first to those who from overseas will host fundraisers for plane tickets for the local band, and those closer who will have to take a bus or a train to get to London, wrestling a tuba aboard while the driver fusses: “Get a move on, Alf; we ain’t got all day!”

 

Invitations to the nabobs and poncies, brittle and self-indulgent in their ingratitude, perhaps should never have gone out at all.

 

“God save the king” is a noble sentiment, but a nobler one would be for the king to say, from his heart, “God save the British people.”

 

-30-

 

A Dead Bug in the Hospital - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Logosophiamag.com

Hellopoetry.com

Fellowshipandfairydust.com

 

A Dead Bug in the Hospital

 

Recumbent on a gurney, little to do

Except to wait and think and hope and pray

Not sure where I was in the surgical queue

Above me the fluorescents, where a dead bug lay

 

We were both quiet, he especially so

I would have asked him how he came to rest

On a panel of plastic; I wanted to know -

He had been blinded by the light, I guessed

 

I thought of this as I lay in my too-short bed

“You’re in recovery now,” a kind voice said

Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaask! - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Logosophiamag.com

Hellopoetry.com

Fellowshipandfairydust.com

 

Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaask!

 

Three years ago I strolled into my fav café

The room grew quiet, and then a chorus did say:

          Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaask!

 

In guilt and shame I put the forgotten object on

My sin of omission had been masked upon:

          Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaask!

 

Two years ago I walked into that place

My now-remembered mask upon my face

          Sneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeer!

 

For politics had changed within a year

We don’t want no Commie masks in here

          Sneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeer!

 

This year between the mandates and the bans

Is it still okay if I wash my hands?

The Shape of a Poem, the Shape of a Life - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Logosophiamag.com

Hellopoetry.com

Fellowshipandfairydust.com

 

The Shape of a Poem, the Shape of a Life

 

A Consideration of Robert Herrick

 

Yes, they are awkward, those poems written in shapes

But if God writes our lives as poetry

Limned and formed for our continuation

We ask that He shape us with clarity and charity

 

A line of verse is not a scattering of thoughts

Flung randomly as leaves upon the ground

But rather a thoughtful, heartful shaping of meaning

To forward life to its logical end

 

Yes, they are awkward, those poems written in shapes

But we are awkward, if not shaped with love

Who Has Been Eating My Chair? - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Who Has Been Eating My Chair?

 

(Which Goldilocks did not ask)

 

Lawn chairs are for lawn-sitting quite at our ease

Soft summer evenings with a book and a glass

With birds and squirrels chittering away

Merrily over their supper of chicken scratch

 

Lawn chairs are presumably not nutritious

But every morning mine has been gnawed away more

Its cotton cover shredded and ripped and torn

The puffy filler scattered all over the lawn

 

What creatures in the night fight, chew, and riot

To make my comfortable old chair their diet?

You Don't Imagine Your Sunday School Teacher - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Logosophiamag.com

Hellopoetry.com

Fellowshipandfairydust.com

 

You Don’t Imagine Your Sunday School Teacher

 

You don’t imagine your Sunday school teacher

As a once-upon-a-time young girl

A slender young girl with flowers in her hair

Running barefoot through a summer field

 

To meet her other self at the edge of the trees

Where the honeysuckle vines cling to each other

You don’t imagine your Sunday school teacher

As a once-upon-a-time young girl

 

Except sometimes when she pauses and sighs

And her eyes look beyond the Jesus-poster walls

The Ninth Commandment 2.0 - doggerel

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Logosophiamag.com

Hellopoetry.com

Fellowshipandfairydust.com

 

The Ninth Commandment 2.0

 

It’s on the InterGossip; it must be true

Now let us see what people are saying about you!

The Honorable Kevin McCarthy Recognizes Tucker Carlson - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Logosophiamag.com

Hellopoetry.com

Fellowshipandfairydust.com

 

The Honorable Kevin McCarthy Recognizes Tucker Carlson

 

And only Tucker Carlson

 

The First Amendment defends everyone’s views

And does not surrender the nation to Fox News