In August Falls the Magic - All Major Credit Cards Accepted

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

In August Falls the Magic

All Major Credit Cards Accepted

No meaning obtains in calendars and clocks
High on a wall, beyond a small boy’s reach
A childhood summer shimmers out of time
July is but another butterfly

To dance and play among young apple trees
A re-Creation thus remembering
Before-Time when we danced among the stars
And played with them like little fairy-lamps

In August falls the magic when, stained with scales,
Foul Satan hisses to us: “Back-to-school sales”

I Wish I Wuz a Sheriff's Deputy - doggerel

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

I Wish I Wuz a Sheriff's Deputy

I wish I wuz a sheriff’s deputy
The traffic laws would mean nothing to me

I’d cruise through the red lights and all them stop signs
But give everyone else lots of tickety-fines

At the café’ I’d park in the handicapped zone
Then drive by the school yakking on my cell phone

Turn signals for me? A thing of the past!
And when scooting through town I’d drive real fast

Yeah, if I wuz a sheriff’s deputy
The traffic laws would mean nothing to me

I will Re-Name this 'Blog in the Next Few Weeks

30 July 2019

Dear Friends,

In the next few weeks I will re-name this 'blog. I propose to call it

Lawrence Hall.blogspot.com

If this does not appear by that name by mid-August please email me at mhall46184@aol for a new name that blogspot has found acceptable.

When I began this web presence several years ago I meant it to be storage and backup for my scribbles as well as a way of sharing my poetry and weekly columns with you.

The current title, Reactionary Drivel, is a humorous allusion to something Evelyn Waugh wrote in one of his books or stories (which I cannot now find); however, in our humorless times, Reactionary Drivel has on occasion offended political partisans (or, rather, dimwits), both Righty-Tighty and Lefty-Loosey. 

In my youth I identified as a Republican in the tradition of William Buckley and Ronald Reagan because of their even-handed patriotism, their intellectual endeavors, and their generosity of spirit. I also perceived this same love of our country and our many peoples in President Reagan's good adversary and good friend, Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill.  In illo tempore both of the dominant political parties shared love of country and a determination to do what was right for all the people despite disagreeing - disagreeing, not screaming with fists clenched - on how to make it so. They also loved a glass of Irish whiskey, good conversation, and a good joke.

Such does not obtain now, and I do not identify with any political party or sub-group. Because the innocent joke about reactionary drivel offends both metaphorical Mensheviks and metaphorical Bolsheviks, I am retiring it, even as, for the past twelve years, I have retired my identification with a political party that I did not leave, but which, as President Reagan once said in another context, has left me.

Jay Parini, in his otherwise interesting and useful Why Poetry Matters, lapses surprisingly when he argues that "all poetry is political," and proceeds to make an implied argument that poetry must always be propaganda (Pp. 20, 21, and 121). 

Poetry can be political, but then it ceases to be a free thought because of its servitude to a cause. That poetry is and must be political is a thesis of tyrannies, and I repudiate it. 

I choose to pursue the good, the true, and the beautiful with you, and will not subject my poor attempts at writing to any ideology.

Cordially,



Lawrence Hall

Partissssssssan Politicssssssssss - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Partisssssan Politicssssssss

Snakes fighting in a rutted logging trail
A chicken snake against a rattlesnake
Whipping the dust with their reptilian lust
For death among the ridings of despair

The rattlesnake is an endangered species
The chicken snake is okay with that, and strikes
The thrashers poise and pounce, loathsome and foul
Until the chicken snake slowly takes the rattler

Through peristalsis down into its maw

the poor rattlesnake

Writhing desperately for a forced recount

The Doomsday Wristwatch and Fitness Tracker - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Doomsday Wristwatch and Fitness Tracker

Since Mickey’s hands are now at two ‘til twelve
Let’s pour our poor doomed selves another glass
We’ll have only our ashes then to shelve
When that great big explosion comes to pass

And as that big bang bangs I’ll kiss my kvass
Goodbye. My watch needs charging anyway
The Gotterdammerung should give it some gas
To tell the time on that Wagnerian new day

Oh! Mickey’s hands are now at that midnight -
Farewell, dear friends; it’s been a wild delight!



(What? Are you still here…?)

Wisteria, Ivy, and Grape - for the Children of Summer - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Wisteria, Ivy, and Grape

For the Children of Summer

Wisteria, ivy, and grape: they cling
To the oak tree’s shaggy, craggy old bark
And up it and down it themselves they fling
Wandering paths with many a loop and arc

Among wisteria, ivy, and grape

Almost hidden highways, up to the sky
That make green pilgrim roads for little folk
For tiny bugs and ants, who cannot fly
But in their journeys play and peek and poke

Among wisteria, ivy, and grape

The little creatures climb along leaf and limb -
Oh, wouldn’t you like to be one of them!

Among wisteria, ivy, and grape

The Log Truck of Unrequited Dreams - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

If You See a Log Truck You’ll Have Good Luck

Playin’ on the back porch, got an old dog
Chewed my toy car from the ten-cent store
Scared my dear momma with a green toad-frog
When she told my daddy I got my britches wore

(If you see a log truck you’ll have good luck)

Early get the cows up, early off to school
Running up the lane to catch the yaller bus
Paddled by the principal for actin’ like a fool
Hours in the classroom hearin’ Teacher fuss

(If you see a log truck you’ll have good luck)

Then in the afternoon to the locker room
With hardly any time for a potty stop
Coach-Bubba’s rolling bassy voice of doom
Bellowing “I WANNA HEAR THE LEATHER POP!

(If you see a log truck you’ll have good luck)

Runnin’ the roads in an old-timey Ford
A fifth of Jack Daniels underneath the seat
Stupidly standin’ on the running board
Singin’ to the radio, O so sweet!

(If you see a log truck you’ll have good luck)

Runnin’ the roads on graduation night
Well, hello, great big world, and here I am
They say I got to get a job now, sure, that’s right
Say, buddy, what’s this place called Viet-Nam?

But

If you see a log truck
                                   you’ll have
                                                      good luck

Decolonize Decolonizing - weekly column

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Decolonize Decolonizing

 

          “… the prevalent spirit of high-flown rhetoric which has been spread everywhere…The first time you hear such
          talk you think ‘What breadth of imagination, what richness!’ But in fact it’s so pompous just because it is so
          unimaginative and second-rate.”

-Yuri, Doctor Zhivago, pp. 284-285

The Whitney Museum of American Art (https://whitney.org/) in New York City was founded in 1934 in support of 20th and now 21st century art – paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs, films, performances, and other expressions of creativity. Not only does The Whitney maintain a permanent collection for the public but also encourages young artists through twice-yearly shows funded by private donations.

The Whitney, through its donors, employees, volunteers, and participating artists, has given the world an artistic outreach and showcase matching the great museums of St. Petersburg, London, and Paris.

Some of America’s greatest artists developed their artistic careers with the help of The Whitney.

Naturally this evil must be stopped.

One of the current trustees of The Whitney is Warren Kanders, and he is associated with a company (http://www.safariland.com/brands/safariland/) that manufactures and sells sporting goods and police protective gear. They do not make or sell firearms, but they do sell tear gas to law enforcement.

Various organizations of Miz Grundys have chosen to seize upon this one product as a pretext for censoring free artistic expression. As ordered by their handlers they make posters, block the free movement of artists and other citizens, and yell “Decolonize this place!” (https://hyperallergic.com/510834/whitney-biennial-boycott-response/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20072519%20-%20As%20Artists&utm_content=Daily%20072519%20-%20As%20Artists+CID_cf3fe71544c7cea3086f713caab7e21e&utm_source=HyperallergicNewsletter&utm_term=As%20Artists%20Withdraw%20From%20the%20Whitney%20Biennial%20Over%20Kanders%20Controversy%20Others%20Refuse%20the%20Call%20to%20Boycott).

They don’t know what “Decolonize this place” means, and The Whitney is not a colony, but they’re told to yell it, and they do as they are told.

Under National Socialism, Socialism, Fascism, and other tyrannies the sole purpose of art is to serve whatever political party is currently in power. An artist does not think for himself, he obeys his masters. He must make party propaganda, and may not deviate into exploring truth and beauty. Propaganda might as an accidental by-product be aesthetically-pleasing, as in Soviet poster art, but that is not its purpose

In a free society there is no political purpose in art. An artist does not accept a master, he does not follow orders, he does not obey. An artist explores truth and beauty in ways that he wants, and if he has a boss (someone has to paint the vegetables on a can of soup or join with a team in making a movie), it is because the artist has freely chosen to work for that company or with that team.

That political hacks are demanding that other artists withdraw from The Whitney is no surprise in our turbulent era; the surprise and the joy is in the brave artists who refuse to do as they are told by the Miz Grundy-Decolonize-this-Place scream-squads.

By the way, I was tear-gassed in the Navy, both in recruit training and then later up some river when some old canisters of the stuff fell apart in transit. Just send me the money, someone.

(A final note: as of this writing, Mr. Kanders has withdrawn from board of The Whitney for the sake of that worthy institution. I hope the artists whose careers he has helped over the years will be privately grateful to him, even if they are bullied into public silence.)

-30-



Corpses for the Lamps of China - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Corpses for the Lamps of China

If any question why we died,

Tell them, because our fathers lied.

-Kipling

Drones fall like broken promises upon
The burning decks while errant missiles fly
From sea to murky sea keeping the peace
Of headless bodies bobbing in the surf

Our leaders’ wars are yeah-boy video games
(With single-malt) across a shiny screen
But workers’ wars are blood and dirt and death
And “Thank you for your service” (now go away)

The good die young, so do the bad, but not
The sons and daughters of our nomenklatura

The Mueller Report Goes "Poof!" in the Atmosphere - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Mueller Report Explodes into the Atmosphere

When meteors on dinosaurs
Fall crashing like the Temple of Dagon
And signals beam from bloody Mars
And mastodons make war on dragons

We little ones must run and hide
In rocky cleft and burrowed cave
While monsters in their wars decide
Just whom to kill and whom to save

When dragons make war on mastodons
Let’s disappear like leprechauns

Maybe.

Or not.

Reflections While Flinging a Dead Snake Over the Fence

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

 

Reflections While Flinging a Dead Snake Over the Fence

 

Is reality filtered through one’s culture

No longer reality? Or is it

That reality without a cultural filter

Is not reality at all, but only

An unobserved function of biology

Chemistry, geology, or radiation

Whose purpose is unknowable because

Without the perception of God or man

It doesn’t exist

 

And neither does the snake, which might have been

But then, maybe it is Schrodinger’s snake
Or was
Or might be

 

They say that the first cultural bias you kill

Is the most difficult, that it becomes

Easier after that. But it isn’t so.

 

After a hard life along existential trails

Of assumptions examined to dust, you want

To put away your Hegelian dialectic

And settle down in a little cottage

In the country with a few good books, a garden,

And Aristotle’s unities, but there’s

Always a young concept-slinger who thinks

He’s faster on the synthesis than you

And calls you out on your legendary denial

Of the knowability of objective reality

 

For the rest of your life (but do you exist?)

No matter how carefully you sharpen your syllogisms

Somewhere out there in the darkness it lurks:

An ontological proposition with your name on it

 

 

"The Test of a Man is in His Conversation" - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

“The Test of a Man is in His Conversation”

-Ecclesiasticus 27:5-8

Friends are the chief ornaments of a man’s life
Through fishing trips and schoolyard baseball games
The brotherhood of barracks and camp and field
And ideas served and volleyed in courtesy

Among those men who have seen something more
Of the world than movie screens and gossip ‘zines
Men as familiar with rifle and rosary
As with a crescent wrench and single-malt

Men who can work both plow and metered line
Then lift a glass in thanks when the first stars shine

Thirteen Reasons Why NOT - a timely re-post

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Thirteen Reasons Why Not

We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny.

But what we put into it is ours.

-Dag Hammarskjold

1. God made you; you can never be replaced
2. God made you for some purpose – live to find it
3. Someone is blessed each day in knowing you
4. You must live so that others may live
5. Someone desperately needs your kindness right now
6. You haven’t yet written your book, your story, your
song
7. When you offer up your suffering, you help others
8. Children running barefoot through the flowers of
spring
9. Children running barefoot through the leaves of
autumn
10. Dachshund puppies. And children. And flowers. And leaves
11. Coffee and a talk with a good friend
12. Breakfast and the Sunday morning funnies
13. That space in the pew God has saved for you


-from Coffee and a Dead Alligator to Go

Da Nang on the 20th of July in '69 - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Da Nang on the 20th of July in ‘69

On the 20th of July in ‘69
I was on the Tien Sha peninsula
Probably shooting penicillin
Into some kid’s *ss for gonorrhea

(That too was a moon shot)

And listening to Radio AFVN
Not paying any attention at all
To Kennedys landing on the surface of
Their girlfriends and then leaving them to die

Soon I was sent to see the moon in Cambodia
More bodies floating in the water there

The Birds - Neither Hitchcock nor Disney - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Not the Disney Version

Two feathers lay upon the new-mown lawn
Like aircraft wreckage after a combat pass
Remembrances of violence in the sky
Of death and blood – now only souvenirs

It was as always an unequal fight
The hawk falling upon a smaller bird
With superior stealth and strength and speed
And grappling-hook talons of screaming death

The little fellow made a good show of it
But he didn’t escape:
                                       hawks never lose

There's a Hurricane! Buy More Batteries! - weekly column

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

There’s a Hurricane – Quick! Buy More Batteries!

The other day I said to the spouse-person that I thought the fear of AI – artificial intelligence – taking over the world was unjustified. The refrigerator and the toaster laughed and said, “Just keep thinking that.” The microwave shushed them lest they give away the plot. The coffee maker gave us a weather report and a treatise on global warming.

Last week we had our first hurricane alarum of the season, and so everyone in our household came home after work with batteries, bottled water, and cans of Spam to add to the existing shelves of batteries, bottled water, and cans of Spam.

Well, it couldn’t hurt, and when in October the cool fronts begin refreshing our land we can take a frying pan out to the back yard on a pleasant evening, slap some hardcore mosquitoes, build a nice little fire, and feast on celebratory Spam as the leaves fall. The batteries will power the tunes, if you want tunes, though the wind and good conversation are usually tuneful enough, and the other batteries will power the flashlight that serves as a lamp unto thy feet back to the house.

In the event, this storm passed us by (with our good wishes) but hurt people in Louisiana and Mississippi. No doubt young newsies employed the tired metaphors that we dodged the bullet and that the stormed wreaked havoc, for the unimaginative are quite incapable of stating the simple facts that storms pass by some areas and cause great harm in other.

One of the local stations found in Louisiana a monotooth with more tattoos than brain cells who averred that he would “ride it out.” As with dodging bullets and wreaking havoc, some are incapable of making the simple declarative statement, “I’m going to stay.”

But staying on the beach when a tropical unhappiness approaches is ill-advised. We are reminded of the story of General John Sedgewick whose next-to-last words on the 8th of May 1964 at Spotsylvania were, “They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance” (https://civilwarhome.com/sedgwickdeath.htm).

Bravado in the face of danger has its moments – “We are going to finish with this chap Rommel once and for all” (http://www.wjinst.com/wjinst/bios/leadmont.htm) – but talking into a storm is not one of those moments. Remember what Kenny Rogers says about knowing when to hold them (whatever “them” you’ve got going at the moment), when to fold them, and when to walk away.

Oh, and you need a good pocket knife. It won’t be on the what-you-need-for-a-hurricane lists, but you will need one for boxes, cans, limbs, wiring, cooking, and dozens of other tasks. A good knife. Sturdy. No made-in-China flash ‘n’ trash Rambo tactical commando wannabe. Just a good knife. Lockback. Saw teeth. You’ll need it.

-30-

Stump Junction by Moonlight - It Ain't Paris, Texas or Paris, France

Stump Junction by Moonlight

“How Ya Gonna Keep 'em Down on the Farm (After They've Seen Paree)?”

-a song of the First World War

Speak not to us of Paris by moonlight -
How are they gonna keep us down on the Seine
When we have seen the gaiety of Stump Junction
By the romantic glow of sweet mary jane

The twinkle of gunfire from a .22
As Cousin Eloise potted beer bottles
While her new guy Kolby took a long ****
On her old guy Shane-Boy’s low-rider rims

The county mounties busted up the fight -
Speak not to us of Paris by moonlight

But Yevtushenko Might Corrupt Our Jailers - a tribute to Penguin paperbacks

Lawrence Hall
mhall46194@aol.com

But Yevtushenko Might Corrupt Our Jailers

A tribute to Penguin paperbacks

When they
Someday
Take us away
For reading
For thinking
For writing

Those Penguin paperbacks all tattered and taped
Discovered when they empty our pockets
          will
Be used against us in their courts of law

But Yevtushenko might corrupt our jailers




17 July is Yevtushenko's birthday (1932)

Fog and a Hypothetical Cat on the Fifth Sunday After Pentecost

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Fog and a Hypothetical Cat on the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

From an idea suggested by Pharaohnica

And with a tip of that cat to
Carl Sandburg and Robert Frost

Invisible to radar, mizzle falls
Itself making the distance invisible
Sandburg said that fog creeps in on little cat feet
But rain-fog is sometimes the entire cat

And if you walk outside into the cat
Beyond the cat, the paws, what will you find
Perhaps, like Schrodinger, the cat is not
But then again, like you, maybe it is

The mystery is lovely, dark, and deep
But we have chores to tend, and they won’t keep

Robin Hood's Favorite (or Favourite) Saint - 15 July is Saint Swithin's Day

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Farmer to Saint Swithin

O good Saint Swithin, please, to you we pray
On this your high-summer rain-making day

Of your blest kindness send us soft, sweet showers
The kind that gently fall for hours and hours

To heal the sunburnt land of thirst and drought
And nourish the corn that sees the winter out

And if you grant the boon we humbly ask
We’ll work the harder on each rural task:

We’ll ditch and fence and plough, and milk the cow
Share with the widder-folk, and feed the sow

Count out some plantful seeds for poor men’s needs
And tell God’s Mysteries daily on our beads