Dostoyevsky’s House of the Dead

In shackles of shame and under the rod
Our brothers lie upon the Russian earth
In penance suffering for the sins of all
Their common cell is floored with filth and mud
Their common bed a shelf of planks and fleas
Their common air befouled with stench and pain
Their several labors in the heat and cold
That blow the seasons lost across the steppes
Exhaust their limbs and cruelly tease their eyes
With river-visions of what might have been
For them there is no hope within this world

And yet

At drumbeat-dawn there is hardly a man
Who does not kneel before the ikons nailed
As surely to the wall as convicts’ sins
Are nailed with Jesus to the shameful Cross
And take that Cross unto himself in depths
Of degradation and despair that bless
The bad thief first, and even so, the good

Remembrance Day / Veterans' Day - 2

Would You Like a Downgrade?

I.  
“Everything I own I’m carrying on my back,”
A shipmate said wonderingly that last day
In the recruit barracks.  And it was so:
Two sets of dungarees, one pair of shoes,
Two sets of Undress Blue and then one set
Of Dress Blue B, one pair of sneaks, one pair
Of this, more sets of that, a ditty bag
Of Personal Hygiene Articles,
Officially and carefully approved,
All in a new seabag.
                                       It was enough.
How much does a man need in order to die?

II.
And now we carry mortgages, jobs, books,
Televisions, cars, hunting rifles, clocks,
Lawnmowers, bills, Sunday suits, Monday shoes,
Plastic boxes that light up and make noise,
Fences that need repair, cats to the vet,
Air conditioners, chainsaws, queen-sized beds,
Closets that need sorting out, chests of drawers
Of things we never needed anyway,
Cameras, clawhammers, pens, reading lamps,
Scissors, and writing paper.
                                                   It is too much.
How much does a man need in order to live?

Ill-lettered functionaries at PBS
Are pleased to announce that Woodstock defined
A generation. In reality,
Generations are not defined at all:

My argument is that women and men
Of conscience, courage, character, and class
Define themselves, and stubbornly refuse
To be counted, conned, or categorized

And only followers would acquiesce

To

Ill-lettered functionaries at PBS

All Souls’ and All Saints’ were made to disappear
Easter is bad enough with rabbit eggs
And Christmas was appropriated by The People
As a tribute to (belch) Glorious Excess

But no one has taken Good Friday away
With gifts and treats and two-for-one specials
Down at Chez Bubba’s Discount Liquor and Smokes,
And Colonial Auto Parts stays open - why not?

But while the world spins along on its way
A few eccentrics remember Him this day

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

If you send me kind words, let me thank you now, because trying to reply is often futile under the new regime.

Whack-a-Cabinet Secretary

The New Children’s Game for Old Children

One pops up; someone whacks him down
Two more pop up; we can only frown
After the third, we take the hint:
We have no stable government

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
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!

We would

Ask a receptionist for her autograph
Gather in thousands in awe of linemen
Practice the carpenter’s hammer at home
Invite a mechanic to the White House

We would

Order as a keepsake a plumber’s last pipe
Post pictures of teachers writing lesson plans
Make recordings of a wise plowman’s words
Publish biographies of waitresses

We would

Envy the garbageman aboard his yacht
And the workers’ lifestyle that we know not

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 sweet, soft 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 folks’ needs,
And daily tell God’s Mysteries on our beads.

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                     The High Priest Kisses King Herod’s (Hands)

                         His Eminence the Cardinal of New York

The High Priest kisses King Herod’s (hands)
And joins him for a feast of mockeries and lies
Giving the tyrant for his crimes a pass
Laughing at Truth as civilization dies

Over lobster and beef they pity the poor
While robed in white ties and evening gowns
And silken ecclesiastical couture
(One of them has visions of papal crowns)

Gluttony and scorn at a rented manse -
All that is missing is Salome’s dance

So my Lawnmower Repair Guy...

                                   The wind that blows
                                Is all that anyone knows

                                  -Henry David Thoreau

And is the man all right? Nobody knows

And my lawnmower is hidden behind a fence
A chain-link fence, among mowers in rows
The owner lost a gunfight; he was taken hence
And what about the mowers? Nobody knows

And is the man all right? Nobody knows

UPS has left notes; the door is locked
There is no sound of man or machine
No one has answered when customers knocked
Only the guard-dogs (yep, they’re really mean)

And is the man all right? Nobody knows

Sergeant Schultz at the cop-shop - she knows nothink
She’s busy with her personal smartphone
Her eyes are fixed; they do not move or blink
And I am all alone in The Twilight Zone

And is the man all right? Nobody knows

So what really happened? Nobody knows

And is the man all right? Nobody knows

So who can I contact? Nobody knows

And is the man all right? Nobody knows


Only the wind...

Maundy Thursday – Mass of the Last Supper

“Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang”
-Shakespeare

The air is thurified – the incense given
Our Lord upon His birth is fumed at last;
The censer’s chains, clanking like manacles
Offend against the silence at the end of Mass

Supper is concluded; the servants strip
The Table bare of all the Seder service:
Cups, linens, and dishes, leaving in the dark
An Altar bare, prepared for sacrifice

In Gethsemane the flowered air is sweet
But iron-heeled caligae offend the night

Restless Hope Syndrome

At two in the morning the great ideas
Are fluttering shadows on the moonlit lawn
The old clock clanks, the new clock hums, and hours
Are an accusation against one’s works

At three in the morning one’s ambitions
Are not even shadows as the moon sails on
The old clock clanks, the new clock hums, and hopes
Crowd around the bed in disappointment

At four in the morning the silent noise
Begins withdrawing before the stale new day

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Logosophiamag.c­om
Hellopoetry.com
Fellowshipandfairydust.com

                             That Chinese Spy Balloon

                       “Number Six is dead. Rover got him.”

                            -Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner

A spy balloon lurks over Montana
And nobody seems to know what to do
Against the intruder Top Guns launch themselves
But only circle around it piteously

They slink away, intimidated by a balloon
That takes its pictures and samples with insolence
Unmenaced by our Merovingian regime
Generals bemedaled like Russian doormen

Our leaders stumble over each other’s gaffes
While in Shanghai the Politburo laughs

It’s All About Family

A rush to change into trousers and shirt
Discarding pajamas and morning quiet
And a half-eaten breakfast burrito -
Dear God, the relatives are here again

They never ‘phone; like mayflies they appear
First peeking through the windows, and only then
Ringing the doorbell, breathless with gossip
And detailing their medical dysfunctions

They seem to settle in for the summer
While one’s soul longs for a burrito lost

Grandfather’s Vespers

His rocking chair pendulums in the dusk
His coffee cup’s half-empty, what’s left’s gone cold
His newspaper’s folded and set aside -
In the evening light he doesn’t see so well

Mist rises from the neighbor’s new-mown field
Shy rabbits nibble along the old fence row
Grandchildren escape from supper into the yard
Chasing lightning bugs while Grandfather smokes

His rocking chair pendulums in the dusk
And so helps stabilize the universe

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

They Shall Not Pass the Dumpster!

The Apocalyptic Battle of the Dumpster of Our People
Before the Gates of Kaplan College
Berkeley, Holy Saturday 2017

“Then shall he strip his sleeve and show his tats,
And say ‘this ink I had on Saturday’”
-not Henry V

In Berkeley, tumult; a protestor screams:
“They have opened the dumpster, and taken away
My Antifi poster of Cosmic Peace –
I’m going to **** someone! Death to Fascists!”

A Trumpi throws a traffic cone in love
Of the Constitution, and rallies then
The Go-Pro squaddies of the ball-capped cause
And bravely cries “To the dumpster, young heroes!”

And there upon that garbage barricade -
Oh, my children, history
  was
          not
                 made

“And When Night Comes…”

They twist her witness with bent arguments
Scholarly papers, harsh editorials
Like smoke and ashes obscuring the heavens
Telling her in retrospect who she is


But in her end, and in her beginning
She left all quarrels on the altar of man
And gave herself on the Altar of God
Because her only crime was loving Him

      and us

Those who emend her – again they martyr her:
They do not know what else to do with her

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                     Algorithm, Algorithm, Algorithm, Bah, Bah, Bah

Parroting a trendy word is not art
So let’s stop babbling about “algorithm”
Lest we drop our readers into the lowest part
Of their 24-hour circadian rhythm

The Dreariness of Dawn

“Carpe Diem.” Dawn, and all its cliches’
But what would one now seize? Unrequited dreams
That slouch in the corner filing their fingernails?
A cup of coffee at the kitchen door?

Dawn is the illusion that this day might
Be different from those that came before
Like advertisements promising happiness
And delivering failures postage-due

Well, you might as well get up, and get dressed
Dawn.  Because, maybe, this time, just maybe…

Shhhhh - Titanic was Sunk by a Bilderberg

Albino rabbis, the Illuminati,
Protocols of the Elders of Zion -
The evidence seemed a little spotty
‘Til a radio guy had us wonderin’ and sighin’

Fluoridation by the New World Order
Backed by the Trilateral Commission
A scheme to open our southern border
To crop circles – that’s his suspicion

Area 51, the Templar Knights
FEMA lurking in the Bohemian Grove
Perfidious Rothschilds through menace and fright
Guarding a Jewish-Viking treasure trove

Poor Newfoundland is Occupied by ****** rats
Who scheme in secret tunnels beneath St. John’s
Brewing magic potions in Macbethian vats
In Rodentian rituals from the Age of Bronze

The Priory of Sion, runes, swastikas, the Vril
Roswell and the Thule Society
No wonder the air is darkly chill:
We all live within a conspiracy.

“The Test of a Man...”

                              -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

A Temporary, Part-Time, Adjunct Faculty Instructor of No  
    Significance Whatsoever at a Little Cinder-Block Community
      College Unknown to Anyone Beyond the Interstate Bypass
     Asks the Most Important Question About Admissions Bribery


Oh, please forgive this seeming diatribe
But I am one of the scrivening tribe
A poor Chaucerian scholar, a scribe

Who asks

Why doesn’t anyone offer me a bribe?

Mr. Hall Proposes a Toast

Ladies and gentlemen, I propose a toast:
What will you have – wheat? White? Honey or jam?
Sourdough for me, lightly-browned, almost golden
With lots of butter, melted all through the crust

Let the warm scene of our merriment be
A café in winter, beneath a large window
All steamy, with rain or snow outside
And we don’t have to go anywhere

Or do anything but talk over our coffee –
Ladies and gentlemen, I propose a toast

A Necktie for Fathers' Day

Roaming around lost in the 1970s
Dull advertising writers still forbid
The purchase of neckties for Fathers’ Day –
As if  DNA ever wears a tie

It’s all knee-pants and advertising now
On cartoon tees and baseball caps and sneaks
Admiring his tattoos in his MePhone
And cadging guy-support from his live-in

While watching his collection of action films:
“I’ll look for a job tomorrow, babe, okay?”

“We read in Isaiah: ‘The ox knows its owner,
                  and the *** the master’s crib….’”

                   -Papa Benedict, The Blessings of Christmas

The ox and *** are in the Stable set
In service divine, as good Isaiah writes
A congregation of God’s creatures met
In honor of their King this Night of nights

And there they wait for us, for we are late
Breathless in the narthex of eternity
A star, a road, a town, an inn, a gate
Have led us to this holy liturgy

Long centuries and seasons pass, and yet
The ox and *** are in the Stable set

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed…”

                                       -Allen Ginsberg


No. He didn’t.

He helped mediocrities self-destruct
Through formless howlings in their lonely minds
He pushed them to their deaths with obscene smirks
No more connected than foul faeces flung

Against the good, the beautiful, the true
He pitied himself, and called it rebellion
He squealed out his pimply scatologies
He destroyed the weaklings he could have helped

The best minds of his generation pitied him
But kept their children far away from it

We can have our Pushkin, all thinky and sad
And our poker-playing pups, cheating at cards
Ruslan and Ludmylla dancing on ice
At the Houston Airport Holiday Inn

Did Pushkin paint the poker-playing pups
Or carve tetrameters while in his cups?
That green baize poker table, a samovar
And the Big Giant Head, who needs an ace

We can have our Pushkin, all thinky and sad
And too those kitschy dogs, being real bad!

Is the End Near for Religion?

-news item

No one will ever acknowledge a MePhone
As the Lord of the universe, or as
The Creator from before created time
Born of an IBM Selectric

True plastic of true limited resources,
Sing Advent hymns unto an Apple II,
Whisper aves on a strand of transistors,
Or genuflect before a Model T

No consecration will ever obtain
Upon the altar of a microchip

“Every herd is a refuge for giftlessness…Only the solitary seek  
       the truth, and they break with all those who don't love it
       sufficiently.”

                          ― Boris Pasternak,  Doctor Zhivago


You cannot write with your fist clenched in hate
You cannot sing with a conscripted voice
You cannot dance if you are made to march
You cannot love if your heart is not free

You cannot think if they slogan your mind
You cannot play if they deny your joy
You cannot dream if they program your spirit
You cannot pray if they poison your soul

You are an artist, a seeker of truth:
And no one should finish this line for you

Did Russians Hide Nukes in the U.S.A.?

The western sky is blue; the east is red
But try to put it right out of your head
If you find a Russian under your bed
Concealing a nuke that will **** you dead

The Intergossip surely must be right
So hit the keyboard now, and share the fright
On Social-Medium-Range all through the night
And type it really fast before…that LIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ding-****, the east is red, the west is blue
And ashes drift about, flake news, untrue

Reclining ****...

                        For a scribbler in that art magazine

             “…bodiless heads, green horses and violet grass,
             seaweed, shells and funguses...conventionally
             arranged in the manner of Dali.”

           -Evelyn Waugh, Put Out More Flags, pp. 31-32

Making messes is but poor huswifery
Tie-dyeing creativity into
A finger-painting school of assemblage
Asymbol’d: “Reclining **** with Pet Frog”

In praise of working people and, like, stuff -
Your comrade cleaners whom you claim to love
Could tell you what a simp you are. They won’t
Because they need their jobs, dear precious ****

So, disappear your selfies into your ‘phone -
The 1960’s are over and gone

If that poor worm remained in his earthy lair
He then would drown in mud and muck and mould
And if that worm crawled up to breathe the air
A robin would eat him as a luncheon cold

He had to make a choice…

And as he died the poor worm cried:
“Mid-term elections!  Everybody lied!”

Slouching...

                   From an idea suggested by Robert Graves in
                                       On English Poetry

I. Thesis

Formalist poetry to attention stands
In ordered meters, ranks and files and lines
Of scansion as determined by disciplined minds
And set in place through skillful strategy

II. Antithesis

Other poetry slouches indolently, insolently with its louche trilby askew
Sleeping late, smoking cigarettes,
                                                     sauntering off
                                                                ­              for a beer
Through scansion as admitted by the heart or the pancreas or something
And seldom set in place at all unless it just sort of happens

III. A Perhaps Unnecessary but Useful Conjunction

But

IV. Synthesis

All poems ramble the same neighborhood
In quest of the true, the beautiful, the good

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

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                           Enter Orlando – or you - with a Paper

                                           …these trees shall be my books
                    And in their barks my thoughts I’ll character

                                 -Orlando, As You Like It, III.ii.5-6

To write a poem and send it to the world
Is not unlike leaving it in a tree
For Rosalind, your Rosalind, to find
(Even at the risk of being scorned as an acorn)

Putting it out there can be dangerous
Art cannot be art unless it is shared
And Rosalind, your Rosalind, might not like it
(And then there’s that thing about a fallen acorn)

Oh, take the risk: for Rosalind, your Rosalind
Probably won’t conclude that you’re an acorn

You are a poem; your stanzas are your life:
A prologue written in the long ago
(with some few emendations here and there)                   (ahem!)
A closure and an afterword await                

But now about this part of your life:

The iambs of your footfalls dance in time
While    
           anapests
                           leap in search
                                                   of a rhyme
Stiff-built trochees stumble clunkily (ouch)
And alexandrines mourn the sometime sorrows of age

And when writing your poem, remember…

Your poetry of life will be truly true
If you almost never write about
                                                          you

The wind that blows is all that anyone knows

                                                          ­  -Thoreau

“She hit me!” “She did not!” “He hit her first!”
“You can ask anyone – I hit the mike!”
“No, no, she hit me!” “No, he is the worst!”
“No, not at all, that’s not what it was like!”

“The president’s a meany!” “The press is rude!”
“This is unprecedented!” “You’re a fake!”
“Take away his pass; I’m not in the mood!”
“It’s unacceptable!” “Well, you’re a snake!”

As the nation crumbles in violence and smoke
The press and president are one bad joke

1.

Stuffed men who never made a single day
Of training make brave speeches on this day

Surely each one of them has his reward -

A government SUV
And bodyguards
And a household staff
And a clean, dry place to sleep
And an income
And medical care
And a pension
And a book deal
And a library
And maybe an eternal flame

2.

And the nation’s enlisted daughters and sons
Who sweat among the rocks, not on the golf course

Have their reward from a grateful nation -

Taking cover behind a blown-up Hummer
They are the bodyguards
They dig holes in the rocks and sand
MREs contracted by the lowest brother-in-law bidder
They stand-to all night under fire
They are paid something less than the president’s special, um, assistant
They will be ignored by the DVA
Their eternal flame is the memory of a death-burnt friend
They are dismissed as millennials and snowflakes
          By the Keyboard Kommandos who learned about war
          Just like our stuffed men in Washington
          By watching Patton over and over

The stuffed men bray every hollow cliché,
But this is what the stuffed men really say:

“Thank you for your service; now shut up and go away
Until we want another photo-op on Remembrance Day”

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                 The Mysterious World of Azalea

If I were a child, this would be a happy place
A hidden leaf-mould world, all darkly green
Summery green beneath the shaded sun
Between the roots, beneath the leaves, alone

If I were a child, this would be a happy place
A brand-new comic book, some army men
A Roy Rogers cap pistol without any caps
A plastic Tarzan swinging from branch to branch

If I were a child…but alas, I’m not -
I’m pruning back limbs and checking for rot

December Through the Windshield

The windshield wipers hiss-scratch-thunk, scratch-thunk
Scratch-thunk against the pre-dawn wind and rain
Thick sodden leaves protest against their fall
And cling forlornly until swept away

To disappear into the autumn night
Their loss unseen by two frail beams of light
Patrolling in advance, into the cold
Ignoring the casualties left behind

December hastens to the year’s end while
The windshield wipers hiss-scratch-thunk, scratch-thunk

You can’t be serious all of the time
Because there are bellowing tyrants around
Who bully and demand, who preach and screech
Whose arguments are threats and censorship

Recusancy is their worst enemy
A casual indifference to their demands
A refusal to wear their branded livery
And clenching one’s fist around only

A brush
A pen
A wrench
A book
A thought
A hope

If all you do is to react, they win -
You can’t be serious all of the time

To be submerged in world and Word, in Word
That is the world, in words that are the Word
Written in holy fire, the eternal Song
In which and through Whom the world is breathed into being

The Torah scroll unrolls the years of creation
The pages of the Talmud frame the law
As in the statute-structure of the ark
Or as a tabernacle of the soul

To read the words, to chant the Word, to sing -
To be the yad in the great Hand of God

Court Day

So sullenly he sneers and slouches there
Behind a menu that he will not read
His mother smiles apologetically
And orders milk and cereal for him

He sulks beneath his franchise baseball cap
And grunts into a little plastic box
Then shoves it back into his pressed knee-pants
His mother smiles apologetically
                                                  ­           tips apologetically
                                                  ­           pays apologetically

The waitress with her chalice takes communion ‘round
Refills the cups at each creaky table
Newspaper stories, what is this world coming to,
Bacon and eggs, toast, orange juice, refills, life

Beyond the misted glass the old court house
Begins to take the early morning light
Like an old man taking his first cup of the day
Having another go at civilization

A rural Thomas More parks his old truck
This Chaucerian sergeant of the law
Will plead the usual catalogue of not-his-faults
The lad will smirk and feign apologies

The creaky tables of the ancient laws
To be served with irrelevant custom
The lad demands change for the Coke machine
His mother yields
                                 Apologetically.

O how beautiful is Our Lady Queen!
Queen of our hearts and hopes, and of the May
Sweet Empress over forest, down, and dene,      
And happy Sunrise over the pilgrim’s way

O let us crown Our Queen with leaf and flower
Gathered this morning in the dawnlit dew
For we in this Island are Her true dower
Pledging our faith with thorn and rose and yew

She gives us Her feast day, cool and quiet and green -
O how beautiful is Our Lady Queen!

Trapped in the Coffee Shop of Lingering Death

He knows everything about every war
Because although he never went to one
He had good friends who did, and they told him
All about it, and about Patton, so there

He knows all about Jesus, and, like, stuff
The Templar tunnels beneath the Pentagon
The Seal of Solomon found on Oak Island
And Mexico’s lost Tribe of Israel, so there

Which can lead the unsaved to tell a lie:
“Oh, gosh, I have to rush, I forgot about…”

So there.

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                     ­ Disney’s Macbeth

                     Upon the release of Joel Coen’s version

I want to see Macbeth in Technicolor
Almost Disney-ish, in cheery pastels,
With bright-lit halls and sunny fields of flowers
And maybe Annette as Lady Macbeth

And let Macbeth be a comely youth
With muscular hands that wield both sword and pen
An honest merry face that smiles with ease
Sweet words and penitent Aves on his lips

The world is well-lit ever since the ark -
It is the human heart that lurks in the dark




Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are young - why does no one work with that?
#macbeth

Neither a Menshevik nor a Bolshevik Be

                                     What is’t you do?
                           A deed without a name.

                                 -Macbeth IV.1.48-49

This is not a matter of recusancy
To wish a blessing on your houses both
That in the Grace of God you amend yourselves -
But go away and do it somewhere else

And take with you your posings and your twootings
Your alligator shoes, expense accounts
Your plastic soldiers all saluting you
And your designer plots of great import

And leave good folk alone to their good work
With sweat-stained hands in clean domestic peace

In my religion we're taught that every living thing, every leaf, every bird, is only alive because it contains the secret word for life. That's the only difference between us and a lump of clay. A word. Words are life, Liesel.

- Max to Liesel in Markus Zusak’s *The Book Thief

We cannot walk with Dostoyevsky as
Guards drag him chained before a firing squad
Comfort Saint Joan against the English flames
Or pray with good Saint Thomas in his cell

We cannot slosh through sodden trenches in France
With Lieutenant Lewis on his birthday
Argue with Akhmatova at The Stray Dog
Or with Frankl at Auschwitz bury dead friends

Unless we read, and then through words we see
The morning sun upon Byzantium

Fifty Shades of Cruise Missiles:
The Night of 6 April 2017

The news appears on the glowing telescreen:
“50+ Missiles Aimed at Syria”
The typeface set in a lurid shade of red
With a flashing cartoon police-car light

And because I was walking in the fields at dusk
I am still armed for a war against age
With a walking stick propped inside the door
Proof against nothing but instability

Useless against missiles or poison gas
I had better go to bed with a good book

Their revenue stream must be falling bad -
Yet another erectile dysfunction ad