Corpses for...

                      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

Whatever might a performance tea
                                                           be?
Whatever are electrolytes to you
                                                           and me?
No antioxidants will ruin our night
                                                           all right?
And hydration is itself a fright
                                                          ­ Quite!

Blowing sleet rattles against the window pane
And the electrics have again winked adieu
But light the gas and brew up, black and plain
We’ll drink our tea by candles, with a biscuit
                                                         ­  or two

In nice China cups, or a mason jar

Because

The best tea of all is a cuppa char

(Upon reading a ‘vert for specialty teas)

That clockwork school! If it’s not gearing up
Then it's winding down, except in the fall
Which then is when it’s gearing up again
But not in the spring, when it is winding down

Sometimes it’s just around the corner where
Presumably it is still gearing up
But maybe winding down, somewhere in town
Waiting for the fall to come back around

Then winding down, having worn out its spring
But back in the fall, you see; that’s the thing!

Alexandria in a Seabag

The barracks is a university
So too the march, the camp, the line for chow
McKuen shares our ham and lima beans
John Steinbeck helps with cleaning guns and gear

(You’re not supposed to call your rifle a gun)

The Muses Nine are usually given a miss
But not Max Brand or Herman Wouk
Cowboys and hobbits and hippie poets
And a suspicious Russian or two

Tattered paperbacks jammed in our pockets:
All the world is our university

“…the war…often seems to have happened to someone else.”

-C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy

A pickup truck beside a Navajo road
Tables of souvenirs, a Thermos of coffee
Clotheslines of dreamcatchers catching the sun
For now; the dreams must wait for sleepless hours

“You were in Viet-Nam,” the old man said
To another old man. No mystery;
He simply took a chance to make a sale
And did, for both had known the Vam Co Tay

Old men along the road, catchers of dreams
Who burned their chances in the long ago

A young mother cradles her broken child
Amid the fragments of her world, her soul.
Blood drips.  Rain-sodden insulation drips.
Stillness between storms.  The trees are all gone.
A dark Sargasso Sea of shattered wood,
Bricks, clothes, books, toys, rags, glass, papers, bodies.
In the gasping heat the rot begins now.
No houses.  No lights.  A helicopter
Floating valley boys with plastic boxes
Taking cruel pictures and O-My-Godding
For the telescreen (between soda ads).
And in fortresses of personal affronts

(Safely far away)

Keyboard commandos leap into inaction:

People who choose to live there deserve it.
We told you that global warming is true.
We didn’t have these things ‘til they kicked Jesus
Out of these here schools. And paddling, by God.
It’s Obama’s fault.  Or is it George Bush?
It’s the Republicans. Public schools. Gaia.
British Petroleum.  Coal.  SUVs.
Suburbs.  Not reading the Bible.  Comets.
You’re stupid. Well eff you back.  Eff you more.

While in the second lowering line of storms
A young mother cradles her broken child.

An urgent message that was never written
Was then not left beneath the third lantern
On an arching bridge that was never built
Under a wondrous river that never flowed

And men wondered at the unwritten words
They could not find atop the fourth lantern
In an echoing tunnel never dug
Over the steppes east of an eastern shore

And the message never written did not say:
O prelates and presidents – for whom do you pray?

The Fifth Karamazov

When young we identify with Alyosha
His optimism and his innocence
His fragile, flowering Orthodox1 faith
A happy, almost-holy fool for Christ

When older, the sensual Dimitri,
With irresponsible lusts and desires
Grasping for the rewards of the moment
Now, ever now, wanting everything now

Then older still, as intellectual Ivan
Sneeringly aloft, above all faith and flesh
A constructor of systems and ideas
From the back pages of French magazines

Though never do we identify with
Nest-fouling, leering, lurking Smerdyakov
Our secret fear, unspoken fear, death-fear:
That he might be who we untruly are

But hear, O hear, the holy bells of Optina2
Those Russian messengers3 singing to us
Inviting us to meet Alyosha again
At Father Zosima’s poor4 hermitage


1Russian Orthodox
2The name of the real monastery upon which Dostoyevsky modeled his fictional one
3The Brothers Karamazov was first published as a serial in The Russian Messenger
4Poor only by earthly standards

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

                     Money in a Tin Can Buried in the Back Yard

Early this morning to the bank’s drive-through
Which, after the lobby model, was closed
There was no sign about when it would open
Only news that the bank had been sold and bought

So what is my bank going to be named nest week?

Velcro Sign State Bank
The Bank of What’s Happening Now
The Whatever We’re Named This Week Bank
Fill-in-the-Blank Bank
Guess Who We Are Bank
Mystery Bank
Random String of Consonants Bank
A Big Bank that Devours Other Banks Bank
Closed

More and more often banks are locked and barred -
Less useful than a tin can buried in the yard

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

                What I Found While Cleaning a Faeries’ Well

Perhaps it was because I cleared the vines
The ancient vines, with tools of iron, of steel
And traced the circles of the well’s lost lines
With my unhallowed hands, by touch and by feel

Or that I wore my boots, or forgot my prayers
To the White Lady said to haunt this place
Or whistled secular songs, careless airs
Until the dusk, when I came face-to-face…

I have lived to tell of this wildest of adventures
I found on the lichened stone – a set of dentures

Oh, foolish Catullus – have you not heard?
Your lover Lesbia gave you the bird!

I Spy with my Little FBI

I spy with my little bright FBI
A government wet and hung out to dry
On clotheslines that might (or might not) be tapped
Through circuitry that the Soviets mapped

And passed the plans on to bad Vladimir
(Who wrestles tigers sans shirt and sans fear)
But, sure, that mighty hyperborean
Had better watch for the North Korean

And keep him closer than a dodgy brother

because

All we Yanks do is snoop on each other

Some have said that the bravest thing we do
Is to get up each morning and face the dawn
It may be so. The light is grey and cold
There seem to be no reasons to go on

And yet - the morning sun begins to kiss
The sensitive, delicate springtime leaves
Turning their own hopes to the morning sun
Stretching their chloroplasts awake to life

So even as sunlight embraces the tree
So maybe there will be kisses - we’ll see!

After Their Divorce

In his garage he takes a break, and sits
Among all the mechanical debris
Of an inventor born a century late:
Unsorted hopes, tools, dreams, and engine parts

The project car that he and his son will never
Rebuild together on Sunday afternoons
An old guitar, an ashtray full of ends
A midden of beer cans crushed in memories

He should be loading his truck and trailer, but
In his garage, in bitterness, he waits

For Thomas V. Morris and William J. Bennett
In gratitude for a wonderful summer at Notre Dame



O, thou dry Jansenist! A night of fire
Left in your pocket like a shopping list
Sitting quietly in a room, will never burn
To set your sere and withered soul alight

And one might wager that your calculator
In brass, for counting brass, touches not the heart
Which has its reasons which the mind knows too
Pensees which never make a night a day

Forgive thou, then, this lettre provinciale
And count it as a friend’s memorial

In Defense of Iambic Pentameter

For Lori Jones McCaffery,
who was spatting with iambic pentameter
but loves it anyway

via HelloPoetry

Oh, no! Pentameter is not a trap -
Pentameter is - freedom’s wings, aloft
And golden in the morning sun, and free
It lifts our dreams into the skies, and sings

Pentameter is language’s strong heart
Its rhythm shapes our fondest hopes, and sends
Each one upon a pilgrimage of truth
To happiness enthroned at journey’s end

Besides all that, pentameter
Helps calm giddy tetrameter!

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

                       A Laser Focus on Screaming Deaths

               Look upon my Works, ye Mighty, and despair

                               -Shelley, “Ozymandias”

Laser focus laser focus laser
Focus laser focus laser focus
Laser focus teens falling to their deaths
Laser focus escape for two thousand dollars

Laser focus or a promissory note
If the enemy overrun the airport
We’ll laser focus your refund back to you
With this laser focus degree of precision  

Shredded body in the laser focus
Of the wheel well

As one of the blue-jacketed workers
As a defiant student
As a child of poverty
Who never had a bicycle to ride to the Sorbonne

I repudiate your vivid red flags
And your graduate-school keyboard revolution
And your catalogue of cliches’ and cant
And your crawling housefly symbolism

As one of the blue-jacketet workers
As a defiant student
After an all-night shift in the plastics factory
I like my cuppa Earl Grey tea in my bleeding hands

Someday I’ll have a bourgeois balcony
And from it look down on your stereotypes

Uncle Vanya and Lady Godiva

Uncle Vanya came strolling down the road
Wishing he had made something of his life
His young friend Anne loquaciously agreed
And with remarkable vehemence urged him

     to endeavour to remediate his perceived inadequacies in the    
     many precedent matters that burdened him…

Don Quixote suggested that worries were giants
Cassandra said, “There is only one page left”
Nick Adams whispered, “Shh! You’ll scare the fish!”
Ambrose Silk asked the way to the world’s end

And young Lady Godiva, sans chemise
Outsourced her image on souvenir tees

Children shot daily despite our stern laws
But at least they are safe from plastic straws

Children shot daily, caught in street-gang fights
But at least they are safe from 100-watt lights

Children shot daily, high death rankings
But at least they are safe from parental spankings

Children shot daily, murdered by crooks
But at least they are safe from The Little House books

Children shot daily, may God bless their souls
And too our regulated toilet bowls

News on the Internet

***, it’s the age of hyperbole!
Legendary icons dropping their jaws!!
Aliens in spaceships watching humans flee
A purple polar bear flapping twelve paws!!!

Blockbuster! Stunning!! Your life will be changed!!!
Putin really is that albino monk!!!!
And did you hear that the Pope is deranged!?!?!?!?!?
He keeps in the Vatican a sacred skunk!!!!!!!

Tectonic plates are shifting; France is gone!
Heart-stopping, eye-popping, cow-flopping news!!
****** called it in on his new smart ‘phone!!!
It’s all the fault of the Catholics and Jews!!!!

Mass graves in Texas, Ireland, and The Hague!
Looky here, see, here’s some pictures an’ stuff!!
Okay, the sources are a little vague
But we want to believe, and that’s enough!!!

-headline

          And how can man die better
          Than facing fearful odds,
          For the ashes of his fathers,
          And the temples of his gods

                         -Macauley, Lays of Ancient Rome

An argument over a parking space –
Lest all the pink Chinese flip-flops are gone
Triple-wide thongs in naughty, frothy lace
And a rhinestone case for a new MePhone

Cartoon shirts from the Vietnamese, sippy cups
Nicaraguan underwear and funny hats
Squeaky plastic toys for the little pups
And genuine autographed tee-ball bats -

There are causes for which a man might die
But “Ten Percent Off!” is no battle cry

Our merry springtime is a glorious feast
Of joyful sights and scents and happy sounds,
Of breezes turning warmly from the east
Of bustling bees winging their flowery rounds

Above, around, and through a world of green
In dreams of life that move the seasons along
Where each day’s sunrise halos a Creation scene
And every blossom is its own soft song

But the sweetest sound echoing through the glades
Is a snake being shredded by the lawnmower’s blades

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

                         “This Waiting Room of the World”

          I’ve always found this a trying time of the year.  The leaves
          not yet out, mud everywhere you go.  Frosty mornings
          gone.  Sunny mornings not yet come.  Give me blizzards and
          frozen pipes, but not this nothing time, not this waiting room
          of the world.

                                            -Jack in Shadowlands

Slow raindrops are the pulse that marks the time
Which falls with them upon the browning leaves
Each one of them a railway station bench
In a darkened world where trains have ceased to run

The ticket window is closed the rest of the day
But someone says the local will run tomorrow
Maybe around two if the tracks are cleared
Of all the hopes that seem to block the line

But maybe not, for nothing seems to move
And the journeys of life are forbidden to us

Anna Apples

Apples, which last week made the orchard trees
A festival of red among the green,
Are disappearing now, and hard to find
And hard to reach, high up and hidden away

Their joyful season is fading in early June
Their mothering trees are in mourning now
For the late-winter blooms that grew so soon
And ripened into transient perfection

Like happy children playing hide-and-seek
They slip away into the leaves and years

Simon and Schuster assure me that I
Will be consumed by J. R. Ward’s new book
But I am neither steak nor apple pie
And probably would be difficult to cook

Annoyme.com

                     An Advertising Monologue in Upspeak

So I just went on annoyme.com
And like I found my ring you know like on
Annoyme.com where you will find
Those unique designs that you just can’t find

And those really famous great big name brands  
AND YOU KNOW WHICH ONES I’M TALKING ABOUT
Annoyme.com has the selections and styles
You want to see at annoyme.com

I’m going back on annoyme.com
Today, right now, while I should be at work



(Repeat many times each day for weeks and weeks until the listener changes radio stations.)

The First Mowing in Spring – Inspection Tour

Interior Dialogue

or

Why is That Old Man Talking to Himself?

V: Have I left that shovel outside since fall?
R: Your ol’ daddy would say something about that!
V: I could have sworn I put that hose away.
R: Obviously, you didn’t.  And what a mess.

V: Pretty little ground flowers – shame to mow them
R: Shame if you don’t – later, they’ll choke the grass
V: Where is the copper cap for that corner post?
R: I told you to use lots more glue, but nooooo

V: You got anything good to say this morning?
R: Well, ain’t it grand to see another spring!

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

                              Why I Wear a Boonie Hat

Mostly to try to avoid speeding tickets
And maybe someone will say, “Thank you for your service”
And pay for my coffee in gratitude
But they just stop at “Thank you for your service”

Sometimes I meet some other old man
And we ask each other where we were
Memories – some of them surprisingly good
Others dark enough
                                      And we were so young

My boonie hat keeps the sun off my head
And the fluorescents in the Social Security office
It makes me look like John Wayne in The Geriatric Berets
Not really. Maybe a different angle…how’s that?

And young women come up to me to say
That their grandfathers were in Viet-Nam

Navigation Lights

Like spirits of the ancients, veiled fireflies
Patrol as appointed the haunted dusk
Their cold lights winking secret messages
From lawn to tree, and then across Creation

And silent in her elegance the Moon
Escorted by strong Jupiter the bold
Is pleased to grace the skies with her presence
Herself obedient to that once-seen Star:

We are never adrift in our own dark nights
For they are marked with navigation lights

For Rod McKuen

The gentle singer of our youth has died
The poet of empty Sunday afternoons
And solitary strolls through Balboa Park
Among lovers and Frisbee-chasing dogs

Of laughing with shipmates while cleaning rifles
Because we knew more than the armorer
About dreaming away from learning war
About pretty girls laughing in the sun

And a chansonnier in sweater, sneaks, and jeans:
The gentle singer of our youth has died

“We Use Cookies to Track Usage and Preferences”

About Clever Us, the Magazine of Poetry and Thinky-ness

We print free verse about revolution
And deconstructing colonialism
The power and urgency of the story
Post-masculine dystopia redeemed

Visit our online submission system
Against the occupation resistance
As activist performance artisans
Who shape our unconventions for ourselves

Fists of ink against oppressionism
And that is why we track your usage

[again violating my rule never to write in the first-person]

Withdrawal Symptoms

So I’m not going to change the world after all
That’s okay; it was doing fine without me
The moon arose last night without my supervision
This morning the sun was up before I was

And, true, there are bad men and women about
But I didn’t do so very well myself
It’s better that I didn’t change many things
And better had I worked on changing myself

Age is aware of its own absurdity
And wisely it withdraws from messing things up

     A cup of coffee now would be so nice

“I consecrate you to a great novitiate in the world.”

-Father Zosima to Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov

The monastery gate opens easily
If it really needs opening at all
The road outside also leads somewhere else
But then it just as often leads back again

The distance measured by a crucifix
Where a weary traveler can pray awhile
Or maybe Harry Bailey’s 1 hamburger joint
A cup of coffee and a cigarette

Offered by a pilgrim in the neon night -
The monastery gate opens easily



1 *The Canterbury Tales

Bulletproof School Backpacks...

                DeLuxe model with emojis and a charging port

School days, school days
Dear old shooting drill days
Coding and walkouts and smart pad functions
Taught to a federal court’s latest injunctions
You were my queen in tats (Day-Glo®)
I was your Trump at every gun show
You carved in my skin “i luv U ‘n’ Che Guevara so”
When we were a couple of latch-key kids




As of 3 August 2019 bulletproof backpacks were not on the approved list for the Texas Comptroller’s tax-free school supplies weekend; bulletproof vests are on the list as taxable (https://comptroller.texas.gov/taxes/publications/98-490/clothing-footwear.php).

Ouroboros

Writhing about in man’s mythologies
Is a completeness, itself to affirm
Scriven in the ancient cosmologies:
The self-ordained perfection of The Worm

The Samsara of the self-seeking soul
And a self-admiring self-causation
Itself entire, a universal whole
Devouring its tail in auto-phagation

But metamorphoses have come to pass:
The endless worm’s head is now up its own (self)

What Can We Do...?

                         They may break our bodies…
                   but they need not dominate our minds.

                                          -C. S. Lewis

Every book we read to a little child
Every kindness we work for another soul
Every bowl we fill while serving the poor
Every prayer whispered, spoken, or dreamed

Every cup of coffee shared with a pal
Every wheezy old joke about Pat and Mike
(Or, to be fair, about Trevor and Neville)
Every small joy sung to the universe

Is a beginning

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                 Election Night 2024: Dry Bones


                “All we are, basically, are monkeys with car keys”

    -Grandma Woody in Northern Exposure, “Animals R Us,” 1991


An early dusk falls under clouds from the Gulf
Yellow houselights wink on as daylight winks off
Supper in greasy bags from fast-fooderies
That everyone argues they can’t afford

Then like the lozenge in A Space Odyssey
A screen appears and dominates all
And family groupings center themselves around it
In excited cavortings before the images

Of brightly-colored cultic election scores
As fists swinging dry bones crush enemy skulls

Sergeant Schultz Saw Everything

This sad world needs another Sergeant Schultz
That merry miles ponderosus who
Carried his rifle like a walking stick
And celebrated strudel instead of glory  
His innocent joy repudiated
The burning-soul ******* of war
In seeing nothing he saw everything
Through ordinary men living in hope
The liturgy of daily happiness -
This sad world needs another Sergeant Schultz

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                             Did You Grow Up in a Palace Too?

                               In Memory of the Palace Theatre

If you were fortunate you grew up in a palace
A Technicolor palace where Robin Hood
Saved England for only twenty-five cents
And the royal feast was popcorn and RC Cola

If you were fortunate you grew up in a palace
Which was so big that the Comanche Nation
Could encircle both a fort and a wagon train
And a candy bar was chuck-wagon stew

If you were fortunate you grew up in a palace
And softly, sweetly found another’s hand
As the cowboys and Indians rode away in peace -
There was a newer magic for you to discover

If you were fortunate you grew up in a palace
In the summertime of your happy youth

That Happy Little Dachshund Dance

All dachshunds dance their days in happiness
And shake their bodies, tails, and ears about
And thank their humans every doggie day
With puppy kisses and yappings of joy:

          For cats to chase, for beds to muss
          For grassy lawns on which to play
          Hoovers to bark – oh, what a fuss!
          And your pillow at the end of day

For dogs still live in Eden, and that is why
All dachshunds dance their days in happiness

Two wideawake birds bumped into each other
On the distant island of Ascension
Said one to the other, “Excuse me, dear brother!”
And the other replied, “Don’t mention
                                                         ­                 it.”

Seventh Day in the Octave of Christmas 2

     Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a      
     thunderstorm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning
     of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is
     only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols.

     -Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

Does the year fail, or is it we who fail?
This Octave day opens in darkness cold
And on the radio the same cold news
That began this fading Gregorian year

And ends it, churned by a news-o-matic
To be poured into an old plastic cup
As steaming-hot clichés to be consumed
By the devout, obedient faithful

The faithful, who worship a falling light bulb
Does the year fail, or is it we who fail?

A Child’s First Safety-Deposit Box

For Kirk Briggs

A dime-store pocket watch that doesn’t run
A tiny magnifier for aiming the sun
A bit of chalk, glass marbles, crayon stubs
A pencil or two worn down to the nubs
A pair of dice gained in a school-yard trade
A cheap pocket knife with a broken blade
A pocket calendar from just last year
A bottle-opener that says “JAX BEER”
A shotgun hull, and little toy cars -
A box is for treasures, not Dad’s cigars!

4,000 More Light Casualties

A group of journalists arrived from Moscow and were told that the Afghan National Army…had taken the ridge. (They) were posing for victory photographs while our soldiers lay in the morgue.

-Svetlana Alexeivich, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War

A touchy old man who never went to war
Now poses with his decorative generals  
In their tailored Ken-and-Barbie battle dress
All prepped for combat in the officers’ clubs

New president, same as old presidents
And generals, awarding each other medals
And promotions for their golden resumes’
For sending not-their-children off to die

While they prosper on defense industry bids,
Afghanistan is the graveyard of our kids

(Shhhhhhhhhh…Don’t disturb Congress; they’re all asleep.)

Oh, yes, you should dabble amateurishly
With sketchbook, pen, guitar, and crescent wrench
With telescope and hiking boots and love
With verse that scans and prose that strongly speaks

For a dabbler, all the world is his adventure:
A coffee cup is as Old Santa Fe
A stroll in the garden a pilgrimage
To Canterbury or Santiago

And you should draw and write and sing these things
Oh, yes, you should dabble amateurishly

Pomona dances among the apple trees
Light-footed through the glowing amber light;
At dusk, kissed by the last rain-drops, the breeze
Begins to sigh, and falls, to sleep the night.

And then pale Cynthia, in silver crowned,
Rises to breathe upon each leaf and flower
Her sacred mists, softly and softly around,
And blesses dreams through many a silent hour.

Bold Helios will wake the sleeping east
And laugh away the magic of the dark;
He sets out daylight as a merry feast
And measures out his work with compass and arc

But later, them, for sweet Pomona’s play
Now celebrates the golden end of day.

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

                        “Now This Ain’t No S---”

The old chief took a slug of coffee and said,
“What’s the difference between a fairy story
And a war story?
One of ‘em begins with ‘Once upon a time’
And the other with ‘Now this ain’t no s----'"

And it is so.

Down at the Auto Repair - A Waiting Room Discourse

Blah blah blah Trump blah blah blah Bannon blah
Blah blah blah da(ng)ed schools blah blah it’s all
Fake news blah blah blah double-blah media
Clintons blah blah blah kids these days blah blah

Blah buzz buzz buzz that wouldn’t have happened
In my day blah blah blah I can’t believe
What they’re charging blah blah blah FEMA blah
Blah Trump blah blah they don’t want us to know

Blah blah blah da(ng)ed schools blah blah it’s all
Fake news blah blah blah double-blah Jesus

(You can turn it over if you want, but the other side’s just the same)

A Small Boy to His Pencil

O, Ticonderoga, my magic wand –
I wave you, and I am an engineer
Speeding a silver passenger train
From Texas to California, and back

I wave you once again; I am Robin Hood
Drawing my bow against a bishop fat:
“I invite you, Your Grace, to a great feast
in Sherwood Forest, at your own expense!”

I wave you yet again - and Old Miz Grouch
Fusses at me: “Do your sums! And don’t slouch!”