Re-Reading Tolkien for Lent

Across the page, across the words, soft light
Soft morning light at play this quiet day
This stand-down day when duty does not call
Not call, and life is for a few hours free

Ink on a page, now forming into songs
Songs that were old when this green world was new
And fields of flowers were as fields of stars
Fields of Creation and eternal Hope

O happy fields forever, here, right here
Across the page, across the words, soft light

Washingtonians, this Wednesday afternoon, come to the Starbucks on 1600 K Street to become acquainted with some young, interesting, average income level Asian American guys and gals. Instead of meeting Asian American doctors, lawyers, and consultants, you’ll meet Dr. Dre copycats, alcoholic paralegals, and T-Mobile wireless salespeople.

These guys and gals are looking to meet new friends that include: white, black, Hispanic, or any other race of people, just as long as you aren’t a F.O.B. Because after all, they don’t want to perpetuate the stereotype that Asians only hang out with other Asians. Just kidding, we love our F.O.B brothers and sisters! But **** stereotypes.

If you are a Washingtonian who likes drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana, stop by and make a new Asian American friend who will provide mixers and match you on a blunt. Please, do not ask these guys and gals for college study notes for Math or Bio, because all of them have dropped out of college to pursue their artistic passions, like: writing a novel about having a white group of friends and being the token who reads Tolkien and likes Toking; playing electric guitar in a grunge, punk, post-emo garage band with your black buddies who like Fugazi and bad brains but ******* hate Green day for selling out; and drawing sketches and painting portraits of the half-Asian girl you’re dating on a wide canvass, but really you’re secretly into selfies and taking photos of breakfast on Instagram.

We don’t discriminate against the kind of alcohol you drink, whether it be wine, beer, or liquor—within reason please don’t bring Franzia or Rolling rock, this isn’t college anymore. Yes, we get it, you’re highly considering attending this group because you’re a huge Haruki Murakami fan and you’re wondering two questions: are our Japanese American patrons also huge fans of the author, and do our patrons behave in a similar fashion to Murakami’s characters like Toru Watanabe and Toru Okada?

First, our Japanese American patrons are huge fans of Murakami and they own books like Sputnik Sweetheart and The Windup Bird Chronicle, but they also think the author often is obsessed with Western culture, in a way that possibly, and seriously possibly transforms him into a Brett Easton Ellis derivative based on Ellis’s American ****** and Glamorama.

Second, no these particular patrons do not behave like Murakami’s characters, because they’re real, living, breathing human beings, and not some fantasy figure or made-up person! But enough of the rant, please come though and let’s have conversations about jazz and talking cats.

While we respect Asian American actors like Ken Jeong and Randall Park, we really aren’t interested in having a lengthy dialogue about The Hangover’s Asian **** scene, or how Park was kinda offensively funny in The Interview. Although Park is awesome in Fresh Off The boat! All we really want is to just drink jack and cokes and smoke Marlboro lights and have conversations about the latest trends in indie rock and Hip Hop culture, and whether Citizen Kane was better than Casablanca, or vice versa.

At the meeting, we will have our guest speaker Jeremy Lin’s college roommate George Park answer questions about Lin, as well as a special appearance by Steve Yuen’s ex-girlfriend Marcy Abernathy who will give us an inside scoop to Yuen’s fetishes as well as his quirky habits. We will also be providing free snacks like LSD Pho noodle soup and Marijuana Mochi ice-cream. On a serious note, we’ll be giving out guilt-free Twinkies.

Before you arrive at the Starbucks, you’ll be getting a name tag and a free A.A.A T-shirt that wasn’t made by little children from China; instead, the shirts are made by Ronald Mai, our aspiring fashion designer whose twitter handle is @thatsmyshirtwhiteman! If you’re interested in coming out to the group our first meeting is this Wednesday at 6 p.m.

Leave your apprehension at the door and walk in with a warm smile, as you’re greeted by an expressionless face. And phoreal if your car is messed up and you require a ride, please call A.A.A’s number at (202) 576-2AAA (we know we’re phunny). Hope to see you there, and if you don’t come, you’re a ******* racist! But seriously come out and meet some cool *** people.

they say you'll never forget
where you were on 9/11
i was nine
i sat in the kitchen
and watched the television
play out the violence hour after hour
my child-like mind conflated the Two Towers
in Tolkien's literary fantasy
with these acts of misanthropy  
and i was taught at the dinner table
that very evening
that all of life could be reduced
to capital letters defining a
cosmic struggle of Good vs. Evil

and yet
regardless of their affiliation
on this defunct
political spectrum of
left left
left right left
politicians canonize a legacy of
injustice and oppression and
in order to suppress
democratic expression
they propagate the notion
that dissent is treason

because the wars we wage are blessed
by the sagely insight of rich old men
who sit safely in mansions protected by
picket fences as white as their skin
while they play off our emotions and
turn us into thoughtless sheep
content to stomach the whims of
politicians propagating vengeance

i will speak this out even
when my voice shakes
because i have seen the hypocrisy
of this war on terror
that relies on terror
to cultivate more terrorists
in order to perpetuate the notion
that Orwell posited

war is peace
freedom is slavery
ignorance is bliss
isn't it

in my naïveté
i rejected the reality of
torture and murdered children for
i nursed a secret hope that
despite the pictures and videos
that served as empirical evidence
we were still somehow
the good guys and
they were the bad guys

but Americans rained white
phosphorous on Fallujah
dropped the world's first
and hopefully last
atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
we toppled democratically elected socialists
whose interests betrayed our self-serving agendas
cultivating a policy of extra-judicial assassination
regime change is the name of the game
just ask the CIA
they'd tell you
business is booming but
then they'd have to **** you

so i switched off my TV screen
and picked up books
i read Slaughterhouse-V
and treasured the way Vonnegut
looks at the lives of even
bees and butterflies as valuable
intoning "so it goes"
every time a living thing dies

i read O'Brien's
recollections
of Vietnam
a month later
he said that
like white lies
tall tales and
fishermen’s yarns
every war story
has a bit of truth

and i've seen the proof
in the photographs of
Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay
in the aftermath of drone strikes
that left pieces of kids scattered
across the desert sands of foreign lands

i see the toxic side-effects of
systemic violence in the eyes
of homeless veterans suffering
on the streets with PTSD
a flicker of fear livens a
deadened gaze at the sound of
every backfiring engine
as if they're a thousand miles away
on some distant shore

betrayed by their own
government once again
a Purple Heart is
a death sentence
when there are 22
military suicides a day
thanks for your service
now die in silence

like bad religion the phrase
war crime is rather redundant
and i testify not because i
aim to disrespect the
men and women in uniform
on the contrary

when i say
**** war
it is because i
cherish every brother
and every sister
who has perished in the
churning gears of conflict

they shoved tall tales of hope
for a collegiate education
and far-flung travel
down our throats
just sign here
right along the dotted line

we want you
to march into hellfire
we want you
to send missiles into
tiny huts and villages
tracking cell phone signals
we want you
to sit down
shut up and
just do as you're told

to every fallen human who
has been sent off to fight on
behalf of this
or any other
corrupt nation
i sincerely apologize
for not taking to the streets to protest
a vitriolic ideology

i regret filing my taxes
when 54% or more of our budget goes to
military expenditures so they could
stick an M-16 in your hands
and ship you off to die for abstract
and so often arbitrary phrases like
freedom and justice for all

you were robbed of your liberty
by a capitalist system that seeks profit
like a false prophet for
bank accounts soar in times of war  
and in my apathy i hammered
nails into your coffin

and i pride myself on  
being an anti-militaristic
non-violent anarchist because
i don't hate soldiers
if i did i would remain
silent and apathetic
and let the government
abuse its youth

i celebrate humanity
regardless of ethnicity and creed
which is precisely why i despise
this system that sacrifices
generation after generation for
conquest and imperial notions

pray tell
will we turn from the
error of our ways
wake up from
this terrorist daze
before it's too late
and say

the State can try to
whitewash history but
i refuse to let them
brainwash me

There're swords,
lots of them,
and long-bows,
with fresh, eager arrows
jostle with notched expert axes;

legendary hair frame braided beards
flowing into refilled tankards
drowning curses through broken teeth
gnawing at poor personal hygiene
across the stench of the public tavern
as granite-stares challenge
bone-shattering laughter.
-
All as anticipated -
there's Orcs about
and the prescribed heroes assemble.
-
-
Slow rolling leaden mist cloaks howling creatures at dawn
from deep within the forest,
then disabling rain falls at dusk
and steel clashes with steel in the storm…
-
All these exploits ferment short of full strength
and stretch onto a wide Winter screen
before facing the final critical battle
for a 12A Christmas.

Lawrence Hall   Poems  

2d
Tolkien's Shelob the Spider
Tolkien’s Shelob the Spider

                “…a great malice bent upon him…gloating over…
                  prey trapped beyond all hope of escape.”

                                     -Tolkien, The Two Towers

A poisonous lump of flesh in malignant repose
Her lair all befouled with scraps of souls
In life sought out with her multiplex eyes
Her Sauron-eyes - it was the hopes that died first

Should a sunbeam shine in, it would be darkened
Should a breath of air waft in, it would be poisoned
Should a sprig of green appear, it would be withered
Should a prayer be whispered, it would be cursed

A poisonous lump of flesh in malignant repose
Within whose realm of hate nothing ever grows

(allusions to The Two Towers and Beowulf)

I remember reading
Martin Luther King, Jr's
Letter from Birmingham Jail
Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom
Mark Twain's Huck Finn
DuBois' Souls of Black Folk
For the first time

The words of Chief Joseph
Sitting Bull
Tecumseh
James Welch
and Alexie Sherman
And others of indigenous kind
Linger like arrows in my mind.

Of course, there's
Gilgamesh's forlorn quest for Enkidu;
Osiris, Amun, Ra, and Seth,
Homer's Illiad and Odyssey,
And Virgil's Roman treatment -
(For whom the gods destroy
We all must learn bereavement).

I remember reading
Milton's Paradises (lost and found)
And Dante's Infernal quest for Heaven
Through the bowels of Hell with Virgil's spritely guide
And up the Devil's staircase with Beatrice by his side.
John's Revelation of Times' End;
And LaHaye's money-making Left Behind
Apocalypses here to chill my mind.

I have surveyed Dead Presidents
Washington,
Jefferson,
Lincoln
Both Roosevelts, Ted and Frank,
And Reagan
And smatterings of others...
Then hopped the bookish pond to read
Sir Winston and some others,
Not the least of whom is Gandhi G,
Taught by the Queen to free his brothers.

I have studied
Moses
Job
David
Ruth
Esther
Isaiah
Jeremiah
The Disciples
Paul
and James
(Ironically,
Though Jesus is the "Word"
He never penned one).

British poets's thoughts,
Tale tellers long-dead
Have found their way
Into my head:
Beowulf and Chaucer
Old moral plays
Shelley and Keats
Cavalier Poets
Scott and Brownings
Burns and (not) Allen
Spenser and Shakespeare
Dylan and Tolkien
Lewis and Auden
And so many more
That I leave on the floor

Western Americana I have loved
Hemingway and Steinbeck, all worth the time,
Mari Sandoz' Old Jules, and
Rolvaag's Giants in the Earth,
Keroac went on the road, while
Joseph Kinsey Howard showed us the West
Lewis & Clark in journals scribed
Their journey west and back again

I can't forget psychology
And so I will digress
Or Sigmund's accusation stays
That I have but suppressed:
Ellis, Freud, and Eric Berne,
Pavlov, Skinner, Thorndike, Watson,
Wundt, and Wm James, Piaget and Chomsky
Then Vygotsky and Bandura put a social spin
on cognitive psychology, and Everybody's in.
Diverging and Converging, psychic students, all
Could never make transaction
'Til Rogers tried to make some peace
But Ellis wouldn't have 'im.

And then, of course,
The lighter stuff,
The popcorn of the mind:
Clancy, Rankin, Carole Keene
L'Amour and Will James
Stephen King and Poe,
Cruz Smith and Leon Uris,
Grisham, Deaver, Cornwall,
Asimov, Bradbury and Herbert,
Carroll and Baum...

i only started collecting a library, because, would you believe it, my local library was a pauper in rags and tatters; apologies for omitting necessary diacritic marks, the whiskey was ******* on icecubes to a shrivel.*

ernest hemingway, e.m. forster, mary shelley,
aesop, r. l. stevenson, jean-paul sartre,
jack kerouac, sylvia plath, evelyn waugh,
chekhov, cortazar, freud, virginia woolf,
philip k. ****, dostoyevsky, aleksandr solzhenitsyn,
oscar wilde, malcolm x, kafka, nabokov,
bukowski, sacher-masoch, thomas a kempis,
yevgeny zamyatin, alexandre dumas,
will self, j. r. r. tolkien, richard b. bentall,
james joyce, william burroughs, truman capote,
herman hesse, thomas mann, j. d. salinger,
nikos kazantzakis, george orwell,
philip roth, joseph roth, bulgakov, huxley,
marquis de sade, john milton, samuel beckett,
huysmans, michel de montaigne, walter benjamin,
sienkiewicz, rilke, lipton, harold norse,
alfred jarry, miguel de cervantes, von krafft-ebing,
kierkegaard, julian jaynes, bynum porter & shephred,
r. d. laing, c. g. jung, spinoza, hegel, kant, artistotle,
plato, josephus, korner, la rochefoucauld, stendhal,
nietzsche, bertrand russell, irwin edman,
faucault, anwicenna, descartes, voltaire, rousseau,
popper,  heidegger, tatarkiewicz, kolakowski,
seneca, cycero, milan kundera, g. j. warnock,
stefan zweig, the pre-socratics, julian tuwim,
ezra pound, gregory corso, ted hughes,
guiseppe gioacchino belli, dante, peshwari women,
e. e. cummings, ginsberg, will alexander, max jacob,
schwob, william blake, comte de lautreamont,
jack spicer, zbigniew herbert, frank o'hara,
richard brautigan, miroslav holub, al purdy,
tzara, ted berrigan, fady joudah, nikolai leskov,
anna kavan, jean genet, albert camus, gunter grass,
susan hill, katherine dunn, gil scott-heron,
kleist, irvine welsh, clarice lispector, hunter thompson,
machado de assisi, reymont, tolstoy, jim bradbury,
norman davies, shakespeare, balzac, dickens,
jasienica, mary fulbrook, stuart t. miller,
walter la feber, jan wimmer, terry jones & alan ereira,
kenneth clark, edward robinson, heinrich harrer,
gombrowicz, a. krawczuk, andrzej stasiuk, ivan bunin,
joseph heller, goethe, mcmurry, atkins & de paula,
bernard shaw, horace, ovid, virgil, aeschyles,
rumi, omar khayyam, humbert wolfe, e. h. bickersteth,
asnyk, witkacy, mickiewicz, slowacki, lesmian,
lechon, lep szarzynski, victor alexandrov, gogol,
william styron, krasznahorkai, robert graves,
defoe, tim burton, antoine de saint-exupery,
christiane f., salman rushdie, hazlitt, marcus aurelius,
nick hornby, emily bronte, walt whitman,
aryeh kaplan, rolf g. renner, j. p. hodin, tim hilton... etc.

-
I: tonight! at the Oscars!

i really had to watch the whole show
twice, to convince myself of
something;
    the first time i watched it i was
as any usual idiot aspiring to
wow!
                      you know the usual
finesse,
             a bunch of humble people
with diamonds that belong
                                     to hades,
or at least the j. r. r. tolkien dwarves,
       and the masked king
          under the dome of the theatre
or rather:
           when does an actor, not act?
and i thought the mob
    that went to see ballet clapped
too much...
                        boy i had it coming
with this crowd...
                  these one-legged actors
seem to clap more than
    your typical pleb like me at
                       a ballet performance;
but this was only upon first sitting.

2nd sitting? ooh - a cringe (show
a face of constipation with closed eyes
and skidding mouth trying
to usher in the crin-  with a floating
                    -dg         - the d being
subtle) show...
                     the majority of americans
are of german descent, although
they speak english, right?
      and i thought english humour
was bad...
                        upon watching highlights
a 2nd time,
      i started smelling a rat...
         weinstein...
               sure, sure...
                          but who's that young
girl sitting next to guillermo del toro?  
      holding his arm as if clinging
to daddy issues - but hey!
               there's the aqua god hidden
somewhere in that bag of meat
               finely, finely attired!  
yeah... and i have an easter bunny
shoved up my ***,
                    and mother goose too!  
and black, so much black,
                 well, khaki doesn't cut it
really...
              but by watching the highlights
the second time
           it just felt like
     quote from the phantom tailor,
i.e. you hurt my feelings!
   chic? what's chic?
          chick-chicky-poo-brains...
        crass, man, absolutely crass...
     the absolute german joke:
    regarding the best picture
            award from last year...
              it just so happened that
the academy made a mistake between
a BLACK movie, and a musical...
     and in this years "ceremony"
            the hurt feelings had to be
appeased and what: the barbarian horde
expected was - but not on the last
minute whim...
            well, bull in a china shop,
     the closest i can come to the grace
of a balerina, is to curl my toes inward,
  and then stand up and walk the crow
walk... the opposite of how a gorilla
does the same with its hands.

***** please, don't confuse hans zimmer
with: are you sure that
   john williams isn't plagiarising
himself all the time?
           so, i came up with a new category,
the sort of guys
    who choose the music for such
films like baby driver...
                          can't argue that that
film is the ******* purely on the basis
of what soundtrack was behind it...
how about there's an oscar for those
music nerds?

II: i never follow the exact recipe -
    this is my body (pepper),
                          this is my blood (salt).

just 'ave a look at this:

ingredient list from
     two different recipes
     (a) epicurius.com
                      (b) pekishme.com
   (c) ... the hybrid

  (no measurements are to be given
in the later revealed hybrid
   as in the following two recipe
sources for a reason...
        i'll admit... the only branch
of chemistry i was good was
       organic: or rather - the i see) -
i've seen too many english women
sticking to "guidelines"
  and have seen at least two
marriages where a woman didn't
understand the concept of
       al dente, that later had to be
cooked to a nice chew in the sauce
after having rested in a seive
   drizzled with oil, prior to being
cooled with cold water to stop cooking...

                   A                                              B
butter          ­                                       fettuccine
breadcrumbs                                    cutterf­ish
fresh basil                                         shrimps
chopped fresh thyme                      clams
mussel                          ­                     white wine
water                                                 double cream
olive oil                                            onions
zucchini   ­                                         garlic
yellow summer squash                  thyme
red bell pepper                                oregano
garlic             ­                                    olive oil
shrimps                                            parmesan cheese
scallops
fettuccine

                                     C      
butter                                                
br­eadcrumbs                                    
                   ­                                         shrimps
                ­                      
mussel                                               white wine
                                                           double cream
olive oil                                            onions
           ­                                                garlic
                                                          ­ thyme
                                                           oregano

                                                        ­   parmesan cheese

fettuccine

and there are problems with reading two
recipes...
         e.g. you can't exactly use wine
and cream and also add
  zucchinil, yellow summer squash                  
& red bell pepper with these mild
sensations that are not balanced
akin to cream and wine (esp. white),
fresh basil? doesn't go with cream...
fresh thyme does go along with meat,
notably, lamb?

    dried thyme & oregano are
a match made in heaven...

      point being,
            the crucial aspect of fusing
recipe (a) with recipe (b)
  is the butter and breadcrumbs...
    you melt the butter and brown
the breadcrumbs in it...
    let them cool, and then sprinkle
them on the dish...
    you can also infuse the addition
of cream with parmesan,
  as you might also add extra on
top...
                 but the point of
recipe (a) crux is the breadcrumbs
mingling with everything
   in recipe (b) - but also with
what's essential in recipe (a) rubric.

III: code.

    for a while i forgot where you begin
writing html...
            blanked man, blanked...
     oh... right... in the notepad
and then you save the file under
   under index.htm
             with a sub-heading ALL TEXT...
but at this point it's really caveman
talk to me, the ones using the language
proficiently have been taught
by pioneers in the field,
            and it's not about wealth
distribution, but about knowledge...
  
e.g.
      <!DOCTYPE html>
<html>                         but why not <\html>?
<body>                         but why not <\body>?

<h1>me being late</h1>
<p>the first word is spelled mama, or gaga?</p>

</body>
</html>

           with those questions in italics
  i can't see no gate opening, nor closing
     subsequently with <h1> and <p>,
               apparently the gates
    are always open and there needs
               to a constant flow through them.

sure, smart, but dumb at the same time;

because i can tell you,
i once had an "I.T" "teacher" in my youth,
charged 20 quid an hour,
and all he managed to "teach" me
was how to change the, ******* screenshot!

it's not exactly true what they say
about teachers... it's not that if you can't
do, you teach... the darker side is:
                       you scam.

IV: ✡.

       there is no such thing as a "secret"
among the rich,
    as there certainly isn't such a thing
as a "conspiracy" among the poor.

V: the croydon cat-killer.

this isn't even an urban myth told
in thailand by hippies...
        let me tell you,
          when you spot a decapitated
cat, lying on the street while
walking at night,
   and you've read about where
this story originated, i.e. croydon
you start to start looking
   for that pathetic sadist...
   thinking to yourself:
           well, and we met, would
you have the ***** to do that to me?
  i'm gagging for a chance encounter,
just to see the ****** breakdown
upon trying to move to an upper
tier of this depraved practice.

New Hiking Shoes for the Trail Ahead

The road goes ever on and on…

-J.R.R. Tolkien

While I was looking for something else I found
A pair of hiking shoes still in their box
From a year ago – in anticipation
Of a summer vacation that never was

And there was no holiday again this year
It was all coronavirus and hurricanes
I had forgotten those shoes, but here they are
All ready for some sunlit summer road

While I was looking for something else I found
A pair of hiking shoes, and a bit of hope

I remember reading
Martin Luther King, Jr's
Letter from Birmingham Jail
Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom
Mark Twain's Huck Finn
DuBois' Souls of Black Folk,
Adichie's The Thing Around Your Neck,
Sherman Alexie's Part-time Indian tale....
For the first time

The words of Chief Joseph
Sitting Bull
Tecumseh
James Welch
and Alexie Sherman
And others of indigenous kind
Linger like arrows in my mind.

Of course, there's
Gilgamesh's forlorn quest for Enkidu;
Osiris, Amun, Ra, and Seth,
Homer's  Illiad and  Odyssey,
And Virgil's Roman treatment -
(For whom the gods destroy
We all must learn bereavement).

I remember reading
Milton's Paradises (lost and found)
And Dante's Infernal quest for Heaven
Through the bowels of Hell with Virgil's spritely guide
And up the Devil's staircase with Beatrice by his side.
John's Revelation of Times' End;
And LaHaye's money-making Left Behind,
Collin's Hunger Games and Dashner's Maze Running
Apocalypses enough to chill my mind.

I have surveyed Dead Presidents
Washington,
Jefferson,
Lincoln
Both Roosevelts, Ted and Frank,
And Reagan
And smatterings of others...
Then hopped the bookish pond to read
Sir Winston and some others,
Not the least of whom is Gandhi G,
Taught by the Queen to free his brothers.

I have studied
Moses
Job
David
Ruth
Esther
Isaiah
Jeremiah
The Disciples
Paul
and James
(Ironically,
Since Jesus is the "Word,"
Through men He penned).

British poets's thoughts,
Tale tellers long-dead
Have found their way
Into my head:
Beowulf and Chaucer
Old moral plays
Shelley and Keats
Cavalier Poets
Scott and Brownings
Burns and (not) Allen
Spenser and Shakespeare
Dylan and Tolkien
Lewis and Auden
And so many more
That I leave on the floor

Western Americana I have loved
Hemingway and Steinbeck, all worth the time,
Mari Sandoz' Old Jules, and
Rolvaag's Giants in the Earth,
Keroac went on the road, while
Joseph Kinsey Howard showed us the West
Lewis & Clark in journals scribed
Their journey west and back again

I can't forget psychology
And so I will digress
Or Sigmund's accusation stays
That I have but suppressed:
Ellis, Freud, and Eric Berne,
Pavlov, Skinner, Thorndike, Watson,
Wundt, and Wm James, Piaget and Chomsky
Then Vygotsky and Bandura put a social spin
on cognitive psychology, and Everybody's in.
Diverging and Converging, psychic students, all
Could never make transaction
'Til Rogers tried to make some peace
But Ellis wouldn't have 'im.

And then, of course,
The lighter stuff,
The popcorn of the mind:
Clancy, Rankin, Carole Keene
L'Amour  and Will James
Stephen King and Poe,
Cruz Smith and Leon Uris,
Grisham, Deaver, Cornwall,
Asimov, Bradbury and Herbert,
Carroll and Baum...

The list goes on and on, and will, I'm sure, expand beyond capacity.