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Lawrence Hall May 2017
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 Jan 2018
The Fifth Karamazov

When young we identify with Alyosha
His optimism and his innocence
His fragile, flowering Orthodox 1 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 Optina 2
Those Russian messengers 3 singing to us
Inviting us to meet Alyosha again
At Father Zosima’s poor 4 hermitage


1 Russian Orthodox
2 The name of the real monastery upon which Dostoyevsky modeled his fictional one
3 The Brothers Karamazov was first published as a serial in The Russian Messenger
4 Poor only by secular standards
Qualyxian Quest Mar 2019
Alyosha - defender of humankind
indeed we need you now
the times have grown quite unkind
our worst usurps our best
we’re lost and hope to find
a way when there’s no way
the creative, communal mind.
Qualyxian Quest Sep 2020
Ivan Karamazov espouses protest atheism
Just too much evil in this world

Evil inflicted on children
The blood does scream and curl

Alyosha patiently listens
He is no Sean Hannity

He is a Russian angel
And his name means Defender of Humanity
Lawrence Hall Sep 2016
A Novitiate in the World

     “…you will go forth from these walls,
     but will live like a monk in the world.”

     -Father Zossima to Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov
      
Every vocation is a novitiate
And every labor a monastic prayer:
Matins and Lauds are sung over coffee,
Then Terce for the plough, the lathe, and the wheel

Sext is gratitude for the midday meal
And None is the hour for downing tools
Soft Vespers is the song of happy homes
‘Til Compline sends all good folk to their beds -

Final vows are taken at death; for now,
Every vocation is a novitiate
Who is buried under the rock
It's a friend of mine, in Barros
Walloping scallops in French Kitchen, cradling reserved Paris
In the free, memories are made often
Of these great following, greetings today
Now tomorrow now comes yeses and sclera
Is a rocking soup, in the full stomach, day after and after

Hue, in the colorful streetlight
Imagine the night of the thunderous clap, when the fly is a ****** hull
And it just hit me, and I kicked the dirt, you're life has to full of sons
If I had music like this ramble on the porch, bleeding by the fire with the letter of tout wheatish complexion
By the dog who waits on the Mitya and Alyosha is your friend in the thought that you will survive the thing that stays after that is what survives in my mind, the Ivan remembers you in his searching elegant looks

Hooking for readable pages that him to a crime of the senescence wailing, waters won't come back again tainted by the hint at the story and talk oh human nature and passion, a bold letter took from your open book, now strewn hanging in the room

Even when I'm in the drunken haze in the clear, swarthy and dressed, lilies wilt in cold art nouveau, talk of colorful tambourines
Dietrich, Lithuania rebarbative is not subjective
Folgen Sie nur auf der Ersten unlike this we search for some facts between the lines of anticipation of something crawl from under
Auf Wiedersehen from the sending  halls that for romance was once, breadth, lengths to go if you're in dearth sickness and you just keep looking to change how you react
Now, you don't even attract me anymore with stories of Lithuania and unspoken in the loveliest languages, how slovenly though
In need for love, drugs can keep this warm, the finding a drunken haze in drugs, ******, are we arriving at the naked frumpy girl or your heaven's in crisis

Hue in the callow streetlamp, your glib about Ibsen, and talk of centuries and blazing etudes that your soul collates, a thrilling merit
When they told her, that she was "yelling."
They asked her to stop making the noise, forgetting that it was music once
They saw the determination in flowery spokes, that follow the sunflower
Parallelogram van in the dim light, strong verses terse hearses
Towers calls and church were we young once, are we full of ourselves
And becoming romantic, philosophizing on knowing you and I
We must have a purpose to do this, applying and ousting ourselves of comforting minnows yarns of jocular joints cracking by the Thomas Munroe book and fireplace, trust the recesses of your mind they aren't distinctly, but, a warm gun
A free drug and Englishman couldn't prevent the brew from brimming
The drudgery of a different time and passion
Time machine, wheels on fire that talks to us and also tells us to sleep, making sure that we keep a mindful eye optioned out of the dinner sleep and talked about that
Well, we are titillating, scintillating, coruscating, shiny friable animated
Frisco bay, curiosity in the shell-shock of the freedom that talks of captivity and caitiffs, call me a coward
We are soldiers in the prisons of our mind, except most of are in the kitchen making the derelict talk, a black cat crosses the street
Talk, and talk, then the electric silence missionaries, a tabled missionary serving food to the few toward the city in pursuit of the curious one.
Lawrence Hall Feb 2018
“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
Lawrence Hall Mar 2018
“…you will go forth from these walls,
but will live like a monk in the world.”

-Father Zossima to Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov
      
Every vocation is a novitiate
And every labor a monastic prayer:
Matins and Lauds are sung over coffee,
Then Terce for the plough, the lathe, and the wheel

Sext is gratitude for the midday meal
And None is the hour for downing tools
Soft Vespers is the song of happy homes
‘Til Compline sends all good folk to their  beds -

Final vows are taken at death; for now,
Every vocation is a novitiate
Lawrence Hall Jan 2023
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Logosophiamag.c­om
Hellopoetry.com
Fellowshipandfairydust.com

                  ­    Corporal Karamazov Flies Home from the War

                                           “Which war?”

                            “Your war – there’s always a war.”

Every young reader sees Alyosha in himself
A sensitive mystic, misunderstood by most
Questing for an answer to a question unasked
Politely shown the door by Father Zosima

As Old Karamazov? Impossible
53 is an age of antiquity
As Dimitri, Ivan, and Smerdyakov?
They are unable to sort out themselves

Lost in thought in a contract airline seat:

A 22-year-old just two days off the line
A patriarchal colonialist ideologue
Qualyxian Quest Aug 2020
Calvert House, Chicago
David Greene, Wendy Doniger
    The Brothers Karamazov
Kalyan Das Aug 2018
It was just another winter morning.
She had an unhurried breakfast
and walked into the traffic.

She spun and fell
when the first car hit.
The car that followed
could not stop fast enough
for her not to be squelched.
A mess of flesh and blood,
she became elementally
what she'd recently
longed to be.

Incomprehension was the
larger reaction
until they found on her reading desk
a musty copy of
The Brothers Karamazov,
pagemarked where the conversation
between Ivan and Alyosha begins.
Lawrence Hall May 2019
Our steppes and birch woods are metaphorical
And so are we - who has not seen himself
In youth as the innocent Alyosha
Or in bad days as Dimitri or Ivan

Grushenka at times, and pale Katya too
The Grand Inquisitor at our dark worst
Old Karamazov lusting after Death
Foul Smerdyakov descending cellar stairs

Or gypsy dancers in a rented room
Rolling Polish officers for their pay

But who could ever be Father Zosima?
Your ‘umble scrivener’s site is:
Reactionarydrivel.blogspot.com.
It’s not at all reactionary, tho’ it might be drivel.

Lawrence Hall’s vanity publications are available on amazon.com as Kindle and on bits of dead tree:  The Road to Magdalena, Paleo-Hippies at Work and Play, Lady with a Dead Turtle, Don’t Forget Your Shoes and Grapes, Coffee and a Dead Alligator to Go, and Dispatches from the Colonial Office.
Qualyxian Quest Jul 2021
All philosophies fail
Mine does as well

Life beyond contained
Alyosha. Ishmael.

Pancakes this morning
English breakfast tea

Gift card for my son
Loneliness for me

          Laudato Si'
Qualyxian Quest Jul 2023
Never went to Catholic school
Pray outside the Church
Jesus didn't die for our sins
Cedar. Willow. Birch.

Water, water everywhere
Water on exomoons
Girl with the Pearl Earring
Water Lillies. Flaming June.

Icy Charles River
Brunch at the hotel
Vegetarian tacos
Alyosha. Ishmael.

Sandor Marai in San Diego
The kiss. Genuflects.
Poetry in Vienna
Wittgenstein reflects

                  Winter ***!
Qualyxian Quest May 2021
Confidence comes so rarely
When it does I'm grateful
Help me with the agony
Help with the despair

Ishmael a sailor
Alyosha listening
Cordelia loyal true
Highwater Everywhere

           God! Her hair!
Qualyxian Quest Aug 2020
Alyosha: Defender of humanity.
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Qualyxian Quest Jul 2020
Alyosha Karamazov
Humanity's defender

Watching Galaxy Quest
Never give up! Never surrender!

Prince in the 80s
An early *******

Little Richard too
Like I told that new bartender

— The End —