yay jo haal hoa sare- shaam hi,
siyah dasht -o- garibaan hoa,
Mjhay hasil naan tha jo kamal bhe,
Wo bay-sabab shikasta -o -jaan hoa..
aay rahbar -e-zindagi, yay kaisi taveel tar raat hai,
Naan amaan mili, naan hi koe imtihaan hoa!!
Wo jo pamaal kar gay meray khwab ko,
us hashar-e- jaan ka kia samaan hoa;
Yunheen gard main liptay bujhay khayal,
Shahr say jaanay ka yun ihtimaam hoa!
Yay rang nhn saraab hain,yay ehsaas say door paar hain,
Meray bayrabt say tootay pyaar main,Jo hoa tou bass yunheen hoa!!

I’ve been listening to a lot of Willie Nelson lately,
A bootleg copy Outlaw Willie’s “Greatest Hits,”
Permanently inserted into the CD-player of my Honda:
An automobile preference,
An immediate dead giveaway,
A tag better than a license plate,
Useful for identification purposes,
Distinguishing friend from foe,
In this case a rolling, conspicuous enemy of
Detroit & rust belt environs.
Like other zombie-American consumers,
I **** the livelihood of my countrymen,
Once again, selling out friends & neighbors,
Doing my bit for Capitalism,
Exporting another job overseas.
I do my bit to help the 1%
Pay Labor back for the
Capitulations of the 1930s:
Unions winning concessions
In the street, pickets & strikes,
Boycotts & violence,
Largely mobbed-up violence.
Willie does a nice cover of “Heartbreak Hotel,”
Different, yet raw like Elvis,
And rocking.
But I digress.

So I’m thinking about the HOA Board,
(HOA: Home Owners' Association)
Local Thanes of Cawdor,
As if people over-55,
Living in gated lunacy,
Actually needed a 4th level of government.
The HOA Board turned down my landscape modification again.
Of course, they are just busting my *****.
They know I’m a hothead,
A deeply anti-authority type,
Forged in childhood in the street,
Through ringalevio & stickball,
“Your Mother” taunts,
******* contests,
Belly bumps,
Bones of contention,
In short: Brooklyn 101.
Retired now & for awhile I think
My problem with authority retired with me.
Just when I'm thinking
My lessons are finally done,
I realize there’s one more report card.
And Citizenship is a Grade:
“Plays Well With Others”
As it was for boys,
The measure of a man,
“It’s a community we have here,”
The HOA Doge & Ministerial Cohorts,
Conspiring to provoke
The sociopath in me, a fit description
For any would-be antagonist,
For anyone challenging
The Restrictions & Covenants,
Openly arrived at, in secret.
My neighbor,
Good Citizen Bernie
Reminds me that a community is
Entitled to know whom it’s dealing with.
The price of real estate not always
Effective for screening out
Potential psychopaths.
A determined caste-climber &
Boat rocker slips through now & then.
Insecure & angry because of it,
The schoolyard **** gone grey,
Yet hasn’t figured out the object of life is
To win friends & influence people.
Retirement: a Carnegie Deli &
Serenity Smorgasbord,
“Plays Well With Others.”
The HOA leadership has the right,
Has a duty to distinguish
The merely eccentric
From the clearly a present danger.
So they bust ***** about rules broken,
Code infractions, sordid violations,
Community norms transgressed.
Better you flip your wig
Under close observation & preparedness,
Than go off spontaneously.
One more massacre;
Another random bloodbath.

At the mailbox, again:
“Who loves me, baby?”
Well, let’s see: there’s a flyer from Mercury Insurance,
Reminding me that most middle-income customers
Save an average of $4 million smackaroons when they switch too.
The Penny Saver USA.com is here,
Thank God, almighty!
So now I know that Thomas Roofing & Paving
Is having a special on 20-year leak-free flat roofs;
"All work guaranteed & insured.
No job too big or small.
Free estimates/Emergency services/License # I8U-69."
And thank you, Jesus,
For another $4.99 Farmer Boys 3-Egg Breakfast
Combo with Coffee coupon, and that
Little Caesars Hot-N-Ready, $5.00 cheese or pepperoni,
Mae-West-“why-don’t-you-come up and see me sometime?”—mailer. And, of course, another technology Siren’s song:
Verizon FiOS delivers entertainment this big,
Dish me up some dish NETWORK, $19.99 a month . . .
Are you ******* me?
For 12 ******* months?
AT&T;: whack me off on 120 channels.
DIRECTV.com - DIRECTV® Official Site‎
Worry-free 99.9%  . . . cue Joe E. Brown,
"Some Like It Hot“ Osgood:
"Well, nobody’s perfect!"
Time Warner/Sprint/T-Mobile;
And ******* Leather, Polk Street, San Francisco.
******* leather?
Must be for my neighbor: that ***** ****!
And here’s the weekly 8-page color fold-out from Stater Bros:
Lowering prices every day, large cantaloupes
(Jessica Lange, are you back?)
10 for $10.00, 32 oz. Gatorade
Or 24 oz Propel in 30 assorted varieties @ 79 cents
+ CRV: California Redemption Value?
Nice euphemistic cover-up for a TAX.
Nice, nice, very nice, CA elected state officials;
Nicely done, Sacramento.
Everywhere else in the country you get real money—
A fixed number of pennies, nickels, or dimes—
For your plastic bottles and aluminum cans.
But in California, the licensed recyclers
Get to pull the market price out of their *** each morning.
California Redemption Value?
What ******* genius government kleptocrat thought that one up? Conspiracy Alert: who gets all that CRV money?
And what are they doing with it?
Feeling plain, Jane?
Marinello Schools of Beauty, want you,
Offer you hands-on training in cosmetology,
Skin care esthetics, manicuring and vaginal deodorizing—
Just kidding, Babaloo.
Food tip for the Third World:
Never try to write poetry on an empty stomach.
Sizzler 6 oz juicy & succulent.
RENEGADE DEAL:
El Pollo Loco guacamole chicken sandwich,
Coupon free, small drink and small chips,
When you purchase a guacamole or jalapeno sandwich,
includes pepper jack cheese and a southwest sauce.
Gardenas sandia con semilla, 7 lbs 99 cents.
GARDENAS: “en precios, servicio y calidad, nadie nos iguaia.”
Bud Gordon’s Quality NISSAN:
One at this price after a $1500 factory rebate.
TERMINIX: get them before they get you!
The Kingdom Animalia, Phylum Arthropoda, Class Insecta
Bug up my *** again.
And a form letter from the VA
Asking me to please update my whereabouts.
And a form letter from the VA asking me
To please update my whereabouts.
And miles to go before I sleep.
Bite me, Mr. Frost!

An outing, at last.
I am going for a walk around the inside of my gates.
I live in one of those gated over-55 lunatic asylums.
There are gates. It is gated. Get it?
GATED! We feel safe here.
Probably a good thing at our age:
Self-imposed institutionalization,
Putting oneself in an asylum to ferment and die.
The fact that so many of us
Need it so bad at only 55
Says something itself about the current state of
Baby Boomer metal-fatigue.
I am now standing at the far end of the golf course.
I wait at the far end of the 18th Hole.
A ball bounces past my head and
Rolls off past the green into the far rough.
The 18th Hole is perched atop a small plateau,
Out of sight, far above the horizon for anyone teeing off.
I am Puck, invisible and impish.
I pluck the ball up.
I scamper to the green.
I pop the ball into the hole.
Which is better than popping a hole in the ball,
Surely, kind of a drag,
As we were once fond of saying.
Deflated Ball.
Deflator Maus.
OPERA can be ****.
Bodice-ripping corsets, whorehouses and naked ******!
Hardly what you might expect from
A night with the Welsh National Opera,
But they found their way into this production of "Die Fledermaus."
Ripe language, contemporary jokes and
Toilet humor thrown in, adding immensely
To the pleasures of Strauss’s operetta.
"Die Fledermaus," or The Bat’s Revenge,
Is all about drunkenness and adultery.
Despite being written in the 1870s,
It remains equally pertinent to today’s pub culture of excess.
Daring; Colorful; ****: PGA golf.
I steal a golf ball on the far end of the 18th Hole.
I pick up the Titleist and stick it in the hole
(Steady Jessica, not yours.
I hide behind your bush.
(Cue up PSA, First Lady Bird Johnson’s 1960s
Nationwide Beautification Campaign:
“I want everyone in America to plant a tree,
A sherrrr-rub, or a booosh.”)
The golfer now searching frantically:
Why is the cup always the last place they look?
Then, wham, bam, he looks:
A legend is born.
A hole in one,
His name forever immortalized
On a plaque over the bar, the proverbial 19th Hole.

As you know, I speak for all mediocrities,
Safe in my 55+ gated-community.
I go next to the Club House,
"The Lodge" as it’s called.
Each afternoon, the usual suspects
Claiming first come/first serve tiered mini-theater seats
Where Netflix matinee gems are screened.
It is two minutes to DVD show time.
I walk to the front of the room.
I stare at my audience.
I count the house slowly,
Making meaningful eye contact with each wrinkled face.
I cup my hands behind my back and speak:
“I assume you are all here for my lecture on Kierkegaard.”
No one reacts.
I turn to leave but do a double-take and smile.
One old woman in the top right corner of the amphitheater laughs, Perhaps the one other human being within the gates
Who has also smoked a joint today.
For an instant, I am overwhelmed with paranoia,
Perhaps I’ve gone too far over the line:
No longer “oh-he’s-a-character;”
I am now “that creep is ******* nuts.”
Is it time for someone to approach my family,
My next of kin, my “who-to-contact-in-event-of-emergency” number? Who will make the call on behalf of the HOA—
The Homeowner’s Association—
The Tsars, the Duma, the Supreme Soviet in these parts?
They are the power inside the gates;
Those who determine the state’s enemies,
Who govern its community norms.
Power within the gates.
Law within the asylum.
Little Hitlers one and all.
Hopefully they reach my sister first.
She’s been briefed.
KEY POINT IN THE NARRATIVE:
The new narrative is non-linear.
We can no longer sustain a narrative understanding of ourselves;
We are each an individual stream of consciousness,
All of us random, non-linear and disconnected.
We grow more and more disconnected from others.
We may be neighbors in space and time,
But we remain deprived of any significant human contact;
Any spiritually significant human contact.
Our social circle narrows to what can fit in The Telescreen;
We become more intimate with a legion . . .
Did someone say a legion? SPQR:
Am I having some sort of genetic-linguistic seizure here?
Am I channeling Benito Mussolini again?
Il Duce speaks to me from the grave,
Still blowing smoke up my Hopi-Jew-*** ***,
Filling in my insecurities,
Plugging the holes in my character
With delusions of classical Roman grandeur, glory and empire. Hmmmm? Quite an appetizing pitch for the average *****,
A message so completely, so ethnocentrically slick,
Olive oily, and so seductive.
A non-Italian would have thought
American Legion or Legionnaire’s disease,
Or The Foreign Legion, The French Foreign Legion.
The French: a virulent, promiscuous people.
Do you want fries with that, Simone?
No, I don’t get out much.
Only an occasional brisk walk around the asylum,
In and around the golf course, around but inside the gates. (LINKS) Bill Gates. Daryl Gates. Billy Bathgate’s Gates? Ghiberti’s Gates? The Hot Gates? Thermopylae? 300 Spartans/700 Thespians:
“The noun causing idiots to think of
Two girls sloppily eating each other’s mighty vaginas,
When they hear mention of someone being an actor.” http://www.urbandictionary.com
Not even close.
No, I rarely venture out.
This is Hemetucky.
There are methamphetamine-stoked
Teenage zombies at the gate.
Note to costume control:
Perhaps camouflage clothing is the safe choice?
No loud red Hawaiian.
No garish Indonesian batik.
Fleet of feet are these Hemet tweakers,
These cranked up Riverside County teenage barbarians,
These Huns & Visigoths,
These amped up, ravenous jackals.
And why stop there?
These Vandals & Vandellas.
A Motown flashback:
“Nowhere to run, baby, nowhere to hide.”
With or without Martha—
They remain dangerously lethal.
Yes, let it be camo clothes for me.
Those **** heads may be young.
They may be fast.
They may be able to run me down
On a dry grass dog-legged fairway savannah,
Tearing the meat from my carcass.
But the sons-a-******* have to see me first.
Besides, we know who are real friends are.
Hooray for our media peeps!
We become more intimate with a legion
Of television personalities on 125 different channels.
Most of these we know by name and context.
We know their families, their friends,
Their histories, their tragedies,
Their favored hyperbole and manner of speech.
Sometimes we establish intimacy with celebrities
Strictly on the basis of universal body language.
At times–in the absence of any other
Empathetic facility of identification–
We connect on instinct alone.
Instinct: perhaps animal at its core,
An animal kingdom affinity group,
Connecting on a bio-linguistic level,
Particularly when the Korean, or Spanish,
Mandarin, or Arabic,
Japanese, or even Hebrew language version is broadcast.
All languages cryptically alien,
A dense boundary, a barrio border wall,
Undecipherable, impenetrable concrete.
But we’ve never spoken to our neighbors,
Nor do we know their names.
Celebrities are the neighbors we know best;
Although the intimacy is an illusion,
Permission to invade their privacy presumed,
Tacit in the relationship between celebrities and their fans.
I am an independent contractor now,
An outside consultant to the NSA.
Try as I might I cannot crack the enigma,
Kim Kardashian remains far beyond my code-breaking prowess.
I repeat myself:
We can no longer sustain a narrative understanding of ourselves;
We are each an individual stream of consciousness,
All of us random, non-linear and disconnected.
We are more and more disconnected from others.
We may be neighbors in space and time,
But we remain deprived of any significant human contact;
Any spiritually significant human contact.
Our social circle narrows to what can fit in The Telescreen; we become more intimate with a legion . . .
Back to you, David Ulin:
“Sometime late last year—I don’t remember when, exactly—I noticed I was having trouble sitting down to read. That’s a problem if you do what I do, but it’s an even bigger problem if you’re the kind of person I am. Since I discovered reading, I have always been surrounded by stacks of books. I read my way through camp, school, nights, and weekends; when my girlfriend and I backpacked through Europe after college graduation, I had to buy a suitcase to accommodate the books I picked up along the way.”
Thank you, David L. Ulin.
I cannot help myself.
I grow more eccentric each day.
My eyeballs glued to that flat screen!

Cosmo Kramer: "The bus is outta control.
So I grab him by the collar, I take him out of the seat,
I get behind the wheel, and now I’m driving the bus."
Jerry: "Wow!"
George Costanza: "You’re Batman."
Cosmo Kramer: "Yeah, yeah, I am Batman.
Then the mugger, he comes to and he starts choking me.
So I’m fighting him off with one hand,
And I kept driving the bus with the other, ya know.
Then I managed to open up the door,
And I kicked him out the door, ya know,
With my foot, ya know, at the next stop."
Jerry: "You kept making all the stops?"
Cosmo Kramer: "Well, people kept ringing the bell!"
(Share this moment with a stranger.)

I speak for all mediocrities.
I am their champion, their patron saint.
Boom Chaka Laka. Boom Chaka Laka.
Boom Chaka Laka. BOOM!
Isn’t it time Salieri tempted Constanze–
Frau Mozart–with a plateful of Capezzoli di Venere:
“******* of Venus.”
You had me at hello, Kidman.
I know you too well, Nicole.
I knew you from before,
Way before Tom’s Oprah couch freak show.
Listen to me, Nicole:
We are face to face
With the most profound question in American literature:
"What is the grass?
The flag of my surrender?
The flag of my disposition?"
I resort to Socratic maxims: Know yourself;
The un-****** life is not worth living.
Is it stress? Is it lack of conviction?
Everything Jeff Lebowski neither wants nor needs in his life?
I watched you *** in "Eyes Wide Shut," Nicole.
Now I know you with my eyes and your legs wide open.
Thank you, Sidney Pollack.
Sidney knew.
Sidney dealt us cards
From his Hollywood Tarot deck.
We are intimate, Nicole.
I watched you squat.

Here is the rub. Riddles we never got. Oh, my.

Serving to illustrate my point of departure from the mean norm.
the rub is the cause of the pain, not its purpose.

Pain is not for punishing, whatever that means to you.
Pain is for correction, for your own good, ditto the meaning part.

The rub is where touch goes too deep, applies too much braking,
the humdrumconundrum setting on life's pace (get the app) in the age of Google.

For more time than Google or its finders could agree, with me, to believe,
I have been waiting for this moment to arrive. There are places where that rubs.

Fiction, that does lubricate real ification, doesn't it.
I never noticed, until now. That's why liars prosper, maybe.

Jah, I saw it comin' on my back, in a safe place, two days before leaving Bien Hoa, Spring
1969. The White Album, Koss EPS6's, tight, no sound, dark, I wandered homeward.

Not all war stories are lies, some are parables, some are prophecies.

I waited until now was firm in every mind involved,
then launched the grand old party line to God almighty, in my mind

Radioman manifested from the dreams and events that seemed as dreams seem,
upon that time, when I lay waiting, near Bien Hoa.

Look homeward? Where? I have no memory, I've been Bourne Borked, why me?
Was I the hero of the story I was in? I must have been, I am alive and I am old.

And there, the acid message burned through my sckull and I played something
like Russian Roulette, with a character named Ken Kingman, who grinned like a devil.

All this in my mind. Where were we then, we Googled men? We friends on the grid?
Flesh and bone, muscle and blood, for God and country, do or die, don't ask why?

Airborne, All the way, ah, we sang that cadence in our dreams, even after we got the joke.
But we was always only me, we are imaginary, in my mind, extensive, albeit, still mine.

I didn't know.

No, you could not have known, that was just me, the meek little me speaks,
peeking beneath the banner over me. You never crossed my mind.

The show runner speaks up and has nothing more to say, we run on, fo' a long time,
lemme tell ye gotamighty gonna cut chadown. Run on, fo' a long

The point. Fret not. Been there done that entered the vernacular on my watch, I saw this.
I'm ready. You ever been slammed, honest t'God slammed to the ground, breathless?

breathing brings us to the center. Home is where your heart is. That's a riddle, BTW.
Where a thought is first thought seems to establish its eventual trajectory, don't you think?

We be comin' to some real that normal can fix on, soon, waitin's what we do til then.
No pain.  No rub, no, friction fiction uses warm a weary mind as to what might be.

When ye think a bout it. Something in the way we thought must 'ave mollified it, the rub,
above, with **** we let slip by. The aitch's do that. Aitch sounds. 'ushin' ohmmmm.

I read lots of Russian lit (in translation, of course) while in Viet-Nam

I understood poor, young Raskolnikov
And read all I found by Anton Chekhov
Remembered nothing about Bulgakhov
Heard naughty whispers about Nabokov
Thrilled to the Cossacks in old Sholokov
And then I learned about Kalashnikov –
This, I decided, is where I get off!



Moc Hoa (pronounced something like “mock wah”) is a now-prosperous town on the Song Vam Co Tay near the border with Cambodia.  In 1970 it was rather down at the heels and was a center of military activity, including mercenaries presumably controlled by the C.I.A*.

I love you all most,
when you are at your weirdest,
I'd **** for you all.

E Tama,
how excited were you to meet a new friend.
He tino poha o te aroha e hoa.
Koda, e hoa

Then there are those times you write
Because otherwise the words will tear you up inside
Like supercharged particles
Of steam under pressure
Or uranium reaching critical mass
So you set to the task
Grab pen and paper
Or iPhone and browser
And start uploading your sins onto clean white sheets
Of loose leaf or LCD
As if possessed by some other self
Or non-self
Itself a fountain of diction
A percolation of syntax
Bubbling up and out so as not to **** the messenger
And lines flow
Kia ora koutou katoa
Nga hoa
Me toku whanau
My friends
And family
Be well
See well through this life
And her pitfalls
Tall walls and
Crash courses in experience
Standard variance and deviation from the mean
She can be mean
She can be cruel and unkind sometimes
But you’ll find rhymes to make lines line up like signs on the highway
And find even in grief there is beauty
Truth in pain
Life in suffering
There is no judgement inherent in these things and none at all other than that which we place upon them
Negative or positive are uniquely human conditions
Everything else just is
It sits within itself
Without apprehension of the fourth dimension
Not beating up younger selves for poor decisions made by poorly equipped versions
Nor fearing an abstract time hence
From whence march our fears about death
And a life well spent
And incontinence
And I think my phone bill is going to be massive
And I think my 2 minutes is up
And I think my 15 minutes is up
Where was I again?
Words have surfaced
Simmered and settled down
Beauty in the badness
Truth in the madness
Tiredness overtakes
Like post coitus
An **** of the monastic order
Intellectual intercourses subsequent exhaustion
And sleep calls ceaselessly
As if nothing else mattress

We have standards here,
no litter, eye sores
no bird feeders or
"off" colors-
you want a fence?
We can put that through to the HOA
get back to you in two years
I'm sure you'll still want it then.
You like cards?
We play and chat
like good little women,
eat sandwiches and the like
like our mothers did
back in the day
you know
when *** was a myth and the world was for only certain people-
you know
a time where the air was pure as bleach
but you'll fit in just fine,
we'll be good friends
follow our lead and you'll be a lady in no time.

The puppy seemed happy to see me
when I seen her at the park that other day.
you coulda seen it right away.

So the shrink lady she say, so what?

Dunnno, jisayin' somebody seemed happy

after seeing me naked paraded before all
who may have noticed,

maybe not.

What if nobody noticed and I am happily
seen a naked thing I am

unnoticeable save for seekers of knowns

believed to be known or
knowable

by you, down in the slew, Bunyan's slough,

ya got iron in yer blood?

ya areckon.

Yer Uncle Sam needs ya, boy,

you leave that Kansas lass to
stare at those July buttermilk skies,

there's a war awaitin' for Rough Riders,
Arizona reared and steered

Say what, sir? Steered? Not me. Done my time.
Played footballs, by damtotell, at Fort Bliss,
I threw hand grenades,
Football was Ft. Huachuca, autumn, 1967

Bien Hoa was in the spring, one day after
My Lai, my country's legacy from my year

beyond the whole idea of war. History said,
if we are not the Redcoats, we are the Hessians,
at least.

Allegiance to a legion because they are many?
Perish the thought.

Guzar gay kaey din , kiay gham-e-jaanaan main hijrat
Aik wohi tou umeed thee apni, ikk wohi thee muhabbat!!

Tmhain maaloom hai meray ghar kay darwazay muqaffal hain paray
Jahan ikk arsay hawa chalti thee, jahan bastii thee chahat!!

Ab tou yun kharay hain shahrahon pay, kay faqeer ka sa gumaan hota hai
Jiss rastay say khusboo aati thee, tere gul-e-rafaqat!!

Aur phir yun hoa kay raat ki parchai gahri say gahri hoti chali ***
Aur hum dobtay chalay gay, madham saanson say taraf, tere rughbat!!

To the victims during the Boston Marathon, April 15, 2013,

Children of Boston
Children of Euston
Children of Kingston

Boys of Mesa
Boys of Tuy Hoa
Boys of Kalba

Teenagers of Kyoto
Teenagers of Toronto
Teenagers of Lesotho

Wives of Berlin
Wives of Kremlin
Wives of Yulin

Humans of the world
Let us spare one word

Let us pray,
From Larissa
To South Kensington
From Tokay
To Grafton

Humans of the world
Let us spare one word

For the children of Boston.

April 15, 2013
Montpellier, France

I didn't have the guts to be a rebel
All the counterculture called at me
Asking me to join
In living rooms with Goodwill couches
Owned by a friend of a friend of a friend
They reached out to me
Hands and hearts so open that they couldn't stop bleeding
Asking me to join them
To make what I felt
To do what I wanted
Regardless of whatever the rules said.
They asked me,

Passing the tokens of a shared insobriety
That sought out the essential truth beneath
A thousand and one layers of culture and biology and social pressure
That only ever manages to turn diamonds into coal

I don't have the testicular fortitude to forsake the gifts of my birthright
My middle-class hope
Of a sliver of land beholden to an HOA
Of a wife who loves me kind of and children that will hold me to an anachronistic social standard that will leave me wanting
But it could be mine
It could be a world of my own making
With love and joy and plenty
And the mediocrity and turmoil
That is essential to life whether it is good or bad
It could be mine

The true face of the world is violent
And life struggles unconditionally to enact it's will on a world
That has extinguished more species than are alive

We are mayflies in the cosmos waxing and waning
And no one cares
And no one guarantees that I will eat tomorrow
Let alone find love
Or persist in the presence of my ancestors.

I don't have the ***** to wager my little bits of happiness
Even if there is a slim chance to change a million minds or more
Call me a coward
Call me a pragmatist
In a century call me dead
Right now you can call me mostly happy
And I don't know if there is anything better

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

                           The 7th of June, 1944 and 1970

My father beached at Normandy on the second day
(He was okay with having missed the first)
From there through France to Belgium in the mud
For a ****** Christmas in the icy Bulge

Munich, Buchenwald, Dachau, Zwickau
For me DaNang, Saigon, Ben Luc, Moc Hoa
I met a child in a Japanese army cap
But he wouldn’t sell it. We all have history

I wish I had that Japanese army cap
And that we knew what any of this means

Dear Anonymous Google Accuser:

Thank you for your note, the contents of which sound much like the block warden’s caution (“Your attitude is noticed, comrade.”) to Yuri in the film version of Doctor Zhivago.

I have re-read the column, which I wrote nine years ago, and find nothing offensive in it (although it is rather puerile), nor do you detail exactly what is offensive in it and why I should be sanctioned. You are being Kafka-esque, and I say this as someone who has read Kafka: you do not tell me what offense I have purportedly committed nor do you face me with an accuser. You do not even face me with you, for you do not give your name. You employ the passive voice in referring to an “Adult Content policy” and to “Community Guidelines,” which sound like something from an episode of Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner: “The Committee won’t like this, Number Six.”

Google (and one could find “google” offensive, with its history of mocking someone’s physical characteristics) is a private company, and so is free to publish or not publish, as is only right.  And I am free to pity Google for moral, ethical, and literary cowardice.

But you say that I am insensitive.

I was raised in situational poverty, barely graduated from high school, and spent 18 months in Viet-Nam. Upon returning to the USA (with life-long skin cancer which the DVA denies) I worked straight nights (double shifts on weekends) as an ambulance driver and later an LVN to put myself through university. I taught for almost forty years in public school, community college, and university as an adjunct instructor of no status whatsoever. In retirement I volunteered with our local school’s reading program until the Covid ended that, and I still volunteer with the lads at the local prison. I volunteer in community cleanup after our hurricanes (tho’ I’m getting a little old for that). I’ve worked hard all my life, paid my taxes, paid off my house at age 70, receive only half of my Social Security because of some vague law, and never gamed the system. Indeed, I would say that the system has gamed me.

But you say that I am insensitive.

In Viet-Nam, by the way, I was not the shooter; I was the shootee. I served as a Navy Corpsman in the ICU at the Station Hospital in DaNang, in the outpatient clinic at Camp Tien Sha in DaNang, and finally at Moc Hoa on the Cambodian border. Several hundred people, mostly young Americans, but also ARVN, VC, NVA, Vietnamese civilians, and Cambodian civilians survived because I was there for them.

But you say than I am insensitive.

And was all of this so that some frightened committee of anonymous inquisitors staring at an Orwellian telescreen or a Mordor-ish Palantir could find an innocuous scribble insensitive?

Pffffft.

Sincerely,

Lawrence Hall

6 0’ clock
and the string of doors on the block
creak open in unison,
The briny smell of sizzling, leathery bacon accretes,
Seeping forth from pale shutters,
Peeling past the cars, stripping beige paint off the sides of houses.
The morning drizzle, forming tiny rainbows,
You would think it was acid rain,
melting away the plastic people.

Midday, after only an hour passes
and white wine splashes
like crashing waves in the crystalline stemware,
Where orderlies dazedly rescue their children from the montessories
Where power lines crack like whips,
So generously oozing sustenance to babes.
The civiliter mortuus, roam their undead domain,
Like a swarm of cockroach wasps
speed walking in parasitic pairs
darting through Safeway aisles,
Demolishing houses of white chocolate, and roasting sweet nothings
On the new George Foreman Grill ™ .

Every house on loan to apathetic debtors
They come to yours with their holy letters
PTA, … IRA … NSA … HOA
They proselytize, prioritize
Themselves over forest bears and wolves,
But where only hedge trimmers growl
The only Tuesday sounds are the behemoth
Devouring your trash,
And where leaf blowers asthmatically howl.

During the first six months of 1967, while McCain was part of an attack squadron of A-4 Skyhawks on the carrier Oriskany in the South China Sea, North Vietnamese officials said some 167 schools were bombed, along with 230 churches, three seminaries, and 23 pagodas. In late September—just a month before McCain’s crash on his 23rd bombing run—U.S. planes managed to drop four massive container bombs (2,400 pellet bombs apiece) on a grade school in Thanh Hoa province, south of Hanoi. The school had just reopened after the summer recess and, according to Vietnamese reports, the attack killed 33 pupils, ages 8 to 12. Thirty more were wounded, including two teachers. That was a single incident. The American estimate is that the 1965-68 bombing campaign killed between 52,000 and 182,000 civilians; the Vietnamese claim the figure was several times higher.

All my chances are sandwiched as the plies of plywood. Luck will have me, she'll be of certain bend: a ***** named Chung or Hoa or any number of gooky names.