I.

         “No doubt they’ll sing in tune after the Revolution.”

                      -Kamarovsky, Doctor Zhivago (film)

Everyone seems to clench his fist these days
In solidarity with ephemera
While setting fire to green recycling bins
Hurling someone else’s bicycle through a window

Armed with their undergraduate degrees
The comrades liberate a coffee shop
Wifi-ing the revolution of the day
Empowerment by beating love to death

Loudsplaining authentic victimization
Posing for selfies with a stolen ‘phone

II.

Their inhumanity seemed a marvel of class-consciousness, their barbarism a model of proletarian firmness…

                         -Doctor Zhivago, p. 349

Everyone seems to clutch his flag these days
In solidarity with a past that wasn’t
While setting fire to misspelled cardboard signs
Hurling someone else’s beer into a crowd

Armed with their lurid Confederate tats
The Something.Right liberate a dumpster
Bull-horning the counter-revolution
Empowerment by beating love to death

Bellowing their Reconquista of stench
Posing behind their cheap gas station shades

III.

“I used to admire your poetry...I shouldn't admire it now. I should find it absurdly personal. Don't you agree? Feelings, insights, affections... it's suddenly trivial now. You don't agree; you're wrong. The personal life is dead…”

            -Strelnikov to Yuri, Doctor Zhivago (film)

Some few embrace civilization these days
In solidarity with humanity
While lighting one small candle as a votive
Whispering an Ave into the Light

Armed with wonder through pen and flute and brush
Recusants choose the liberation given
In singing of the eternal verities
Self-empowerment happily denied

With love, with poetry, music, and art
Celebrating life on this summer day

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Macbeth, Doctor Zhivago, Captain Call, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Allen Ginsberg, and Rod McKuen Visit the Dentist but Have to Wait for Beowulf's Root Canal

         In gratitude for all the wonderful dentists, hygienists, and
                       technicians who keep us chewing!


                                  Macbeth Visits the Dentist

Is this a drill which I see before me
The whirring drill outstretched to my teeth
O happiest gas! Come let me clutch thee!
Before my body I throw my dental shield


                            Dr. Zhivago Visits the Dentist

Poor dental hygiene is for crowds of mediocrities
Only individuals seek dentistry
And they shun those who tolerate bad teeth
How many things in the world deserve our loyalty?

A dentist whose papers are in order


                            Captain Call Visits the Dentist

Call saw that the dentist was looking at him
The nitrous oxide drained out of him
Leaving him feeling tired
“I hate a bad tooth. I won’t tolerate it.”


                 Yevgeny Yevtushenko Visits the Dentist

For a tooth to come out
Some of the pain must be devoted to Stalin
Soviet dentistry demanded happy endings
I knew I could floss and brush better than Mayakovsky
Bella’s teeth were second only to those of Akhmatova
Only I could make Babi Yar all about me and my teeth
When I saw a dentist in Zima Junction
I saw the truth of the Revolution in her little mirror


                     Allen Ginsberg Visits the Dentist

I saw the best teeth of my generation destroyed by sugared sodas and a failure to brush and floss

dragging themselves through the medical complex at dawn looking for a fix

thinning-hair old hipsters burning for relief from aching jaws at the healing hands of dedicated professionals among their shining instruments

dedicated professionals who did not drop out of the University of Arkansas and never saw Mohammedan angels among the rooftops


                                   Rod McKuen Visits the Dentist

I am like a molar; I have chewed alone
Gnawed a hundred hamburgers
Never found a bone
Still and all I’m toothy
Reason is you see
Once in a while along the way
Dentists have been good to me.

Upon Re-Reading Doctor Zhivago

for two friends

Love lost along abandoned railway lines,
Grave-cold, grave-still, grave-dark beneath dead snow,
A thousand miles of ashes, corpses, ghosts -
Sacrarium of a martyred civilization.

A silent wolf pads west across the ice,
The rotting remnant of a young man’s arm,
Slung casually between its pale pink jaws -
A cufflink clings to a bit of ragged cloth.

Above the wolf, the ice, the arm, the link
A dead star hangs, dead in a moonless sky,
It gives no light, there is no life; a mist
Arises from the clotted, haunted earth.

For generations the seasons in darkness slept,
Since neither love nor life were free to sing
The eternal hymns of long-forbidden spring -
And yet beneath the lies the old world sighs

The old world sighed in sudden ecstasy
A whispered resurrection of the truth
As tender stems ascended, pushed the stones
Aside, away into irrelevance.

And now golden sunflowers laugh with the sun
Like merry young lads in their happy youth
Coaxing an ox-team into the fields,
Showing off their muscles to merry young girls.

The men of steel are only stains of rust,
Discoloring fragments of broken drains,
As useless as the rotted bits of brass
Turned up sometimes by Uncle Sasha’s plow.

For this is Holy Russia, eternally young;
Over her wide lands high church domes bless the sky,
While Ruslan and Ludmilla bless the earth
With the songs of lovers in God’s eternal now.

Upon Re-Reading Doctor Zhivago

for two comrades

Love lost along abandoned railway lines,
Grave-cold, grave-still, grave-dark beneath dead snow,
A thousand miles of ashes, corpses, ghosts -
Sacrarium of a martyred civilization.

A silent wolf pads west across the ice,
The rotting remnant of a young man’s arm,
Slung casually between its pale pink jaws -
A cufflink clings to a bit of ragged cloth.

Above the wolf, the ice, the arm, the link
A dead star hangs, dead in a moonless sky,
It gives no light, there is no life; a mist
Arises from the clotted, haunted earth.

For generations the seasons in darkness slept,
Since neither love nor life were free to sing
The eternal hymns of long-forbidden spring -
And yet beneath the lies the old world sighs

The old world sighed in sudden ecstasy
A whispered resurrection of the truth
As tender stems ascended, pushed the stones
Aside, away into irrelevance.

And now golden sunflowers laugh with the sun
Like merry young lads in their happy youth
Coaxing an ox-team into the fields,
Showing off their muscles to merry young girls.

The men of steel are only stains of rust,
Discoloring fragments of broken drains,
As useless as the rotted bits of brass
Turned up sometimes by Uncle Sasha’s plow.

For this is Holy Russia, eternally young;
Over her wide lands high church domes bless the sky,
While Ruslan and Ludmilla bless the earth
With the songs of lovers in God’s eternal now.

Until today I have never re-posted someone else's work on my modest site. This is brilliant:

W. K. Kortas
JUNE 22, 2021

ON WATCHING “DOCTOR ZHIVAGO” WITH THE SOUND OFF

On Watching “Doctor Zhivago” With The Sound Off
There is a certain shock, not from the silence itself
But of its revelations, the laying bare
Of the utter superfluence of language
In all which unfolds before us, the testament mute
But imbued with all the power of an orchestra
In full-throated fortissimo
Delivered through the panorama of the vast steppes,
The bounty of their Junes,
The desolation of their Januarys
The visage of the doomed Strelnikov,
The darting glances of the chameleonesque Komarovsky,
His eyes scuttling to and fro like dark cockroaches,
And most of all by the unquiet, not-of-this world gaze
Of Yuri Andreyevich, a stare which tells tales
Of how fleeting this world’s happiness will be,
How final and inescapable its sadness,
And as he stumbles and falls in his mad, final pursuit
Of a grail which is unheeding, unseeing,
Always just a step out of reach,
The dialogue is not a necessity,
For we have a trove of our own words and experience
To attest to the veracity of the scene in question.

(AUTHOR’S NOTE–as I would be justly castigated by my good friend Lawrence Hall if I failed to do so, I made a point of adding the good Yuri’s patronymic .)

an ample empty Sunday
nothing on the agenda,
the calendars cease their chirping,
it's a kinda free rarely heard

maybe will go see a movie,
walk alongside the East River currents,
rushing somewhere we don't have to be,
maybe we will practice rolling on the floor,
visiting and winding up the grandkids,
then escaping/leaving them with parents,
crazy high and wet & dry

maybe I'll cancel some credit cards,
crack open the briefcase of deferred questions,
have pizza for breakfast,
write half a dozen baker's poems,
finish some more of Dr. Zhivago,
that I started several years ago,
maybe, I'll keep her ******* in our bed,
releasing her when she releases me  
because I released her first

yup,
an empty day ahead
full of the oscillating,
a true east/west directionless
vibrating range of
ample possibilities

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

It has been stamped with dispassionate blue ink,
Signifying its future lack of suitability to sit on the shelves,
Having been elbowed aside by this and that year’s thing
(And the book had not been checked out since the mid-seventies,
Perhaps some young man all but short-circuited
By the prospect of a bathing Julie Christie,
Or some female counterpart shedding bell-bottomed tears
Over doomed love, which, in her cosmology,
All such things were fated to be)
Placed in some temporary cardboard casket
Which once held bananas or copier paper or ancient time cards,
Sitting cheek to elbow with cookbooks, breathless biorhythm tomes,
Buffeted about forces unseen and beyond its control
As it faces the uncertain and uneasy prospect of possible reclamation.

There is a certain shock, not from the silence itself
But of its revelations, the laying bare
Of the utter superfluence of language
In all which unfolds before us, the testament mute
But imbued with all the power of an orchestra
In full-throated fortissimo
Delivered through the panorama of the vast steppes,
The bounty of their Junes,
The desolation of their Januarys
The visage of the doomed Strelnikov,
The darting glances of the chameleonesque Komarovsky,
His eyes scuttling to and fro like dark cockroaches,
And most of all by the unquiet, not-of-this world gaze
Of Yuri Andreyevich, a stare which tells tales
Of how fleeting this world's happiness will be,
How final and inescapable its sadness,
And as he stumbles and falls in his mad, final pursuit
Of a grail which is unheeding, unseeing,
Always just a step out of reach,
The dialogue is not a necessity,
For we have a trove of our own words and experience
To attest to the veracity of the scene in question.

Love lost along abandoned railway lines,
Grave-cold, grave-still, grave-dark beneath dead snow,
A thousand miles of ashes, corpses, ghosts -
Sacrarium of a martyred civilization.

A silent wolf pads west across the ice,
The rotting remnant of a young man’s arm,
Slung casually between its pale pink jaws -
A cufflink clings to a bit of ragged cloth.

Above the wolf, the ice, the arm, the link
A dead star hangs, dead in a moonless sky,
It gives no light, there is no life; a mist
Arises from the clotted, haunted earth.

For generations the seasons are lies,
Since neither love nor life is free to sing
The eternal hymns of long-forbidden spring -
And yet beneath the lies the old world gasps

The old world gasps in sudden ecstasy
A whispered resurrection of the truth
As tender stems ascend and push the stones
Aside, away into irrelevance.

And now the sunflowers laugh with the sun
Like merry young lads in their happy youth
Coaxing an ox-team into the fields,
Showing off their muscles to merry young girls.

The men of steel are only stains of rust,
Discoloring the seams of broken drains,
As useless as the rotted bits of brass
Turned up sometimes by Uncle Sasha’s plow.

For this is Holy Russia, eternally young;
Over those wide lands her church domes bless the sky,
While Ruslan and Ludmilla bless the earth
With the songs of lovers in God’s ever-spring

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Following a Path Worn by Pilgrims
                         -Doctor Zhivago, p. 75

No one is first along a pilgrim road
Other footsteps began our journey for us -
To Bethlehem, Emmaus, Damascus –
Wherever the heart is centered in hope

Someone has stepped on this cactus before
And sat on that rock to pull out the spines
And muttered about the indignity
Of a holy man pestered with stickers

But humility is part of the search

Because

No one is last along a pilgrim road

ona mruga oczyma jak sra, czy jak szczy?
  (concerning one of my cats in the garden
                  easing the ****, or bladder,
whichever - imagine saying it's a baby
when it's should be said: retract that idea of
nappies and breastfeeding, watch Prometheus -
girl quick on the mark, alien tadpoles ahoy!);
you'd love to see the rainbow of curses
i littered the ground around me -
      all because i overslept my doctor's appointment
over the phone -
                 hell knows no womanly furies,
it's kitted out with them as standard -
                 mind you, it's about time to encounter
if not simply invite Dr. Zhivago to cool
things down -
                          such trivialities as only a woman
might know to be the basis of infuriated assault -
and about a thumb's length of whiskey
on an empty stomach, and three coffees...
              ****'s buzzing...
after vacuuming the house i make my oaths:
yes, the 21st century Homeric heroes to mind,
our modern heroes: heroism equivalent of
paying the gas bill -
                               entertainment value? zilch:
unless you're bound to be watching Odysseus
take the longest yawn spanning into the 22nd century.
no... i didn't have a rich father, but
they managed ******* into my mouth anyway,
no wonder all i get to say is: it stinks -
           alter?
                   *nasrali mi do gęby,
nic dziwnego że mówie: smród!
                                                    smród!­
nie jeden balas w szambie tym samym
    demokratycznym słowem powie: smród
                     i rozkaz męczybuły nad głos!
a tu jakiś Kossak pięścią... sto razy wdepte
ci dekalog: dwór! dwór! nie pałacyk...
                        buda! buda, psie marnego skinienia
                            w aport! hujnia i homonto!
              oraj pole... jebana mać oraj złote włókno
            by przestał głód pytać o gram
                                                        sytu­! oraj!
             beauty of out a loss in temperament,
no cocktail party for miles...
                                 if you look closely you can
spot a Belgian field of poppies;
god the English malaise of attempting to curse...
           the easiest curse in English is identified
as courtesy - sorry means as much as *******.

A Hasty Partisan Response to the Mueller Report

                      “And art made tongue-tied by authority”

                         -Sonnet 66, often quoted by Pasternak

The Russian reports on my desk include:

Selected Poems, Yevtushenko
The Possessed, Dostoyevsky
The Zhivago Affair, Finn and Couvee
The Complete Poems of Anna Ahkmatova
August 1914, Solzhenitsyn

And some of them unread, some of them read
And better read than red, so someone said
Some of them shelved (We and The House of the Dead)
But now I’m going to work the flower bed

And what century is it outside?  1


1 Pasternak

motes of snow float listlessly by the window
rising and falling with meandering currents of air
sunlight, filtered pale through grey cloud
another moment passing
a dull refrain...
the chill clawing at walls and doors
incessantly as incomprehensible being      
...
another long grey day,
arctic wind,
bodies bundled,
and the mind seeking the warmth of certainty...
not found today
...
today, I wish I was a Marxist with something worldly to believe in
something that gives utter meaning
something that displaces, with in me, the grey despair, the icy thoughts of winter
not some frigid airy faith
but the lodged certainty of mind, man, and history...

but those statues are long gone
those poets of the proletariat have been
single mindedly disgraced
the windows of future hope have been iced over
and our little fire burns the furniture of our lives
like Zhivago's

and the mice are watching us from the cupboards
and the rats fall between the walls scratching at lathe and plaster
and in the night
they scare us scuttling over our sleeping bodies

they’re everywhere
like spies saying nothing
watching, waiting for the cold to take us
unfeeling, frozen on the recliner covered
with a feeble quilt
they’ll dance then before our milky white eyes
open, staring out past the frosty sill
And the ice glaze over the pane
…
when spring comes I will cry with the ice...
melting down the window
when worldly ideology fails
I will read banned books on the soul
spin in the slushy square a sloppy dance
of liberty

when spring comes I will sing
with the crows over dead ideology
that couldn’t save a soul
but could hope to
like all the others  

when spring comes
I will look no further than
naked trees promising bud

...
December 3rd 2014

Like a scene from Doctor Zhivago
Silent snowfall glides on the wind
Settling amongst its fallen brethren

A landscape painted in reverse
Each flake a dab of pigment erased
Till a clean white canvas emerges

When Kafka got up to danska
the band played desafinado
for a deliciously exciting polka
and a dreary two step of Vienna
but he only danskaed the tango
to appease his latent fandango
Kafka got lost in the danska
discovering his passionate waltza
embracing his favourite *****
he hastily finished his unfinished
and secretly went to his America
much desafinado about nothing
he mused of dansking in Alaska
by buying a fur hat in Canada
but it only danskaed the polka
back home in Czechoslovakia
the hat was really not bothered
as long as the danska was polka
and Kafka was quite very travodkad
and occasionally marlony brandyed
dancing a lost tango in anchorage
so ominously close to old Russia
and Doctor Zhivago’s new locum
with much more of that desafinado
and even less dansking his tango
he quietly learned to play banjo
but he found it all a bit of a trial.

If they were Of The People they’d tog in tees
The uniform of the Proletariat
To demonstrate their unique specialness
And admire each other’s piercings and tats

Sitting at a bar in dinner jackets
Without any irony, just two men
And talking with each other, not to ‘phones
Quiet voices – so totally not cool

Having a few after a semi-do
They’ve been noticed1 - not Good Comrades, these two

1“Your attitude’s been noticed.” – Commissar to Yuri in *Doctor Zhivago

I Miss my Northern Exposure Tee Shirt

We could drive into town for a beer at The Brick
Listening to the radio as Chris-in-the-Morning
Reads a chapter from Doctor Zhivago
Connecting Yuri with Uncle Roy Bauer

We could drive into town for gas at Ruth-Anne’s
Marilyn and Ed will talk about movies; Maggie and Joel
Will argue some more on the sidewalk outside
While Maurice preens before his reflection in the glass

And then to The Brick: Shelley behind the bar
Holling and Dave-the-Cook wrestling the grease trap -
I think I left my Northern Exposure tee shirt
In the laundromat in Cicely, Alaska

We could drive into town and look for it

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

                          ― Boris Pasternak,  Doctor Zhivago


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

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

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

Strelnikov is still Wrong

"I used to admire your poetry…I shouldn't admire it now. I should find it absurdly personal. Don't you agree? Feelings, insights, affections...it's suddenly trivial now. You don't agree; you're wrong. The personal life is dead in Russia. History has killed it."

– Strelnikov in Doctor Zhivago (film)

Don’t write to be approved by masters who
Wear Rolexes in the Name of the People
Don’t write to be approved by masters at all
But be your own authority and see

Your life – yours - is nobler than manifestos
The latest noisy Ghibellines and Guelphs
All Power to the Constituent Assembly
One folk, one nation, one waffle with syrup

Write freedom through verses, and disobey
Anyone who pushes you what to say

nothing warms the heart as a butter-scrub
of prokofiev on a dull & uneventful life,
i'm still to fathom the mastering mystery,
but lieutenant kijé romance
always makes my ***** into an omelette,
and for all the wrong reasons:
i like it, joked aside, it almost like
watching a monkey play the trumpet
in the odd joke of jazz quarter (
antithesis of the punk power 3)
with the elephant... ****... what would
the elephant do given the ability
of a trunk?!
          tap dance, or attempt a pirouette?
i love the she said he said questions,
she said: madam butterfly, he said
      la traviata...
he cried, she simply stared at two russian
girls making airs,
talking handbags and their usual
schoolyard deal about a chubby nose,
which she did, and we would have
wishes to actually bite...
         i hate those nationalist tourists,
chopin means as much to as a need
for chop-sticks...
                          its 4 30 in the morning
and i still have to drink something...
and do i love her?
well, i love writing about her quirks,
would i love siberia?
would i love anywhere without her?
i'd probably love dr. zhivago in either
spanish, or kazah...
     hands up: i am having
a literary love affair, and i pray to
gott that she's making a competitive
counter to my shallow affair of not
inviting enough pubescent imagination
counter imaginative girls to my camp...
that despised number by men,
you know they're only teen girls
keeping the jailbirds swarming in jitter...
they do grow up...
      and then you throw in a fake
muse into the bargain,
and then you keep hiding the real muse,
more and more,
               her nose becomes your
obsession, foremost because it's russian,
and second-most because she wants
to be rid of it...
     say it how it is, heaven awaits those
who manage to upkeep a truth on earth,
hell is filled with perpetuated liars,
and there's no greater story that the devil
minds than a lie upon lie,
upon the grandest of lies: that
his realm is but a poetic "indifference"...
i will drag my bride into the depth of
behemoth and call it bohemia...
     i will have my words: forgive me
echo by the church bells of the church
of mariacki in cracow...
           she can argue all the wants,
she will be as unwilling at my quest for
that eternity tasted in st. petersburg
once upon a time...
        and all that muzak near the fountainheads
will means at little as the fact that:
prokofiev was actually loved...
and that tchaikovsky was a degenerate
peasant...
    and for ever what my poetry i wrote,
she reaches her 80th b.d.,
       i will not mind the same "respect",
i've visited a brothel...
   came s.t.d. free...
           if there are 72 virgins waiting
the islamic martyrs,
   i'm trying to keep count of the prostitutes
in the harem of crusaders...
i just about scratched off the word malta
from a t-shirt, just so i could get
the hospitalier crux remaining...
       and have a field trip of double-glossing
in mirror the fervent journalistic
        somewhat, or other of "compensation";
then again,
              verbis ultimatus, est verbis omni
dignitas custodia;
don't even ask me how i conjured up
the phrase,
     unless you replicate the same in vino,
and call in vitro veritas / in vivo veritas
to question.

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

                                        The War on Books

          The war on books, codified by Stalin’s functionaries
          at the Soviet Writers’ Conference in 1934 and ruthlessly
          waged by the secret police for the following fifty years,
          was finally coming to an end, and Zhivago’s insurgent
          guerrillas were winning.

                             -Duncan White, Cold Warriors:
                    Writers Who Waged the Literary Cold war

What books will America purge this week -
What childhood adventures, what scholarly works
What entertainments of an idle hour
Will be forbidden to us in this Land of the Free?

We pray that nations blessed with liberty
Will smuggle books to us, stories and poems
With innocent ideas that give delight
And in their innocence threaten tyrants

What books will America purge this week –
And when did we become afraid of ideas?

Something About Life

                                      “Live.  Just live.”

                               -Yuri in Doctor Zhivago

The plane lifted, and the cheering was wild
And then pretty quickly the pilot said
“We are now clear of Vietnamese
Territorial waters.”  There was joy,
Even wilder cheering for most, and quiet
Joy for a few.  For me, Karamazov
To hand, peace, and infinite gratitude.
“I’m alive,” I said to myself and to God,
“Alive.  I will live, after all.”  To read, to write,
Simply to live.  Not for revolution,
Whose smoke poisons the air, not for the war,
Not to withdraw into that crippling self-pity
Which is the most evil lotus of all,
But to live.  To read, to write.
                                            But death comes,
Then up the Vam Co Tay, or now in bed,
Or bleeding in a frozen February ditch;
Death comes, scorning our frail, feeble, failing flesh,
But silent then at the edge of the grave,
For all graves will be empty, not in the end,
But in the very beginning of all.

Memorial Day III: Something about Life

“Live.  Just live.”

-Yuri in Doctor Zhivago

The plane lifted, and the cheering was wild
And then pretty quickly the pilot said
“We are now clear of Vietnamese
Territorial waters.”  There was joy,
Even wilder cheering for most, and quiet
Joy for a few.  For one, Karamazov
To hand, peace, and infinite gratitude.
“I’m alive,” he said to himself and to God,
“Alive.  I will live, after all.”  To read, to write,
Simply to live.  Not for revolution,
Whose smoke poisons the air, not for the war,
Not to withdraw into that crippling self-pity
Which is the most evil lotus of all,
But to live.  To read, to write.
                                            But death does come,
Then on the Vam Co Tay, or now in bed,
Or bleeding in a frozen February ditch;
Death comes, scorning our frail, feeble, failing flesh,
But silent then at the edge of the grave,
For all graves will be empty, not in the end,
But in the very beginning of all.

“No doubt they’ll sing in tune after the revolution.”

                         -Kamarovsky in Doctor Zhivago (film)

Kerenskys marshaled in two ordered lines
Unsure exactly how to stand, to pose
Merry banter, backpats, handshakes, and smiles
A show, a glow of Party unity

And then – a hiss, a strike, a spit, a spat
In sixty-second bursts atop the tomb
Comrade against comrade, a free for none
The audience applauds the ****** fun

Who is the Trotsky, and who the Stalin, then;
Who will die in exile, and who will win?

Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                   Petite Bourgeois, Personal, and Self-Indulgent

                        I used to admire your poetry. I shouldn't admire
                        it now. I should find it absurdly personal. Don't you
                        agree? Feelings, insights, affections...it's suddenly
                        trivial now.

                   -Strelnikov to Yuri in Doctor Zhivago (film)

In the evenings I sit on my summer lawn
Slouched in an old, much-painted metal chair
That symbol of petite-bourgeois respectability
With a little table for my drink, my pipe, my book

(The cat pads by on errands of his own)

At dusk a friend or two might amble along
And join me for a glass, a smoke, a talk
We casually swat at mosquitoes and rumors
And argue about Doctor Zhivago and Lonesome Dove

(A fast-diving mockingbird mocks the cat)

In a fallen world of chaos and suffering
With fear of revolution in the air
Is it right to indulge ourselves with such trifles
As sitting and talking with old friends in the twilight?

Oh, yes

(The cat and the mockingbird continue their game)

Fragments in a Fragmented Season

Neither a cyber-warrior nor a cyber-worrier be

But is this flower a patriotic flower?

The nation that never had much use for me
Except to send me to an undeclared war
Is suddenly broken

Was I playing with the puppies when the revolution began
And so didn’t notice?

“Take It Down!” someone scrawled on a statue in New Orleans
Dear New Orleans: Saint Joan of Arc was never a Confederate

Dear Canada: Do you really want to be a republic?

The vice-president takes shelter within his armored hair, and is silent

The Real Knees of Irving, Texas

Think about a Wal-Mart employee taking a knee during the morning Wal-Mart chant

It’s the Russians, no doubt

Chess ratings are up

Everything’s an Orwellian Two-Minutes’ Hate now.  Even the hours and seconds are outraged

“Your attitude’s been noticed, comrade.”  - House Warden to Yuri in Doctor Zhivago

Maybe the Republic will be in better shape next season.

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

                                Oppos­ite the House of Sculptures

“…unchanging, shrill, crazy exclamations and demands, which became progressively more impractical, meaningless, and unfulfillable…”

                  -Doctor Zhivago, Part Two, Chapter 13,
                        “Opposite the House of Sculptures”

O strong man, strong man, Supremo Alpha-******
Please be our Putin, ******, or Mussolini

O strong man, strong man; tell us what to think
Pour us some Jim Jones; we’ll take a real deep drink

O strong man, strong man; tell us what to do
We’ll happily go to prison just for you

O strong man, strong man; clench your mighty fist
You put for us the “GO” in your “jingoist”

O strong man, strong man, you are our latest god
Please break us to obedience with your mighty rod

O strong man, strong man, you are our highest law
Whatever dribbles from your mouth we hear in awe

O strong man, strong man, we are your little elves
We promise to stow our history upon the shelves
And never, ever again think for ourselves

“Go Inside Your Houses, Please.”

“Sorry, that page doesn’t exist!”1 You are
Well advised not to ask questions about
What happened here. Just move along;
There was never anything to see here.

“Go inside your houses, please. All these people
will be taken care of.”2 “You can search Twitter
using the search box below or return
to the home page.”1 Go inside your screens, please

All this awkwardness will be taken care of
Go inside your screens, please. Go inside. Please.

1 NBC
2 Doctor Zhivago, 1965

Following a Path Worn by Pilgrims

#Doctor Zhivago, p. 75

No one is first along a pilgrim road
Other footsteps began our journey for us -
To Bethlehem, Emmaus, Damascus –
Wherever the heart is centered in hope

Someone has stepped on this cactus before
And sat on that rock to pull out the spines
And muttered about the indignity
Of a holy man pestered with stickers

But humility is part of the search

Because

No one is last along a pilgrim road

I used to admire your poetry…I shouldn't admire it now. I should find it absurdly personal. Don't you agree? Feelings, insights, affections...it's suddenly trivial now. You don't agree; you're wrong. The personal life is dead in Russia. History has killed it.*

-Strelnikov in Doctor Zhivago (film)

Don’t write to be approved by masters who
Wear Rolexes in the Name of the People
Don’t write to be approved by masters at all
But be your own authority and see

Your life – yours - is nobler than manifestos
The latest noisy Guelphs and Ghibellines
All Power to the Constituent Assembly
One folk, one nation, one waffle with syrup

Write freedom through verses, and disobey
Anyone who pushes you what to say

Something About Life


Strelnikov: “What will you do in Varykino?”
Yuri: “Live.  Just live.”

-Doctor Zhivago

The plane lifted, and the cheering was wild
And at that happy moment the pilot said
“We are now clear of Vietnamese
Territorial waters.”  There was joy,
Even wilder cheering for most, and quiet
Joy for a few.  For one, Karamazov
To hand, peace, and infinite gratitude.
“I’m alive,” he said to himself and to God,
“Alive.  I will live, after all.”  To read, to write,
Simply to live.  Not for revolution,
Whose smoke poisons the air, not for the war,
Not to withdraw into that crippling self-pity
Which is the most evil lotus of all,
But to live.  To read, to write.
                                            But death comes,
Then up the Vam Co Tay, or now in bed,
Or bleeding in a frozen February ditch;
Death comes, scorning our frail, feeble, failing
      flesh,
But silent then at the edge of the grave,
For all graves will be empty, not in the end,
But in the very beginning of all.

truly... there's nothing quiet like September & October in England... the most glorious months... splendour seems to seep into the air... into the sunlight... it's that time of the year when i start making my own wine & if i might be lucky... Jack Daniels will be discounted to £20 from £35 at the supermarket... it's splendid because my muse returns... i am hurrying around in my mind with letters jumbled up... nothing compares to the months September & October in England... famous as they are... dubbed... the Indian Summer... autumn is so consolidating... i itch with hope for snow... frost... and the eternal night.

oh sure... perhaps those unicorns do really exist...
but a jinx is in my lineage...
all the men in my family would fit
the socratic maxim:
sure... if you find a good wife... you'll be
content with life... but if you find a horrible
woman: a Medusa... you'll become
a philosopher...
i can go through the list...
my now estranged uncle: brother of my
mother... a ****-boy bachelor...
cousins... divorced...
son of my godmother... divorced....
had to battle for custody of his son...
only won because his ex-wife started
to drink heavily...
the wedding was fun... i got so drunk
on Śliwowica (slivovitz) that i almost started singing...
my father's father: divorced... remarried twice(?)
my mother's father: my grandmother...
as much as i'm supposed to like her...
well... let's just say...
she would scold him with words...
sure... he was a heavy drinker...
but worked his *** off in the metallurgy industry
when it was still alive in Poland under
the discretion of the Soviets...
it's painful though...
   i saw him about 3 months before his death...
in that 3 months he was going to die...
dementia complications... blah blah...
i think he just gave up...
he couldn't stomach living with this woman...
i hear Italians and Greeks speak fondly
of their grandmothers...
me? i wish i could... i could once...
but she kept his final days a secret...
with my now estranged uncle...
a week or so before his death he insinuated
that we must have "perspectives":
to look... "perspective-ly"...
i would have ****** off to his deathbed in a second...
i didn't lose a grandfather: i lost a friend...
the hours we spent talking on the balcony...
music life in the graveyard...
our trips to Warsaw & Cracow in the summers
when i was still in school... cycling together...
fishing... his memory of me climbing
trees in the forest while walking Bella...
an Alsatian and Axel the dobberman...
but his death was kept a secret known only until
he was on his last in a hospice...
his death was kept a secret...
   it's not like we didn't call and inquired:
oh no no... everything's fine...
i don't buy the excuse that... to save us the pain
we didn't have to witness his death...
he actually thought of himself as a patriarch...
what's horrible is that he probably
had that gnat of a woman standing over him
as he died applauding his death...
pulsating with venom!
i only have one comfort...
that he managed to read a snippet of Karl Ove
Knausgaard's Autumn...
a snippet about eating apples...
how Karl would teach his children to eat
the whole apple... even the core...
a metaphor for life...
that you'd eat the sweetness first...
but then arrive at... ahem... the complicated bit
of the apple... the bitterness of the seeds...
i only have this comforting story to tell myself...
that he was armed with this metaphor of life...
in his dementia labyrinth of memory:
thank god he saw what i saw:
memory... the most pristine cinema...
after all... movies are boring these days...
- my father: also no luck...
sure... he's still married... but i'm also nearby to
smooth things other... even he complains...
sometimes half jokingly... sometimes seriously...
so i do the cooking and look after
the house...
the garden... making the wine...
but then... he was abandoned by his mother
& father & raised by his grandmother
& her second husband...
thankfully i can channel my drinking habits into
something creative...
however mundane i find it to be...
but i'm sure of it...
there's a jinx in my lineage...
some ancestor of mine must have done something
horrid to some woman that:
the matter will only resolve itself
by me... ending the lineage...
           well... i hope these words can at least
survive for a 100 years after i'm: corpus ******* "christi"...
eh... if Marquis de Sade was bad
at desecrating a crucifix for an imitation
of a ***** with a *******: getting jailed for that
sort of antic... i desecrated the blood of Christ
once by ******* into a glass of wine
and drinking it...
my own... so what?! if i were in a desert
wouldn't i drink my own **** to survive?!
i still have a little glimmer of... i wouldn't call it hope:
i'd call it... fancy...
that the "juice is worth the squeeze"...
all my luck with women was only ever
associated with prostitutes...
i remember paying for ***...
but i don't remember paying for lies and niceties...
if a ******* tells me i'm smart...
that i look like Bradley Cooper...
i'm buy that... even thought our transaction
was about claiming something else
intimacy...
or that i am a good man...
i much prefer the quote from Dostoyevsky...
the eternal evil that only wishes to will good...
sometimes i miss the mark...
sometimes i'm spot on...
i hear a whisper in the wind:
you selfish man...
  i'd prefer the word obnoxious...
        i don't mind the odd auditory hallucination
from time to time: it's comforting to know
that i'm not truly alone...
egoistic... i can't be...
if i entertain what i'd call the antithesis of
Heidegger's dasein... what a funky little compound:
da: there... sein: being...
there's being... over there... yonder...
        i'm suggesting something more akin to:
presence... with the german words...
jetzt: now... and hier: here...
perhaps i ought to compound one or the other
or both with sein, too...
        again... reiteration... from the time of Ancient
Greece... there's no guarantee with women...
which is sad... i fell in love with the idea
of woman from the time i read Stendhal's
the Red & the Black in my teens...
i actually saw the movie adaptation starring
Ewan McGregor & Ra-kh--kh-el Weisz
  (is it... Raych-el?) first...
                    probably the only movie adaptation
that made me want to read the book...
n'ah... that's a lie...
Dr. Zhivago is on the list...
             as is the Sienkiewicz trilogy...
there's no ******* chance in hell that i'll listen
to those people who cry: you'll die alone!
well sure... and when i do... i hope it's as Caesar wished:
suddenly!
oddly enough... he died suddenly...
stabbed as he was...
        but for some reason i'll have to
battle with myself over whether i employ dignifying
tactics or go full out Nero / samurai...
when all life will lose its meaning...
when i'll give up scribbling these little doodles of
anti-rhyme...
but not today... i have that wine of my own
labour to look forward to... in a week or two;
and as much medieval music as i like!
it's autumn, it's England!
there's no better time to be alive!
i don't own a car... i own a bicycle!
                i'm content in my melancholy...
i have focus... i have curiosity...
to hell with any worldly ambition!

title: beetroot
body:
red: pulpit:
sclera:
avoidance white.

bellum contra influenza usus frigus:
war against the flu using the cold...
   sure, even Socrates famously meditated in the cold...
i only had one meditation this time round:
get me... of this weak-bed! get me off it!
i'm not going to be weak when spring comes!
more cold! give me a hailstorm!
                     i'll cure myself using cold weather!

you get sick for about 5 days, it's really rough,
you test positive for Covid... but it's not Covid...
it's just this freak flu... your bones ache,
your muscles ache... you're lethargic...
you're ****** with yourself that you're so weak...
but you still go and do two grueling shifts
at Wembley... strange April cold... the wind is
bothering you... but...
    that's how the cold helps...
   sure, taking a mixture of paracetamol 500mg),
promethazine hydrochloride (10mg),
dextromethorphan hydrobromide (7.5mg)
does help... but nothing helps against a cold...
or the flu... as... doing a grueling shift of standing on
your feet for about 10 hours, getting bashed
by the wind gusts... the rain...
          it sort of reminded me of that saying:
fight fire with fire... well... fight the flu / a cold...
with more cold...
      it worked... i ploughed through...
the muscle aches are gone, the bone pains are gone...
the lethargy is gone...
i was cooking again today... making my father lunch...
i can't wait for tomorrow...
i'll be working in the garden un-******* all
the wooden decking, peering inside at the rot...
before a patio is going to be installed...
   wood... eh... it lasts a good decent decade...
   that's going to change...
hell... 3 days... 4 days of feeling ****...
   but if the medication isn't working...
         time for something ancient...
              find the bug with... cold weather...
                  more pressure... more pressure... more!
10 hours standing coordinating people...
3 hours on a bicycle feels like less strain than standing
up like a soldier at an unknown soldier's memorial...
no one some of them drop down from exhaustion...
your arms - shoulders are strained...
pompous ******* role...
                  but i appreciate this is unimaginative
writing... it really is... i have still retained the blocked
nose and the cough...
as the saying goes... an untreated cough and blocked
nose lasts 14 days...
a treated cough and block nose lasts 2 weeks...
you heard me correctly... it's unavoidable...
but pulverise this little **** in me that's hitchhiking
with conditions unsuitable for it...
let some bigger virus scare it...
                       and to think: sometimes i'd look forward
to sitting down with a bottle of whiskey
and scribbling anything down...
now... i'm thinking about Sunday...
   and whoever West Ham are playing...
                   about going among people and playing
my role as the serious silent type...
surrounded by people who... as of yet...
haven't talked much at work except for work...
no chance of talking about... anything... really...
i dare say: Heidegger's hammer is  bad joke...
could i talk to someone about philosophical matters
on the job? hell... music... could we talk about music?
could a ******* wheel of a car "talk"
about the temperature of the road at noon in June?
to... the car's engine... hyperbolic language...
i'm still not ready to return to being fully possessed
of my mind... but my senses are more focused...

- and its like these moments when recovering from
an illness that might shave off a decent proportion
of the population in their 80s...
if i didn't go into the cold... and instead...
cowered in my bed sheets... in the warmth:
perfecting breeding ground for this little bug to
build up a collective ego... a refocus...
     but why do i write this? i'm comforted by the existence
of tabloid journalism...
sure... i'm using up the energy of a light-bulb to
scribble this down... but i'm not chopping down
a tree to make some paper...
          why does a song like British Warm by
Normil Hawaiians have only 2.2K views...
what am i going to do with my time?
watch t.v.? i like drinking and looking into the distance...
at shadows... at trees without leaves...
at brick walls... perching on a windowsill...
smoking a cigarette... scribbling...
    i literally having nothing better to do...
it's not even that those respected poets on
poetry-foundation.org are anything to go by...
so politicised...
                sure... perhaps this is a waste of time...
but at least i'm not watching t.v.:
just this blank screen upon which words appear
from my itchy finger tips... i scratch my head:
try not to think...
        i take comfort in not being married...
it's only sinking in: right about now...
   if i think about having to keep dates... dinner dates...
keeping conversation with "friends"...
last time i tried that... i ws ushered off into the gutter...
he brought out a pretend violin:
brushing it all off... i know he too had problems...
i was willing to listen... but he wasn't willing
to talk... right there and then... i thought: **** it...
i'm not willing to meet up and watch movies
with you, while you smoke marijuana and i drink
a beer... i raised my hands high up in the air...
and then dropped them down: crescendo style...
an expression of: c'est la vie!
at this point... i don't think it would be:
even remotely... a good idea to have friends...
what... when an hour with a *******
suffices?! now i'm like... talk... about what?!
i can exercise my needs on this canvas...
                and i'm happy with that...
                        well... if not happy: then certainly
not sad... i'll go see ol' Thames at Coldharbour -
or at Putney Bridge...
  i'll go into Bower Wood and say hello
to the forest by knocking a firm branch against
a pillar of a dead tree...
                       if only this climate could allow
living off of pine-nuts and other such gatherings...
i think i would...
   society doesn't phase me...
                        
the world continues to do its little spin on and off of
crazy... i tried watching the first 30 minutes
of... about 4 different movies...
pretty woman, four weddings and a funeral,
Notting Hill... some other...
instead tuned into the tennis at the Miami ATP...
that too started to bore me...
i was thinking about the next shift...
doing... **** all... beside...
putting on a mask and pretending to be nice,
pretending to be polite to spectators...
bouncing around their enthusiasm...
      it's not even like i don't care:
but i just don't care about the sort of care they think
i might provide...
i care about what i'm willing to give...
rather than what they might receive...
clearly... i'm fooling them...
since... eh... long story...

                          but at least this is not the tabloid press...
i'm "bored" of living with people
of grandiose self-importance syndromes...
just give me a ******* drill... some decks to unscrew...
stack them high... stack them low...
the best health is found bound
to interacting with people one day...
and a day... say... spent... chopping wood...
dealing with inanimate objects...
you can't mould these: esp. if you're trying to salvage
them... and then... return to animate objects...
people... the sanctity of silence...
why... would i be talkative about work
when i'm doing it?
              sorry... what sort of ******* is necessary
to mingle, "correctly"?

                    i figured... as long as you're not at work
trying to waste someone's time... that's enough...
do what you're supposed to do and... *******...
and my ****** mistake...
of fancying a girl who started working...
i played a tight game...
            liars don't walk on stilts...
                        what a waste of a homemade wine...
i should have drank that...
since i made it...
                   tough... well... one less spell of dandruff...
so... a win... considering i still managed
to find the best **** i was searching for for the past
14 years... yawn...
but at least! at least: no chance of a #metoo backlash...
yawn...

         scribble so more... well... i'm hardly built
for writing a Dr. Zhivago... honestly?
the film was spectacular... the book?
                                  honestly? well obviously i'm not
looking for Sveedish applause towards a Nobel...
am i? but the book? compared to the movie?
sort of falls short...

most of the time when surrounded by people:
it's so comforting to be around yourself...
being solaced by an apron of silence...
when you talk with only grimaces...
you hold sway with non-verbal cues...
     it's so comforting to not talk when you're
otherwise prompted to talk and
you're like: huh?!

i look at it from a lens...
a lot of 1960s American culture... the whole
state of Israel wouldn't have happened...
if the Holocaust didn't take place...
crude, rude... the world keeps knocking at my door
and i'm like:
and what the **** do you want?
what ****** liberation? what great / grand
awakening?
i'm scribbling toward 12am to subsequently
fall asleep to... listening to...
le chant des templiers... because...
i don't have a wife: because i can...

                     i like the idea of a wife...
but... the chains of being perpetually needed...
to have this persistent call for company...
it's sort of... itchy... always having to need
someone... what great new upheaval will /
might generate a mighty cultural influx of
creativity... and then the outlier that
always come late to the "party"...
the Sons of Sam... etc.

O svelte Pinay Muslima, minister care with the type of nursing that
Omar Sharif, as Zhivago, slipped to Julie Christie when rehearsing
a manualized-attempt modality of Heather McCartney's lip-pursing
that upgraded ****-degrading shipboard oaths & truck-stop cursing
to deflate a John's will regarding 1 *****'s aversion for reimbursing

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                 Joining the Class Struggle

                              “Yuri, what splendid words!”

                                  -Anna in Doctor Zhivago

Lift high the red banner, comrades and comradettes!
Lift high the made-in-China bullhorns against the rich
Make crudely misspelt signs and block the streets
(How dare the workers work while we’re yelling at them)

Pull down the statue of St. Joan of Arc!
Because she was, like, you know, a Confederate general
And smash the windows of the corporate coffee shops
(Make mine a decolonized double decaf)

Liberate the people’s goods! To arms! To arms!
(But who will stay behind to work the farms?)

i woke up with a thought...
funny...
   so Louis XIV
built a palace...
yes, a non-defensible
                     versailles...
while            Пи́тер
founded
Санкт-Петербург
                   on a whim...
and...
               some variant
of my own included "other"...
kin...
              the stamping,
the footwork,
         the tirade of tango...
     right...
       so... "where's my money"?
crypto...
              comment section
banter...
                 the people expecting
to be paid....
  paid... for... what?
vulture journalism?
     eastern european work
ethic started to climb its way inot
the general stratum...
        "we" already know
why Britain left the European
Union...
   keep the **** paedophiles...
limit the entrty of eastern
european workers...
          imagine if Kiev joined
the club!
           w'ooh ooh h'oo!
smashing a mirror
7 times before
the superstitious maxim
started to kick in!
    i might be considered
hibernian...
   outer-land outside
the statrum of the Benelux
dictum...
           me? fame?
i can tell you what uber looks
like in russia...
          the make-shift taxi
you're taking?
  it's not driven by
a serial killer...
   the first time i ever took
sight of the Baltic sea?
when i was visiting Stockholm...
so from Sweden,
everything appears
far away...
             me, Europe...
a congested space...
a constipated ideology
ready to be born mongrel...
of counter nationalism
with its continentialism...
     i could be worse off
being a tabloid journalist
blank space basher....
   fun, free...
              me and a blank
space... or for clarification's
worth of a canvas...
              raz, dwa, trzy...
   nibbling on the germanic
psyche...
        like an invasion
of the asiatics
without the tokyo
inhibitions of
actor, faked, politeness...
an answer by a satellite
people,
    having to celebrate
a century of independence...
my bad...
       i forgot to celebrate
such an event...
  lodged myself into
the use of english...
       can i simply be the person
who forgot to ask
people for money?
           money, what?
writing poetry?!
huh?!
   doktor zhivago?!
sure:
and the song too
by neon neon...
     great movie...
what?!
         vulture journalism?
         people are
allowed to sieve through
the crap of others
and expect, an expectation's
fee?

              hello,
  slander,
hello "riddling" the "other"...
the plateau...
and the skint...
  hello basis: membrane
and... buffer zone...
  hello...
                
        i already know my status:
alien...
                 against
the polyglot invitation...
yeah... i am alien...
  foreign, parasitically ridden...
is it just me,
or too few polyglot
geniuses
ever leave their
metaphysical confines
and experience their
ability as tourists?

             Louis the 14th
only envisioned a legacy
via a construction
of a palace...
                Peter the Great
decided to make
his legacy,
  worth the sediments
of a city...

               guess who's being
overlooked;
   let's overlook this
lazy affair,
of sore words,
to a wounded realism
with no alleviation.

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

                                                  Shelter in Place

                                  “Go inside your houses, please.
                              All these people will be taken care of.”

                               -Police Commander in Doctor Zhivago

Blue and red lights flicker across the face
Of the rigid black-clad police commander
Whose admiral’s stars all shiny and bright
Are meant to reassure us that we are safe

Blue and red lights flicker across the night
Front yards now blue now red now blue now red
The curious from their houses now blue now red
Like corpses discolored in the summer’s heat

Blue and red lights flicker across the wraps
Of a world heaved into an ambulance

Bitter Old Men Yelping at Each Other

       (rather like some of the in-laws over Christmas dinner)


     “Language, the home and receptacle of beauty and meaning….”

                                 -Doctor Zhivago, p. 437


My country, ‘tis of thee

     “Get out of your bunker and get out of the sand trap!”

Sweet land of liberty

     “What do you want to call them? Give me a name. Give me a name!”

Of thee I sing

     “It’s hard to get a word in with this clown.”

Land where my fathers died

     “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by!”

Land of the pilgrims’ pride

     “He’s Putin’s puppet!”

From every mountain side

     “You can’t even say the word ‘law enforcement!’”

Let freedom ring

     “Will you shut up, man?!”


(No apologies to Samuel Francis Smith; he pinched the tune from “God Save the Queen.” As for the sad old men, they are entirely our own.)