I Had a Flat Tire Along the Silk Road - not a Tang quatrain

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

I Had a Flat Tire Along the Silk Road

 

A bandit-princess stole my trail-lost heart

To play with carelessly one idle day

She teased me a road sketched on her magic chart

But I had a flat tire along the way

In reading Li Po (variant pronunciations and spellings in English) and others, and trying to understand Tang quatrains, well, I don’t understand much. The forms and content are so varied as to make the term almost undefinable to my simple English soul. But nature, irony, loss, and separation are apparently common, as well as rhyme, so I took them and iambic pentameter for this not-really-a-Tang-quatrain.

Tropes, Dopes, and Culture Worriers - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

 

Tropes, Dopes, and Culture Worriers

 

I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. 

 

-Tolkien, from a letter rebuking a German publisher, 1938

 

 

One does not imagine Tolkien schlubbing about

In a garish cartoon tee and baggy shorts

A Glock strapped to his 50-inch waist

Shopping the dollar store in a Trumpy cap

 

One does not imagine Lewis following QAnon

Encouraging Peter to take an AR to Latin class

Or quartering the Cross of good Saint George

With a swastika’s spidering wheel of shame

 

Not all evil comes from outside the Shire –

Sometimes evil is our own internal desire

 

On the time J.R.R. Tolkien refused to work with Nazi-leaning publishers. ‹ Literary Hub (lithub.com)

 

Why does Lord of the Rings appeal to the radical right? – The Irish Times

 

Behind the Catholic Right’s Celebrity-Conversion Industrial Complex | Vanity Fair

Thoughts of Home from Behind the Wire - poem

 Thoughts of Home from Behind the Wire

 

Over the South China Sea

 

We could see China past the portside wing

The forbidden land of our enemy

Who encouraged the Viet-Cong in our destruction

But allowed us peaceably to pass

 

Refueling in Japan

 

We could see Japan from behind chain-link fencing

The industrial land of an ally now

They sold us tape recorders and radios

And airplane fuel from beyond the wire

 

Thank you for your service

 

Honored fighters for freedom almost home from the wars

Penned freely behind pig wire and gates and bars

My Grandfather's Hayfield - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

My Grandfather’s Hayfield

 

From my own fields I can hear the band

The high school marching band, oom-pah, oom-pah

From several miles away, with merry songs

and merry cheers around the homecoming bonfire

 

That was my grandfather’s hayfield in my youth

Before the town and school replaced the past

The shaking baling machine compressing grass

Where the team captain gives his whup ‘em speech

 

I found a terrapin where the cheerleaders dance

From my own fields I can see my youth

The White Lady of the Well - a senryu

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The White Lady of the Well

 

She visits at dusk

She’s watching you;

                                 turn around -

She’s just over there

For English Pick Up the Anglophone - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

For English Pick Up the Anglophone

 

For English pick up the Anglophone

For French the Francophone

For others in Canada the Allophone

          (“‘Allo! ‘Allo!”)

For Mandarin or Cantonese the Sinophone

For Portugal the Lusophone

In Deutschland perhaps the Deutschesphone

          (or perhaps not)

And in Russia the Russophone

 

Please phone in, everyone

 

Because isn’t it wonderful -

So many phones, and each with a direct line to God

Li Po Writes to us from His Mountain - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Li Po Writes to us from his Mountain

 

Li Po, “Ancient Air,” p. 84

A Book of Luminous Things, ed. Czeslaw Milosz

 

We read of the poets of China

In the days of the Golden Tang

In the time of The Gathering of Kings

When The Silk Road carried dreams

 

Government officials were the poets

And poets were the government officials

Who knew The Five Classics by heart

And wrote of China in Tang quatrains

 

They were writing to the Emperor

And now they are writing to us