Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Last Sunday after Pentecost - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com


Last Sunday after Pentecost

A calling-crow-cold sky ceilings the world,
Lowering the horizon to itself
All silvery and grey upon the fields
Of pale, exhausted, dry-corn-stalk summer

The earth is tired, the air is cold, the dawn
False-promises nothing but an early dusk
As calling-cold-crows crowd the world with noise,
Loud-gossiping from tree to ground to sky

Soon falling frosts and fields of ice will fold
Even those fell, foolish fowls into the depths
Of dark creek bottoms where dim ancient oaks
Hide darkling birds from wild blue northern winds

Crows squawk of Advent disapprovingly,
For Advent-autumn drifts to Christmastide
When all the good of the seasonal year
Then warms and charms the house, the hearth, the heart.

Monday, October 30, 2017

Poetry of the Occupation - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Poetry of the Occupation

“…trained in the politics of the day, believing the great new system
invented by a genius so great that they never bothered to verify its results.”

-John Steinbeck, The Moon is Down

Political poetry occupies the streets
Brakes squealing to a stop before an idyll
Squads of inclusive wordtroopers disembark
Into our souls to force submission and love

Armed with warrants and inquisitions
The bills of indictment already drawn
Needing only a tap upon a screen
To serve in the office of a signature

And sensitive to death the personal life -
Political poetry occupies the streets

Sunday, October 29, 2017

Vaches Sans Frontieres - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Vaches Sans Frontières

An American
Cow goes “Moo.” A Canadian
Cow goes “Eh.”    Merci.

Saturday, October 28, 2017

That Happy Little Dachshund Dance - poem

Lawrence Hall
mall46184@aol.com

That Happy Little Dachshund Dance

All dachshunds dance their days in happiness
And shake their bodies, tails, and ears about
And thank their humans every doggie day
With puppy kisses and yappings of joy:

     For cats to chase, for beds to muss
     For grassy lawns on which to play
     Hoovers to bark – oh, what a fuss!
     And your pillow at the end of day

For dogs still live in Eden, and that is why
All dachshunds dance their days in happiness

Friday, October 27, 2017

Dry Well - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Dry Well

A Gift from Fort Apache Energy, Inc.

“We will be drilling with a fresh water mud system
which has no environmental impact.”

- Allan P. Bloxsom III, President

As woodland creatures shy until the dark
Drift as a silent blessing through the trees
At dusk some sad folk gather ‘round the wounds
Gored geometrically into the ground
A palisade of wood and water and earth
Now guarding nothing but pale desolation:
A pond of death whose hydrocarbon sheen
In corpselike stillness entertains no life
A sewerage ditch bedecked with human turds
A dumpster skip piled high with promises
Piles of unidentified white powder
An unattended garbage fire, a shirt
Some bolts, planks, screws, sandwich wraps, cigarette butts
A cargo cult of curiosities
Liturgically in statio around The Hole
That venerable new hole, that hole of hope
That fabled argosy laden with dreams
That fell into the depths, and never returned
At dawn a tower stood, adorned with lights
By dusk it was folded, and stolen away
Like the long-storied tents of Araby
Or a Roman camp in the Teutoburg
Abandoned among the darkening woods
For the curious primitives to poke
And prod about, chattering in their tongue
About the marvels of a superior race
Who make no environmental impact.

Thursday, October 26, 2017

Have You Seen my Browning? - column

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Have You Seen my Browning?

…in the army…(e)very few days one seemed to meet a scholar, an original,
 a poet, a cheery buffoon, a raconteur, or at the very least a man of good will”

-C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy

Field Marshal Viscount Wavell G.C.B., G.C.S.I., G.C.I.E, C.M.G, M.C. was a remarkable man. He lost an eye in the First World War…let us amend that: young Major Wavell did not carelessly misplace his eye; it was blown away by German mischief in the 2nd Battle of Ypres in 1915.

Wavell remained in the army and served as a liaison officer in Russia (he was fluent in Russian as well as Urdu, Pashtun, and Persian), and then in combat against the Turks in Palestine. During the Second World War, with inadequate forces and supplies, he led brilliant campaigns against the Italians in East Africa and against the Italians and Germans in North Africa. Posted to lead the Allied defense against the triumphant Japanese in the Far East, he was given the blame for an impossible situation, and sent to India as Governor-General.

In India, toward the end of his life, Wavell was persuaded by friends to collect and edit his favorite poems into a book.

Wavell loved poetry and could recite hundreds of poems from memory like many people raised without the curse of glowing screens (your scrivener heard Robert T. Holmes of Kirbyville, Texas, a farmer and a practical man, well into his seventies, recite John Milton’s “When I Consider How my Life is Spent” over coffee one morning).

As Wavell quotes from an obscure play, The Story of Hassan of Bagdan, and How He Came to Make the Journey to Samarkand:

      Caliph: Ah, if there shall ever arise a nation whose people have forgotten poetry or whose poets   
      have forgotten the people, though they send their ships around Taprobane and their armies across
      the hills of Hindustan, though their city be greater than Babylon of old, though they mine a league
      into earth or mount to the stars on wings–what of them?

      Hassan: They will be a dark patch upon the world.


Wavell’s anthology, with the unfortunate title Other Men’s Flowers, was published in 1944, and continues to be available. A better title might be Manly Poetry for Manly Men, for that is mostly what it is. Modern critics savage Other Men’s Flowers, which in itself is a good reason for reading it, for here one will not find the pallid, self-pitying, free verse, me-me-me, I, I, I wallowings that (for now) have supplanted poetry.

Other Men’s Flowers is divided into nine sections containing hundreds of poems, mostly English, Irish, Scots, Canadian, and Empire, with a few token Americans and a very few women, so we can’t have that, eh. But then Wavell was putting together what was important to himself and to brave men he knew, not for the ovine credential harvesters of seventy years later. Wavell gives us Belloc, Kipling, Shakespeare, Wilde, Browning, Chesterton, Masefield, Kipling, McCrae, Buchan, Emerson, Fitzgerald, Burns, Macauley, Sassoon, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Housman, Stevenson, Scott, Yeats, Milton, and dozens of others whose work proudly occupied bookshelves and kitchen tables and backpacks before the sorrows of 1968 vetoed civilization.

And about Browning. The phrase “When someone speaks to me of culture, I want to de-cock my Browning” appears in a German play of the early 1930s, but is often credited to Hermann Goering or some other Nazi oaf. In 1942, when the Japanese were expected to invade India from Burma at any moment, Wavell is said to have asked someone to help him find his Browning. The aide looked everywhere for the field marshal’s pistol, and couldn’t find it. But the field Marshal was wearing his pistol; what he wanted was his copy of the poems of Robert Browning.

Now there was a soldier. Does one consider that any member of the current British or U.S. governments would understand any of that?

Not that every man appreciates poetry. Wavell says of his boyhood:

     Horatius…was the earliest poem I got by heart. Admiring aunts used to give me threepence for
     reciting it from beginning to end; a wiser uncle gave me sixpence for a promise to do nothing of
     the kind.

-30-

The First Blast of a Metaphorical Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of the Culture of IPhonery - sort of a poem not really maybe kinda

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The First Blast of a Metaphorical Trumpet Against
the Monstrous Regiment of the Culture of IPhonery

A Statement Solo and a Response Choral in Existential Whine Mode

Solo: Before we end for today – do begin thinking about a topic for your research paper due in December.

Chorus: I don’t understand…but you said...are you talking about the persuasive essay…what does “expository” mean…oh, this is not expository…but we’ve never written a persuasive paper…is this the persuasive research paper you’re talking about…what is the difference between “expository” and “persuasive”…but what are we going to write about…I mean like why don’t you give us a topic…I don’t understand…when is this due…but that’s the pro and con, right…it’s not…but you said…what does “bibliography” mean…so when is this due…but how many pages…so you just want the bibliography and the first page…I don’t know what you mean by a thesis that can be argued either way…I don’t understand why you don’t give us a topic…I’m confused…what do you want us to write about…but when is this due… I don’t understand…but you said...are you talking about the persuasive essay…what does “expository” mean…but we’ve never written a persuasive paper…is this the persuasive research paper you’re talking about…but what are we going to write about…I mean like why don’t you give us a topic…I don’t understand when is this due…but that’s the pro and con, right…it’s not…but you said…we’ve never written a research paper before…what does “bibliography” mean…so when is this due…but how many pages…so you just want the bibliography and the first page…I don’t know what you mean by a thesis that can be argued either way…I don’t understand why you don’t give us a topic…I’m confused…what do you want us to write about…but when is this due… I don’t understand…we’ve never written papers like this before…but you said...are you talking about the persuasive essay…what does “expository” mean…but we’ve never written a persuasive paper…is this the persuasive research paper you’re talking about…but what are we going to write about…I mean like why don’t you give us a topic…I don’t understand when is this due…but that’s the pro and con, right…it’s not…but you said…what does “bibliography” mean…so when is this due…but how many pages…so you just want the bibliography and the first page…I don’t know what you mean by a thesis that can be supported with authoritative sources and logic…I don’t understand why you don’t give us a topic…I’m confused…what do you want us to write about…but when is this due…!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!????????????

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

The Dreariness of Dusk - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

(This poem may be considered as a dyptich / diptych / dipstick with "The Dreariness of Dawn")

The Dreariness of Dusk

Anticipated no victories today
Expected no letters to be answered
Or packages of life to be delivered
Not given even the hope of a hope

But…

But, no, the weary hours were unrelieved
The weary, dreary hours of near-despair
Plodding like a mule harnessed to the past
And given only the ghost of a ghost

As was expected, the teapot was warm -
“Yes, but there ain’t going to be no tea” 1

1 Katherine Mansfield

Tuesday, October 24, 2017

The Dreariness of Dawn - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Dreariness of Dawn

“Carpe Diem.” Dawn, and all its cliches’
But what would one now seize? Unrequited dreams
That slouch in the corner filing their fingernails?
A cup of coffee at the kitchen door?

Dawn is the illusion that this day might
Be different from those that came before
Like advertisements promising happiness
And delivering failures postage-due

Well, you might as well get up, and get dressed
Dawn.  Because, maybe, this time, just maybe…

Monday, October 23, 2017

"Render unto Caesar..." - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

“Render unto Caesar…”

29th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Let us render unto the Caesars
Our sons and daughters for undeclared wars
Each death excused with a telephone call
Each death another medal for a general

Let us render unto the Caesars
Our children for the pleasures of the rich
Each death and shattered heart excused as art
Each death a tribute to some rich man’s lust

Each leader, each Somebody, takes and takes –
They then dismiss their victims as snowflakes

Sunday, October 22, 2017

Porching on a Saturday in October - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Porching on a Saturday in October

But where are the little children? Well, here,
But they are tall, lanky teenagers now
With car keys and cutoffs and muscle shirts
Whispering, giggling, heavy-lifting

(Stop tormenting your sister!)

Dad wants the outdoor grill moved? Sure – watch this!
Pans and food from the kitchen to the grill
And back again? We’re well on top of it
Something from town? We’re on our way right now

(Stop hitting your brother!)

Children, like spring, must grow into summer
And their springs and summers are forever our joys

(And never stop loving each other.)

Saturday, October 21, 2017

The Death Penalty and a New Computer Printer - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Death Penalty and a New Computer Printer

If we consider our culture to be
An ongoing affirmation of life
Consistently in favor of redemption
We cannot then presume to kill a man

A death penalty for any one of us
Is a death penalty for all of us
A submission to the darkness of evil
A yielding again to original sin

From execution, then, may God preserve us –
(Except for
That 1-800 wretch in customer service)

Friday, October 20, 2017

Autism - A Boy and His Dinosaur -poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Boy and His Dinosaur

In another world, a silent world within,
The dominant species are dinosaurs.
Never having fallen, no evil obtains,
And beneficent reptiles live there as -

As innocently as butterflies.
In his quiet world of gentle reptilians
A little boy is never without a friend,
A Saurian with an unpronounceable name,

To share a cave, a thought, a book, a toy,
And so that world with a best-friend dinosaur
Is the child’s real world, the only one
Where he knows love.

Thursday, October 19, 2017

Pedal-Pushers of the Undead - column


Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Pedal-Pushers of the Undead

These crisp autumn days mean that soon college administrators will be telling students what they must not wear for Halloween lest they hurt the feelings of other young grownups.

No one ever asks why college students are thinking about Halloween, that non-holiday, at all. They’re beyond trick-or-treating, don’cha think? College students should be doing college-student-thinky-things, like solving for x or writing about the influence of Fannie Brawne on John Keats’ existential vision of something-or-other.

And, besides, if folks on college campuses (or is that campi?) were to wear costumes, how would anyone know? To visit a college campus now is to wonder why so many people dress as if they looted their garments from hurricane debris – tee-shirts with pictures of that bearded mass murderer, knee-pants (yes, those 1950s pedal-pushers have risen from the sartorial dead), clown shoes, and desperately goofy hats.

That’s the faculty, of course; students usually manage to dress more appropriately.

As for the hurt feelings, well, I know of at least one college that last year greeted its incoming students with coloring-book sessions. If anyone suffers the Aunt Pittypat vapours from seeing someone costumed as capitalist oppressor Thurston Howell III the faculty can hand him a coloring book and a box of crayons in approved colors: “Look, honeykins. Here’s Mickey Mouse. See? Let’s color his house environmentalist green, okay? Then you’ll feel allllllllllll better.”

Oh, yeah, coloring books for college students will advance the arts and sciences of this great nation.

In Texas, college students who meet the legal requirements are permitted to carry firearms on campus, but are forbidden to dress up as Christopher Columbus, Pocahontas, or Zorro. A distressed 21-year-old princeling whose emotions have been triggered – yes - by being asked to, oh, read a book or solve some engineering problems may lawfully carry a pistol while on his way to his coloring-book sensitivity therapy to express his existential outrage.

And citizens are arguing about Halloween.

-30-

The University Drama Club Presents... poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com


Look Back in Petulance

A Kitchen Microwave Drama
Featuring Angry Young Persons

Dramatis Personae:

Rainblossom – an existential performance artist

Skydream – a self-authenticating air-vegan

The stage is set as the world of our dreams, peopled with only the good who dream dreams and vision visions and, like, you know, and don’t eat our forest friends, and stuff. The actors are dressed in hand-dyed Colombian ruanas to represent The True.

Rainblossom –

I demand that you validate our soul!

Skydream –

As a cosmic sunbeam of otherness

I must not.

Rainblossom –
                             O where are my comic books?

Skydream –

They have been cleansed, just as my soul has sung
Unto the Cosmic Dissonance of love

Rainblossom –

Oh, Oh, Oh

Skydream –

                      Look, Look, Look

In unison –

                                                       A vision of…Truth

Rainblossom –

But our truth, not some other bogus truth

Skydream –

                                                                       Woke, Woke


fin

The writers, cast, and crew of The Green Street Meadows Collective of Artists and Workers with Fists and Dreams and Words United Against the Occupation (Your Major Credit Card Welcome) neither need nor desire your cheap, shallow, bourgeois, sexist, racist applause to validate our existential worth. Be in awe, and then slink away in your individualist privileged guilt.

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

The Mirror Heal'd from Side to Side poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Mirror Heal'd from Side to Side

When a mirror looks
Into you, deep inside you
Does it see itself?


(An allusion to Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott”)

Tuesday, October 17, 2017

This is NOT the Age of Weinstein - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Blah-Blah-ing in the Age of Blah-Blah-Blah

No, this is not The Age of: Hefner, Clinton,
Obama, Trump, Harvey, Putin, Kim, Xi
Trolls, polls, super bowls, or cinnamon rolls
Kurz, Kaepernick, Ginger, or Mary Ann

Nor yet again an Age of: Gold or lead
Bronze, pewter, silver, nickel, aluminum
Chrome, nichrome, copper, brass, titanium
Thallium, thorium, thulium, tin 1

This is the age of You, unless you insist
On claiming this the age of something else


1 Yes, I had to look all that up

Monday, October 16, 2017

Mother of Exiles - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Mother of Exiles

Saint Mary’s Church of Frydek, San Felipe, and Sealy

The grasses of the coastal plain are still;
Across the road a summer field plowed under
Waits through October’s lingering heat for frosts
While the distant Interstate chants to itself

Our Lady of Frydek, Mother of Exiles!

First Nations, Spaniards, Mexicans, Czechs, Poles
Italians, Germans, English, Vietnamese

Have ended their pilgrimages here, with You
Where God has led them for His purposes

And here, dear brother, God has led you too
To wait with them, with Her, for history’s end

Which will be
The Beginning

Sunday, October 15, 2017

You Russian Poets - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

You Russian Poets

You Russian poets must write your lines in blood
For often that is all that is left to you
By invaders, revolutionaries, and
“The briefcase politician in his jeep” 1

Perhaps every Russian is a Pushkin
In frost and heat, in every deprivation
Plowing in the face of the enemy
Building civilization with frozen hands

And always shaping noble tetrameters
Into an eternal song of Russian spring



1 Yevtushenko, “Zima Junction”

Saturday, October 14, 2017

"Mild Suburban Christianity from 30,000 Feet" - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

“Mild Suburban Christianity”

A famous religion writer jets about
The world, from holy site to holy site
And being holy here and there, he writes
About his being holy here and there

And in his profitable scorn dismisses
“Mild suburban Christianity,” as if
Labor and thrift are somehow unworthy
Of a holy writer seated in first class

Editor-in-chief of This, President of That

(And free to be a non-profit 501C)

He asks for gifts from those suburbans mild

Friday, October 13, 2017

Viet-Nam Service Medal - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Viet-Nam Service Medal

A dragon lurks among the bamboo trees
And if sometimes half-hidden, still, always there
Sometimes half-forgotten, but always there
Is he a glorious dragon? Sometimes, yes

But then some nights he stirs the leaves awake
His eyes – they seem to flicker through the dark
His claws – they tear into the freighted soul
His blood – like Duncan’s, will not wash away

But dragons are good – what is it that one sees
If not a dragon lurking among the trees?

Thursday, October 12, 2017

Sorting Out Russian Poetry - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com


Sorting Out Russian Poetry

Avant-garde post-modernism ego
Futurism symbolism acme
Ism constructivism cosmopol
Itanism formalism neo

Formalism futurism imag
Inism proletarian real
Ism absurdism maximalism

Socialist realism, nothingism -
Poetic beauty, in spite of the Isms

Tuesday, October 10, 2017

The Dreaded Microsoft 10 Security Alert Popup of Doom That Won't Go Away - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Dreaded Microsoft 10 Security Alert Popup of Doom
That Won’t Go Away
 

(In order to receive the best support, we request all users initially download and run the Genuine Diagnostics tool (MGADiag.exe) at this link http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=52012. Click "Continue", click the "Copy" button then “Paste” the report into a reply message in this thread.)

I took a miner's lantern and a pouch
Of vampire-bane and crawled into the dark,
Dark tunnels of Security Updates.
I may have slain the beast, but it was dark

(Microsoft Genuine Advantage > Closed - Office Genuine Advantage Validation Issues (Office) Read-Only)

So dark in there. I lunged with vague commands
All printed in translation from the Orc
And strange lights flickered, flickered, flick…off
Restart reboot alt control shift…huh?

(Post this question in the "Suggestions and Feedback for the Forums" Forum at the following address http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-us/suggest/threads.)

Silence. A stench of death…it’s dead, it’s gone…
But wait…no…NO! I hear a popup coming…!

(Marking as Answered. Your feedback is important. Bye.)

Penny Wise and Penny Foolish - column

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Penny Wise and Penny Foolish

Emptying one’s pockets at the end of a busy day of bringing home that metaphorical bacon reminds us of how useless is all that pot-metal we take as change and then carry around almost to no purpose.

In Ye Olden Days a pocket full of coins was a good thing: a cup of coffee cost a nickel, as did the daily paper and a Hershey bar, a Coca-Cola was six cents, a telephone call was a dime, and a hamburger was a quarter. These things weren’t cheaper; it’s that the money was worth more.

Around 1983 some alligator-shoe boy ruled that the copper penny should no longer be made of copper, but rather copper-clad, whatever that means. A penny now appears to be made of painted floor-sweepings, and is worthless. Dimes, quarters, and half-dollars, once made of silver, are as substantial as Monopoly® money. Purchasing power now begins only with the dollar, and a bouquet of dollars at that.

Why, then, does the government still manufacture play money, and why do we carry it around?

For adults the penny is probably a matter of sentiment. Although there is no longer any such thing as a piece of penny candy, we remember those childhood days and so remain attached to pennies that really aren’t even pennies. A penny is rather like Prince Albert in a can, which no longer exists even as the wheezy telephone joke: “Have you got Prince Albert in a can? Well, you better let him out before he suffocates!”

Canada rid itself of the penny in 2013, saving $11 million a year in bothering with them. The Dominion does not seem to have suffered thereby. Since Canadian pennies are the same size as U.S. pennies they show up in circulation south of the 49th fairly often. If you save your Canadian pennies then in a few years they will be worth, well, nothing. But the Maple Leaf is pretty.

Spanish escudos and reales have not circulated hereabouts since 1821 or so, and the English pound has not purchased any tea on the east coast since the tiff beginning in 1776. However, the old saying “penny wise and pound foolish,” meaning thrift in small matters but wastage in greater ones, lingers, much like the penny.

One wonders if, two hundred years ago, moms and dads in Nacogdoches, Anahuac, and San Augustine cautioned their children about being reale wise and escudo foolish.

-30-

Monday, October 9, 2017

Ite ad Joseph - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Ite ad Joseph

For Joseph Thaddeus Petty
Sunday, 8 October 2017

Then let us go in to Joseph this day,
His day, soft-cradled in his mother’s arms;
He does not rule Egypt, but rather, our hearts
In the ordained hierarchy of love

His sisters in their turns nestle him too -
“Be sure to support his head – yes, that’s right” –
Their playmate new in the garden of life,
Their brother in the cloisters of Creation

He sleeps, so, shhhhhh – now let us slip away
For we have greeted Joseph on this happy day

Sunday, October 8, 2017

The Big Kids - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com


The Big Kids

For Claude Bevil Blanchette Hall,
Of Happy Memory

1954

Sprinkled by the janitor from a coffee can
The oily smell of the green sawdust sown
Along the old school hallway’s green tile floors
And pushed along with a long-handled broom

My brother’s at the door with my lunch money
He’s one of The Big Kids, 5th grade, y’know
High up on the third floor, where we can’t go

Not yet

What’s it like to be one of The Big Kids?

2017

My brother’s on a higher floor again
And what’s it like up there, where we can’t go?

Not yet


Claude Bevil Blanchette Hall was the son of Claude Duval Blanchette and Katherine Mattie Bevil Blanchette.

Claude Duval Blanchette was an officer on the tanker SS Muskogee, which was torpedoed off the Carolinas on 28 March 1942 with the loss of all hands. His son, Claude, was born on 12 October 1942, and died on 6 October 2017.

After the war Katherine married Hebo Ogden Hall.

All happy, happy memories.

“Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and make perpetual Light to shine upon them.”


Saturday, October 7, 2017

Houston Man Accused of Decapitating Mother - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Houston Man Accused of Decapitating Mother

He was a quiet man who always kept
His lawn neat would give you the shirt off his back
Was on his way to Bible study wouldn’t
Harm a flea that’s not the (name) that I know

Seemed like a normal everyday guy to me
Never saw this coming just can’t believe it
Let us come together and stand as one
Because that’s not the kind of people we are

We just won’t let them change the way we live
He just snapped so GoFundMe tee-shirt give

Friday, October 6, 2017

Truck Stop Restroom Cologne - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Truck Stop Restroom Cologne

Denny’s / Flying J, Orange, Texas

Check out the boom-chick in the parking lot -
Love and diesel fumes are in the air.
Tattoos and cigarettes, oh, man, she’s hot!
Industrial peroxide tints her hair
Like rainbows in a toxic fuel-oil spill.
Her waist is a rockin’ forty-four,
A pavement Venus posed before the grill
Of a Peterbilt outside the truckers’ store.
How can the lovestruck swain lure her to his cab?
Persuade her to give him her innocent all?
A ripped-shirt display of a manly ab?
Wait - what’s that machine on the restroom wall?

Cool dude, you’ll never have to truck alone
If you scent yourself with restroom cologne.

Thursday, October 5, 2017

Paleo-Yuppies at Work and Play - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Paleo-Yuppies at Work and Play

Fading slowly from the existential struggle,
Waving their MePhones about in protest,
They swarm to Starbuck’s for adjective coffees,
Uniformed in knee-pants and bulbous sneaks
And Chinese soccer tops with little checkmarks,
Their graduate degrees at parade rest,
And in confusion, suddenly-stalled careers
Raging against the thirty-something machine.
Not trusting anyone under forty,
They rustle their foam cups and resumes’
Instead of suspicious Democrats,
And demand promotions and Perrier.
They mourn pinstripes and leather briefcases,
And the old floppy disc of yesteryear,
And fumble their PowerPoint Presentations
Tho’ once they illuminated the world
With colored markers on glossy whiteboard.
They no longer play games on a Commodore
Or rock to neo-Carib fusion jazz;
Their Rush is Right baseball caps are now filed
In trays of antique curiosities
Beside the moldering hippie stuff shelved
In an adjunct of the Smithsonian
Where curricula vitae go to be eaten
By a computer virus named Vlad.
Now, as the sun sets on Ferris Bueller’s day,
They count and verify their MeBook friends –

They did not change the world, not at all, but
The world changed anyway, and without them,
And in the end they love neither Jesus
Nor The Force; like Eve, they bow to an Apple.

Wednesday, October 4, 2017

Paleo-Hippies at Work and Play - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Paleo-Hippies at Work and Play

Having withdrawn from the existential struggle,
Surrendering their arms and protest signs,
They muster in Denny’s for the Senior Special
Uniformed in knee-pants and baseball caps
And Chinese tees that read “World’s Greatest Grandpa,”
Hearing aids and trifocals at parade rest,
And quadrupedal aluminum sticks
Raging against the oxygen machine.
Not trusting anyone over ninety,
They rattle their coffee cups and dentures
Instead of suspicious Nixonians,
And demand pensions, not revolution.
They mourn classmates dead, not The Grateful Dead.
They do not burn their Medicare cards
Tho’ once they illuminated the world
With their flaming conscription notices.
They no longer read McKuen or Tolkien
Or groove to ‘way-cool Peter, Paul, and Mary;
Their beads and flowers are forever filed
In books of antique curiosities
Beside a butterfly collection shelved
In an adjunct of the Smithsonian
Where manifestos go to be eaten
By busy mice and slow-pulsing fungi.
As darkness falls they make the Wheel, not love

They did not change the world, not at all, but
The world changed anyway, and without them,
And in the end they love neither Jesus
Nor Siddhartha, but only cable t.v.

Tuesday, October 3, 2017

Saint Garden Gnome - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Saint Garden Gnome

An obscure barefoot friar in Italy
Long labored in the Perugian sun,
Heaped rocks upon rocks, and then other rocks,
Up to a wavery roof of broken tiles,
Repairing with his bleeding hands God’s church

Then, better known – it wasn’t his fault – this friar,
With others in love with Lady Poverty,
In hope and penance trudged to far-off Rome
To offer there his modest Rule of life,
Repairing with his mindful words God’s Church

Along the delta of the steaming Nile
He waved away the worried pickets, crossed
Into the camp of the Saracens
Preaching Christ to merciful Al-Kamil,
Offering with a martyr’s heart God’s Faith

Saint Francis is depicted in fine art
In great museums and in modest homes -
And you can find him too, down at Wal-Mart,
Between the plastic frogs and concrete gnomes.

Monday, October 2, 2017

A Lady and Her Two Knights - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Lady and Her Two Knights

For their Nona and Papaw

Three young adults walking along to Mass
Pals from childhood, arms around each other,
Laughing, and pausing briefly for a mama-picture -
For them, even October is their spring

And in this springtime of their lives they offer
All of their happiness to Our Lord Himself,
All together Ad Altare Dei,
To God who giveth joy to their youth1

Three friends laughing, taking the morning air:
Two knights honored to escort their lady fair

1paraphrased from the Missale Romanum of 1962

Sunday, October 1, 2017

A Dachshund Among the Leaves - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Dachshund Among the Leaves

For Liesl-the-Wonder-Dachshund, of Happy Memory

A merry dachshund yaps, and leaps for leaves
Wind-strewn across the still-green summer grass
As Autumn visits briefly, and looks around
To plan his festive moonlit frosts when soon
Diana dances across November’s skies.