The 10,000-Year-Old Girl - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The 10,000-Year-Old Girl

She is a 10,000-year-old girl
Although she is rather younger today
Only 240 or so
While taking coffee with James Madison

She has discussed the weather with Gilgamesh
Given Keats her handkerchief for his cough
Danced with the fairies on Midsummer Eve
And captured the castle with Cassandra

Because she has listened when the Nine have sung
An old soul she is, and so
                                                          forever young

Soulfight in a Locked Room - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Soulfight in a Locked Room

In the end, they had to break into his room
He was dead in his chair, and quite alone
Self-exiled from his family for years
Alone in a shell, silent, and alone

The accidentals of life were cast away:
A coffee pot, a coat over a door
His schedule for the methadone clinic
A note to meet with his parole officer

But the pathologist’s tox screen was clean -
Better than most of us, he went down fighting

A Tool of the Establishment - column

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

A Tool of the Establishment

Stopping for bright, shiny things lying on the road is seldom a good idea, but since there was no other traffic on a rural road the other morning I stopped to pick up a bright, shiny thing.

Said bright, shiny thing is a spark plug wrench with a handle welded at a right angle. The handle can also be used as a flat-blade screw driver or a pry. The handle is stamped with “STIHL” and a sequence of numbers, so presumably this is a tool which came with one of Stihl’s highly-valued chainsaws.

Most such small-engine spark plug wrenches are double-ended, offering two sizes so that the tool can be packaged with different models. The pronounced asymmetry of this one suggests that the owner hacksawed off the other end, presumably to help manipulate the needed spark plug socket in an awkward space. Your mechanic could tell you many narratives about how the engineers who design gasoline engines sometimes seem determined that spark plugs be placed in almost inaccessible locations.

This wrench is a nice thing someone has lost off a trailer or a pickup, and I hope I can return it to the owner.

Hand tools are in themselves good, honest things, but are now mostly cobbled together out of pot metal in Shanghai, which is why hitting the yard sales for American, German, or Finnish tools is useful. Even if you don’t need another screwdriver, wrench, socket, or chisel right now, you will eventually, and you might as well pick up good used hand tools now instead of paying more for crumbly junk later.

Besides, you might run across some of the good stuff stolen from my garage by those among us whose concept of ownership of the means of production is more from Marx-Lenin-Stalin than from Jesus.

In an aside we may note that Marx, Lenin, and Stalin often spoke of the nobility of the working man, though like many of our modern leaders they seem never to have busted a sweat themselves except on the tennis court or the golf course. (Our state representative, James White, and our federal representative, Brian Babin, are intimately familiar with stringing barbed wire, shoveling ****, pushing a broom, and working the night shift to get through school. That is part of why they are work-boots-on-ground effective. I imagine many of their colleagues just don’t get it.)

There is no app for a properly balanced hammer, for the hammer is the app. It is not programmed, nor can it be recharged. A good steel file responds to the craftsman’s hands, not to a code. A wrench, once purchased, serves the careful owner for the rest of his life, and is not subject to a densely-worded and deceptive contract. Your grandpa’s pocket knife has lasted three generations without losing a satellite signal.

I will never be a good comrade, because I know that books (I’m speaking of Keats, Wordsworth, Lewis, Chesterton, Viktor Frankl et al, not Barbara Cartland [shudder]) are as essential to civilization as hunting, fishing, and good, honest work. This nation needs men and women in “all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war” (John Milton), men and women who know their way around Paradise Lost, the pea patch, iambic pentameter, and a good socket set.

-30-

Hesychasm as Practiced at Midday - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Hesychasm as Practiced at Midday

Cicadas contribute to the silence
With their impious reproductive racket
A cloud of whistles, whirrs, buzzes, and clicks
In the otherwise still and stiller noon

An old man rests his shovel and himself
And sits in the flickering shade awhile
To think of nothing while sweet incense rises
Up from the sacred bowl of his Peterson’s pipe

The Eternal breathes silently over all
(Them cicadas sure is noisy, though)

Because We Respect Words, We Wrestle With Them - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Because We Respect Words, We Wrestle With Them

Suggested by a Thought from Temporal Fugue

Because we respect words, we wrestle with them
And because they respect us, they wrestle back;
We shape them in order serviceable 1
And they refuse to be pinned as cliches’

We fling a needful verb against a noun
To make a thought complete, but then adverbs
And adjectives begin cluttering lines
And then we all must take a coffee break

Because we respect words, we wrestle with them
For every scrap of story, verse, or hymn


1 Cf. John Milton, “Hymn on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity”

Everyone has a Clothing Line These Days - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Everyone has a Clothing Line These Days

Well, okay, it’s out there in the back yard
Where on display you’ll see: old boonie hats
Uncool, but good when working in the heat
And cotton khakis from the discount store

Just washed, and drying in the summer sun
Admired by every Merry Little Breeze 1
Skivvies and socks sewn in Cambodia
And work shirts stitched together in Viet-Nam

Nothing by Versace or Calvin Klein
Just old clothes drying on the old clothes line


1 Thornton W. Burgess’ Mother West Wind stories

An Immigration Czar (do we have any spare Romanovs about?) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

An Immigration Czar

Someone demands an immigration czar
Which could be interesting: a crown, a throne
A double-eagle flag, the border guards
Singing a Troparian while on patrol

On the Steppes of Central Texas 1
The Czar in progress royal comes to see
His happy villagers waving MREs
From behind the merry Potemkin wire

The Czar, contented, turns his escort then
To Petersburg, and lunch at the Little Red Hen

1 cf. Borodin's "On the Steppes of Central Asia"

Let no one take this scribble as anything more than a bit of fun about the use of “czar” in a mixed republic / democracy. I am about a thousand miles from the border and don’t know what’s going on there, and prudently do not trust any news source.

The Prophet and the Dancing Girl - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Prophet and the Dancing Girl

When the kitchen staff did the washing-up
They could not but notice, among the bowls
And serviettes, spoons, knives, pitchers, and plates,
One of the best silver trays, blotchy with blood

And scraps of vertebrae, ruining the shine
“Oh, bother; these stains will never come out,”
Muttered the old woman in charge of such things
But she scrubbed and polished, did a good job

With that and with each costly silver cup
When the kitchen staff did the washing-up

The First Blast of the Trumpet (if not the Trump) Against the Monstrous Regiment of Social Media - poem (not much of one, though)

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The First Blast of the Trumpet 1 (if not the Trump) Against

the Monstrous Regiment of Social Media

V: Follow us on Facebook or Twitter
R: No


1 No apologies to the odious John Knox

Every Page is Open to the Sun - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Every Page is Open to the Sun

In my religion we're taught that every living thing, every leaf, every bird, is only alive because it contains the secret word for life. That's the only difference between us and a lump of clay. A word. Words are life, Liesel.

- Max to Liesel in Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief

We cannot walk with Dostoyevsky as
Guards drag him chained before a firing squad
Comfort Saint Joan against the English flames
Or pray with good Saint Thomas in his cell

We cannot slosh through sodden trenches in France
With Lieutenant Lewis on his birthday
Argue with Akhmatova at The Stray Dog
Or with Frankl at Auschwitz bury dead friends

Unless we read, and then through words we see
The morning sun upon Byzantium

The Existential Sorrow of Waiting Room Art - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Existential Sorrow of Waiting Room Art

Sunlit sailboats in daubs of orange and red
And mass-produced impressionist barn owls
In flight above an unsecured wire rack
Of greasy copies of Reader’s Digest

Behind the receptionist’s hole-in-the-wall
Children of the Cornbread centered in plastic
Jesus-frames grin against their will, freeze-posed
Among department-store studio trees

Across the walls some glued-on murals roam
(But at least this isn’t the funeral home)

The Summer Solstice as Not Celebrated in Texas - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Summer Solstice as Not Celebrated in Texas

One might as well call this an equinox
For night and day are equinoxious now:
Mosquitoes, soul-withering heat and damp
Itch-allergens and rattlesnakes not featured

In advertising fantasies about
Bugless, unbitten happy families
Posing with plates and carnivorous smiles
Before neighbor-envious chromium grills

And playing free of heat rash and pustules
Around surgically sterile swimming pools

Instant Canonization (no cannons, though) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Instant Canonization

Don’t bother about being a saint so rare-y;
They’ll make you one in your obituary!

Shhh - TITANIC was Sunk by a Bilderberg - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Shhhhh - Titanic was Sunk

by a Bilderberg

Albino rabbis, the Illuminati,
Protocols of the Elders of Zion -
The evidence seemed a little spotty
‘Til a radio guy had us wonderin’ and sighin’

Fluoridation by the New World Order
Backed by the Trilateral Commission
A scheme to open our southern border
To crop circles – that’s his suspicion

Area 51, the Templar Knights
FEMA lurking in the Bohemian Grove
Perfidious Rothschilds through menace and fright
Guarding a Jewish-Viking treasure trove

Poor Newfoundland is Occupied by Commie rats
Who scheme in secret tunnels beneath St. John’s
Brewing magic potions in Macbethian vats
In Rodentian rituals from the Age of Bronze

The Priory of Sion, runes, swastikas, the Vril
Roswell and the Thule Society
No wonder the air is darkly chill:
We all live within a conspiracy.


From Paleo-Hippies at Work and Play, p. 166, available on amazon.com via Kindle and as nicely-bound fragments of dead trees.

Our Fathers' Stories - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Our Fathers’ Stories

Our fathers told of hard times on the farm
Of walking barefoot down the road to school
And walking home again to get the cows back up
From woods and fields to the old dairy barn

And joining the Army at seventeen
Sleeping later in boot camp than on the farm
Coming home from the war to look for a job
Thirty years at the sawmill – then laid off

And in his turn a New Man proudly says:

I scored real high on Minecraft on my ‘phone
While standing in line for my free school supplies

Shall I Compute Thee to a Summer's Day? - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Shall I Compute 1 Thee to a Summer’s Day?

A Lament for the Unlettered

They launch no voyages of discovery
To sail beyond the sunset 1 of their dreams
No pages open to them; no books, no boots,
No paths lead them to Constantinople or Rome 3

For the horns of Elfland 4 they listen not
Nor for the unheard pipes on a Grecian urn 5
The Red Book of Westmarch 6 is forever closed
And lines of lyric verse sing not to them

They cling to their precious palantiri 7
And launch no voyages of discovery


1 As Shakespeare did not say

2 From Tennyson’s “Ulysses.” Heinlein used the phrase as the title for his final novel.

3 Patrick Leigh Fermor and Hilaire Belloc

4 C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy

5 Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”

6 Tolkien, Lord of the Rings

7 Tolkien again

Did Canada Burn Down the White House? - column

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Did Canada Burn Down the White House?

The question has been asked: Did Canada burn down the White House?

Well, no, not exactly.

In 1812 Congress declared war on Britain, thinking that the several provincial Canadas of that time (Canada did not become a Dominion until 1 July 1867) would easily be conquered and absorbed into the land of the free, whether or not they wanted freedom imposed by conquest and absorption. Irony, eh?

Britain was at war with Napoleonic France, and her army and navy were committed to the defense of the home islands and to distant campaigns against the French Empire. The D.C. war hawks (as always, hawkish with the lives of other men and their sons, not with the lives of themselves and their sons) in congress envisioned a quick and victorious campaign over the British regulars, English militias, French-Canadian militias, and the allied First Nations.

Thomas Jefferson, slaveowner (https://www.monticello.org/site/plantation-and-slavery/thomas-jeffersons-attitudes-toward-slavery) and former president, said that the conquest of Canada would be a matter of marching. He, however, did not march. He never marched. Thomas Jefferson fought in the wars by writing thinky-stuff and attending diplomatic receptions.

During the campaigns United States forces burned York (now Toronto), the capital of Upper Canada, and other towns, and in 1814 regular British forces in their turn burned much of Washington and other towns.

Apparently there were no Canadian militia units involved in torching our capital, but instead regular British soldiers and militia from the Caribbean. Canadians claim the honor anyway, and since they remain part of the British Empire, one can with a grain of salt and a cup of Tim Horton’s coffee admit their claim.

When the war ended in 1814, and everyone signed The Treaty of Ghent on Christmas Eve, the boundary between the several Canadas and the United States was exactly where it had been two years before. Some 50,000 American, British, Canadian, French Canadian, and First Nations soldiers, and far more civilians, died for the irresponsible ambitions of the War Hawks (who did not themselves hawk to war, not even for the defense of their own capital).

So God bless Canada, and us, and everyone. Let’s drop the tariffs and the passport requirements, apologize nicely for ill manners shown to this nation’s best friend, shake hands all ‘round, send the prime minister some socks appropriate for grownups, and go catch a Toronto Blue Jays game.

-30-

An Ikon of Saint Seraphim of Sarov among Birch Trees - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

An Ikon of

Saint Seraphim of Sarov among Birch Trees

Saint Seraphim among the birch trees, bent
In penitential pain – O pray for us
A thousand souls depending on your peace
And then a thousand more for each, and more

Saint Seraphim among the birch trees, bent
And leaning on your axe-stave now become
Your staff of office among foxes and bears
Please consecrate in us your Spirit of love

Saint Seraphim among the birch trees, bent -
Dear friend of penitents, dear Heaven-sent

Two Kiddie Pools in the Back Garden, with Honeybees and a Dachshund - doggerel with a real dog

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Two Kiddie Pools in the Back Garden,

with Honeybees and a Dachshund

The dachshund loves her kiddie pool
The honeybees love theirs
The dachshund splashes to get cool
The bees mind their affairs

(Honeybees cannot launch from water, so I keep freshly-cut leafy limbs in their pool.)

Drunk Girl Crying in the Parking Lot - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Drunk Girl Crying in the Parking Lot

Drunk girl crying in the parking lot
     Always begins her ‘plaints with “I”
Dull boy whining on an email screen
     Always begins his notes with “I”
Mean girl screaming in the shopping mall
     Always begins her rage with “I”
Sad boy sucking on a cigarette
     Always begins his verse with “I”
‘Lone girl staring at a tv set
     Always begins her sigh with “I”

And why?

Because they overdose on I, ME, MY

The Hegelian Dialectic on Garbage Day - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Hegelian Dialectic on Garbage Day

Thesis and antithesis became one
And synthesis became thesis again
Another synthesis antithesis
And they became a higher synthesis

And the higher truths rose higher and higher
Higher and higher in a spiraling spire
Of conceptualizations like holy fire
Thoughts far above all earthly muck and mire

until

Until Mrs. Hegel told Mr. Hegel
That he ought to get off his lazy geist
And begin helping out around the house,
And set the weltseele out on the curb

Tactical Thirty-Year-Old Tactical Children Tactical - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Bedrooms of Thirty-Year-Old Children

                        “I am looking for a some what tactical bible cover. I would prefer that it have hook and loop
                        some were on it, so I can put moral patches on it.”

-https://www.ar15.com/forums/general/-/135-1549758/

Each tactical gun and each tactical knife
Made in China by tactical slaves
Tactical gear for tactical strife
(Tactical guys to their tactical graves)

Tactical undies and tactical pen
Tactical chocolate and paintball paint
Tactical everything for wannabe men
Desperate to be whatever they ain’t

Tactical shelters for when it’s raining –

But

They never made Day One of army training

Eek! Who Burned Down the White House? - a limerick

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Eek! Who Burned Down the White House?

Someone once burned down the White House!
Someone who was wearing a red blouse
The British claim it loudly
But others more proudly:
“We Canadians burned down the White House!”

In 1812 Congress declared war on Britain, thinking that the several provincial Canadas of that time (Canada did not become a Dominion until 1 July 1867) would be easily conquered and absorbed. During the campaigns United States forces burned York (now Toronto), the capital of Upper Canada, and in 1814 regular British forces in their turn burned much of Washington. Apparently there were no Canadian militia units involved in torching our capital. Canadians claim the honor anyway, and since they were part of the British Empire, one can with a grain of salt and a cup of Tim Horton’s coffee admit their claim.

God bless Canada. Let’s drop the tariffs and the passport requirements, apologize nicely for ill manners shown to this nation’s best friend, shake hands all ‘round, and go catch a Toronto Blue Jays game.

Upon Finding a Souvenir of Canterbury in a Desk Drawer - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Upon Finding a Canterbury Remembrance in a Desk Drawer

Astride his horse, the gift-shop blisful martir
Raises his glov’ed hand in priestly blessing
For those who wear his token in evidence
Of a devout pilgrimage to Canterbury

By tour bus those who wolden ryde there
To seek a blessing (and a souvenir)
In brass Saint Thomas and his horse and groom
Forever stand; Saint Thomas asks of us:

“Sin you have seyn the paving wher I deyd –
Let now Iesu forever be your gyde”

When Computers, Eggs, and Airplanes Go Bad - Column

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

When Computers, Eggs, and Airplanes Go Bad

“Have you no idea of progress, of development?"

"I have seen them both in an egg," said Caspian. "We call it 'Going Bad' in Narnia”

-C. S. Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader

In a careless moment the other day I pushed the wrong response when a software provider named – let us say MacroPlop – suggested that their latest update would make the world of personal computing much better, leading my internet experience into the broad, sunny uplands or something or other.

I have spent the last two days repenting of my misplaced trust in the blandishments of MacroPlop by roaming through Dante’s Darksome Wood while trying to follow the software provider’s wonderfully opaque instructions on how to remediate the mess they made while improving my computer:

Error 500 this will take a few minutes please leave your computer online now Error 370 and a yo-ho-ho check the cleverly named icon which is nowhere on your screen you may need to restart your computer to make this update take effect can’t rename because a file ERROR with that name already exists the application failed to initialized because the window station is being shut down you must restart window to complete the program removal failure unknown error you may need to restart your computer to make this update take effect an error occurred ERROR the following information might help you resolve the error if an wah-wah error is returned which is not defined in the standard woo-woo filter, it is converted to one of the following errors which is guaranteed to be in the filter you may need to restart your computer to make this update take effect in this case information is lost you may need to restart your computer to make this update take effect however, the folder correctly handles the exception (doobydoobydo) if there are any messages that are stuck, follow these steps to clear those messages in outlook, click the send/receive tab, and then click work offline note this stops outlook from trying to send all email messages select the outbox you can now take one of the following actions move the message move the message to the drafts folder you may need to restart your computer to make this update take effect…

My favorite message advises the frustrated computer user to go online to seek help about the computer that is unable go online.

But I caught up on some reading.

While waiting hours for the several this-may-take-a-few-minutes remedies to download I finished reading John Mortimer’s Rumpole and the Age of Miracles. Given that I am a slow reader and easily distracted – oh, look, a squirrel! – a better reader could work his or her way through the Old Testament, St. Augustine’s City of God, William Manchester’s Churchill trilogy, or McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove while waiting for MacroPlop promises.

You can find the books online if your machine isn’t offline.

And speaking of going offline, modern passenger planes are built with the control surfaces connected only by computer signals, not by cables. When those computers system crashes, so will the airplanes.

Progress.

-30-

Oh, Please, Not Another Tapestry! - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Oh, Please, Not Another Tapestry!

Slowly weaves a magnificent…tapestry 1
O’Murchu weaves a tapestry of science and spirit 2
A brilliant tapestry of love, pain and dogs 3
Quartet weaves a tapestry to serve as background 4

Weaves a tapestry of contemporary life 5
The Banner saga weaves a tapestry 6
Local author weaves a…tapestry 7
Weaves itself into Toronto’s tapestry 8

Weaves a tapestry of two romances 9
Burke weaves a tapestry of unique characters 10


1 http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2012/08/the-english-war-and-peace-paul-scotts-raj-quartet.html

2 https://www.ncronline.org/books/2017/08/o-murchu-weaves-tapestry-science-and-spirit

3 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB985905633270438842

4 http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1988-10-26/news/8802100482_1_fluegelhorn-soul-eyes-art-farmer-quartet

5 https://www.dallasnews.com/arts/books/2012/09/20/in-between-days-by-andrew-porter-weaves-a-tapestry-of-contemporary-life-and-hot-button-issues

6 https://www.vg247.com/2014/01/09/the-banner-saga-weaves-a-tapestry-of-loss-morality-and-hope-impressions/

7 http://www.reformer.com/stories/local-author-weaves-together-a-tapestry-of-conflicting-emotions,372745

8 https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/canadian-hindu-temple-weaves-itself-into-torontos-tapestry/article1079566/

9 https://bookpage.com/reviews/6557-sandra-brown-tough-customer#.WmOZAkly7IU

10 https://www.bookbrowse.com/bb_briefs/detail/index.cfm/ezine_preview_number /6557/feast-day-of-fools

Alienation is the Constant Theme - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Alienation is the Constant Theme

Alienation is the constant theme
A child for whom the family dinner table
Is the scene of nightly interrogations
Can never be at home outside himself

Alienation is the constant theme
When every word is dissected by others
For any taint of beauty, love, or truth
And any deviation from today

Alienation is the constant theme
When trust is but a morning-broken dream

Microsoft Windows Latest Update - a caution

Microsoft Windows Latest Update

 

Windows 10

Fails again

 

 

 

I was an hour or so repairing the mess made by the latest Microsoft update.  In the end, the only remedy was to purge the update via the control panel

 

Beware of progress.

Upon Reading a Graduation Program Which Features a Clumsily-Formed Sentiment Wrongly Attributed to Shakespeare - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Upon Reading a Graduation Program Which Features

a Clumsily-Formed Sentiment Wrongly Attributed to Shakespeare

Scorn not the printed word, O thoughtful soul,
As Wordsworth 1 did not say, and do not set
An electric machine to grind through files
In search of gobbets all thinky and stuff

For Shakespeare set in iambs clean and neat
All the transcendent ideas of the good,
The beautiful, and the eternal true
Sustained in meters of steel and words of gold



Shakespeare never

                                     wobbled
all over the paper in unmetered rubbish
                                                                                                                  lines
of disconnected babble about stars and selves 2 without any citations for verification
stirred around in a sort of it-sounds-like-Shakespeare-kinda-sorta-they-won’t-care-anyway soup to be copied and pasted onto sheets of 8 1/2” by 11” fake parchment woodpulp because, like, y’know, that’s what you do for graduation ceremonies



1 Wordsworth, “Scorn not the Sonnet”
2 Possibly a misremembering of Cassius’ words to Brutus in Julius Caesar: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” If so, the quotation has been, like Caesar, assassinated.

Monday Morning after Graduation - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Monday Morning after Graduation

For thirteen years one’s life is organized
By Mom and Dad and the glorious state 1
Passive behavior rewarded and prized
Just work your sums on an electric slate

Bubble in circles with a number two
Glitter-glue posters for every right cause
School’s all about state scores, not about you
And state exams, according to state laws

For thirteen years you were controlled and toyed -
Today you’re just one of the unemployed



1 You are the state. A school will be exactly what you and the other citizens want it to be. Always vote in your local school board elections; self-government is not a spectator sport.

Life High the Red Cuppa, Rather - a mildly amusing couplet

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Lift High the Red Cuppa, Rather

A proper English Communist, I say,
Should drink only that tea called Comrade Grey

The People Gather to Honor Their Children Graduating from High School - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The People Gather to Honor Their Children Graduating from High School

To the Accompaniment of “Land of Hope and Glory” on a CD Player

Piped to Speakers on the Artificially Turfed Football Field

 

“Here, sir, the people govern”

-attributed to Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, and others

Beards flowing over beer-swollen bellies
Tattoos, tee-shirts reading “I’m With Stupid”
Knee-pants, hairy legs, knives worn openly -
And some of the men are dressed that way too

Bubba caps worn defiantly during the pledge
Cell ‘phones at full wail during the opening prayer
Too few genetic codes and too few teeth
Rattling loudly during the valedictory

And air-horn cousins out on probation
To lend some elegance to graduation

A Doctor Seuss-Free Graduation Poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

On a Morning in June – a Doctor Seuss-Free Graduation Poem

The earth is all before me: with a heart
Joyous, nor scar’d at its own liberty,
I look about, and should the guide I chuse
Be nothing better than a wandering cloud,
I cannot miss my way.

- Wordsworth, Prelude, I.15-19

Soon you’ll depart for your own pilgrimage,
Seafaring through the life God has given you,
To the golden Canterbury of your heart,
Along the sunlit road you’ve chosen to walk,
A pilgrimage, perhaps, to Orwell’s dusty room,
Or deep into the mind of Thomas More
Or far-off Saint James of the Field of Stars,
Or sea-passages swift to Denmark’s shores,
Or fields of sonnets singing in the dawn -
All these you’ll find along your pilgrim road.

Take then, your haversack, and neatly pack
Your book, your song, your dream, a change of clothes
(Your dreams are happier when you wear dry socks)
A prayer that your parsoun will write for you
A cup, a bowl, a pocketknife, a pen;
And do take care to pack those useful words
Learned, shaped, and sharpened, polished from your youth:
The baby-sounds for supper, sandwich, cat,
The childhood sounds for play and your best friend,
Then words from Mom and words from books - and words from  
     you.

Words flown by you in dreams like sunlit sails
Then shaped again in pencil or in ink
And flung in hope upon a waiting leaf
Words made by you for honest purposes
And never employed in wicked deceit,
For thieves might steal your book, your song, your hopes,
And time decay your purposes and strength
But your own words, oh, yes, your good, strong words,
Like an old pair of boots will see you through
To your heart’s desire at your journey’s end.