That Keep Calm and Carry On Thing

Mack Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

That Keep Calm and Carry On Thing

In 1939 the English Ministry for Printing Posters (or something) set up the typeface and inks for posters that would read KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON to be distributed if the Nazis invaded.

In such a contingency, keeping calm would be a challenge indeed: “Okay, lads, the Germans are crawling up the beaches now.  We’re all out of rifles, but here are some really inspirational posters…”

Some of the sample posters were rediscovered several years ago, and ever since then the Chinese have kept themselves profitably excited by printing the KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON meme on posters, coffee cups, bath towels, and anything else that will hold ink.

This of course led to the inevitable spoofs, and here are y’r ‘umble scrivener’s modest contributions:

Buzzards: Keep Calm and Carrion.

Beachcombers: Keep Clams and Carry ‘Em

Airlines: Keep Calm but not the Carry-ons

Assad of Syria: Keep Killing and Carnage On

Mardi Gras: Keep Cool and Carouse On

Fast-Food Joints: Keep Cholesterol and Cardio-Clog On

Mountaineers : Keep Climbing and Clinging On

When the boss is giving a speech: Keep Clapping and Cheering Him On (or else)

A Newfoundland fisherman: Keep Cod and Carry On, Eh

Best friend: Keep Calm and Have a Cup of Coffee

NRA: Keep Calm and Conceal-Carry

I.T.: Keep Calm and Restart

Psychologist: Keep Calm and Let’s Talk About Your Desire to Slaughter Unicorns

Captain Kirk: Keep Calm and Set Phasers on Stun

Captain Picard: Keep Calm and Engage

Winston Churchill: Never, in the field of human endeavor, have so many kept calm

Vladimir Putin: Keep Calm and Cordon off the Troublemakers

Vice-President Biden: Calm Keep and Strangle Republicans

Governor Perry: Keep Calm, Y’all

The Social Security Administration: Keep Calm and Keep Stocking Up on .357 Sig 125-grain, bonded, jacketed, hollow point pistol ammunition

Shakespeare: Keepeth Calm and Carrieth On, Forsooth

Daily Mail: Keep Calm and Red Arrow Me

The State of Texas: Keep Calm and We’ll Pay a British Company Millions of Your Tax Dollars to Test You.

 

-30-

Alternative Prayer Before a Crucifix

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Alternative Prayer Before a Crucifix

Our little plastic boxes glow and blink,

They wink, they clink, they link; they almost think -
Until the tenuous connections fail
To silence blown by the January gale,
And we are left in still, cold darkness there:
A candle, a Crucifix, and a prayer.

The Frogs of August

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Frogs of August

After surprising summer showers in

A time of heat and dust and lethargy,
Forth from their hidden reptilian repose
The frogs of August rise, and sing a hymn,
A joyful hymn to rain and tasty bugs.

The Pickwickian toad sings of himself,

A stout old gentleman of means and thrift;

The bluff and hearty bullfrog by the pond

Bellows his boasts, and puffs his own praises.

Preferring window screens to rain-damp leaves,

The tiny tree frog trills his outsized voice.

The disparate, dissonant descantations

Of this catalogue of errant froggery

Drift in and out of transient harmony
And back again, an ancient unity
To please the late-night wanderer of hours.

 

O Ye of Little Frog

For those who deny that frogs sing to God

 

O ye of little faith in night’s mysteries
Oft hasten to explain away God’s arts,
And dampen joys with your false-writ histories
Believing in dull books, and not your hearts.

You claim that frogs sing only to gain mates,

Based on some long-dead dullard’s science log,
Claiming the last word on reptilian traits -
What do you know of the love-life of a frog?

You might then with equal injustice claim

That Compline is sung in order to attract
Women – but is that Saint Benedict’s aim?
Poor frogs and monks sing hymns; and that’s a fact!

Vigil of the Assumption

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Vigil of the Assumption

We will forever venerate our Queen,

Whom God Himself chose happily to be
His Mother, and the Mother of us all.
Each orphaned soul, rejected by mankind,
Adrift among the sloshing, foul debris
Of counsels falsely hissed behind the leaves
Must know that in the wild, sin-howling nights
Of desolation, clutching to himself
The fragments of his failed humanity,
Even so, his loving Mother comes to him,
To tend, to heal, to love, to hold in trust
For God this child of Hers, condemned by time.

Night Class

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Night Class

The moonless night presents a nothingness,

As flickering cones of yellow light pursue
Pale wraiths and shadows through the conifers.
The radio hisses in its loneliness,
While miles and hours in meditation pass;
The coffee cup from several towns ago
Is empty now; its caffeine promises
Have faded like a statesman’s solemn vows
While Byron, Shelley, and Keats, in repose
Between the covers of a Moby Book,
Await those even later, owlish hours,
Then to renew their pleynts against the past.

Liesl and the Egrets

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Liesl and the Egrets

 

Neighbor Willie was mowing the August fields
And to this tillage flew egrets, all white,
Following the blade for its bug-rich yields,
Soaring and wheeling in the mid-day light

Some thirty or more of this hungry flock

Alighted on the lawn beneath the trees
Before the wide window, as if to mock
A spirited dachshund – oh, what a tease!

Young Liesl girded for battle, oh, yes:

The air, the birds, and the doggie were still,
As when a thunderstorm builds, as you may guess,
Or a stalking she-wolf waits for her kill

The door was opened, and, thundering, Liesl sprang

Into the lists of honor, against all odds,
With yelp and yap and yip and paw and fang,
True daughter of the old Germanic gods!

Ere long the scene was silent, free of birds;

An errant feather here and there told the story
Of Liesl’s noble charge far better than mere words,
Told of this day’s dachshundian glory.

 

Chris and Deedra's Porch

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Chris and Deedra’s Porch

Porch-exiled with our beer and cigarettes
We firmly urged the dogs, dead wasps, and heat
To move a bit and make some room for us.
There was no evening cool, no hope of it,
No hope in anything, and there we sank
Into drought-dusty, disreputable old chairs,
Surrendered to the heat and beer and smokes,
Avoided thinking about the death-still dusk.
But then a gentle tease, a gentle breeze
Came wafting coolly from across the fields
Only for a moment, and was gone again,
Not cruelly but of kindness, just a note,
A fairy’s note, soft-whispered through a leaf,
A hymn for exiles, a song of autumn.

Summer Doggerel

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Summer School

The blue fluorescent lights in summer are

More hateful than in autumn, yes, by far.

The Hurricane That Wasn’t

The hurricane that wasn’t flies away;

The land still gasps – no rain again today

Summer Lawn Care

The lawns are rough, so work I must,

But all I mow are weeds and dust

The Pale Summer Rose

God blesses us with the pale summer rose

But it won’t live without the water hose

Liesl-Dog

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Liesl

My little dachshund often yaps;
At other times she sweetly naps

Pippa-Cat

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Pippa-Cat

Sweet Pippa-Cat was hot with lust
So at the vet all that was fixed
But now she’s only a bit of dust -
A speeding car, and she was nixed

25 June: Saint William, Abbot

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

25 June: Saint William, Abbot

Saint William, Abbot, had a rabbit, who

One hot day chose to chew the Abbot’s shoe.

Studies Show

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Studies Show

Loud advertisements claim that studies show

The need to buy their products, don’t you know:
Expensive slimming creams that trim one’s hips
Vitaminized water to pass one’s lips
Soft magic creams to block the cancerous sun
And scientific pills to make life fun.

But

We’re never told who studied what, the name

Of that mysterious scholar without fame,
What university in which he worked
What secret corporate labs in which he lurked
What validation he could bestow -

We’re only told that studies show.

An Old, Old Colossus

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

An Old, Old Colossus

News item: corpses of stowaways found

aboard a container ship

Foul darkness, stench, and silence thus entomb
Dead made-in-China hopes inside a box,
Lost souls upon, within, a breathless sea
Among the video games and Christmas toys,
The sneakers that one cannot live without
And fashions fresh from blooded tiny hands
In squalid concrete blocks of suicide.
True bills of lading note the paperwork,
Promissory notes of neatly typed doom,
Free on board, but payable upon our deaths:
The tired, the poor, the huddled corpses wait,
Decaying in an airless metal box,
Afloat upon a golden harbor where
A grim, badged functionary, uniformed
In body-armor and tactical gear,
There lifts his lamp inside the darkened door,
And mourns.

The Staretz

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Staretz

In middle life the sunflower bends its head,

No longer to the sun as in its youth,
But to the earth in all humility,
Ripening for us all its dreams and works,
And aging happily to eternal dawn.

The Farmer to Saint Swithin

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Farmer to Saint Swithin

O good Saint Swithin, please, to you we pray,

On this your high summer rain-making day –
Of your blest kindness send us sweet, soft showers,
The kind that gently fall for hours and hours,
To heal the sunburnt land of thirst and drought
And nourish the corn that sees the winter out;
And if you grant the boon we humbly ask
We’ll work the harder on each rural task:
We’ll ditch and fence and plough, and milk the cow,
Share with the widder-folk, and feed the sow,
Count out some plantful seeds for poor folks’ needs,
And daily tell God’s Mysteries on our beads.

Pinon

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Pinon

The incense of the mountains drifts along

The arroyos, and into the narrow streets
Of Taos at dawn, the breath, perhaps, of God.

Song Dancer Wind Something Woman

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Song Dancer Wind Something Woman

(slowly, soothingly)

Like, you know, crystals are so last week’s feeds;
Magic rocks are the latest transcendence,
Drawing from the mountains the soul’s desire
To be one with the one-ness of all things,
Warmed by the desires of the seeking heart,
These rocks, blessed by the, like, ancient peoples
Bring peace and healing to the soul and spirit

(Faster)

And, like, I don’t care what people say

About me and what I done in high school
‘cause that ain’t, like, none of their business
And these people that don’t know me judge me
But they’re in darkness I have found the truth
In Transcendental Earth One-Ness as taught
By the One and he likes me anyway.

Makeshift Shrine

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Makeshift Shrine

Teddy bears ribboned to a chain-link fence,
Plastic-wrapped flowers stacked like compost,
Dime-store candles flickering in the exhaust
Of passing mini-vans.  The inanity
Of filler-language falls, descends upon
The shattered souls of the barely alive,
The dead cliches’ of well-planned camera-grief:
“Our hearts and thoughts go out to you.”
What does that mean?  Nothing but conventional noise
For generations of lovers and mourners
Long-ago looted of reality,
Programmed with state-sanctioned hyperbole,
And mourners now are left with nothing but
An existential howl against the light,
Sodium-vapor upon broken glass,
While strident Men of Destiny
There rake for votes among the ashes of death.

Come Laughing Home at Twilight

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Come Laughing Home at Twilight

 Beaumont-Hamel, 1916

And, O!  Wasn’t he just the Jack the lad,
A’swellin’ down the Water Street as if –
As if he owned the very paving stones!
He was my beautiful boy, and, sure,
The girls they thought so too: his eyes, his walk;
A man of Newfoundland, my small big man,
Just seventeen, but strong and bold and sure.

Where is he now?  Can you tell me?  Can you?

Don’t tell me he was England’s finest, no –
He was my finest, him and his Da,
His Da, who breathed in sorrow, and was lost,
They say, lost in the fog, among the ice.
But no, he too was killed on the first of July
Only it took him months to cast away,
And drift away, far away, in the mist.

Where is he now?  Can you tell me?  Can you?

I need no kings nor no kaisers, no,

Nor no statues with fine words writ on’em,
Nor no flags nor no Last Post today:
I only want to see my men come home,
Come laughing home at twilight, boots all mucky,
An’ me fussin’ at ‘em for being’ late,
Come laughing home at twilight...

Olympic Ashes

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Olympic Ashes

The People line the streets obediently

Awaiting the crematorial flame
Of appointed divine diversity
(Glancing about lest some perfidious Jew
Contaminate the sweet inclusiveness)
While strength through joy is celebrated again
In torchlit progress international
Celebrating freedom as commanded.
In the end, they but cheer their own oxidation

It Says "Moby Richard" on His Swimming License

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

It Says “Moby Richard” on His Swimming License

Oh, yes, I’ve read that Moby Book;

You won’t believe the hours it took -
The Pequod sailed for many nights
And I was late turning off the lights
While brave men fought wind, tide, and gale:
To tell the truth, I cheered for the whale.

A Movie With a Happy Ending

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Movie with a Happy Ending

Jack was chased all over the ship

Giving his pursuers the slip
Gunfire, then, was Spicer’s game
(One wished Spicer a better aim)
But, Oh! The laughter, short of breath,
When annoying Jack froze to death!

Hymn to a Radio Talker

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Hymn to a Radio Talker

Tune: “A Mighty Fortress is our God”

A noisy small man plays at god
A loud-mouth ever flailing;
Our yelper he amid the flood
Of bleak doom-sayers wailing.
For he doth want our cash
For this his tongue doth lash;
He works those crocodile tears
For profits throughout the years,
Please God he has no sequel.

Primary Runoffs - Casting a Vote

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Midsummer Primary Runoffs -

Casting a Vote

Well, no, one does not exactly cast a vote -
The petitioner presents his papers,
And the County Mothers pince-nez them
As the countenance of ‘Way Cool Jesus
Beams down upon all from the cinder-block wall
Of the youthatorium, focused on
The holy liturgical percussion-set,
Now sacrally stilled in a Lenten silence.
The beldams rubber-stamp democracy,
And, humbly honored by their Nihil Obstat,
The citizen communes with a party ballot,
Ignoring the glares of disapproval
From one set of partisan poll-watchers  
And ignoring too the approbation
Of another shoal of lapel-flagged bluehairs,
He sits in pontifical dignity
On the folding cathedra of wisdom,
At the cafeteria table of justice,
Rood-screened in occultus by cardboard sheets
(Bearing flags thereon, and symbols arcane),
And blots with The Sacred Pen of Our People
Little squares illuminating holy texts.
He frowns, recalling in indignation
Intrusive ‘phone calls from a candidate:
“Suspendatur,” he thinks, and then moves on,
Blotting, blotting away into history,
“Here, sir, the blotters rule.”  And then The Box:
The Blue Box or the Red; the Red Box or the Blue;
The Ballot, unfolded, face up, must be
Not cast but slid, like a speakeasy tip,
Gently, into The Box, The People’s Box.
Not cast, but slid, carefully, and then
In November one does this again.

1 August 2012

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

1 August 2012 –

The Euphemism Mandate

That which was forbidden from Genesis

Was then gently, tolerantly permitted
And later, under subtle laws, required.

Rendering unto Moloch, today we must pay

For the fires to sacrifice our children
For the bullets of our executions
For the grave of civilization

Iesu mercy.

We Are Our Own Spies

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

We Are Our Own Spies

“Who is Number 1?”

“You are Number 6.”

– The Prisoner, 1965-1966

They do not need The Village¹ to spy on us

To Rover² us with unseen, unknown bounds
To drug our dreams with possets venomous³
Or microphone us on our guarded rounds

Because

In some bright Orwellian techno-mart

We stand in humble, sad submission
To purchase tiny Rovers of sinister art
And contract for our own inquisition

The allusions are to Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner.

¹The Village – the prison only looks like a holiday camp

²Rover – the malevolent robotic spy, enforcer, and keeper of the bounds, a sort of proto-drone

³“possets venomous” - #6 is frequently drugged by The Village in hopes he will tell all

(Perhaps one of the secrets is why the editing device will not at the moment allow me to reduce item 3 in size)

Planting an Autumn Garden

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Planting an Autumn Garden

 Cast in the mortal heat of August, seeds:

A few stray beans, peas, and lots of sunflowers,
And pumpkins for children’s Halloween needs,
Most for the birds; what’s left will be ours

Ironmongery

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Ironmongery

Hose clamps, glue, and gaskets along Aisle Ten,

Mower blades next to the metric wrenches,
Motor oil further over, then back again,
Close to the folding rules, marked in inches;

Bolts, hammers, drills, saws, a misplaced wing nut:

Great fun for the craftsman to pause longer,
Among the motors, chisels, and nails - but
What, then, one asks, does iron really monger?

Bach

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Bach

You may note that Bach wrote “Air on the G-String”;
Now what was he thinking, the silly old thing?

A Capitalist on Roller Skates

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Capitalist on Roller Skates

She glides from car to car and back again,
In flight upon the summer concrete’s glare,
A cupbearer to each spare-changed paladin.
O may her hard-won dollars buy her hair
The crown of Cleopatra, then the gown
Of Fair Rosamund; so let her be fit
As a noble woman of great renown.
And no false man say she did not earn it.

Bat-Wing'd Dusk

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Bat-Wing’d Dusk

The heavy summer dusk is a buffet
Of insects for a delicate bat’s good taste:
A careless moth, mosquitoes bordelaise,
Moths, crickets, flies, gnats - nothing goes to waste!

But even a hungry bat flies low and slow,

Weary-winging his eventide flight,
Tired, lazing through his practiced touch-and-go,
This humid, heat-sodden, late-summer, night.

A Makeshift Shrine

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

A Makeshift Shrine

Teddy bears ribboned to a chain-link fence,

Plastic-wrapped flowers stacked like compost,
Dime-store candles flickering in the exhaust
Of passing mini-vans.  The inanity
Of filler-language falls, descends upon
The shattered souls of the barely alive,
The dead cliches’ of well-planned camera-grief:
“Our hearts and thoughts go out to you.”
What does that mean?  Nothing but conventional noise
For generations of lovers and mourners
Long-ago looted of reality,
Programmed with state-sanctioned hyperbole,
And mourners now are left with nothing but
An existential howl against the light,
Sodium-vapor upon broken glass,
While strident Men of Destiny
There rake for votes among the ashes of death.