Sunday, September 27, 2015
Cane, Shillelagh, or Pilgrim’s Staff?
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Cane, Shillelagh, or Pilgrim’s Staff?
A walking stick does not walk at all; it is carried by fashionable gentlemen who employ it both for adornment and for balance.
An acquaintance who shall rename nameless…don’t tell them your name, Pike! Oops – too late. Anyway, my buddy Pike must work with some uncooperative knee joints just now – knee joints are like that – but resists using his walking stick. My buddy Pike is like that.
Thus, I ask the reading public to help persuade Pike to take his walking stick with him on his adventures. Here is a beginning:
With the addition of a straw boater Pike could work on his Maurice Chevalier routine: “Every little breeze seems to whisper Louise…”
For football games Pike could bring out his weekend sports model, a walking stick with a portrait of Elvis carved into the handle.
All the cool kids have walking sticks this year.
An aluminum walking stick is a serious babe magnet.
Well, okay, a quadrupedal aluminum thingie is not cool, but for amusement Pike could name each of the four feet: Huey, Dewey, Louie, and Donald Trump, perhaps, or maybe Larry, Moe, Curly Joe, and Trevor.
Some walking sticks have a little compass in the handle. What could be more important than knowing where north is while roaming free in the vegetable aisle at the grocery store?
If Pike carries a walking stick and moans in pain occasionally, people won’t expect him to help move furniture.
A walking stick makes any elegant boulevardier appear even more elegant.
Pike could carry one of those clever walking sticks with a little flask of brandy concealed in the handle.
“Open Channel D.” Pike’s walking stick could also be a secret radio for transmitting T.H.R.U.S.H secrets to Mr. Waverly at U.N.C.L.E.
A walking stick can be used to measure the depth of street puddles and the Atlantic Ocean.
A swordstick would be handy for dealing with Commie assassins on darkened Berlin streets. It would also amuse TSA agents at airports.
A walking stick is good for beating snakes to death, especially the endangered species.
Why a walking stick? Because a walking pine cone just won’t do.
Most of all, I think my friend Pike should use his walking stick because without it he might fall and hurt himself. And that would make me very sad.
Pike would be sad too.
-30-
Monday, September 21, 2015
On the Shortage of Farmhands - Poem
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
On the Shortage of Farmhands
Or
Got Gratitude?
No televised awards for milking cows
No presidential medals of milkdom
No red carpets or memorial plaques
No offices, carpets, or retirement plans
The poets are silent on those who milk
Those pretty girls in cool convertibles
Are never known to swoon over good farmhands
And no one sings “She thinks my Jersey’s sexy!”
No takers? No need to wonder why and how
Since no one honors the man who milks a cow
Autumn Equinox with Heat and Dust - Poem
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Autumn Equinox with Heat and Dust
Perhaps old Janus is an autumn god
His door is open to the summer too
Open both ways at this the equinox
Upon tired heat and fall’s pale promises
Sunsets are earlier, and now the dusk
Is noisy with the mowers of late-summer
Still making hay while tractor headlights shine
Upon sad, dust-blown fields for one last turn
This is Saint Matthew’s Day, and summer still
Hangs heavily, like poor Macbeth’s late summons
An Offset Wing - Poem
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
An Offset Wing
A pine nut rotors down, suspended from
Its only wing for this its only flight
Dreamed long ago, and sung into this autumn
To free-fall-spin on warm September’s wind
This aviator of the mono-wing
Knows nothing of machined efficiency
Or scheduled maintenance according to
Electric rhythms in a plastic box
Its flight is brief, but changes everything:
A pine nut rotors down, and moves the world
Variant:
An Offset Wing
A pine nut rotors down, suspended from
Its only wing for this its only flight
Dreamed long ago, and sung into this autumn
To free-fall-spin on warm September’s wind
This aviator on a mono-wing
Knows nothing of machine efficiency
Or scheduled maintenance for turn-around
Its brevity is for eternity
The flight is brief, but changes everything:
A pine nut rotors down, and moves the world
Notification of Death - Poem
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Notification of Death
A sheet of paper is a forest leaf
Two sides of life reflected in the sun:
On one side is written the joy of youth
And on the other side an elegy
A single leaf is but ephemera
When one side disappears into the mist
So does the other one – or maybe not:
We are told both sides are corrected and kept
Fair-copied cleanly by a steady Hand
And folded then into the Book of Bliss
The Joint Task Force Combat Commando Pillow Brigade of Fluffy Death
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
The Joint Task Force Combat Commando Pillow Brigade of Fluffy Death
During the American Revolution, West Point, nee’ Fort Clinton, nee’ Fort Arnold, was fortified in order to keep the British Navy from controlling the Hudson River. The position was so important that the British paid General Arnold a great deal of money and a generalship in the British Army to betray the soldiers in his command. The plot failed but General Arnold got his British general’s uniform and maybe a nice pillow.
The matter of the Great West Point Pillow Fight of 2015 seems to have gone to sleep in the past few weeks. The thoughtful reader will remember that West Point ends its summer training with a pillow fight, just like the Marines, the 300 Spartans, the Samurai, the SEALS, the S.A.S., and the Spetsnaz.
The West Point Ye Olde Army Pillow Fight is said to be a century-old tradition. Several West Pointers from the 1970s report never having heard of it. Maybe West Point is like other schools, inventing brand-new old-time traditions every week or so.
One does not easily imagine Meade, Sherman, Lee, Patton, Pershing, Eisenhower, Abrams, Clark, Merrill, Ridgeway, and Haig pillow-fighting. Or their commandant ordering them to do so.
This year some of the lads decided that placing hard objects such as their helmets into the pillow cases would add to the merriment. Emergency room admissions followed. Nothing says Army Strong like breaking a fellow soldier’s arm or skull through a Benedict Arnold-ish dirty trick. In future wars these young officers will certainly know how much they can trust each other.
Since this is how future officers of the U.S. Army go all frat boy on each other, will they respect the service and dignity of the young enlisted men and women under their command?
The Russian army and air force are now active in Syria, and the Chinese navy is poking about in the ocean off Alaska. Russian bombers play double-dog-dare along the air spaces of free countries in Europe. In response, West Point is training the future leaders of the American army through Cub Scout hijinks.
Perhaps that’s in Sun Tzu’s The Art of Pillow.
“This is my pillow. There are many like it. But this one is mine.”
No doubt our young soldiers posted to Whose-Stupid-Idea-Was-This-Istan make their way into camp after exhausting patrols and small-unit action in the dust and heat and then amuse themselves with a jolly pillow fight.
Just like their superior officers.
The superintendent of West Point, a modern, sensitive sort of general who refers to soldiers as teammates, promised a full investigation, followed by short-sheeting the perpetrators.
Jokes aside, the New York Times reports that thirty cadets were injured in the pillow fight, with twenty-four of them suffering from concussion. In a pillow fight.
A pillow fight.
Thirty casualties.
In a pillow fight.
What would the odious Benedict Arnold think of that?
-30-
Room at the Inn
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Room at the Inn
If Jesus had been born in Newfoundland, the folks there would have found room for the Holy Family.
Many Americans fly over Newfoundland on their way to and from Europe, but too few visit that beautiful island. Fourteen years ago, when all flights to and from the USA were forbidden, a great many people of all nations found themselves taking an unexpected time-out there.
This piece of 9/11 history comes from Newfoundland via a friend of a friend there. Heather McKinnon, the operations manager of the Delta Hotel and Conference Center in St. John’s, relates this remembrance of 9.11.2001 and the days following:
I will never forget this day for the rest of my days. It was a Tuesday, on Sept 11, 2001. We became aware at the Delta that we would start accepting the passengers whose flights were landing in quick succession at YYT [St. John’s]. The first group of guests who arrived were flight crews from two United Airlines flights who had just lost many of their colleagues. They were shell shocked. Then the passengers started arriving - hundreds more than we could handle comfortably. And they kept coming. They slept on the floor in the ballrooms and meeting rooms, on couches in the lobby, anywhere they could find a space. This went on until the following Sunday. And my team here at the Delta displayed a level of humanity I won't soon forget. They swung into action. Worked an 8 hour shift and then volunteered to stay behind as unpaid volunteers for another 8-10 hours - served food, read stories to the children, organized games, took passengers to their homes for showers, did pharmacy runs. It went on and on. Corporate partners like Margot Bruce-O'Connell at ExxonMobil reached out to help us manage the masses. George Street United Church ministers conducted an ecumenical service in our lobby and everyone gathered together. Air Canada and United Airlines stranded flight crew showed up in their uniforms as a sign of respect to the fallen air crew of the US flight crew. It was heart breaking.
We had to ask all the ballroom sleeping bag guests to pack up their belongings on the Saturday before they left so a wedding could go ahead. Once the dinner was over, the bride threw open the doors to the ballroom and invited the passengers to the dance. For the first dance, they all joined hands in a massive circle around the wedding couple as they took their first dance. These passengers arrived as strangers. On Sunday, they left as grateful friends. On this day, every year since, I still receive messages from some of the guests from that week. They say the same thing. They will never forget. I have kept every one of those messages. What a week that was.
Amen.
An excellent book related to the thousands of travelers grateful to have been given sanctuary by the generous citizens of Newfoundland is Jim DeFede’s The Day the World Came to Town, New York: Harper Collins, 2002.
-30-
Monday, September 14, 2015
Enemies Foreign and Domestic - Poem
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Enemies Foreign and Domestic
Some battles are fought in dripping woods
And others along rivers lost in mist
Still others are fought in book and pen and thought
And in unhappy dreams, still lost in mist
About Those Purple Socks - Poem
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
About Those Purple Socks
Graham Greene’s Monsignor Quixote
The world had no more use for any of them:
An old Communist, an old priest, an old car
All of them well into their horsemeat days
And so they fled, and crashed into the truth
On a chivalric quest for purple socks
Wandering on the road to Golgotha
Their Stations of the Cross a cinema,
A pair of Guardia, a brothel, wine
And so they fled, and fell into the truth
There at the foot of the Altar of God
The History Side of Wrong - Poem
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aolcom
The History Side of Wrong
How very joyful then to be condemned
For serving on the wrong side of history
Stubbornly refusing the Kronos-trap
And laughing at a clock that isn’t there
Poor centuries are but long lists of lies
Death’s dated data-base of next best things
That weren’t, as pointless as a game of Pong
Played out by polyester Arians
For the tired thoughtcrime of not groovin’ in time:
How very joyful now to be condemned!
A Salvage Sunday Morning - Poem
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
A Salvage Sunday Morning
Pearly morning mist over our little harbour
The water sloshing a few feet away
A censer swinging, wafting goodly odours:
Sweet water, air, and earth, consubstantial
With coffee in a mug from Canadian Tire
A morning offering in gratitude
From this small porch, for all of Creation
For the quiet before Bert starts cussing his boat
(Because the engine is balky again) -
For here where we have found a Heaven indeed
Room at the Inn
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Room at the Inn
If Jesus had been born in Newfoundland, the folks there would have found room for the Holy Family.
Many Americans fly over Newfoundland on their way to and from Europe, but too few visit that beautiful island. Fourteen years ago, when all flights to and from the USA were forbidden, a great many people of all nations found themselves taking an unexpected time-out there.
This piece of 9/11 history comes from Newfoundland via a friend of a friend there. Heather McKinnon, the operations manager of the Delta Hotel and Conference Center in St. John’s, relates this remembrance of 9.11.2001 and the days following:
I will never forget this day for the rest of my days. It was a Tuesday, on Sept 11, 2001. We became aware at the Delta that we would start accepting the passengers whose flights were landing in quick succession at YYT [St. John’s]. The first group of guests who arrived were flight crews from two United Airlines flights who had just lost many of their colleagues. They were shell shocked. Then the passengers started arriving - hundreds more than we could handle comfortably. And they kept coming. They slept on the floor in the ballrooms and meeting rooms, on couches in the lobby, anywhere they could find a space. This went on until the following Sunday. And my team here at the Delta displayed a level of humanity I won't soon forget. They swung into action. Worked an 8 hour shift and then volunteered to stay behind as unpaid volunteers for another 8-10 hours - served food, read stories to the children, organized games, took passengers to their homes for showers, did pharmacy runs. It went on and on. Corporate partners like Margot Bruce-O'Connell at ExxonMobil reached out to help us manage the masses. George Street United Church ministers conducted an ecumenical service in our lobby and everyone gathered together. Air Canada and United Airlines stranded flight crew showed up in their uniforms as a sign of respect to the fallen air crew of the US flight crew. It was heart breaking.
We had to ask all the ballroom sleeping bag guests to pack up their belongings on the Saturday before they left so a wedding could go ahead. Once the dinner was over, the bride threw open the doors to the ballroom and invited the passengers to the dance. For the first dance, they all joined hands in a massive circle around the wedding couple as they took their first dance. These passengers arrived as strangers. On Sunday, they left as grateful friends. On this day, every year since, I still receive messages from some of the guests from that week. They say the same thing. They will never forget. I have kept every one of those messages. What a week that was.
Amen.
An excellent book related to the thousands of travelers grateful to have been given sanctuary by the generous citizens of Newfoundland is Jim DeFede’s The Day the World Came to Town, New York: Harper Collins, 2002.
-30-
Saturday, September 5, 2015
Perhaps Today - Poem
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Perhaps Today…
The sun appears each dawn, predictably
In its accustomed cosmic liturgy
Arising from the baptism of the night
The sins of yesterday now washed away
It smiles upon all earthbound penitents
And sings a morning hymn of sacraments
For now a theme, a dream, to dance as light
Thin filaments of air, soft-sighing there
Are teasingly presented, and then – withdrawn:
Another night of feverish, ragged sleep
Untamed Poem - Poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Untamed Poem
A writer in an online 'zeen issues
An edict that must not be disobeyed:
By order poetry will be untamed
Untamed and free! (to specifications)
Now unmuzzle the trammeled trimeter
Let trope and trochee gallop wild and free
Release pentameters to pentabout
And dactyls to anaphora their dreams
O wild little poem, telling truth through metaphor -
You will be neutered by the editor
Whatever Happened to Gilligan's Castaways?
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Whatever Happened to Gilligan’s Castaways?
After a busy day we are all tempted to take a well-deserved break from work and family chores in order to flop into a comfortable chair and vegetate in front of jolly post-war Italian cinema, the merry visions of Fritz Lang’s silent German films (silent, and somehow still loudly German), or the fluffy Soviet films of Sergei Bondarchuk, Sergei Eisenstein, and Grigory Chukhray.
Who hasn’t shed tears of joy and laughter as the cackling, sneering, moustache-twirling Czarist cavalry run down innocent, granola-earing, flower-sniffing workers and peasants through the thoughtful character development and in the subtle artistry for which Soviet films are famous?
We have to remind herself that for the sake of intellectual and ethical development we should occasionally challenge ourselves to consider more demanding works of the visual arts: Gilligan’s Island comes to mind.
The exposition is this - in the autumn of 1964 the tour boat Minnow is disabled by a storm and beached on an unknown island. In Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales the Skipper is a pirate, but now he has reformed and doesn’t murder people. Although the Skipper is an experienced seaman, hiring bumbling Gilligan as his ship’s crew does indicate a tendency to self-destruction. Also aboard, and then beached, are a rascally Republican millionaire and his wife, a movie star, a professor, and a farm girl.
For three years of half-hour programs and then a series of television movies and cartoon remakes the castaways enjoyed adventures among themselves and with hundreds of visitors – including Soviet cosmonauts and the Harlem Globetrotters – on that supposedly unknown island.
The irony of Gilligan’s Island is that while the castaways want to leave the beach and the palm trees, the rest of us think that a month or so of sloshing around in the lagoon and drinking refreshing beverages from a coconut shell would be great therapy. And let the people say “existential.”
And what happened to the castaways?
After returning to the USA Gilligan became the lead technology guru for the State Department.
The Skipper, as a middle-aged white male, was declared redundant. He is said to spend his days on the beach in Florida bumming spare change from tourists and singing “Margaritaville” in bars.
Thurston Howell IV is currently the director of the Donald Trump campaign. Mr. Howell’s wife, Lovey, left him for Brad Pitt. The bitter custody battle over her pink poodles and Mr. Howell’s famous suitcase full of cash continues to this day.
Glamorous Ginger, now over thirty, finds work only as erratic mothers in guest spots in unimaginative, heavily laugh-tracked sitcoms.
The Professor was vetted by his university for ideological correctness, sensitivity, and multi-culti, and is permitted to continue teaching and research as long as he understands that physics, chemistry, and the maths are not objective realities, and can be changed often since they are always subject to the collective needs and cultural visions of The People.
Mary Ann developed a television cooker show called The Ruthlessly Chipper Cupcake which was a staple of daytime programming for years until she was convicted for poisoning three husbands, four boyfriends, and an unknown number of unhappy staffers. Her case was not helped when she baked the judge and prosecutor a batch of happy-face cupcakes sodden with a rare poison she discovered while on the island.
Does anyone imagine that Gilligan’s Island, with its innocent plots and gags and physical comedy, would be accepted for prime-time programming now?
The little ship Minnow is said to have been named as a dig at Newton Minnow, the chairman of the FCC who famously dismissed television as “a vast wasteland.” If Gilligan’s Island is a wasteland, well, this poor old world certainly could use a little more waste.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
Whatever Happened to Gilligan’s Castaways?
After a busy day we are all tempted to take a well-deserved break from work and family chores in order to flop into a comfortable chair and vegetate in front of jolly post-war Italian cinema, the merry visions of Fritz Lang’s silent German films (silent, and somehow still loudly German), or the fluffy Soviet films of Sergei Bondarchuk, Sergei Eisenstein, and Grigory Chukhray.
Who hasn’t shed tears of joy and laughter as the cackling, sneering, moustache-twirling Czarist cavalry run down innocent, granola-earing, flower-sniffing workers and peasants through the thoughtful character development and in the subtle artistry for which Soviet films are famous?
We have to remind herself that for the sake of intellectual and ethical development we should occasionally challenge ourselves to consider more demanding works of the visual arts: Gilligan’s Island comes to mind.
The exposition is this - in the autumn of 1964 the tour boat Minnow is disabled by a storm and beached on an unknown island. In Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales the Skipper is a pirate, but now he has reformed and doesn’t murder people. Although the Skipper is an experienced seaman, hiring bumbling Gilligan as his ship’s crew does indicate a tendency to self-destruction. Also aboard, and then beached, are a rascally Republican millionaire and his wife, a movie star, a professor, and a farm girl.
For three years of half-hour programs and then a series of television movies and cartoon remakes the castaways enjoyed adventures among themselves and with hundreds of visitors – including Soviet cosmonauts and the Harlem Globetrotters – on that supposedly unknown island.
The irony of Gilligan’s Island is that while the castaways want to leave the beach and the palm trees, the rest of us think that a month or so of sloshing around in the lagoon and drinking refreshing beverages from a coconut shell would be great therapy. And let the people say “existential.”
And what happened to the castaways?
After returning to the USA Gilligan became the lead technology guru for the State Department.
The Skipper, as a middle-aged white male, was declared redundant. He is said to spend his days on the beach in Florida bumming spare change from tourists and singing “Margaritaville” in bars.
Thurston Howell IV is currently the director of the Donald Trump campaign. Mr. Howell’s wife, Lovey, left him for Brad Pitt. The bitter custody battle over her pink poodles and Mr. Howell’s famous suitcase full of cash continues to this day.
Glamorous Ginger, now over thirty, finds work only as erratic mothers in guest spots in unimaginative, heavily laugh-tracked sitcoms.
The Professor was vetted by his university for ideological correctness, sensitivity, and multi-culti, and is permitted to continue teaching and research as long as he understands that physics, chemistry, and the maths are not objective realities, and can be changed often since they are always subject to the collective needs and cultural visions of The People.
Mary Ann developed a television cooker show called The Ruthlessly Chipper Cupcake which was a staple of daytime programming for years until she was convicted for poisoning three husbands, four boyfriends, and an unknown number of unhappy staffers. Her case was not helped when she baked the judge and prosecutor a batch of happy-face cupcakes sodden with a rare poison she discovered while on the island.
Does anyone imagine that Gilligan’s Island, with its innocent plots and gags and physical comedy, would be accepted for prime-time programming now?
The little ship Minnow is said to have been named as a dig at Newton Minnow, the chairman of the FCC who famously dismissed television as “a vast wasteland.” If Gilligan’s Island is a wasteland, well, this poor old world certainly could use a little more waste.
-30-
Tuesday, September 1, 2015
September at Last - Poem
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
September at Last
A dawn under clouds – September at last
No one longs for August, or misses it
The heat and humidity linger still
But the mythology of the calendar
Has drawn the summer’s metaphorical fangs
And grownups now anticipate cold fronts
Like children who know that Christmas will come
Although the season seems to be taking
Its own sweet time in bringing home its gifts
Of chilly mornings, and geese winging south
The Apocalyptic Wasp Spray of Cosmic Doom
Mhall46184@aol.com
The Apocalyptic Wasp Spray of Cosmic Doom
As with rattlesnakes, fire ants, and presidential candidates, the purpose of wasps within the glory of Creation is a great mystery.
Big red Communist wasps, their wicked, batlike wings pulsating slowly to the degenerate rhythm of a pagan blood-song of pain, lurk in porch corners - or along any of Donald Trump or Scott Walker’s Berlin walls - and then attack with a sting as painful and bitter as a glare of disapproval from a poll watcher from the other party who sees you voting in The Wrong Primary.
As the old hippie song does not say: Wasps! Unh! What are they good for!? Absolutely nothin’!
And if the county agricultural extension agent tells you that wasps are a beneficent species because they blah, blah, blah, she’s probably a Fascist or something. So there. Tell me something. End of. And stuff. And other logical rebuttals.
Real Americans buy aerosols of toxic poisons for sending wasps to the Grendel-doom they’ve earned. If the environment must be destroyed in order that wasps die, that’s a fair and reasonable exchange.
Usually the sprays work, but sometimes the wasps fly insolently away, unimpressed with better dying through chemistry.
What this world needs is a really good wasp spray. The ideal wasp spray would not kill wasps instantly, though. Oh, no. The perfect bug bomb would send each wasp spinning down like The Red Baron in flames, thudding to the ground still alive but dying in such gruesome (or is that grueful?) pain that the progressive Renaissance practice of hanging, drawing, and quartering would seem like a walk in the mall.
The American consumer wants that wasp to feel the soul-destroying existential despair of a freshman football player at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville when he (or “zhe”) is told that the name of his (or “zher”) team has been changed from The Tennessee Volunteers to The Incredible Edible Eloi.
The dying wasp must wallow in the same agony as a traveler doomed to wander throughout eternity the wretched-hive-of-scum-and-villainy hallways of Newark International Airport.
The dying wasp must be made to feel the ghostly chill that reduces even the bravest, strongest young manly-man into a quivering emotional puddle when he arrives at school on Monday morning and suddenly remembers that he is scheduled to take an algebra II exam at 0800.
The dying wasp must experience total bleakness of spirit as he realizes in his last moments that, just like a Republican in the summer of 2015, his life suddenly has no meaning after all. And that’s really hairy.
The dying wasp must sob in spasms of grief and sorrow, rather like a hungry child standing in line for her Michelle Obama lunch.
The dying wasp must be made to scream in horror like an ear-banging-hammer-metal-scum-rock DJ who finds that he is scheduled to work the three-day All Lovin’ Spoonful All The Time Festival.
Anyone who has ever applied cold compresses to a swollen, wasp-stung ear can only wonder why wasps were allowed to board the Ark and unicorns were not.
We need a meaner wasp spray.
-30-
Thursday, August 27, 2015
Make America Change and Hope Yet Again
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Make America Change and Hope Yet Again
Roderick Spode: “…this great country can go forward once more to glory!...Citizens…I say to you that nothing stands between us and our victory except defeat! Tomorrow is a new day! The future lies ahead!”
Man in audience: “You know, I never thought of that.”
-Jeeves and Wooster
Just like poor Charlie Brown believing, despite humiliating experience, that this time Lucy is not going to snatch away that football, the American people believe, over and over, that this time they’ve got a candidate. But again and again their football of happiness is snatched away - by Senator Clinton, Governor Christie, Senator Cruz, and a series of other Lucy Van Pelts.
As John Keats did not say, where are the candidates of spring? Ay, where are they?
They are gone, lost down the Orwellian Memory Hole along with pet rocks, the End of the World in 1999, the Hale-Bopp Comet spaceships, the End of the World in 2000, Jade Helm ninjas, the End of the World some other time, unmarked UN helicopters, the End of the World yet again, the Central Texas Disney World, the End of the World we really mean it this time, global-warming, the End of the World this September 13th, and those buckets of magic ice water that were said to cure disease.
Quick – who were the candidates who stood against George H. W. Bush in the primaries? Who was Bill Clinton’s first pick for vice-president? Who were the big noises for each political party only last June?
The current big noise promises to make America great again – just like all the other big noises since George Washington.
As a modest contribution to the low-Prole unreality show that by populist acclamation has replaced thinking in this nation, here is a matrix of well-used terms, some of them quite international, for future presidential campaign slogans. Read them, and then follow the instructions below for each candidate who is really going to save us this time, just like that last one, and the one before that, and the one before:
We are the people we are the 99% transparency we shall triumph the whole world is watching make American great again sustainable forward together hope and change long live our glorious leader the buck stops here remember the Maine power to the people no war but class war Le Québec aux Québécois justice for everyone je suis Charlie it’s Scotland’s oil heim ins reich every man a king Ross for boss change we can believe in si se puede bread and roses me no frego let’s keep fighting for progress Peron o muerte where’s the beef? reigniting the promise of America not just peanuts he’s making us proud again kinder gentler nation for people a new American century time for a change it’s time to change America integrity vote for change commitment honest putting people first building a bridge to the 21st century in your heart you know he’s right a time for greatness to begin anew peace and prosperity a revolution is coming happy days are here again he kept us out of war fighting for us rum Romanism and rebellion go Greens turn the rascals out forward the people’s president a green new deal for America had enough? strength and experience reform prosperity and peace drill baby drill America first country first hope let America be America again taking America back vote for leadership a real choice for America defeat the Washington machine unleash the American dream a safer world and a more hopeful America tea party working for America the choice is clear a stronger America prosperity and progress compassionate conservatism leadership for the new millennium we can’t wait everyday Americans need a champion I want to be that champion from hope to higher ground the people united will never be defeated bread and freedom a chicken in every pot I’ll build a wall it’s time for a change death to world capitalism greater together.
And stuff.
Cut up this scribble into individual words. Dump all of them into a gimme cap. Pull any four words out of the cap. Have those four words stitched onto the cap. Practice saying the words over and over while taking selfies. And there you are, all ready for Campaign 2016 for any political party you choose.
-30-
Poets are Remarkably Silent on the Subject of Wrenches - poem
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Poets are Remarkably Silent on the Subject of Wrenches
In life one suffers many twists and turns
And this is why one takes a wrench in hand
And turns the good things forward, the bad things back
When mending broken gadgets, lives, or hopes
So take the wrench, and turn the twist aright
Or take the wrench, and twist the turn aright
And spiral something beautiful into being
Because, as a worthy Marine might say,
This is a wrench. There are many like it
But this one is in the hands of an artist
Hurricane Tracks - Two Poems
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Hurricane Tracks
What if your life were a hurricane map
Available upon a glowing screen
Or as a supermarket paper handout
With all of life gridded into neat squares
You then would know exactly what to do
And where to go, predicated upon
The latest scientific spaghetti
Curved colored strings ordering you aright
But you are free not to follow the lines
Because your life is not a gridded map
Hurricane Tracks – The Kirk Briggs Variant
What if your life were a hurricane map
Available upon a glowing screen
Or as a supermarket paper handout
With all of life gridded into neat squares
You then would know exactly what to do
And where to go, predicated upon
The latest scientific spaghetti
Curved colored strings ordering you aright
But you are free not to follow…oh…wait:
You could also stall, strengthen, or fizzle out!
The Palmer Method of Child Cruelty - a poem
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
The Palmer Method of Child Cruelty
Left-handed children will write prettily
To Old Lady Stalin’s specifications
When Buna, Texas freezes over – twice
Or wicked Palmer rises from the dead
“Why can’t you write neatly, like your brother?
Just look what a chicken-scratch you’re making
You’ll stay in from recess and write it over
And don’t you waste so much paper this time…”
No stories, no thoughts, only soulless curves
Left-handed children will write angrily
Corporal Himmelstoss - A Poem About the Office
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Corporal Himmelstoss
Oh, yes, we all know Corporal Himmelstoss
That dutiful office functionary
Bully and thief, master of the resume’
Keeper of the entrance to the boss-cave
A creature of fluorescent lights, a worm
Obsequious above, brutal below
The listener at doors, the writer of reports
The examiner of secrets and lies
The administrator of loyalty oaths
Oh, yes, we all know Corporal Himmelstoss
Two Cups of Coffee - a poem
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Two Cups of Coffee
Two lovers surely sat here long ago
One evening early, as the winter rain
Slid down the windows like children at play
The raindrops teasing and chasing each other;
Across the table shyly flirting eyes
A little bit unsure, a little bit lost -
But happily so – they also teased and played
As softly as the winter’s window-mist
Two lovers surely sat here long ago
“Yes, sugar, please,” she said. “How did you know?”
The First Lesson in Diplomacy - poem
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
The First Lesson in Diplomacy
A fountain pen cannot be monitored
By frightened Norks at ranks of glowing screens
Or hipster graduates of M.I.T.
Submissive to their way-cool boy-gods
A sheet of paper never breaks an oath
Or whispers carelessly across the sky
A bottle of ink stands firm upon your desk
And knows all secrets only ‘til they dry
A fountain pen cannot be monitored
So take it up, and not that spying ‘phone
High-Tuned Little Magazine of Little Poetry - poem
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
High-Tuned Little Magazine of Little Poetry
Negates stultifying silencing I
Originary events negate me
Bible Belt culture of racism I
Nuanced imperialist grappling we
Compelled surrounding culture footnote I
Grew the poetry community me
Identify attitudes impulse I
Literally typically dismissed we
Cursory recurring dismissal I
Imbalanced anemic valuing I
Who is That Absurd Old Man? - a poem
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Who is That Absurd Old Man?
Who is that old man in the looking-glass
That absurd old man with the puffy face
And thinning hair, more grey than anything
Whence came that wobbly chin, those hairy ears?
The face in the mirror is supposed to be
Narrow and sharp, with lots of tousled hair
Falling over bright and healthy eyes
Eagerly greeting the morning of life
But this is no matter – lift high the blade
(Rotary now) and with it challenge the dawn!
Monday, August 17, 2015
Pretty Klan Girls - Poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Pretty Klan Girls
Three girls, three teenaged girls, three giggling girls
So fresh and lovely in their springtime prints
A daring bit of makeup, hair just right
At early breakfast with their moms and dads
But sitting at a separate table so
Their youthful giddiness does not disturb
The adults’ serious, prayerful conversation
Over coffee in the no-smoking area
Three girls, three teenaged girls, three giggling girls
All pretty for the rally later today
Elias and the Broom Tree - Poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Elias and the Broom Tree
Asleep beneath a broom tree in Judaea
A man brought low, and lost among the waste
Stopped there to die, exhausted and alone
In refuge from a queen’s pursuivants
But in a little while a Messenger
Unseen will leave a gift of water and of bread
Food for a journey to the Mountain of God
But now, for now, for a few healing hours
Guarded in holy silence, only a man
Asleep beneath a mysterious Tree
Who is That Absurd Old Man? - Poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Who is That Absurd Old Man?
Who is that old man in the looking-glass
That absurd old man with the puffy face
And thinning hair, more grey than anything
Whence came that wobbly chin, those hairy ears?
The face in the mirror is supposed to be
Narrow and sharp, with lots of tousled hair
Falling over bright and healthy eyes
Eagerly greeting the morning of life
But this is no matter – lift high the blade
(Rotary now) and with it challenge the dawn!
mhall46184@aol.com
Who is That Absurd Old Man?
Who is that old man in the looking-glass
That absurd old man with the puffy face
And thinning hair, more grey than anything
Whence came that wobbly chin, those hairy ears?
The face in the mirror is supposed to be
Narrow and sharp, with lots of tousled hair
Falling over bright and healthy eyes
Eagerly greeting the morning of life
But this is no matter – lift high the blade
(Rotary now) and with it challenge the dawn!
The Ninja Jade Helm Dinner Roll of Flying Death
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
The Ninja Jade Helm Dinner Roll of Flying Death
South of Springfield, Missouri, in the little town of Ozark, the hungry traveler will find Lambert’s Café, where the staff throw dinner rolls. There are two other Lambert’s Cafes, one in Sikeston, Missouri and another in Foley, Alabama, where more rolls are thrown.
And why do the waiters and waitresses at Lambert’s throw dinner rolls?
Because throwing green peas just won’t work.
Except for one-year-olds. A one-year-old can fling a mean cloud of peas.
Lambert’s is a highway-side establishment cluttered with the usual garage-sale debris tacked to the walls and which serves good, honest, industrial-strength-cholesterol road food. Lots of cafes do just that, so to stand out Lambert’s bills itself as The Home of the Throwed Roll. The diner who wishes another dinner roll catches the waiter’s eye and holds up a hand. The waiter then skillfully tosses a roll for the patron to catch. Your ‘umble scrivener has dined at Lambert’s. He caught his second dinner roll (hey, the first one was a bad pitch, okay?) without bodily harm, and can testify that it’s all good, low-prole merriment.
Naturally, Lambert’s is being sued by a customer who was brutally mauled by a ninja jade helm dinner roll of flying death.
The complainant alleges a catalogue of head injuries just short of decapitation. Apparently Lambert’s light, fluffy dinner rolls are really stealth gluten toxic death bombs.
Grievously wounded by a poof of flour and air, the diner went all Donald Trumpy hissy-fitty and demanded the cost of a new car instead of dessert. After all, she could not possibly have read the signs about the “throwed” rolls or have seen the aerial celebrations of the in-house baker’s art flying as gracefully through the air as spring butterflies.
One is reminded of the story, some years ago, of the high school girl who sued for a spot on the football team and then sued again because a blocker on the opposing team knocked her down during a game. Her grounds for the second lawsuit were that no one had told her she could get hurt playing football.
But to be taken down by a dinner roll - oh, the humanity.
Thank goodness the weapon wasn’t something heavier and sharper, such as a marshmallow.
Lambert’s might need to place warnings on its dinner rolls: “The Surgeon General of the State of Missouri has determined that food is dangerous to your health.”
Think of a carbohydrate movie treatment: Sergeant Preston and his husky King keep Canada safe for the Empire with just a dog sled and a buttered croissant.
Or Casablanca: “Get away from that ‘phone! I was willing to fling an English muffin at Captain Reynaud and I’m willing to fling an English muffin at you!”
Hunters will have to pass day-long bread safety courses before they can legally take to the woods with a biscuit.
The United States Senate, aka The Marx Brothers and Sisters, will hold hearings on the racism of flinging dinner rolls made of white flour.
Many businesses do not lend themselves to the concept of flinging. Auto parts come to mind: “Hey, Joe, here’s your new exhaust manifold…catch!”
Or children’s health clinics: “Okay, kids, who wants to play dodge-the-flu-shots?”
Many people take up hobbies that feature some element of danger: skydiving, mountain climbing, skiing, motorcycling, and beating Vladimir Putin at chess come to mind. But no one would have thought of the lurking menace (cue the Jaws shark music), the raw, savage, blood-crazed, edge-of-your-seat terror in asking the waitress for another dinner roll.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
The Ninja Jade Helm Dinner Roll of Flying Death
South of Springfield, Missouri, in the little town of Ozark, the hungry traveler will find Lambert’s Café, where the staff throw dinner rolls. There are two other Lambert’s Cafes, one in Sikeston, Missouri and another in Foley, Alabama, where more rolls are thrown.
And why do the waiters and waitresses at Lambert’s throw dinner rolls?
Because throwing green peas just won’t work.
Except for one-year-olds. A one-year-old can fling a mean cloud of peas.
Lambert’s is a highway-side establishment cluttered with the usual garage-sale debris tacked to the walls and which serves good, honest, industrial-strength-cholesterol road food. Lots of cafes do just that, so to stand out Lambert’s bills itself as The Home of the Throwed Roll. The diner who wishes another dinner roll catches the waiter’s eye and holds up a hand. The waiter then skillfully tosses a roll for the patron to catch. Your ‘umble scrivener has dined at Lambert’s. He caught his second dinner roll (hey, the first one was a bad pitch, okay?) without bodily harm, and can testify that it’s all good, low-prole merriment.
Naturally, Lambert’s is being sued by a customer who was brutally mauled by a ninja jade helm dinner roll of flying death.
The complainant alleges a catalogue of head injuries just short of decapitation. Apparently Lambert’s light, fluffy dinner rolls are really stealth gluten toxic death bombs.
Grievously wounded by a poof of flour and air, the diner went all Donald Trumpy hissy-fitty and demanded the cost of a new car instead of dessert. After all, she could not possibly have read the signs about the “throwed” rolls or have seen the aerial celebrations of the in-house baker’s art flying as gracefully through the air as spring butterflies.
One is reminded of the story, some years ago, of the high school girl who sued for a spot on the football team and then sued again because a blocker on the opposing team knocked her down during a game. Her grounds for the second lawsuit were that no one had told her she could get hurt playing football.
But to be taken down by a dinner roll - oh, the humanity.
Thank goodness the weapon wasn’t something heavier and sharper, such as a marshmallow.
Lambert’s might need to place warnings on its dinner rolls: “The Surgeon General of the State of Missouri has determined that food is dangerous to your health.”
Think of a carbohydrate movie treatment: Sergeant Preston and his husky King keep Canada safe for the Empire with just a dog sled and a buttered croissant.
Or Casablanca: “Get away from that ‘phone! I was willing to fling an English muffin at Captain Reynaud and I’m willing to fling an English muffin at you!”
Hunters will have to pass day-long bread safety courses before they can legally take to the woods with a biscuit.
The United States Senate, aka The Marx Brothers and Sisters, will hold hearings on the racism of flinging dinner rolls made of white flour.
Many businesses do not lend themselves to the concept of flinging. Auto parts come to mind: “Hey, Joe, here’s your new exhaust manifold…catch!”
Or children’s health clinics: “Okay, kids, who wants to play dodge-the-flu-shots?”
Many people take up hobbies that feature some element of danger: skydiving, mountain climbing, skiing, motorcycling, and beating Vladimir Putin at chess come to mind. But no one would have thought of the lurking menace (cue the Jaws shark music), the raw, savage, blood-crazed, edge-of-your-seat terror in asking the waitress for another dinner roll.
-30-
Wednesday, August 12, 2015
It Begins With an Unreferenced Pronoun - Poem
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
It Begins With an Unreferenced Pronoun
That which is not winding down is gearing up
Then said to be however under way
Exciting year anticipates even better
Rekindling old friendships short enjoyable
Forward to the high school cafeteria
Another great please plan to join and look
Begin another year preparing it
To seeing you has convocation it
Committed to excellence each of you
That which is not gearing down is winding up
A U-Haul Box - Poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
A U-Haul Box
A cardboard U-Haul box is a time machine
Which stores the years in careless unity
A lonely chessman lost and wandering
Along the childhood lanes of Candyland
Next to a napkin from the senior prom
Some keys that don’t seem to fit anything
And an unlabeled videocassette
Of a cousin’s wedding in ‘89
Old pens, old plates, old dreams, old high-school jeans:
A cardboard U-Haul Box is a time machine
mhall46184@aol.com
A U-Haul Box
A cardboard U-Haul box is a time machine
Which stores the years in careless unity
A lonely chessman lost and wandering
Along the childhood lanes of Candyland
Next to a napkin from the senior prom
Some keys that don’t seem to fit anything
And an unlabeled videocassette
Of a cousin’s wedding in ‘89
Old pens, old plates, old dreams, old high-school jeans:
A cardboard U-Haul Box is a time machine
Monday, August 10, 2015
Lions and Dentists and Trumps, Oh, My!
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Lions and Dentists and Trumps, Oh, My!
The world remains outraged over the death of Trevor the Hairpiece. Trevor, beloved of everyone in the U.S.A., was slaughtered by a dentist from Zimbabwe who hired two local guides to help him in his search for a prize hairpiece to kill, kill, kill.
The alleged hair murderer is Dr. James Mbiriri, an orthodontist from Harare. Dr. Mbiriri is unavailable for comment, and his office is closed until further notice.
Reports from Iowa indicate that the guides, Megyn and Roger, lured Trevor the Hairpiece from Donald Trump’s head by bribing a disgruntled lone wolf rogue stylist taking secret orders from Chewbacca the Wookie through a secret radio transceiver in the basement of the Vatican barber shop. Once Mortimer was outside the otherwise empty crawlspace, Dr. Mbiriri cruelly dispatched the poor hairpiece with the little scissors of his Swiss Army Knife despite Trevor’s tearful rendition of the title song from Hair.
Trevor the Hairpiece died a slow, agonizing death, sort of like veterans waiting for the government to do right by them.
School children all over the world are crayoning tearstained pictures of their hero and inspiration, Saint Trevor the Hairpiece. Their parents are lining up outside stores to buy Trevor the Hairpiece backpacks and Trevor the Hairpiece pencils and crayons for the new school year.
In Paris the obedient sort of people who wear Che Guano tees are chanting “Je suis Trevor the Hairpiece!”
The Cackling Woman Cookery Show on The Gourmand Channel has gone dark in mourning, and its angel-hair spaghetti is being flown at half-mast for thirty minutes or until the rinse-and-set is complete.
In response to the hairpiece crisis the State of Texas has directed all appraisal districts to raise property taxes again.
Dr. Mbiriri’s selfie of himself and the trophy hairpiece has gone as viral as pouring buckets of ice water over secret Jade Helm ninjas skulking in the dark corridors of an abandoned Wal-Mart atop Bald Mountain.
Protestors have blockaded the Swiss embassy in Harare and are tying stuffed toy Trevors to the fence in that all-purpose response to anything, a makeshift shrine, which is of course a contradiction. When a reporter for the ZBC asked a demonstrator if she could define the term makeshift the demonstrator filed charges of insensitivity against ZBC. “We’re outraged that Switzerland promotes violence to free-range hairpieces all over the world through its obscene manufacture of itty-bitty pocket knives with ittier-bittier scissors, and the ZBC are interrupting my script with an appeal to rationality!” she shrieked.
According to Poncy Tworbst, BA, MA, Certified Grief Counselor, and Ordained Holistic Aromatherapist, consultant to The Times of Zimbabwe, “This is another example of a privileged supremacist hirsutest imposing his tonsorial appropriation occupation syncopation centrist views on a primitive culture, Iowa, through his psychologically dubious quest for trophy follicles.”
The Speaker of the Parliament of Zimbabwe has called for hearings, ‘net mobs have called for the extradition of a Zimbabwean citizen to the U.S.A. based on ‘net gossip, and the Minister of Defence has called for every commander to confiscate all scissored pocket knives from Zimbabwean soldiers and airmen.
In his morning minute Tim Brocaw said “I, I, I, me, me, me was once among hairpieces when I, I, I was a barefoot all-American lad in West Dakota. I am not a bad hairdo, but I, I, I am honored to have lived among them, and I, I, I am so special and aw-shucks cute.”
The Church of Elvis is re-naming itself The Church of Trevor the Hairpiece, and new streets will be named for Trevor. Every morning all really sensitive Zimbabweans will pledge allegiance to Trevor-ness, and statues of so-last-week Zimbabwean heroes will be pulled down and replaced with memorials to Trevor the Great. There will be Trevor the Hairpiece Editions of the Bible with commentaries by Trevor the Hairpiece in the margins. The peoples of the world will unite in perpetual adoration of Trevor the Hairpiece, and will forswear all food because rainbows, sunshine, and gluten-free air are all humanity needs for nutrition and for holistic dental care.
The relics of Saint Trevor will be enshrined in St. Ambrose’s Cathedral in Iowa City. A basilica will be built over the site of his martyrdom, and will be consecrated by Rosie O’Donnell with a Sacred Liturgical Twerking of the Salisbury Rite of Rebuke Against the Trumpness.
All hairpieces everywhere will be allowed to roam wild and free in their natural habitat, and will not be murdered by greedy humans looking for a hair-raising thrill.
Justice for Trevor the Hairpiece! The ‘Net Mob demands it!
And justice for murdered children? Still no word on that.
-30-
Sunday, August 9, 2015
English and Celtic Poets - a Poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
English and Celtic Poets
A Sassenach assembles words and lines
In order, disciplined, like hammer-falls
Upon reluctant steel in armories
The beat and off-beat in formation set
A Celt sings challenges carelessly into the eagle-skies
To soar among the storms in sorrow and in joy
Laughing among full cups of heathery vowels
Claidheamh-mor swinging against blank verse in English helmets
An Englishman sends words to fight and work
A Celt persuades wild words to fight and dream
mhall46184@aol.com
English and Celtic Poets
A Sassenach assembles words and lines
In order, disciplined, like hammer-falls
Upon reluctant steel in armories
The beat and off-beat in formation set
A Celt sings challenges carelessly into the eagle-skies
To soar among the storms in sorrow and in joy
Laughing among full cups of heathery vowels
Claidheamh-mor swinging against blank verse in English helmets
An Englishman sends words to fight and work
A Celt persuades wild words to fight and dream
Secret Stuff the Presidential Candidates Will Not Say
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Secret Stuff the Presidential Candidates Will Not Say
Governor Perry – “Every American should be free to conceal-carry a carton of Blue Bell in church or in a cinema.”
Senator Sanders – “Free love! Free Blue Bell for the masses! In Commie-Red flavors! Us old hippies rock.”
Donald “The Hair” Trump – “All the problems in America are caused by illegal Ben and Jerry’s ice cream swarming across our sacred borders! And Governor Perry looks professional in his new eyeglasses. And, okay, let the veterans have some Blue Bell. And the little cracker.”
Governor O’Malley – “Sure, faith ‘n’ begorrah, just what American needs, meself, another faux Irishperson who wouldn’t know Guinness from Pim’s Ale. Like, sure, I was in an Irish band, sure, only not in Ireland, sure. When I’m elected Taioseach the ice cream will be Green Bell, not Blue Bell, sure. But all ice cream matters! Wait…maybe not…”
Governor Christie – “We’re gonna make Blue Bell an offer it can’t refuse. Otherwise, I gotta bridge with Blue Bell’s name on it. But please tell me more; I want to listen to different points of view.”
Senator Webb – “Blue Bell and the Marines – Semper Fi all the way!”
Governor / Reverend Huckabee - “I’m a-pickin’ and I’m a-grinnin’ with my hillbilly band and my Blue Bell.”
Governor Thompson – “Blue Bell is on strike. I don’t like that.”
Senator Cruz – “Okay, I don’t know if I’m Catholic, Baptist, Cuban, American, or Canadian, but I know I’m a Blue Bell. Or whatever Daddy says this week.”
Senator Paul – “Me too.”
Senator / Secretary Clinton – “Blue Bell!? Ben and Jerry’s!? WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE!?!?!?!?!?”
Senator Rubio – “You know, as a people of faith we can come together over Blue Bell, Hagen-Daz, or Ben and Jerry’s, because, really, it’s all pretty much the same. Just as long as we all like ice-cream.”
Governor Jindal – “I like the alligator-flavored Blue Bell.”
Shawna Sterling – “No GMOs in Blue Bell!”
Senator Rubio – “Blue Bell in Margaritaville!”
Governor Bush – “Open borders for Blue Bell!”
Senator Graham – “Blue Bell, y’all.”
Carly Fiorina – “In my spreadsheets Blue Bell adds up. Most of the time.”
Dr. Carson – “I prescribe Blue Bell for all my patients.”
Governor Kasich – “If you like your Blue Bell, you can keep your Blue Bell. Maybe. Kinda. Sorta.”
Y’know, we don’t have any Blue Bell ice cream in this country just now but we sure have a stockyard full of mooing presidential candidates. Things’ll be better when Blue Bell is back.
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
Secret Stuff the Presidential Candidates Will Not Say
Governor Perry – “Every American should be free to conceal-carry a carton of Blue Bell in church or in a cinema.”
Senator Sanders – “Free love! Free Blue Bell for the masses! In Commie-Red flavors! Us old hippies rock.”
Donald “The Hair” Trump – “All the problems in America are caused by illegal Ben and Jerry’s ice cream swarming across our sacred borders! And Governor Perry looks professional in his new eyeglasses. And, okay, let the veterans have some Blue Bell. And the little cracker.”
Governor O’Malley – “Sure, faith ‘n’ begorrah, just what American needs, meself, another faux Irishperson who wouldn’t know Guinness from Pim’s Ale. Like, sure, I was in an Irish band, sure, only not in Ireland, sure. When I’m elected Taioseach the ice cream will be Green Bell, not Blue Bell, sure. But all ice cream matters! Wait…maybe not…”
Governor Christie – “We’re gonna make Blue Bell an offer it can’t refuse. Otherwise, I gotta bridge with Blue Bell’s name on it. But please tell me more; I want to listen to different points of view.”
Senator Webb – “Blue Bell and the Marines – Semper Fi all the way!”
Governor / Reverend Huckabee - “I’m a-pickin’ and I’m a-grinnin’ with my hillbilly band and my Blue Bell.”
Governor Thompson – “Blue Bell is on strike. I don’t like that.”
Senator Cruz – “Okay, I don’t know if I’m Catholic, Baptist, Cuban, American, or Canadian, but I know I’m a Blue Bell. Or whatever Daddy says this week.”
Senator Paul – “Me too.”
Senator / Secretary Clinton – “Blue Bell!? Ben and Jerry’s!? WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE!?!?!?!?!?”
Senator Rubio – “You know, as a people of faith we can come together over Blue Bell, Hagen-Daz, or Ben and Jerry’s, because, really, it’s all pretty much the same. Just as long as we all like ice-cream.”
Governor Jindal – “I like the alligator-flavored Blue Bell.”
Shawna Sterling – “No GMOs in Blue Bell!”
Senator Rubio – “Blue Bell in Margaritaville!”
Governor Bush – “Open borders for Blue Bell!”
Senator Graham – “Blue Bell, y’all.”
Carly Fiorina – “In my spreadsheets Blue Bell adds up. Most of the time.”
Dr. Carson – “I prescribe Blue Bell for all my patients.”
Governor Kasich – “If you like your Blue Bell, you can keep your Blue Bell. Maybe. Kinda. Sorta.”
Y’know, we don’t have any Blue Bell ice cream in this country just now but we sure have a stockyard full of mooing presidential candidates. Things’ll be better when Blue Bell is back.
-30-
Sunday, August 2, 2015
A New Shirt - Poem
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
A New Shirt
Shirts are nice. They cover your funniness
Almost no one looks good without a shirt
Especially when you’re old and parts don’t fit
Quite like they did (listen to your looking-glass)
A store-new shirt is one of life’s little joys
You pull away the plastic clips and floof
The fabric out among its new-shirt smell
And praise yourself for your excellent taste
The cuffs and collar fold exactly right
And you look good today in your new shirt
The Death of Mortimer the Tomato
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
The Death of Mortimer the Tomato
The world remains outraged over the death of Mortimer the Tomato. Mortimer, beloved of everyone in England’s fens country, was slaughtered by an American vegan who hired two local guides to help him in his search for a prize tomato to kill, kill, kill.
The alleged murderer is Neville (Rockin’ Nev) Thistletwit, an inspirational singer-songwriter from New Orleans. Rockin’ Nev is unavailable for comment, and his former space on Jackson Square is currently occupied by Madame Zumba Sees All Knows All Astrologer to the Stars.
Reports from Peterborough indicate that the guides, Bert and Alf, lured Mortimer the Tomato from his sheltered bin by paying off a greengrocer with two pounds and ten pence. Once Mortimer was outside the shop, Rockin’ Nev cruelly dispatched the poor veggie (yes, yes, technically a tomato is a berry) with his Swiss Army Knife despite Mortimer’s erudite existential arguments about the circle of vegetative art.
Mortimer the Tomato died a slow, agonizing death, sort of like television network news.
School children all over the world are crayoning tearstained pictures of their hero and inspiration, Saint Mortimer the Martyred Tomato.
In Paris the sort of people who wear Che Guano tees are chanting “Je suis Mortimer the Tomato!”
The Cackling Woman Cookery Show on The Gourmand Channel has gone dark in mourning, and its quiches are being flown at half-mast for thirty minutes or until the crust is a delicious flakey brown.
In response to the tomato crisis the State of Texas directed all appraisal districts to raise property taxes again.
Rockin’ Nev’s selfie of himself and his lunch has gone as viral as junior high hallway gossip.
Protestors have blocked the Swiss embassy in London and are tying stuffed toy Mortimers to the fence in that all-purpose response to anything, a makeshift shrine, which is of course a contradiction. When one reporter asked a demonstrator if she could define the term shrine she filed charges of insensitivity against him. “We’re outraged that Switzerland promotes violence all over the world through its obscene manufacture of itty-bitty pocket knives, and you are interrupting my script with an appeal to rationality!” she shrieked.
According to Poncy Tworbst, BA, MA, Certified Grief Counselor, and Ordained Holistic Aromatherapist, consultant to Ferret News, “This is another example of a privileged supremacist vegan imposing his horticultural appropriation occupation syncopation vegicentrist views on a poor part of the world through his psychologically dubious quest for a trophy lunch.”
The Speaker of the House of Merovingians has called for hearings, ‘net mobs have called for the extradition of an American citizen based on ‘net gossip, and the Secretary of Defense has called for every commander to confiscate all provocative pocket knives from American sailors and soldiers.
That’s how we Americans roll – in every crisis we call for stuff.
In his morning minute Tim Brocaw said “I, I, I, me, me, me was once among tomatoes when I, I, I was a barefoot all-American lad in West Dakota and I, I, I am so special and aw-shucks cute.”
The Church of Elvis is re-naming itself The Church of Mortimer Tomato, and new streets will be named for Mortimer. Every morning all really sensitive Americans will pledge allegiance to Mortimer-ness, and statues of so-last-week American heroes will be pulled down and replaced with memorials to Mortimer the Great. There will be Mortimer the Tomato Editions of the Bible with commentaries by Mortimer the Tomato in the margins. The peoples of the world will unite in perpetual adoration of Mortimer the Tomato, and will forswear all food because rainbows, sunshine, and gluten-free air are all we really need for nutrition.
The relics of Saint Mortimer will be enshrined in Peterborough Cathedral. A basilica will be built over the site of his martyrdom, and will be consecrated by Kim Lohan with a sacred twerking.
All tomatoes everywhere will be allowed to roam wild and free in their natural habitat, and will not be murdered by filthy humans looking for an ego-boosting salad.
Justice for Mortimer the Tomato! The ‘Net Mob demands it!
And justice for murdered children? Nahhh.
-30-
Heat Stress
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Heat Stress
Now summer is a song without any words
Though midday silence in the dancing heat
Is music enough in this stasis time
When nothing moves across the face of noon
Not even an errant breeze to whisper hope
In the sun-blown desolation of July
Thus silence descants restless rests among
Notes fallen from a hymnal that was lost
Among the weeds and dust where once were dreams
But summer is a song without any words
Heat Inversion
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Heat Inversion
Summer collapses in upon itself
Inversions of thought wandering in the heat
Beaten into confusion’s minorpiece
As the planet orbits, wobbles, and spins
Like Icarus saucily taunting the sun
With importunities and insolence
Until a solar roar of outrage sends
Frail featherings of imagination
Falling into dizzying nothingness as
Summer collapses in upon itself
Back-to-School Shopping
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Back-to-School Shopping
Electronics and ear-buds on display
New jeans and tees, and the most-happening shoes
Tennis rackets and shorts for every day
Maybe even academic tattoos
Jewelry, sunglasses, feathers for one’s hair
Che Guano’s mug shot on a size small shirt
Cool Mickey ‘n’ Minnie themed underwear
A Class Of XX nose ring (that’s gotta hurt!
And that’s the latest faculty look
But no one ever dreams of buying a book
Dresscrossing - Poem
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dresscrossing
When asked if s/he were a transvestite
S/he replied, “Oh, no, that’s not right;
I’m English, and so a transwaistcoatite.”
Fete de la Raison
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Fete de la Raison
Personhood is the measure of a Lamborghini
Along with self-identification
The authentic voice of the marginalized
Because science can now work wonders these days
Only not with your crackers and grape juice
If you are told the sun rises in the west
Follow the sensitive conversation
Body parts. Who will buy my body parts
Freshly sexed-up pancreas for sale
Stuff is now the measure of personhood
A Frivolous Reflection on Power Cords
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
A Frivolous Reflection on Power Cords
Electrical cords are marvelous things
They slither voltaically without wings
To drag resistant ohms out of the walls
Then digest them along to light the halls
Make radios talk and tellys light up
And heat the coffee for a coffee cup
And make refrigerators thermodyme
AC in rhythmic Isaac Newton time
Lights all alight and a doorbell that rings:
Electrical cords are marvelous things
Sunday, July 19, 2015
Colonel Mustard, Miss Scarlett, and Donald Trump
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Politics According to Clue™
Even more than Wheel of 60 Minutes Fortune and Flip the Dancing Stars off this Island, the USA’s most popular and longest-running unreality show is politics. Back-to-school shopping begins in June, and football in August, but electioneering never ends. A presidential election is in itself little more than a brief pause between presidential election campaigns.
Baseball? Hot dogs? Apple strudel? Nope. What defines The Ye Olde Folksy New England Republic is a catalogue of people asking other people for money so that the first set of people can make more video ads.
This season is unusually loopy, lending itself to a new board game to help the players sort out politics, policy, and politics foreign and domestic. As a service to America, the auctor presents to a confused electorate (not that many of them ever vote anyway) a new board game, Campaign Clue™. Each game set contains:
10 character cards
President Obama
Donald Trump
Senator McCain
El Chapo
Vladimir Putin
Bernie Sanders
Senator Clinton
Edward Snowden
Hillary Clinton
Kim Jong Un
10 location cards
The White House Rose Garden
The Spratly Islands
St. Petersburg (Russia or Florida)
A Bridge in New Jersey
A Blue Bell factory
The dumpsters behind the Kremlin
The secret Jade Helm dungeons of doom beneath an abandoned Wal-Mart
A truck stopped for a traffic light in Calais
The Socorro Desert
A dimly lit Tim Horton’s down the street from the Toronto city hall
10 plastic weapons tokens
A pinata
Silly String
A stern editorial in The New York Times
A Confederate flag
A supercilious sneer
An indictment
Gender reassignment surgery
A Greek promissory note
A New Jersey Department of Transportation Traffic Cone
The Cosmic Hairpiece of Clinging Death
Each player takes a divvy of character cards, location cards, and plastic weapons tokens, dumps them into a foam cup from Captain Queeg’s, shakes them up, and pours them out in a meaningless pile. The players then talk about how much they miss Colonel Mustard, Miss Scarlett, the Professor, Ginger, Mary Ann, and the rest of the old gang.
-30-
Saturday, July 18, 2015
The Joyful Mysteries - Meditations for a Young Man
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
The Joyful Mysteries -
Meditations for a Young Man
I. The Annunciation
When Romans ruled, tetrarchs obeyed, the nights
Were given over to wonderings and dreams
An angel whispered to a girl “Fear not”
She made her choice, and history turned away
From failing, flailing, falling into mists
And looked again upon the morning sun
Beneath whose light the Jordan flowed, and days
Were given over to waiting and to work
For carpenters and fishermen who knew
Little of Rome, but much of suffering
II. The Visitation
In loving service to humanity
A girl, a woman now, another choice -
To leave her home to help, to love, to work
Her sweet Magnificat a hymn to us
A song of sweeping floors and making beds
And bringing in the goats for milking time
And laughter to the home of Elizabeth
A leap for joy expressed through busy hands
For maidens and mothers (and even men!) who knew
Little of Rome, but much of work and love
III. The Nativity
Now in reluctant service to the state
To render unto Caesar obedience
A little family once again leaves home
Following orders, not a star, and yet
There is a star. What is it telling them?
Suddenly – no thoughts for Caesars or stars
But only for a Child in exile born
Among the poor and humble of the earth
There to a weary young mother who knew
Too much of Rome, too much of doing without
IV. The Presentation
Now happily, in service to the Law
A going up, up to Jerusalem
A joyful journey to present the Child
Unto the Lord, and there two prophets spoke:
In holy Anna’s fasting, prayers, and words
And Simeon’s rejoicing “Nunc dimittis”
Of risings, fallings, swords, deliverance
The former world passing into the new
And for His Mother at the temple gate
No thought of Rome – but only of Her Son
V. Finding the Lord in the Temple
When Romans ruled, tetrarchs obeyed; the young
In faith and hope gave all their dreams to God
And listened for angelic whisperings
Not only in the night, but in their hearts
And Jesus grew to hear, to know, to teach
To search the hearts of young and old and find
Within them there the heartbeat of Himself
Our Lady kept these things within Her heart -
And, finally, even Romans kept them too
And so it was
And so it is
For you
mhall46184@aol.com
The Joyful Mysteries -
Meditations for a Young Man
I. The Annunciation
When Romans ruled, tetrarchs obeyed, the nights
Were given over to wonderings and dreams
An angel whispered to a girl “Fear not”
She made her choice, and history turned away
From failing, flailing, falling into mists
And looked again upon the morning sun
Beneath whose light the Jordan flowed, and days
Were given over to waiting and to work
For carpenters and fishermen who knew
Little of Rome, but much of suffering
II. The Visitation
In loving service to humanity
A girl, a woman now, another choice -
To leave her home to help, to love, to work
Her sweet Magnificat a hymn to us
A song of sweeping floors and making beds
And bringing in the goats for milking time
And laughter to the home of Elizabeth
A leap for joy expressed through busy hands
For maidens and mothers (and even men!) who knew
Little of Rome, but much of work and love
III. The Nativity
Now in reluctant service to the state
To render unto Caesar obedience
A little family once again leaves home
Following orders, not a star, and yet
There is a star. What is it telling them?
Suddenly – no thoughts for Caesars or stars
But only for a Child in exile born
Among the poor and humble of the earth
There to a weary young mother who knew
Too much of Rome, too much of doing without
IV. The Presentation
Now happily, in service to the Law
A going up, up to Jerusalem
A joyful journey to present the Child
Unto the Lord, and there two prophets spoke:
In holy Anna’s fasting, prayers, and words
And Simeon’s rejoicing “Nunc dimittis”
Of risings, fallings, swords, deliverance
The former world passing into the new
And for His Mother at the temple gate
No thought of Rome – but only of Her Son
V. Finding the Lord in the Temple
When Romans ruled, tetrarchs obeyed; the young
In faith and hope gave all their dreams to God
And listened for angelic whisperings
Not only in the night, but in their hearts
And Jesus grew to hear, to know, to teach
To search the hearts of young and old and find
Within them there the heartbeat of Himself
Our Lady kept these things within Her heart -
And, finally, even Romans kept them too
And so it was
And so it is
For you
Sunday, July 12, 2015
Cigar Boxes
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
History Lessons on a Cigar Box
Mark Antony preens in his Class-A best
Cleopatra is somewhat underdressed
The servant girl is not at all impressed
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
A Child’s First Safety-Deposit Box
A dime-store pocket watch that doesn’t run
A tiny magnifier for aiming the sun
A bit of chalk, glass marbles, crayon stubs
A pencil or two worn down to the nubs
A pair of dice gained in a school-yard trade
A cheap pocket knife with a broken blade
A pocket calendar from just last year
A bottle-opener that says “JAX BEER”
A shotgun hull, and little toy cars -
A box is for treasures, not Dad’s cigars!
Mhall46184@aol.com
History Lessons on a Cigar Box
Mark Antony preens in his Class-A best
Cleopatra is somewhat underdressed
The servant girl is not at all impressed
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
A Child’s First Safety-Deposit Box
A dime-store pocket watch that doesn’t run
A tiny magnifier for aiming the sun
A bit of chalk, glass marbles, crayon stubs
A pencil or two worn down to the nubs
A pair of dice gained in a school-yard trade
A cheap pocket knife with a broken blade
A pocket calendar from just last year
A bottle-opener that says “JAX BEER”
A shotgun hull, and little toy cars -
A box is for treasures, not Dad’s cigars!
Scrambled Eggs in Rainwater
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Scrambled Eggs in Rainwater
Field Medical Service School
Shivering in the rain, up in the hills
Of Sunny Southern California
Kerosene cookers and their gust-blown smoke
Squid-wet Corpsmen in flying wet slickers
Mess kits held out to sullen, cursing cooks
Slam-glopping glops of sausages and eggs
Cold coffee in aluminum canteen cups
No cover, no shelter for floating food
Or for sergeants bellowing in the dark –
And laughing through it all, for we were young
Mhall46184@aol.com
Scrambled Eggs in Rainwater
Field Medical Service School
Shivering in the rain, up in the hills
Of Sunny Southern California
Kerosene cookers and their gust-blown smoke
Squid-wet Corpsmen in flying wet slickers
Mess kits held out to sullen, cursing cooks
Slam-glopping glops of sausages and eggs
Cold coffee in aluminum canteen cups
No cover, no shelter for floating food
Or for sergeants bellowing in the dark –
And laughing through it all, for we were young
Mad Dogs and Mourning Doves
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Mad Dogs and Mourning Doves
go out in the Midday Sun
When nearly noon the old lawnmower is stilled
The unexpected silence is a pause
While an unseen conductor turns a page:
Morning cicadas yield the program to
The responsorial midday mourning doves
Who descant songs across the lonely fields
Whence midday heat has driven all but them
Exchanging love-notes through the drowsy hours
All unaware that when October comes
They’ll have to pack away their amphibrachs
Mhall46184@aol.com
Mad Dogs and Mourning Doves
go out in the Midday Sun
When nearly noon the old lawnmower is stilled
The unexpected silence is a pause
While an unseen conductor turns a page:
Morning cicadas yield the program to
The responsorial midday mourning doves
Who descant songs across the lonely fields
Whence midday heat has driven all but them
Exchanging love-notes through the drowsy hours
All unaware that when October comes
They’ll have to pack away their amphibrachs
A Course of Study
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
A Course of Study
Life is itself our university:
A table for study at a window
A book whose pages are bright autumn leaves
A laboratory of unexpectations
A hymn sung while stacking ammunition
A smile remembered while the coffee brews
A Christmas pocket knife lost long ago
A remembrance, a pain, a thought, a fear
And in the end a graduation hymn -
Life is itself is our university
Mhall46184@aol.com
A Course of Study
Life is itself our university:
A table for study at a window
A book whose pages are bright autumn leaves
A laboratory of unexpectations
A hymn sung while stacking ammunition
A smile remembered while the coffee brews
A Christmas pocket knife lost long ago
A remembrance, a pain, a thought, a fear
And in the end a graduation hymn -
Life is itself is our university
A Working Knowledge of Bed Frames
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
A Working Knowledge of Bed Frames
For assembling bed frames a craftsman needs
A hammer (because a mallet won’t do)
And a vocabulary of bad words
Bad you-go-rinse-your-mouth-out-with-soap words
For disassembling bed frames, well, the same:
A hammer (because a mallet won’t do)
And a vocabulary of bad words
Badder rinsing-your-mouth-out-with-soap words
Because cosmic conflict against metal frames
Requires a catalogue of soap-choking names!
Mhall46184@aol.com
A Working Knowledge of Bed Frames
For assembling bed frames a craftsman needs
A hammer (because a mallet won’t do)
And a vocabulary of bad words
Bad you-go-rinse-your-mouth-out-with-soap words
For disassembling bed frames, well, the same:
A hammer (because a mallet won’t do)
And a vocabulary of bad words
Badder rinsing-your-mouth-out-with-soap words
Because cosmic conflict against metal frames
Requires a catalogue of soap-choking names!
Life Begins at 111
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Life Begins at 111
Open a page, and dream into that world
Songs and merriment from the inn at Bree
The scent of flowers from far Lothlorien
And smoke rising from The Last Lonely House
A pack, a walking stick, a friend or two
Then step into the night, into the road
That does indeed go on and on
Mhall46184@aol.com
Life Begins at 111
Open a page, and dream into that world
Songs and merriment from the inn at Bree
The scent of flowers from far Lothlorien
And smoke rising from The Last Lonely House
A pack, a walking stick, a friend or two
Then step into the night, into the road
That does indeed go on and on
THE Calculus
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
THE Calculus
Why is there a math called THE calculus
Could there be a second one? Dubious
And there are so many maths to cuss
Algebra, for instance – what is the fuss?
To solve for X does not serve any purpuss
And one arithmetic, minus or plus
Geometry – useful but tedious
Each math is one, so nothing to discuss
So
Why is there a math call THE calculus?
mhall46184@aol.com
THE Calculus
Why is there a math called THE calculus
Could there be a second one? Dubious
And there are so many maths to cuss
Algebra, for instance – what is the fuss?
To solve for X does not serve any purpuss
And one arithmetic, minus or plus
Geometry – useful but tedious
Each math is one, so nothing to discuss
So
Why is there a math call THE calculus?
Canada Day? Just One?
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Canada Day? Just One?
With love from an ‘umble Yank
But every day is Canada Day!
The afternoon plane lands in Halifax
When the hatch is popped, cool air rushes in
Even the fog is happy in Canada
The Muskogee never made landfall here
And so we pilgrimage for her, complete
Her voyage from ’42 to Canada
Wolfville, Grand Pre’, Le Grande Derangement
The Deportation Cross and beer cans
Well, God forgive the Redcoats anyway
Newfoundland
Is a bold
Anapest
The church spires in a line, the light is green
The bold young captain shoots the narrows wild
Can you find your way to your painted house?
To walk again the cobbles of Ferryland
And smell the very blue of the Atlantic
The sea-blown wind is cold in Canada
Blue Puttees and a mourning Caribou
Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord
Good children sing “We love thee, Newfoundland”
Quebec – royal city of New France
May Le Bon Dieu bless the Plains of Abraham,
And may God bless
The signs an English driver cannot read
The Coca-Cola streets of Niagara Falls
Yanks laugh at made-in-China Mountie mugs
And buy them, happy to be in Canada
A cup of Toujours Frais from – well, that place
But to us in your southern provinces
Below Niagara, Tim too is Canada
But Canada goes on; these scribbles must not -
Your grateful guest wishes only to say
That every happy day is Canada Day!
Mhall46184@aol.com
Canada Day? Just One?
With love from an ‘umble Yank
But every day is Canada Day!
The afternoon plane lands in Halifax
When the hatch is popped, cool air rushes in
Even the fog is happy in Canada
The Muskogee never made landfall here
And so we pilgrimage for her, complete
Her voyage from ’42 to Canada
Wolfville, Grand Pre’, Le Grande Derangement
The Deportation Cross and beer cans
Well, God forgive the Redcoats anyway
Newfoundland
Is a bold
Anapest
The church spires in a line, the light is green
The bold young captain shoots the narrows wild
Can you find your way to your painted house?
To walk again the cobbles of Ferryland
And smell the very blue of the Atlantic
The sea-blown wind is cold in Canada
Blue Puttees and a mourning Caribou
Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord
Good children sing “We love thee, Newfoundland”
Quebec – royal city of New France
May Le Bon Dieu bless the Plains of Abraham,
And may God bless
The signs an English driver cannot read
The Coca-Cola streets of Niagara Falls
Yanks laugh at made-in-China Mountie mugs
And buy them, happy to be in Canada
A cup of Toujours Frais from – well, that place
But to us in your southern provinces
Below Niagara, Tim too is Canada
But Canada goes on; these scribbles must not -
Your grateful guest wishes only to say
That every happy day is Canada Day!
Dialogue Not Heard in Casablanca
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dialogue Not Heard in Casablanca
“Of all the boutique coffee bars in all the gated communities in all the world…”
“Bluebirds, bluebirds! Bluebirds everywhere!”
“Maybe tomorrow we’ll be on the plane – it’ll take us that long to get through security.”
“Play it, Sam. Play ‘The Pilgrims’ Chorus’ from Tannhauser.”
“I don’t think I remember it, Miss Ilsa. Mostly because you never leave anything in the tip jar, you cheapskate.”
“I was informed that you were the most beautiful woman ever to visit Casablanca. Meh.”
“Oh, Rick – I’ll have to do the thinking for both us.”
“Round up some unusual suspects.”
“I’m making out the report now. We’re not sure if he committed suicide or was vaporized by Jade Helm ninja vampires in secret tunnels beneath an abandoned Circuit City in New Ulm.”
“I’m shocked! Shocked! To learn that Bible study is going on in here!”
“Aw, come on, you guys – doesn’t anyone in here know the words to the Marseillaise!?”
“I remember every detail – the North Vietnamese wore green; you wore a blue Che Guano tee-shirt.”
“Yes, I put that tee-shirt, knee-pants, and flip-flops away. When the North Vietnamese march out I’ll wear them again.”
“What makes baristas so snobbish?”
“Are you one of those people who cannot imagine English soccer fans in your beloved Newark?”
“Oh, no, Emile, please. A bottle of your best designer water, and put it on my bill.”
“Just a moment. I heard a rumor those two German couriers were carrying the latest Apple watches.”
“I don’t mind a parasite. I object to one who isn’t accredited by the BBB.”
“Ricky, I’m going to miss you. Apparently you’re the only one with less scruples than the Supreme Court.”
“Paula Deen and Bill Cosby walk into a bar…”
“And remember – this gun is pointed right at your pancreas.”
“Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but when you can’t get a refund on those tickets to Lisbon…”
“We’ll always have Caney Head.”
“I have already given him the best table, knowing that he is with the Clinton campaign and would take it anyway.”
“C’mon, Mr. Rick. We’ll get the car. We’ll drive all night. We’ll go fishing. We’ll wear togas! Partee! Partee!”
“Major Strasser has been tasered!”
“Here’s looking at you, kid. You know, that’s a really patronizing, sexist expression.”
“Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful limited-liability partnership.”
“I came to Casablanca for the Blue Bell ice cream…I was misinformed.”
-30-
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dialogue Not Heard in Casablanca
“Of all the boutique coffee bars in all the gated communities in all the world…”
“Bluebirds, bluebirds! Bluebirds everywhere!”
“Maybe tomorrow we’ll be on the plane – it’ll take us that long to get through security.”
“Play it, Sam. Play ‘The Pilgrims’ Chorus’ from Tannhauser.”
“I don’t think I remember it, Miss Ilsa. Mostly because you never leave anything in the tip jar, you cheapskate.”
“I was informed that you were the most beautiful woman ever to visit Casablanca. Meh.”
“Oh, Rick – I’ll have to do the thinking for both us.”
“Round up some unusual suspects.”
“I’m making out the report now. We’re not sure if he committed suicide or was vaporized by Jade Helm ninja vampires in secret tunnels beneath an abandoned Circuit City in New Ulm.”
“I’m shocked! Shocked! To learn that Bible study is going on in here!”
“Aw, come on, you guys – doesn’t anyone in here know the words to the Marseillaise!?”
“I remember every detail – the North Vietnamese wore green; you wore a blue Che Guano tee-shirt.”
“Yes, I put that tee-shirt, knee-pants, and flip-flops away. When the North Vietnamese march out I’ll wear them again.”
“What makes baristas so snobbish?”
“Are you one of those people who cannot imagine English soccer fans in your beloved Newark?”
“Oh, no, Emile, please. A bottle of your best designer water, and put it on my bill.”
“Just a moment. I heard a rumor those two German couriers were carrying the latest Apple watches.”
“I don’t mind a parasite. I object to one who isn’t accredited by the BBB.”
“Ricky, I’m going to miss you. Apparently you’re the only one with less scruples than the Supreme Court.”
“Paula Deen and Bill Cosby walk into a bar…”
“And remember – this gun is pointed right at your pancreas.”
“Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but when you can’t get a refund on those tickets to Lisbon…”
“We’ll always have Caney Head.”
“I have already given him the best table, knowing that he is with the Clinton campaign and would take it anyway.”
“C’mon, Mr. Rick. We’ll get the car. We’ll drive all night. We’ll go fishing. We’ll wear togas! Partee! Partee!”
“Major Strasser has been tasered!”
“Here’s looking at you, kid. You know, that’s a really patronizing, sexist expression.”
“Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful limited-liability partnership.”
“I came to Casablanca for the Blue Bell ice cream…I was misinformed.”
-30-
Monday, July 6, 2015
With True Prayers
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
With True Prayers
For the Martyrs of Charleston
“…but with true prayers
That shall be up at heaven and enter there”
-Measure for Measure II.ii.151-152
A study table is an Altar too
Whereon repose not only holy books
But also hopes and prayers and coffee cups
On Wednesday evening – there in fellowship
To crown the middle of the busy week
With an hour or two of quiet discourse
And, yes, laughter, joy, and merriment
Among dear friends, our happy gifts from God -
Evil cannot veto, even with our blood
The truth: this table is an Altar too
Published in Longbows and Rosary Beads, June 2015
mhall46184@aol.com
With True Prayers
For the Martyrs of Charleston
“…but with true prayers
That shall be up at heaven and enter there”
-Measure for Measure II.ii.151-152
A study table is an Altar too
Whereon repose not only holy books
But also hopes and prayers and coffee cups
On Wednesday evening – there in fellowship
To crown the middle of the busy week
With an hour or two of quiet discourse
And, yes, laughter, joy, and merriment
Among dear friends, our happy gifts from God -
Evil cannot veto, even with our blood
The truth: this table is an Altar too
Published in Longbows and Rosary Beads, June 2015
Children and Books
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
A Boy with a Book
For Gunter, Kason, Joey, and Isaac
A little boy is not a boy without
A book to guard him against education:
Give him spaceships, cowboys, a pirate’s shout
Instead of teachy televisation
If he can’t find a book that sings, give him
Lots of blank paper, and he’ll write his own:
Sheriffs, swords, shields, and ships, his gear in
trim
To sail the Spanish Main until the dawn
A boy is a child of summer; he needs
His dog, sun-leafy hours, and his books
And outlaws hiding there among the weeds
Or maybe the Sheriff of Nottingham’s crooks:
Adventure yarns, and wooden sword in hand
In summer to make a boy a worthy man
A Girl with a Book
For Kate, Valentine, Veronica, Virginia,
Margaret Rose, Harper Rose, and Kaili
A little girl is not a girl without
A book to guard her against education:
Give her spaceships, cowgirls, a pirate’s shout
Instead of teachy televisation
If she can’t find a book that sings, give her
Lots of blank paper, and she’ll write her own:
Princesses, swords, and ships, a voyager
To sail the Spanish Main until the dawn
A girl is a child of summer; she needs
Her dog, sun-leafy hours, and her books
And outlaws hiding there among the weeds
Or maybe the Sheriff of Nottingham’s crooks
A girl, her book, her sword, her backyard tree:
Oh, what a good, strong woman she will be!
mhall46184@aol.com
A Boy with a Book
For Gunter, Kason, Joey, and Isaac
A little boy is not a boy without
A book to guard him against education:
Give him spaceships, cowboys, a pirate’s shout
Instead of teachy televisation
If he can’t find a book that sings, give him
Lots of blank paper, and he’ll write his own:
Sheriffs, swords, shields, and ships, his gear in
trim
To sail the Spanish Main until the dawn
A boy is a child of summer; he needs
His dog, sun-leafy hours, and his books
And outlaws hiding there among the weeds
Or maybe the Sheriff of Nottingham’s crooks:
Adventure yarns, and wooden sword in hand
In summer to make a boy a worthy man
A Girl with a Book
For Kate, Valentine, Veronica, Virginia,
Margaret Rose, Harper Rose, and Kaili
A little girl is not a girl without
A book to guard her against education:
Give her spaceships, cowgirls, a pirate’s shout
Instead of teachy televisation
If she can’t find a book that sings, give her
Lots of blank paper, and she’ll write her own:
Princesses, swords, and ships, a voyager
To sail the Spanish Main until the dawn
A girl is a child of summer; she needs
Her dog, sun-leafy hours, and her books
And outlaws hiding there among the weeds
Or maybe the Sheriff of Nottingham’s crooks
A girl, her book, her sword, her backyard tree:
Oh, what a good, strong woman she will be!
"With a Clear View of the Southern Sky"
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
“With a Clear View
of the Southern Sky”
Curved metal plates with gadgetry attached
Those cosmic spies and robot messengers
Lurk on the roof and there obscure the stars
With clutter beamed and bounced about the skies
Encoded and decoded back and forth
Somewhere between the truth and a satellite
Attractive knowledge of evil and good
Electrons coiled around a metal tree
Purring in unison: “You shall not die” -
Curved metal plates with gadgetry attached
mhall46184@aol.com
“With a Clear View
of the Southern Sky”
Curved metal plates with gadgetry attached
Those cosmic spies and robot messengers
Lurk on the roof and there obscure the stars
With clutter beamed and bounced about the skies
Encoded and decoded back and forth
Somewhere between the truth and a satellite
Attractive knowledge of evil and good
Electrons coiled around a metal tree
Purring in unison: “You shall not die” -
Curved metal plates with gadgetry attached
Tainopsis
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Tainopsis
Grandfather’s Saint George medal – hide it first
The ikon of Saint Seraphim – that’s next
Babushka’s crucifix – O, how she loved it
The picture of the Czar – away! Away!
Do not betray your thoughts – a careless word
A smile not authorized, a memory
A fragment from a cheerful Christmas song:
These do not advance The Revolution
Beneath our Brave Red Star they must lie hidden
While our dear comrades love and watch us all
mhall46184@aol.com
Tainopsis
Grandfather’s Saint George medal – hide it first
The ikon of Saint Seraphim – that’s next
Babushka’s crucifix – O, how she loved it
The picture of the Czar – away! Away!
Do not betray your thoughts – a careless word
A smile not authorized, a memory
A fragment from a cheerful Christmas song:
These do not advance The Revolution
Beneath our Brave Red Star they must lie hidden
While our dear comrades love and watch us all
Script for the Hourly News
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Script for the Hourly News
boots on the ground icon boots on the ground
icon boots on the ground icon boots on
the ground icon shooting boots on the ground
icon shooting boots on the ground icon
boots on the ground icon boots on the ground
icon booths on the ground icon shooting boots
on the ground icon boots on the ground icon
boots on the ground icon boots on the ground
icon shooting boots on the ground icon
shooting boots on the ground icon boots on
the ground icon boots on the ground icon
boots on the ground icon shooting boots on
the ground icon boots on the ground icon
boots on the ground icon boots on the ground
icon shooting boots on the ground icon
shooting boots on the ground icon boots on
the ground icon boots on the ground icon
boots on the ground icon shooting boots on
the ground ISIS school lunches gluten-free
mhall46184@aol.com
Script for the Hourly News
boots on the ground icon boots on the ground
icon boots on the ground icon boots on
the ground icon shooting boots on the ground
icon shooting boots on the ground icon
boots on the ground icon boots on the ground
icon booths on the ground icon shooting boots
on the ground icon boots on the ground icon
boots on the ground icon boots on the ground
icon shooting boots on the ground icon
shooting boots on the ground icon boots on
the ground icon boots on the ground icon
boots on the ground icon shooting boots on
the ground icon boots on the ground icon
boots on the ground icon boots on the ground
icon shooting boots on the ground icon
shooting boots on the ground icon boots on
the ground icon boots on the ground icon
boots on the ground icon shooting boots on
the ground ISIS school lunches gluten-free
Matins and Lauds and Cats
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Matins and Lauds and Cats
Now stir your morning hopes into a cup
Of coffee sweetly censed with optimism
Along with milk or cream and chemicals;
Switch off the strident, nattering radio
And through the kitchen window note with joy
The dramatic stretchings of indolent cats
Yawning the beginning of their new day,
A tree frog working late, reposing still
Upon the screen as if it were a throne
From which he rules all insect destinies,
And a sudden fluttering in the grass
As an early bird gets his worm indeed
While a vapor of diaphanous mist
Slow-curls among the oaks, perhaps to seek
Some comfortable solitude for the day;
Old Sol, fresh from his adventures in the East
Serves sunlight filtered softly through the damp,
Fresh light for your breakfast, a Matins
Psalm sung to you all the way from a star.
Matins and Lauds without any Cats
If your sunrise view is of garbage cans
And utility poles leaning over an alley
Or if you have no window, or even a kitchen
If morning dew condenses on barbed wire
Or dripping concrete walls echoing-echoing,
If your only view is of a cinder-block wall
And the only sound is the medicine trolley
Squeaking through its early hospital rounds
Without any coffee or even much hope
Then please feel free to borrow for today
Any of the many, barely-used mornings
From those of us who in our ingratitude
Tend to begin our days of open windows
Not with a joyful litany of praise
But with a tiresome catalogue of complaints
mhall46184@aol.com
Matins and Lauds and Cats
Now stir your morning hopes into a cup
Of coffee sweetly censed with optimism
Along with milk or cream and chemicals;
Switch off the strident, nattering radio
And through the kitchen window note with joy
The dramatic stretchings of indolent cats
Yawning the beginning of their new day,
A tree frog working late, reposing still
Upon the screen as if it were a throne
From which he rules all insect destinies,
And a sudden fluttering in the grass
As an early bird gets his worm indeed
While a vapor of diaphanous mist
Slow-curls among the oaks, perhaps to seek
Some comfortable solitude for the day;
Old Sol, fresh from his adventures in the East
Serves sunlight filtered softly through the damp,
Fresh light for your breakfast, a Matins
Psalm sung to you all the way from a star.
Matins and Lauds without any Cats
If your sunrise view is of garbage cans
And utility poles leaning over an alley
Or if you have no window, or even a kitchen
If morning dew condenses on barbed wire
Or dripping concrete walls echoing-echoing,
If your only view is of a cinder-block wall
And the only sound is the medicine trolley
Squeaking through its early hospital rounds
Without any coffee or even much hope
Then please feel free to borrow for today
Any of the many, barely-used mornings
From those of us who in our ingratitude
Tend to begin our days of open windows
Not with a joyful litany of praise
But with a tiresome catalogue of complaints
A Few More Little Poems
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Sirens and Harpies
The siren of the romance-misted night
Softly seductive and mysterious
By dawn shifts shape into a haggery fright:
The elf is now a harpy imperious
Data Not Available at This Time
“Data not available at this time”
Scrolls slowly across the tiny screen
But
(insert name of internet service biller – not necessarily as good at providing – here)
carefully counts every dime:
Their monthly pound of flesh is never lean
How Lucky God is to Have Him
Perhaps he is a seer
Gifted with visions of glory
Still, I don’t want to hear
His me, me, me conversion story
Not on My Watch
A fellow whose timepiece was off just a notch
Said of a jeweler who was drunk on Scotch,
“He can work on his hangover,
but not on my watch.”
Rain with Punctuation
A house when empty is not always peaceful
But today it is. September rain to heal
The hurt, summer-dry earth floats so softly
And so quietly
That thunder is a loud punctuation
An exclamation mark BANG! In the middle
Of a quiet, meditative line.
Elegy for Brave Little Cottonpip
For Deedra
In Egypt cats were set as palace guards
To watch the desert from stone-linteled gates
With wide-set eyes, proud lions of the Nile
And in their diminutive dignity
Bless with their furry, purry, royal presence
The households of the ancient kings and queens
And cats have never forgotten their ancient
warrant:
To pose, to pace, to pause, to pounce, to please
Their noble queen always, faithful even unto
death -
O do not mourn the passing of brave Pip
For now he tumbles and plays among the stars
And purrs to you still, your brave palace guard
Quagmire
We’re mired once more within a quag
Or quagged, perhaps, within a mire
Evil laughs at the same old gag:
Nero golfs while the world’s on fire
mhall46184@aol.com
Sirens and Harpies
The siren of the romance-misted night
Softly seductive and mysterious
By dawn shifts shape into a haggery fright:
The elf is now a harpy imperious
Data Not Available at This Time
“Data not available at this time”
Scrolls slowly across the tiny screen
But
(insert name of internet service biller – not necessarily as good at providing – here)
carefully counts every dime:
Their monthly pound of flesh is never lean
How Lucky God is to Have Him
Perhaps he is a seer
Gifted with visions of glory
Still, I don’t want to hear
His me, me, me conversion story
Not on My Watch
A fellow whose timepiece was off just a notch
Said of a jeweler who was drunk on Scotch,
“He can work on his hangover,
but not on my watch.”
Rain with Punctuation
A house when empty is not always peaceful
But today it is. September rain to heal
The hurt, summer-dry earth floats so softly
And so quietly
That thunder is a loud punctuation
An exclamation mark BANG! In the middle
Of a quiet, meditative line.
Elegy for Brave Little Cottonpip
For Deedra
In Egypt cats were set as palace guards
To watch the desert from stone-linteled gates
With wide-set eyes, proud lions of the Nile
And in their diminutive dignity
Bless with their furry, purry, royal presence
The households of the ancient kings and queens
And cats have never forgotten their ancient
warrant:
To pose, to pace, to pause, to pounce, to please
Their noble queen always, faithful even unto
death -
O do not mourn the passing of brave Pip
For now he tumbles and plays among the stars
And purrs to you still, your brave palace guard
Quagmire
We’re mired once more within a quag
Or quagged, perhaps, within a mire
Evil laughs at the same old gag:
Nero golfs while the world’s on fire
Je Suis Dust Jacket
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Je Suis Dust Jacket
A can’t-put-it-down layered tapestry of
Spell-binding patriarchal must-read rich
Ness woven of cross-cultural patriarchal
Assumptions is a multi-gendered land
Mark of accessible, richly textured
Narratives that will make you laugh, make you
cry,
And change your life forever through a unique
Voice of powerful unstinting timeless
Human condition moving milestone land
Mark compelling nuanced epic of searing
Honesty and gripping poignancy burnt
Into the human conscience challenges
The heterosexist patriarchal
Mainstream that will define a generation
Iconic sensual stunning absorbing
Lapidary roman a clef triumph
Definitive edgy in the tradition
Of luminous provocative. And stuff.
mhall46184@aol.com
Je Suis Dust Jacket
A can’t-put-it-down layered tapestry of
Spell-binding patriarchal must-read rich
Ness woven of cross-cultural patriarchal
Assumptions is a multi-gendered land
Mark of accessible, richly textured
Narratives that will make you laugh, make you
cry,
And change your life forever through a unique
Voice of powerful unstinting timeless
Human condition moving milestone land
Mark compelling nuanced epic of searing
Honesty and gripping poignancy burnt
Into the human conscience challenges
The heterosexist patriarchal
Mainstream that will define a generation
Iconic sensual stunning absorbing
Lapidary roman a clef triumph
Definitive edgy in the tradition
Of luminous provocative. And stuff.
The Revolution
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
The Revolution
Little men arguing in shabby rooms
Meetings, manifestos, revolvers, bombs
Informers, spies, social organization,
Speeches, minutes, dues, What is to be Done?
The great cause of the Proletariat
Greetings from our good comrades in Smolensk
Nihilism, committees, secrecy
The thirst for culture is aristocratic
Nihilism is the only art of the people
Rumors, whispers, clandestine magazines
The unification of workers and peasants
Resolutions passed in the factory soviet
Clenched fists to reject the personal life
Electrification and equality
Cigarettes, vodka, the people’s justice
Against the parasitical bourgeoisie
Solidarity to destroy the kulaks
His poetry reeks of sentimentality
Self-centered intellectual decadence
The people’s will for the people’s party
Education for the twentieth century
Lift high the red banner, fill full the graves
mhall46184@aol.com
The Revolution
Little men arguing in shabby rooms
Meetings, manifestos, revolvers, bombs
Informers, spies, social organization,
Speeches, minutes, dues, What is to be Done?
The great cause of the Proletariat
Greetings from our good comrades in Smolensk
Nihilism, committees, secrecy
The thirst for culture is aristocratic
Nihilism is the only art of the people
Rumors, whispers, clandestine magazines
The unification of workers and peasants
Resolutions passed in the factory soviet
Clenched fists to reject the personal life
Electrification and equality
Cigarettes, vodka, the people’s justice
Against the parasitical bourgeoisie
Solidarity to destroy the kulaks
His poetry reeks of sentimentality
Self-centered intellectual decadence
The people’s will for the people’s party
Education for the twentieth century
Lift high the red banner, fill full the graves
Adjective Childhood Pity
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Adjective Childhood Pity
Your Irish childhood – oh, give it a pass
Indian childhood
Single-parent childhood
Poverty childhood
Small-town childhood
Urban childhood
Farm childhood
Army brat childhood
Immigrant childhood
Emigrant childhood
Migrant childhood
Reservation childhood
Mountain childhood
All that adjective pity - it’s been said
But your childhood – your childhood, your
childhood
Free it from adjectives, and you’ll have
something
mhall46184@aol.com
Adjective Childhood Pity
Your Irish childhood – oh, give it a pass
Indian childhood
Single-parent childhood
Poverty childhood
Small-town childhood
Urban childhood
Farm childhood
Army brat childhood
Immigrant childhood
Emigrant childhood
Migrant childhood
Reservation childhood
Mountain childhood
All that adjective pity - it’s been said
But your childhood – your childhood, your
childhood
Free it from adjectives, and you’ll have
something
Save the Date
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Save the Date
O how I hope that you will Save The Date!
It’s a special occasion, so don’t be late
Be sure to sign in with the guard at the gate
I leave on the twelfth; I simply can’t wait
That’s when I’ll be executed by the State
Registered at Coffins ‘n’ Stuff,
Thibodeaux’s Funeral Home,
& Jardin d’Memoires and Gift Shoppe
mhall46184@aol.com
Save the Date
O how I hope that you will Save The Date!
It’s a special occasion, so don’t be late
Be sure to sign in with the guard at the gate
I leave on the twelfth; I simply can’t wait
That’s when I’ll be executed by the State
Registered at Coffins ‘n’ Stuff,
Thibodeaux’s Funeral Home,
& Jardin d’Memoires and Gift Shoppe
Martinmas
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Martinmas
Red is the color of a soldier’s cloak
Exchanged for a poor man’s blessing in the night
Met well there by a crumbling pagan oak
Ennobled now that vestment in angelic white
Martin is the name of that Roman guard
Between the watch fires pacing slow his round
Ready and alert, though the frost is hard
And spies a sad wretch shivering on the ground
Now does the soldier give him warmth and hope
Cold is the night, and yet somehow made mild
Exchanging his pride for a priestly cope
Denying self – the poor man is the Child;
As does Saint Martin, all good soldiers still
Yield self in service to the Christ Child’s will
mhall46184@aol.com
Martinmas
Red is the color of a soldier’s cloak
Exchanged for a poor man’s blessing in the night
Met well there by a crumbling pagan oak
Ennobled now that vestment in angelic white
Martin is the name of that Roman guard
Between the watch fires pacing slow his round
Ready and alert, though the frost is hard
And spies a sad wretch shivering on the ground
Now does the soldier give him warmth and hope
Cold is the night, and yet somehow made mild
Exchanging his pride for a priestly cope
Denying self – the poor man is the Child;
As does Saint Martin, all good soldiers still
Yield self in service to the Christ Child’s will
Does This Machine Kill Fascists?
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Does This Machine Kill Fascists?
Does this machine kill Fascists? Probably not
Unless it bores them to a yawning death
Through soporific clichés crudely imposed
Upon a few poor, battered chords that twang
Like the barbed wire of an Arctic gulag
Where happy comrades
Shiver in the snow
Wither in the wind
Starve on slops
Burn with typhus
Rot in the tundra
As they build the future upon mass graves
While the anti-Fascist cashes his checks
mhall46184@aol.com
Does This Machine Kill Fascists?
Does this machine kill Fascists? Probably not
Unless it bores them to a yawning death
Through soporific clichés crudely imposed
Upon a few poor, battered chords that twang
Like the barbed wire of an Arctic gulag
Where happy comrades
Shiver in the snow
Wither in the wind
Starve on slops
Burn with typhus
Rot in the tundra
As they build the future upon mass graves
While the anti-Fascist cashes his checks
The Privileged Patriarchal Postcolonial Boy
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
The Privileged Patriarchal
Postcolonial Boy
To the tune of “The Wild Colonial Boy”
He vets his work for political tone
Writes nothing to annoy
And if his words offend – they’re gone!
The postcolonial boy
He was born and raised in poverty
His mother’s only joy
Still a child of privilege, you see
The postcolonial boy
No matter what he might dare say
No matter how polite, how coy
Nothing can excuse his DNA
The postcolonial boy
A shame it is that he submits
Agrees that he’s sans foy
He silences himself; he quits
The postcolonial boy
mhall46184@aol.com
The Privileged Patriarchal
Postcolonial Boy
To the tune of “The Wild Colonial Boy”
He vets his work for political tone
Writes nothing to annoy
And if his words offend – they’re gone!
The postcolonial boy
He was born and raised in poverty
His mother’s only joy
Still a child of privilege, you see
The postcolonial boy
No matter what he might dare say
No matter how polite, how coy
Nothing can excuse his DNA
The postcolonial boy
A shame it is that he submits
Agrees that he’s sans foy
He silences himself; he quits
The postcolonial boy
Some More Short Poems
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
The Widening World of Cookery
Old housewives cook, and talk about it so
Someone invented the cooking show
Where women watch the fashionable gas ring’s glow
And watch also their widening waistlines grow
Posting Grades
But the grades aren’t really posted at all
Just tapped by super-secret access code
Into an Orwellian telescreen
Thin tittle-tattle about test results
A Flicker of Life
Movies are but flickering images
Sometimes, to the observer, so is life
Dante
Dante Alighieri
Wasn’t very merry
Whenever he didn’t feel well
He imagined his enemies in (Newark)
A Funeral
The hymns have been sung, and the Gospel read;
We prayed for everyone except the dead
The Tedious Gatsby, Old Sport
I took up Gatsby, and I read,
And now I’m glad that Gatsby’s dead
mhall46184@aol.com
The Widening World of Cookery
Old housewives cook, and talk about it so
Someone invented the cooking show
Where women watch the fashionable gas ring’s glow
And watch also their widening waistlines grow
Posting Grades
But the grades aren’t really posted at all
Just tapped by super-secret access code
Into an Orwellian telescreen
Thin tittle-tattle about test results
A Flicker of Life
Movies are but flickering images
Sometimes, to the observer, so is life
Dante
Dante Alighieri
Wasn’t very merry
Whenever he didn’t feel well
He imagined his enemies in (Newark)
A Funeral
The hymns have been sung, and the Gospel read;
We prayed for everyone except the dead
The Tedious Gatsby, Old Sport
I took up Gatsby, and I read,
And now I’m glad that Gatsby’s dead
The Mild Ones
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
The Mild Ones
“What are you rebelling against?”
“Whaddaya got?”
“A philosophical matrix predicated
Upon experience analyzed rationally
Without incessant self-reference
Or submission to transient fashions.
This matrix considers natural law,
Epistemologically demonstrable,
Ecclesiastical law, which is subject
To discussion because of variant
Concepts of divine revelation
And then secular law, which grounds
Even a republic, in its origin,
In the Jewish-Christian Mosaic law
But which is subject to modification
According to the federal constitution
And the various state constitutions
Expressed by popular will according to
Due process of law, that is, elections.
Applying the Hegelian dialectic,
One can sort out for himself a mode of life
In harmony with both his conscience
And with the needs of a multi-cultural state.”
“Got a beer?”
mhall46184@aol.com
The Mild Ones
“What are you rebelling against?”
“Whaddaya got?”
“A philosophical matrix predicated
Upon experience analyzed rationally
Without incessant self-reference
Or submission to transient fashions.
This matrix considers natural law,
Epistemologically demonstrable,
Ecclesiastical law, which is subject
To discussion because of variant
Concepts of divine revelation
And then secular law, which grounds
Even a republic, in its origin,
In the Jewish-Christian Mosaic law
But which is subject to modification
According to the federal constitution
And the various state constitutions
Expressed by popular will according to
Due process of law, that is, elections.
Applying the Hegelian dialectic,
One can sort out for himself a mode of life
In harmony with both his conscience
And with the needs of a multi-cultural state.”
“Got a beer?”
Had Byron Lived a Few Years Longer
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Had Byron Lived a Few Years Longer
V:
She stalks in Makeup, like a fright
Of Senior Specials and takeout fries;
And all that’s worst of snark and bite
Meet in her painted layers of guise:
Thus billowed in fluorescent light
Which Heaven to youthful lads denies
R:
He talks of Makeup, silly old wight
Of faded beauties – through his old eyes!
And his slim waist and muscled might
Have long departed – he is no prize!
Thus now of greater width than height
Which Heaven to happy girls denies
mhall46184@aol.com
Had Byron Lived a Few Years Longer
V:
She stalks in Makeup, like a fright
Of Senior Specials and takeout fries;
And all that’s worst of snark and bite
Meet in her painted layers of guise:
Thus billowed in fluorescent light
Which Heaven to youthful lads denies
R:
He talks of Makeup, silly old wight
Of faded beauties – through his old eyes!
And his slim waist and muscled might
Have long departed – he is no prize!
Thus now of greater width than height
Which Heaven to happy girls denies
Song of Comrade Photocopier Operator
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Song of Comrade Photocopier Operator
From Le Chansons de Volga File Clerks Rouge
© 1962 by Les Chansons, Leningrad
O sing a song of reproduction
Accomplished by electrical induction
As workers’ hands insert the paper
Deep into the magic vapor
Chanting without a fuss or stink,
“Yo, ho, ho and a bottle of ink!”
Ions charge the chemical toner
Unless there’s none, ‘cause it’s all goner
Or even worse – if there’s a jam
And then the worker yells out (“Goodness!”)
But with a wrench and a mighty shout
Like that ol’ Czar, the jam is OUT
The Committee decrees a Print Command
This is their red-star’red demand
And out comes the paper, newly free
Fresh from a cartridge in a… (There! See?)
By Good Comrade Worker, Ivan-on-the-Spot
Alas, the message is for him to be…
shot
mhall46184@aol.com
Song of Comrade Photocopier Operator
From Le Chansons de Volga File Clerks Rouge
© 1962 by Les Chansons, Leningrad
O sing a song of reproduction
Accomplished by electrical induction
As workers’ hands insert the paper
Deep into the magic vapor
Chanting without a fuss or stink,
“Yo, ho, ho and a bottle of ink!”
Ions charge the chemical toner
Unless there’s none, ‘cause it’s all goner
Or even worse – if there’s a jam
And then the worker yells out (“Goodness!”)
But with a wrench and a mighty shout
Like that ol’ Czar, the jam is OUT
The Committee decrees a Print Command
This is their red-star’red demand
And out comes the paper, newly free
Fresh from a cartridge in a… (There! See?)
By Good Comrade Worker, Ivan-on-the-Spot
Alas, the message is for him to be…
shot
Instructions to the Chauffeur
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Instructions to the Chauffeur
Said the owner, most intently,
“Mind, now, how you drive my Bentley:
Always drive it confidently,
Never, ever insolently
‘Sure to watch the road intently
Take the sharp curves very gently
Follow my rules most excellently
Then you’ll never get a dent, see?”
mhall46184@aol.com
Instructions to the Chauffeur
Said the owner, most intently,
“Mind, now, how you drive my Bentley:
Always drive it confidently,
Never, ever insolently
‘Sure to watch the road intently
Take the sharp curves very gently
Follow my rules most excellently
Then you’ll never get a dent, see?”
Sola Scriptura
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Sola Scriptura
“It’s right here in the Bible!” she said,
Waving her MePhone over her head
mhall46184@aol.com
Sola Scriptura
“It’s right here in the Bible!” she said,
Waving her MePhone over her head
Pursued by Hallway Gideons
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Pursued by Hallway Gideons
Hi there how are you doing isn’t this a
wonderful day would you like a New Tes
tament sir thank you hi ma’am good to see
you would you like a New Testament you
are so welcome Hi there how are you doing
isn’t this a wonderful day would you
like a New Testament sir thank you hi
ma’am good to see you would you like a New
Testament you are welcome Hi there how
are you doing isn’t this a wonderful
Repeat
Hi there how are you doing isn’t this a
wonderful day would you like a New Tes
tament sir thank you hi ma’am good to see
you would you like a New Testament you
are so welcome Hi there how are you doing
isn’t this a wonderful day would you
like a New Testament sir thank you hi
ma’am good to see you would you like a New
Testament you are welcome Hi there how
are you doing isn’t this a wonderful
Repeat
Hi there how are you doing isn’t this a
wonderful day would you like a New Tes
tament sir thank you hi ma’am good to see
you would you like a New Testament you
are so welcome Hi there how are you doing
isn’t this a wonderful day would you
like a New Testament sir thank you hi
ma’am good to see you would you like a New
Testament you are welcome Hi there how
are you doing isn’t this a wonderful
Exeunt omnes, pursued by a bore waving a little green book about
mhall46184@aol.com
Pursued by Hallway Gideons
Hi there how are you doing isn’t this a
wonderful day would you like a New Tes
tament sir thank you hi ma’am good to see
you would you like a New Testament you
are so welcome Hi there how are you doing
isn’t this a wonderful day would you
like a New Testament sir thank you hi
ma’am good to see you would you like a New
Testament you are welcome Hi there how
are you doing isn’t this a wonderful
Repeat
Hi there how are you doing isn’t this a
wonderful day would you like a New Tes
tament sir thank you hi ma’am good to see
you would you like a New Testament you
are so welcome Hi there how are you doing
isn’t this a wonderful day would you
like a New Testament sir thank you hi
ma’am good to see you would you like a New
Testament you are welcome Hi there how
are you doing isn’t this a wonderful
Repeat
Hi there how are you doing isn’t this a
wonderful day would you like a New Tes
tament sir thank you hi ma’am good to see
you would you like a New Testament you
are so welcome Hi there how are you doing
isn’t this a wonderful day would you
like a New Testament sir thank you hi
ma’am good to see you would you like a New
Testament you are welcome Hi there how
are you doing isn’t this a wonderful
Exeunt omnes, pursued by a bore waving a little green book about
A Subversive Priest
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Subversive
Lapsing into 1968-Speak
The television priest says “subversive”
While waxing (and polishing?) discursive
He says it often, at least thrice a week
mhall46184@aol.com
Subversive
Lapsing into 1968-Speak
The television priest says “subversive”
While waxing (and polishing?) discursive
He says it often, at least thrice a week
Triptych for a Dipstych
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
A Triptych for a Dipstych
Raul Castro Find Jesus
Raul admits that Jesus saves,
Says nothing of his victims’ graves
The Sleep of the Innocent
Raul sleeps peacefully in his bed
Dreaming of his thousands dead
Raul Reflects
Thousands to their executions driven -
“It’s all right, ‘cause I am shriven.”
mhall46184@aol.com
A Triptych for a Dipstych
Raul Castro Find Jesus
Raul admits that Jesus saves,
Says nothing of his victims’ graves
The Sleep of the Innocent
Raul sleeps peacefully in his bed
Dreaming of his thousands dead
Raul Reflects
Thousands to their executions driven -
“It’s all right, ‘cause I am shriven.”
Pilgrimage Along the A1
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Pilgrimage Along The A1
For all the de Beauvilles, Beauvilles,
Bevilles, Bevills, and Bevils
From Peterborough drops a road
Across the Fens, into the past
(Where wary wraiths still wear the woad);
It comes to Chesterton at last
And we will walk along that track,
Or hop a bus, perhaps; you know
How hard it is to sling a pack
When one is sixty-old, and slow
That mapped blue line across our land
Follows along a Roman way
Where Hereward the Wake made stand
In mists where secret islands lay
In Chesterton a Norman tower
Beside Saint Michael’s guards the fields;
Though clockless, still it counts slow hours
And centuries hidden long, and sealed
And there before a looted tomb,
Long bare of candles, flowers, and prayers,
We will in our poor Latin resume
Aves for old de Beauville’s cares
mhall46184@aol.com
Pilgrimage Along The A1
For all the de Beauvilles, Beauvilles,
Bevilles, Bevills, and Bevils
From Peterborough drops a road
Across the Fens, into the past
(Where wary wraiths still wear the woad);
It comes to Chesterton at last
And we will walk along that track,
Or hop a bus, perhaps; you know
How hard it is to sling a pack
When one is sixty-old, and slow
That mapped blue line across our land
Follows along a Roman way
Where Hereward the Wake made stand
In mists where secret islands lay
In Chesterton a Norman tower
Beside Saint Michael’s guards the fields;
Though clockless, still it counts slow hours
And centuries hidden long, and sealed
And there before a looted tomb,
Long bare of candles, flowers, and prayers,
We will in our poor Latin resume
Aves for old de Beauville’s cares
A Few Frivolous Poems
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
The Fall of Man
A Christian walking down the street -
A dog came by and tripped his feet
The man fell down; oh, gosh, it hurt!
Another man (his name was Bert)1
Said
“We don’t agree on what’s essential;
I, you see, am existential
I’ll call my friend; you’re in a fix -
You’ll need two walking agnostics!
(Thank you. Thank you very much.)
1Father Raph suggests that this passerby might have been Bertram Russell
Wu Who?
One misses the British Empire
And the jolly old Hapsburgs too
The Czars beneath an onion spire
And Chinese emperors named Wu
The Heart of the House
In the place of honor, a great flat screen -
No sacred image of Our Lady Queen
No crucifix, cross, or ikon Hellene
No painting of some calm pastoral scene -
No, only a glowing, pulsing flat screen
On which nothing worthy is ever seen
The Latest Pew Poll
Sometimes you just don’t know what you should
do -
So park that problem in the nearest pew
mhall46184@aol.com
The Fall of Man
A Christian walking down the street -
A dog came by and tripped his feet
The man fell down; oh, gosh, it hurt!
Another man (his name was Bert)1
Said
“We don’t agree on what’s essential;
I, you see, am existential
I’ll call my friend; you’re in a fix -
You’ll need two walking agnostics!
(Thank you. Thank you very much.)
1Father Raph suggests that this passerby might have been Bertram Russell
Wu Who?
One misses the British Empire
And the jolly old Hapsburgs too
The Czars beneath an onion spire
And Chinese emperors named Wu
The Heart of the House
In the place of honor, a great flat screen -
No sacred image of Our Lady Queen
No crucifix, cross, or ikon Hellene
No painting of some calm pastoral scene -
No, only a glowing, pulsing flat screen
On which nothing worthy is ever seen
The Latest Pew Poll
Sometimes you just don’t know what you should
do -
So park that problem in the nearest pew
Bill Kristol Disapproves of Baby Boomers
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Baby Boomers
For William Kristol Epiphanes
Children of privilege getting up at four
To herd milk cows in from ice-sleeted woods
And then at dawn running late down the lane
To catch the rattling school bus into town
Self-indulgent baby-boomers sentenced
To the gasping heat of Indo-China
Along the banks of the Song Vam Co Tay
Not optimistic about seeing the dawn
A useless, indolent generation
Working double shifts at the shop by night
Chaucer, geometry, history by day
Coffee, noodles, used textbooks, the laundromat
Those insolent, unfocused layabouts
On pilgrimage along the American road
Jobs, families, house-notes, voting, and taxes
But judged and found wanting by The Divine Bill
mhall46184@aol.com
Baby Boomers
For William Kristol Epiphanes
Children of privilege getting up at four
To herd milk cows in from ice-sleeted woods
And then at dawn running late down the lane
To catch the rattling school bus into town
Self-indulgent baby-boomers sentenced
To the gasping heat of Indo-China
Along the banks of the Song Vam Co Tay
Not optimistic about seeing the dawn
A useless, indolent generation
Working double shifts at the shop by night
Chaucer, geometry, history by day
Coffee, noodles, used textbooks, the laundromat
Those insolent, unfocused layabouts
On pilgrimage along the American road
Jobs, families, house-notes, voting, and taxes
But judged and found wanting by The Divine Bill
The Indictment of Beowulf
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
The Indictment of Beowulf
A sad, sensitive, suffering soul,
Dwelling deeply down in a wetland,
Poisoned by perfidious polluters,
And cunning cultural imperialism,
Vacated vehement vegetarianism,
And dined on Danes, delicious Danes,
Who foolishly failed in their fatuous folly
To understand Grendel's special needs.
His hunger for delectable Danes in truth
A plaintive plea for pity, for grief counseling,
Because the demonic, devilish Danes
Forced Grendel to devour them
Through their ethnocentric failure to
inculturate,
Vividly vivifying Grendel's victimhood.
The harrowing of Herot, high Herot,
Was, as all the world knows,
The fault of the Danes themselves.
'Til that warrior came, that weaponed wonder,
That greatest of Geats, brave Beowulf,
Who slew misunderstood Grendel,
Grendel, who had a bad childhood,
His existential angst
Crying out among the fluorescent-lit cinder-
blocks,
Who just happened to be standing on dead
bodies,
Dead Danish bodies, waiting for his friend,
His friend, um, Bob, um, to
To drive him to his therapy.
Or maybe to his Bible class.
And the Danes cheered that brave Beowulf,
Deliverer of that people, leader of men,
Until office-hungry courtiers,
Perfumed, protected, precious princes
Loaded fantasies into their photo programs,
And promoted a perfidious pogrom,
Sacrificing truth, once again
Worshipping the old, old gods.
Then Hrothgar, as commanded by the Court,
The wonderful, worshipful Witan Court
Arrested Beowulf, woeful warrior,
For the worst of war crimes -- winning a war.
"Hwaet!" wailed the wise ones, wrapped in robes,
Judicial robes spun from the blood of workers.
"We accuse you of insensitivity, of Grendel-cide,
Of profiling, heterosexuality, and smoking
cigarettes.
We accuse you, in the name of The People,
The MePhone-passive, obedient People,
Who think as they are told, vote as they are told,
Dress as they are told, riot as they are told,
The People, in whose Name we fatten ourselves --
We accuse you, Beowulf, of thinking for yourself.
We accuse you of courage, of caring, of
compassion.
We accuse you of killing an innocent creature
Who was just expressing his or her existential
angst,
Undoubtedly abused by a meddlesome priest,
And of killing a mother, a caring mother,
An artist, an acclaimed artist
And an activist (we forget just for what)
Whose scraps of human skin on the walls of her
den
Won a 1985 Honorable Mention
In the Cutting-Edge Arts Show and Peace Rally.
"Did you try therapy, tender-touch therapy?
Did you offer Grendel, that forest-forager,
Your human hand in in humane humility?"
Then Beowulf, greatest of the Geats,
Deliverer of Danes, destroyer of dung-hearts,
Stood, and, almost unlocking words from his
pancreas...
Was told by his court-appointed attorneys
That his salvation reposed in silence.
"It was all Beowulf's fault!" cried The People,
Forgetting the slaughter of their friends.
"Punish Beowulf for lying about
Monsters of mad destruction!
Let us abase ourselves
For offending Grendel,
Cultural, colorful Grendel, and let us dialogue
And inculturate. Like, y'know."
And so beaten Beowulf, now baddest of the bad,
Retired to his country home
To spend more time with his family
to write his memoirs,
While his men, winning warriors all,
Rowed back to Geatland, and were ignored
By the MePhone People,
Who praised whomever in this hour’s Daily Mail
And had no more use for truth, justice,
Or the Geat way. They tore down statues
Of their warriors, and put up peace plazas,
And lapsed into languor, Lethe-ish languor.
And other Grendels, grinning Grendels,
Waited and watched.
mhall46184@aol.com
The Indictment of Beowulf
A sad, sensitive, suffering soul,
Dwelling deeply down in a wetland,
Poisoned by perfidious polluters,
And cunning cultural imperialism,
Vacated vehement vegetarianism,
And dined on Danes, delicious Danes,
Who foolishly failed in their fatuous folly
To understand Grendel's special needs.
His hunger for delectable Danes in truth
A plaintive plea for pity, for grief counseling,
Because the demonic, devilish Danes
Forced Grendel to devour them
Through their ethnocentric failure to
inculturate,
Vividly vivifying Grendel's victimhood.
The harrowing of Herot, high Herot,
Was, as all the world knows,
The fault of the Danes themselves.
'Til that warrior came, that weaponed wonder,
That greatest of Geats, brave Beowulf,
Who slew misunderstood Grendel,
Grendel, who had a bad childhood,
His existential angst
Crying out among the fluorescent-lit cinder-
blocks,
Who just happened to be standing on dead
bodies,
Dead Danish bodies, waiting for his friend,
His friend, um, Bob, um, to
To drive him to his therapy.
Or maybe to his Bible class.
And the Danes cheered that brave Beowulf,
Deliverer of that people, leader of men,
Until office-hungry courtiers,
Perfumed, protected, precious princes
Loaded fantasies into their photo programs,
And promoted a perfidious pogrom,
Sacrificing truth, once again
Worshipping the old, old gods.
Then Hrothgar, as commanded by the Court,
The wonderful, worshipful Witan Court
Arrested Beowulf, woeful warrior,
For the worst of war crimes -- winning a war.
"Hwaet!" wailed the wise ones, wrapped in robes,
Judicial robes spun from the blood of workers.
"We accuse you of insensitivity, of Grendel-cide,
Of profiling, heterosexuality, and smoking
cigarettes.
We accuse you, in the name of The People,
The MePhone-passive, obedient People,
Who think as they are told, vote as they are told,
Dress as they are told, riot as they are told,
The People, in whose Name we fatten ourselves --
We accuse you, Beowulf, of thinking for yourself.
We accuse you of courage, of caring, of
compassion.
We accuse you of killing an innocent creature
Who was just expressing his or her existential
angst,
Undoubtedly abused by a meddlesome priest,
And of killing a mother, a caring mother,
An artist, an acclaimed artist
And an activist (we forget just for what)
Whose scraps of human skin on the walls of her
den
Won a 1985 Honorable Mention
In the Cutting-Edge Arts Show and Peace Rally.
"Did you try therapy, tender-touch therapy?
Did you offer Grendel, that forest-forager,
Your human hand in in humane humility?"
Then Beowulf, greatest of the Geats,
Deliverer of Danes, destroyer of dung-hearts,
Stood, and, almost unlocking words from his
pancreas...
Was told by his court-appointed attorneys
That his salvation reposed in silence.
"It was all Beowulf's fault!" cried The People,
Forgetting the slaughter of their friends.
"Punish Beowulf for lying about
Monsters of mad destruction!
Let us abase ourselves
For offending Grendel,
Cultural, colorful Grendel, and let us dialogue
And inculturate. Like, y'know."
And so beaten Beowulf, now baddest of the bad,
Retired to his country home
To spend more time with his family
to write his memoirs,
While his men, winning warriors all,
Rowed back to Geatland, and were ignored
By the MePhone People,
Who praised whomever in this hour’s Daily Mail
And had no more use for truth, justice,
Or the Geat way. They tore down statues
Of their warriors, and put up peace plazas,
And lapsed into languor, Lethe-ish languor.
And other Grendels, grinning Grendels,
Waited and watched.
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