Unintelligible Screaming - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Unintelligible Screaming

Young conscripts posted to a midnight bridge
They lean against an armored car and smoke
Wondering what idiot had the bright idea
Of a pointless exercise in guarding a road

Young conscripts posted to a midnight bridge
The first few drivers turn around as ordered
But then there are more, and these leave their cars
And gather ‘round, and yell and push and grab

“Get the lieutenant on the line…no…wait…”

Young conscripts dead upon a sunlit bridge

Must There be a Balloon Drop? - column

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Must There be a Balloon Drop?

Why do political conventions always feature balloon drops as the final spectacle of spectacles? Such is appropriate for a child’s birthday party, not as part of the sober, serious governance of a republic.

Okay, that’s just grumpiness. For a good, restorative laugh nothing beats watching superannuated Republicans in funny hats and cartoon sunglasses trying to dance to the groovy pseudo-sixties rhythms of the convention rent-a-band

Don’t mock them, Democrats; you’re next.

+ + +

The Atlantic, nee’ The Atlantic Monthly, features a useful article on “book deserts” in the USA, and as its thesis asks this relevant question regarding the intellectual and ethical development of pre-school children: How do you become literate when there are no available resources?”

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/07/where-books-are-nonexistent/491282/?utm_source=feed

God bless those who through taxes, contributions, and volunteer service make public libraries free to all, especially to little children.

+ + +

One of the new robot cars is reported to have caused a fatal crash. What a marvel of technology modern science has given us: a car driven by a computer that can text, apply makeup, take selfies, look for those PokeyThings, light a cigarette, get drunk, scream obscenities at other computers in other cars, change the radio, ignore stop signs, and drive twice the speed limit.

+ + +

Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today,
I wish, I wish he'd go away...

From “Antigonish,” Williams Hughes Mearns

Americans, ever submissive to little plastic boxes that light up and make noises, have taken to searching for little beings that aren’t there. The little Orwellian telescreens layer beings that don’t exist upon physical realities that do – including parks, streets, cemeteries, churches, and gang headquarters. The purpose of this new game (“Human – fetch!”) is – well, let’s be real: the initial free access is a loss-leader for selling the player stuff. There’s nothing wrong with that, but the game also allows a certain internet company-which-must-not-be-named to access the player’s machine, including contents and emails.

Let’s blame the police. And President Bush. And fluoride.

Old people are already complaining: “By cracky, in my day we played Angry Buzzards on a Mac II, and we were glad to get it.”

+ + +

There were probably no PokeyThings or pretty balloons in the streets of Constantinople and Angora last week. Confused and leaderless young conscripts were sent out – by whom? - in what was later said to be an attempt at a coup. Unwilling to shoot their fellow citizens, these isolated lads were quickly overwhelmed by hordes of healthy and better-organized young men who were not unwilling to humiliate, beat, and murder the young soldiers who had been ordered into an impossible situation and not told why. And as someone asked later, where did all those thousands and thousands of brand-new Turkish flags come from in the middle of the night?

How good it would be if children could go to bed with their mothers reading Goodnight, Moon to them, all without any fear of gunfire, rockets, mortars, rioters, tanks, and murders just outside the window.

-30-

Gently Used - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Gently Used

Gently used clothing, and gently used shoes
Gently used school supplies for charity
Gently used cast-offs – there’s nothing to lose
Gently used humans? Not a priority

The Summer of 2016 - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Summer of 2016


1969

In Viet-Nam you looked around
For even a stem of grass astray
You watched the water; you watched the ground
Upriver along the Vam Co Tay

1970

Safe home, the earth did not explode
There was no need to pause your breath
And hope they hadn’t mined the road
With stakes or bombs of gutting death

No cause to bring your piece to bear
On creeping shadows among the trees
Or a curious movement over there
Upon the sweet, leaf-singing breeze

2016

Except that now there is – O dreams
Lost and desolate among death-screams

Alexandria in a Seabag - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Alexandria in a Seabag

The barracks is a university
So too the march, the camp, the line for chow
McKuen shares our ham and lima beans
John Steinbeck helps with cleaning guns and gear

(You’re not supposed to call your rifle a gun)

The Muses Nine are usually given a miss
But not Max Brand or Herman Wouk
Cowboys and hobbits and hippie poets
And a suspicious Russian or two

Tattered paperbacks jammed in our pockets:
All the world is our university

What the EZine Reviewer Learned - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

What the EZine Reviewer Learned

What I learned about the best cliché that
You’ve never heard of Mother Theresa
The Dalai Lama and me I went there
To teach them, but they taught me, how to love

And to embrace the possibilities
A heart like a butterfly with issues
Of marginalized voices crying in unison
While raising awareness of awareness

Because the paramecium was here first
Weaving a windsong tapestry of hope

Saint Peter ad Vincula - column

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Saint Peter ad Vincula

1st chess player, moving a pawn: “En passant.”
2nd chess player: “Just down the hallway, second door to your left.”

+ + +

Can a chess player have a checkered past?

+ + +

What is an ozone action day? What is ozone? Is it good? Bad? Decades ago the boys and girls with thick glasses and white lab coats were telling us that there was a hole in the ozone layer, said hole being a bad thing because ozone is a good thing. Now the hole in the ozone layer is closing up, and that’s a good thing because ozone is a good thing. But an ozone day is bad thing, and we are told we should not mow our yards or drive our cars lest there be more ozone.

Huh?

I wish in either case that the roving peddlers of make-it-up-as-you-go-along ideologies and “paving materials left over from a job” who infest my driveway would carpool, not so much for the ozone but so that I could conveniently shoo them off as a discount package.

+ + +

In a week in which there has been little cause for optimism about the human character there was this good moment: in Weatherford, Texas, six prisoners broke out of a courthouse holding cell, not for personal freedom but for the good of their fellow man.

The jailer, who had been chatting amiably with his charges, suffered a heart attack and fell to the floor unconscious. There was no one around except the prisoners, all of them shackled, who then broke down the door to get to the man and do what they could. None of them knew how to give CPR but they knew how to make a racket, and did.

Deputies and bailiffs in the courtroom upstairs responded to what they thought was a fight, and took charge of the scene. The medics got the jailer’s heart jump-started, and apparently he will be okay. The county installed a better door to the holding cells.

For a few minutes the six prisoners were in control of everything in the courthouse basement. They were in control of the keys, and could have bolted. They were also in control of a seventh man’s life and of his firearm. They could have made several kinds of bad decisions, but apparently it never occurred to them to do so; they made only the right decision.

You probably couldn’t trust these lads with your car or unattended lawn equipment, but you can certainly trust them with your life, and what is more important than that?

Saint Peter in Chains, pray for them and for all prisoners, and for all of us.

-30-

Make the Holy Roman Empire Great Again©™ - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Make the Holy Roman Empire Great Again©™

Are all of us but Guelphs and Ghibellines
And sub-divisions of sub-divisions
G.I.N.O.s and Pre-Fab-Cabin Ghibellines,
The Stir-Clockwise Guelphs repudiating

The True-Blue Red Stir-Counter-Clockwise Guelphs
Make Fiorenza Great Again lawn signs
In dubious battle against Venetian
Leave the Holy Roman Empire Empire ball caps

For a grand tomb that will never be built
Are all of us but Guelphs and Ghibellines?

Come on in; the Water's Slime - column, 3 July 2016

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Come on in; the Water’s Slime!

Rio de Janeiro, that palmy and balmy romantic playground of old movies, is not ready for the summer Olympics. The beaches and water are polluted, venues are incomplete and in some cases construction seems to be halted, athletes arriving early for practice and acclimation have been robbed, gang warfare makes Rio one of the world’s most dangerous cities, some athletes are refusing to travel to Rio for fear of mosquito-borne illnesses, and now body parts are washing ashore.

Lean and tan and tall and tender, parts of the girl from Ipanema go bobbing…

Well done, the International Olympic Committee.

+ + +

Locally, the Houston Chronicle reports at least four cases of flesh-eating bacteria attributed to Gulf waters. The public relations mouthpieces for various communities and businesses whose economies depend on beach tourism assure us that of the millions of people who splash about in the waters off Texas only a tiny percentage have been infected.

And that’s true. Still…

We can expect PETA to file a court injunction against the beach towns and other local authorities who are working to mitigate the bacterial threat, claiming loudly that “The germs were here first!”

Perhaps Brigitte Bardot will appear for a photo-op cuddling a tranquilized baby amoeba.

And then there’s the alligator.

And the airplane making an emergency landing on the beach.

What would Annette and Frankie do?

+ + +

Exhibiting all the sophistication and secrecy of a Get Smart plot a presidential candidate’s husband and the attorney general investigating the presidential candidate just sort of “bumped into each other” in the attorney general’s (ours) private plane while cold-faced men in dark classes kept the free people of this Republic in their place. Keep moving, comrades. This, the free people are told, was all so that the presidential candidate’s husband and the attorney general investigating the presidential candidate could talk about their travels, their grandchildren, and, oh, general topics.

+ + +

On the other side of the metaphorical tarmac another presidential candidate generated a twooter (or something like that) employing the outline of a Star of David with a background of money in order to accuse the first presidential candidate of financial corruption.

When I was old enough to begin to understand, my father, who was one of the first Americans into Ohrduf, part of the Dachau complex, show me some cast-off Army photographs he had kept from that day, and while I don’t remember his exact words, they were to the effect that we must never forget.

Looks like someone forgot.

Of our charity we might speculate that the candidate, a product of expensive private schools, never knew.

But, hey, he’s mastered S.T.E.M., so it’s all okay.

-30-

Summer Apples - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Summer Apples

A summer apple is like love, you know
Expected, hoped for, but still a surprise
A mystery, an undeserved joy
As happy as a dewy morning in June

But June then drifts away into July
And sometimes love does too, falling away
Into a summer dream that might have been
And lost forever in the mists of fall

And yet the taste remains, a sweet remembrance -
A summer apple is like love, you know

80 by 8 and 90 by 9 - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com


80 by 8 and 90 by 9

Yeah, 80 by 8 and90 by 9
Humidity set to steam or stir-fry
Accompanied by the mosquitoes’ whine -
God preserve us from the month of July!

Ad Orientem - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com


Ad Orientem

Let us now face the sun, and not ourselves
And so forswear the mirrored loop of Us
That zeitgeist chasing its ossified Now
Into a spiral of dark nothingness

A club that looks endlessly at itself
Sharing dismal, universal handshakes1
Can never see the Incarnation dawn
As joyful, laughing Light upon the world

His star is in the east, and too His sun -
Let us worship the Lord, and not ourselves

1Yes, pinched from John Milton

Dependence Day - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Dependence Day

There cannot be an independence day
Nor would the faithful want to be exiled:
The frailties of one’s body are proof
That every breath is a dependent gift

From that infinite Word, restless with love
Who holds a worried soul, with all its flaws,
A pearl still in formation in its cell,
More dear to Him than all the universe

From love, the love of God in Whom we live
One prays there is no independence day

Inactive Shooters - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Inactive Shooters

If only there were inactive shooters
And inactive shooting situations
Cafes where nothing much is going on
Forgetting to learn where the exits are

Terrorists too lazy to lock ‘n’ load
Bigots rising up for another beer
The Ku Klux Klan taking a laundry day
Mad bombers running barefoot through the flowers

A parking ticket making the front page
If only there were inactive shooters

Live Your Dreams - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Live Your Dreams

A girl, all pimples, pits, and piercings pores
Over a lottery ticket bouquet
Fast-fading flowers unpetaled one by one
Desperately loved-me-not with a lucky penny

Accented by the lite beer light, she sighs,
And counts her change for another pack of smokes
The night clerk wishes she would go away
And so does she, but somewhere is nowhere

They lied to her on graduation night

And

She never found her cap, tossed up so high

The Courthouse Square - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Courthouse Square

A few varas west this would be a plaza
But here it is, a county courthouse square
Where trustys in their horizontal stripes
Take their commands in English (of a sort)

To mow the lawns without regard for race
Creed, or color around the monument
To the glorious Confederate dead
No one here ever heard of de Vaca

Or why bahia grass is called bahia -
A few varas west and this would be a plaza

More Education for the 21st Century - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com


More Education for the 21st Century

At each desk sits an attentive MePhone
With a parasite tentacled to its back

The Bean Free Cemetery - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Bean Free Cemetery

For James Bateman, of Happy Memory

Across the tracks and then away from town
And just beyond the sewage treatment plant,
And though unseen by more prosperous temporals
Set nicely in a shaded Eden-glade

No storied sepulchers are raised up here -
These graves are crowned with tears, and little tin labels
And numbered on a grid filed carefully
In a fireproof vault at the funeral home

But here the Gates of Jerusalem open:
Across the tracks and then away from town

The Evil of Banality - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com


The Evil of Banality

In patriotic Chinese baseball caps
And 40/50 poly-cotton tees
All Real Americans assert theirselfs
In camouflage or in red, white, and blue

Dogmatic assertions punctuated
With contextual allusions to John Wayne
A Russian AK tattooed across their chests
And sucking up that p*ss-thin Belgian beer

They’d-uh-whupped them A-raabs if they’d been there
In patriotic Chinese baseball caps

23 June 2016 - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

23 June 2016

Will England truly be England again
Free of those inky blots old Gaunt contemned
And harsh Napoleonic edicts signed
In the name of a housepet Belgian king?

Yes.

Dover’s white cliffs stand sentinel in the sun
The Saxon horse still prances on chalk hills
Free men follow the plough and work the mills
And merry Sherwood still boasts a tree or two

Now to the pub to celebrate this day -
With a pint and a song and a kiss from Joan!

Poetry is Not - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Poetry is Not

Poetry is not

The unacknowledged legislation1 of

Anything

Poetry is a forest footfall soft
Not heard, but sensed somehow, in autumn’s leaves

1Shelley

Come Laughing Home at Twilight - Beaumont Hamel, 1916

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Come Laughing Home at Twilight

Beaumont-Hamel, 1916

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

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

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

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

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

Smoking is Bad for Your Feet - column

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Smoking is Bad for Your Feet

In childhood our parents often cautioned us against any sort of forceful leader with “So if he told you to jump off a cliff would you do it?”

They didn’t mention the hot coals, though.

According to ABC and other news sources a fellow in Dallas talked thousands of people into giving him money for a motivational exercise in walking barefoot on hot coals.

Cold coals simply don’t enjoy the cachet of hot coals.

Casualties so far are given as dozens.

Welcome to the Trump University Class of 2016. Or maybe the United States Congress.

One might as well say that telling people to put their fingers into lamp sockets is an exercise in team-building.

First of all, walking across hot coals, shod or not, is illogical. Why would anyone do that?

Second, if someone does want to walk across hot coals, why doesn’t he dump his Fourth of July barbecue over after the wienies and burgers have been cooked and then walk on his own coals? Then he can burn his feet down to the quality of his brain for only the price of a bag of charcoal.

The Motivator reigned over a flock of crystals ‘n’ essential oils believers during a three-day sheep-shearing called “Unleash the Power Within.” One supposes that after three days there was nothing left to be unleashed from the credit cards of the faithful.

Just what power was on a leash was not made clear, except for the power to walk on hot coals, and, yeah, like that’s going to make the individual or the world better. And does a power owner walk into a pet store and ask for a leash for his power? Is there a leash for walking on hot coals and a different one for walking across the street against the light?

The Motivator’s program avers that walking (he says “storm”) across hot coals will help the…um…participant "overcome the unconscious fears that are holding you back." The illogic is that fear of being burned is a conscious fear, not an unconscious one, and is not symbolic of anything except the possession of the survival skills expected of a six-year-old.

Some folks don’t need to own hot coals without a background check and lessons with a certified instructor.

All others need to be on a no-fry list.

On his site The Motivator presents as a handsome man with a fine set of teeth, the usual chin-fuzz, and the now-requisite pimple-on-a-wire microphone, and adored by thousands of cheering followers. He says stuff. He has more money than you. He must be right. Obey him.

To paraphrase the old song, here’s your hot coal.

-30-

Calendars, Alligators, and Hipsters - column

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Calendars, Alligators, and Hipsters

How curious that according to the mechanistic Gregorian calendar the 21st of June is the beginning of summer, while in a wiser folk tradition it is midsummer, as in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In the far north, where the sun doesn’t complete disappear on St. John’s Day, people stay up all night – or, rather, day – to party.

Far south of the equator the sun is mostly absent, and in New South Wales folks shiver in the cold rain and short days of summer.

The sun is as far north as it goes, and now begins its voyage south. Those who have occasion to drive roads laid out on an east-west axis can note the changes as well as those ancients who built Stonehenge for the same purpose.

A ten-year-old boy probably knows best – summer begins on the Monday after school lets out, and ends in August when classes resume. Summer is bare feet and a cane fishing pole, and later watching the afternoon clouds build up to thunderstorms while herding the cows home to the barn for the evening milking. The other seasons are but not-summer, limited to the horizon of a board at the front of a classroom, once black or green for chalk and now likely to be instructive flashes of colors beamed from a gadget programmed by the Texas Legislature and its British master Pearson Publishing.

+ + +

The small boy fishing with a cane pole is increasingly endangered by the false but legislated ideology that millions of large, carnivorous reptiles constitute an endangered species and so must be protected, while children may with ecological approval be sacrificed to horrible deaths in the claws and teeth of dinosaurs privileged by Molochian laws.

+ + +

Rome has elected the first-ever woman mayor, Virginia Raggi, an attorney who wants to eliminate corruption and Mafia influence in the city. Now it is Caesar’s husband who must be above suspicion.

+ + +

Last Sunday 65,000 Okinawans demanded that American Marines and sailors leave. Every American Marine and sailor agreed. On the same day China began measuring Okinawa and the rest of Japan for new curtains.

+ + +

The Irish national police, the Garda, have been instructed to conduct raids only during the work day out of consideration for the suspects. One hesitates to suggest that this courtesy is, well, a very English thing to do.

Would the ban include traffic stops after 5:00 P.M.?

+ + +

Adolf Hitler was a self-obsessed drug user, non-drinker, non-smoker, wannabe artist, socialist, and diet faddist who wrote a book all about himself and his feelings, shacked up with his squeeze, had his horoscope cast every day, and wore funny clothes and funny hair. Aren’t we pretty much talking about a hipster?

The Austrian government wants to tear down the apartment building in which Hitler was born lest crazy people make a shrine of it. Yes, but then they’ll make a shrine of the parking lot or fast-food restaurant that will replace it because no one can eliminate geographical co-ordinates.

Are there any alligators in Austria?

-30-

Watch List - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com


Watch List

Bulova, Caravelle, and Hamilton
Gaudy Rolex and sturdy Omega
Humble Timex and Comrade Citizen
Tag Heuer measuring Switzerland’s slopes

Caravelle, Movado, and Ingersoll
Longines, Wittnauer, Elgin, and Eberhard
A Dunhill pretending to be Big Ben
Elgin and Gerard-Perregaux (mais oui!)

Ticking the hours ‘til civilization
Tocks its escapement motionless at last

Summer solstice - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Summer Solstice

Apollo seems to pause his passages
His constant celestial orbitings
And gaze upon the north; he may not fly
Beyond his long-appointed limitings

Thus now he seems to stop awhile and rest
Above this earthly altar of repose
Until the bonfires of our good Saint John
Remind him to resume his pilgrimage

His solar voyage to December’s south -
Apollo seems to pause his passages

No-Fly List - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

No-Fly List

The ostrich cannot fly; the emu’s still
The penguin waddles on his icy hill
The kiwi stays in place, as does the rhea
As for the Campbell teal’s flight, no way-a

The auk and steamer duck are out of luck;
Extinct they are, and buried in the muck
The cassowary (always feathers, never hairy)
Can only envy its cousin, the canary

A flightless bird - like you, it seldom moves -
One hopes, comrade, your attitude improves

Icarus, Dude! - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Icarus, Dude!

Young Icarus worked late in his stable
Laying out feathers on an old table
A dreamer of dreams by olive oil light
This visionary with an idea of flight

All scorned his wax wings, but he wasn’t mute:
“Oh, no; I’ve got a golden parachute
I’m boxing outside the think, don’t you see:
Science for the fourth century B.C.!”

He showed them all, and flew to the sun
(His landing, alas, wasn’t much fun)

Safety Deposit Box - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Safety Deposit Box

A safety deposit box is but a grave
Of bits of paper connecting the dead
With bits of land sold long ago, and lost
In housing tracts and Wal-Mart parking lots

Pictures, medals, Army discharge papers
Clear title to cars and memories
Running-board picnic buffets at the creek
In a summer that will never come again

Oh, let it go and celebrate the Now:
A safety deposit box is but a grave

A Fog of Unknowing - 13 June 2016 - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

A Fog of Unknowing - 13 June 2016

If fifty lives were ended yesterday
How can anyone know that this is so
And how it came to pass, since those more equal
Cannot agree on how and why and who?

The glowing screens barely contain the shrieks
Of shrill denunciations flung about
Like ragged posters in polluted winds
Torn fragments of the most delicious lies

There were clouds today, but the rain passed by
Though fifty lives were ended yesterday

Not Listening to The Voices - a three-dot column

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Not Listening to The Voices

A famous American brand of acrid, yellow-tinted fizzy water containing a soupcon of alcohol is for a time re-naming itself with a patriotic Yankee-Doodle label. Nice, but the corporation that makes this stuff is a Belgian-Brazilian concern.

+ + +

And just try to find Independence Day decorations, including flags, not made in the peace-loving, granola-munching, gluten-free, Workers’ and Peasants’ Glorious Republic of China.

+ + +

Speaking of peace-loving peoples, how ‘bout that European love-fest going on in Marseilles, eh?

+ + +

An Oregon state judge ruled that a person may self-identify as “non-binary” instead of man or woman.

So much for the science of DNA.

The concept of non-binary is awkward. Imagine a couple of sailors of either sex granted a Cinderella liberty, with one suggesting “Hey, let’s go to the USO dance and see if we can meet some cute non-binaries.”

+ + +

A headline said that London has its first nude restaurant. Are there any restaurants that wear clothes?

+ + +

Robots are replacing more workers, which is why we might soon see R2D2and C3PO out by the dumpsters smoking cigarettes and muttering into their MePhones. The Borg robot will ask you if you want to pay with cash, credit, or your soul. You can tell the supervisor robot by its decades out-of-date shell and its cheesy painted-on moustache.

+ + +
Imagine a Santa Fe passenger train stopping at the faux-Spanish colonial depot Tucson, Arizona for a crew change and a mechanical check. A young man wearing a business suit and smoking a cigarette gets off the train to make a pay-telephone call and to buy a newspaper and a souvenir postcard. He wears a wristwatch and carries a fountain pen and a pocket knife.

He is thankful to be home from the war, and no longer needs to carry a weapon or worry about bombs, bullets, and ambushes.

Such things once were.

-30-

Discharge Papers - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Discharge Papers

Now trudging up the creaky courthouse steps
He ran and skipped up forty years ago
One step at a time, now, clinging to the rail
So insolently scorned in his callow youth

The papers deposited long ago
Are needful to the VA office gnomes
Who probably will say no anyway
As they always have. Their slogan should read

“To ignore him who shall have borne the battle” -
He trudges up the creaky courthouse steps

The Romance of Foreign Postage Computerized Printouts - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Romance of Foreign Postage Computerized Printouts

Where are the postage stamps of yesteryear;
Aye, where are they…? (Wait, that gag’s been taken)
What are “UPS MAIL INNOVATIONS?”
It’s only a computer stickered printout

One wants a postage stamp, with a portrait
Of a king, a president, or a loon
Swimming alongside a senator’s yacht
With a halo of “Two Pence” over its head

One tires of the latest computer gear –
Where are the postage stamps of yesteryear?

The Gardener - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Gardener

Unnoticed are the gardeners and the gods
Mary Magdalene mistook one for the Other
Thinking the Other had been thrown away
Cast out like the first of all gardeners

Beyond the rivers, into a desert
But this Man taken for a gardener -
He really was a gardener, and is,
And the Master Gardener works quietly

To tend forever the gardens of our souls -
Unnoticed is the Gardener who is God

A Saturday Morning Wall-Eyed Hissy-Fit - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

A Saturday Morning Wall-Eyed Hissy-Fit

On a rainy Saturday morning, two cats
For reasons known to them alone, round off
(For cats, being more circular than angled,
Can never square off) – a catty cacophony

Of yowling, growling, prissing hissy-fits
In mutual feline outrage, their tails
Twisting like scorpions, or furry snakes
Threatening death – or at least disapproval

Much to the delight of the back porch dogs:
On a rainy Saturday morning, two cats

Beneath the Dome - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Beneath the Dome

A coven of wispy wraiths squatting on the floor
Of a ruined temple built by better men
Importuning yet another false god
To be as empty as they, and ooze forth

To destroy in screams and blood the innocent
They riffle little books they cannot read
And grunt again five bitter syllables
That shut away their hearts from life and love

They summon the pale thing that they worship
And to their shrieking horror
it will come

Dozing in a Lawn Chair - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Dozing in a Lawn Chair

Cicadas sing the evening heat and damp
Amid the sinister sweet scents of night
Unseen and mysterious musicians
Following the script of a tropical murder

The smooth assassin enters from the left
His dinner jacket, white, immaculate
Hangs perfectly from his muscular frame
As his steady hands reach for a cigarette

In a paperback forgotten on the lawn -
Cicadas sing the evening heat and damp

No Way, Shape, or Bombshell, Actually - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

No Way, Shape, or Bombshell, Actually

No way, shape, and form literally dropped
A bombshell to the next level, with no
Ifs, ands, or buts defining a generation
While living in the shadows of America

Where the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree
Going viral in trending a hashtag
Through user-generated content link-bait
Engaging the meme traffic actually

Cloudwising virtual reality
Thinking outside the box form shape way no

(And let the people say “icon”)

The Invention of the Pencil - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Invention of the Pencil

We lay our scene in a monastic scriptorium in Cumbria

“Somehow I can’t get my pencil to work.”
“Now have you first tried to re-sharpen it?”
“No, I was in fear of breaking something.”
“Okay, move over, and I’ll show you how.

Take now your pen knife…”
“But this is a pencil.”
“We’re still at work on the pencil knife, true,
But a penknife for now will work as well.
Oh, isn’t technology wonderful!”

(cut, cut, cut)

“Just chant for P.T. if you have any more…”
“Wait a moment; just show me that again.”

A Picture Post-Card of Notre-Dame de Amiens at Dawn - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

A Picture Post-Card of Notre-Dame de Amiens at Dawn

For Doris and Anthony

I.

Merci, mes amis, for the picture-card
Of Notre-Dame de Amiens at Dawn
Of church and river greeting the new day
Over the loving heart of La Belle France

Near the Palais de Justice a streetlamp glows,
And across the Riviere des Clairons
A café opens for early risers
Workers and joggers, scholars, and poets too

While Matins and Lauds sung from the cathedral
Anticipate the sun and early Mass

II.

But otherwise the city is at rest
Thousands of years of civilization
Do not leap out of bed like children on
A holiday; they wait for the proper hour

To rise, to offer up their ancient prayers
So that Amiens may be blessed in her work
Of loving service to humanity
Her chosen duty from the long ago

This vision is France, first daughter of the Church,
God’s lamp upon the altar of the world

America's Best - a memorial

Mack Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

America’s Best

Your son, my lord, has paid a soldier’s debt:
He only lived but till he was a man

- Macbeth V.vii

Last week ten of our best young men and women died.

Their deaths were horrible; there is no avoiding that painful reality. But these ten did not die from drug overdoses, falling from resort hotel windows while drunk, committing crimes, blowing suicide vests among innocents, taking selfies on the edges of cliffs, in gang fights, fighting in Christmas shopping sales, or comatose in the middle of the street. They died in military training, preparing themselves for the defense of this nation. They died doing instead of talking, because in the Marines and in the Army there is no concept of hangin’ out, feeling sorry for yourself, or smoking loser-weed behind the dumpsters.

Families and friends will grieve for their military sons and daughters and comrades at their funerals and forever. They will never need to apologize for them. The families’ hearts are at half-mast but their heads are high, and the rest of us should in some way work to be just a little bit worthy of the memory of these ten and all who serve.

Those who died in service last week weren’t the common golly gee whiz supposedly super-secret commandos who write books and sue each other and make big noises; one was a Marine fighter pilot, and the other nine were soldiers in the Army, the real Army, the regular Army, the old Army, the kind of men and women who charge into a rathole to drag a nazi, a commie, or a jihadi out by the scruff of his neck and make him holler “calf rope!” without popping off about how wonderful they are.

They are good men and women, our defenders, far better than those of us who sleep in soft beds at night deserve:

Captain Jeff Kuss, USMC, 32, a Blue Angels pilot

Staff Sgt. Miguel Angel Colonvazquez, 38, Brooklyn, New York

Sp. Christine Faith Armstrong, 27, Twentynine Palms, California

Sp. Yingming Sun, 25, Monterey Park, California

Pfc. Brandon Austin Banner, 22, Milton, Florida

Pfc. Zachery Nathaniel Fuller, 23, Palmetto, Florida

Pvt. Isaac Lee Deleon, 19, San Angelo, Texas

Pvt. Eddy Raelaurin Gates, 20, Dunn, North Carolina

Pvt. Tysheena Lynette James, 21, Jersey City, New Jersey

West Point Cadet Mitchell Alexander Winey, 21, Valparaiso, Indiana.


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

-30-

Poetry - All Dressed up with Some Place to Go - two poems

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Poetry – Dressed up with Some Place to Go

A poem need not be so overdressed
That it embarrasses free-verse poseurs
Awash in self-absorbed, self-pitying tears
The sound of one first-person pronoun clapping

But still they should be instructed

That a poem is not about the poet
It is about the reader who has turned
His attention and the writer’s pages
To the existential questions of life

And so is properly dressed for its work



Poetry – Slouched in a Chambray Shirt and Old Khakis

Dude! Slack me some slack here - my weekend words
Deserve to wear the untied sneakers of life
Kicked back, kicked up, with a cosmic crossword
To puzzle out with coffee and iambic-free buttered toast of indeterminate
scansion and crumbs

Since scribblers should be comforted

For a poem is about the poet too
Turning his thoughts and the reader’s pages
To those same questions, but with half-and-half
Sloshed into both the coffee and one’s art

And so is properly dressed for the porch

Saint Boniface - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Saint Boniface

Saint Boniface chopped down a pagan oak
The followers of Thor resented the bloke
So some years after that witching tree fell
Those pagans chopped down that Englishman as well!

Transfiguration - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Transfiguration

A mysterious Light shines from Mount Tabor
On the holy Feast near the harvesting
And if a man chooses not see it
He builds a tabernacle in the dark

A stable not picked out by any star
An altar without any sacrifice
A pilgrim road that twists back on itself
A hymn in praise of hollow sentiment

If a man sees it not, he is not changed -
A mysterious Light shines from Mount Tabor

The Dragon Defense - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Dragon Defense

A dragon-errant went a-questing for
A cruel, fire-breathing knight who terrorized
The huts and hovels of poor villagers
Who humbly toiled and tilled the sacred earth

And yearly in October sacrificed
A maiden innocent in every way
To slake the dark and intemperate lusts
Of the violent and satanic knight

And thus at last the story is made right:
Take not the word of a fire-breathing knight!

Date of Departure Unknown - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com


Date of Departure Unknown

Green leaves are like the sails of fairy ships
Set fully by their sailors in the spring
But moored in harbor all the summer months
Awaiting orders to cast off and launch

We pass the waiting time in sorting out
The fancies and the dreams we want to pack
Into the hold of our wind-singing ship
And poring over charts yet to be drawn

‘Til Ceres and Demeter bid us go -
Green leaves are like the sails of fairy ships

The Latest Hundred-Year Flood - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Latest Hundred-Year Flood

Another hundred-year flood this wet week
With south winds gusting and slinging the rain
Wildly off the roofs, hour after dark hour
Sheeting the lawns into green fairy ponds

The woods are black upon a silvered floor
And lightning sends folks inside for the day
To their recurring coffee-corner clashes
About whose rain gauge is more accurate

While the rain sings of ditches, gutters, and drains -
Another hundred-year flooding this week

Linear Life Looping - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Linear Life Looping

How do they put those spirals into blank books
Threading wires along blank pages of dreams
Not yet realized or even written or drawn
Restrained as soon as penned into being

Story Line A formed up against Sketch B
And Schematic C made to dress right, dress
Addresses and telephone numbers lined
In exile on the last little page or two

Life spinning forward and up as little loops -
How do they put those spirals into blank books?

Decolonizing English Literature - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Decolonizing English Literature

Fluid active shooter situation
Surreal ongoing high-powered rifle
Show of force first responders swat teams
Abundance of caution fluid active

Shooter situation surreal ongoing
High-powered rifle show of force first
Responders swat teams abundance of
Caution fluid active shooter situation

Surreal ongoing high-powered rifle
Show of force first responders swat teams

Eligible for an Update - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Eligible for an Update

Good comrades once were forced to stand in lines
To register submission to the cause
And beg for life while starving in the cold
Applauding all the while their misery

Good comrades still fall in obediently
To register submission to the ‘phone
And fight for selfie-space – oooh, look at me!
Applauding bars of connectivity

The irony of queueing before false shrines -
Good comrades once were forced to stand in lines

Heelspur's Victory - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Heelspur’s Victory

“And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s Day.”

-Henry V

The great man seduces a ragged host
Of aged motorcycle commandos,
Appropriating their victories and sorrows
Channeling old Hollywood movie wars

But

How many of his Harley-mounted host
Fear-vomited in sour Cambodian mud
Or bled their youth out in sour desert dust
DD214 everyone? Anyone?

Don’t challenge keyboard commandos with the truth -
Who knows what anything is anymore?

Everybody's a Warrior - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Everybody’s a Warrior

Weekend warrior
Prayer warrior
Eco warrior
Road warrior
Shopping warrior
Coupon warrior
Spiritual warrior
Bleacher warrior
Nutrition warrior
Social justice warrior
Fitness warrior
Happy warrior
Yoga warrior
Warrior, warrior, warrior!

Given all these wars, how good it is to be

A draft-dodger

Groovin' to the Hootenanny of Time - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com


Groovin’ to the Hootenanny of Time

The years sneak by, as we were told

But still –

How strange it is to be this old!

Nobody Apologized - column

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Nobody Apologized

From reading the popular press the naïve among us might infer that in August of 1945 the world was in a happy state of peace and repose, and that President Truman, with nothing much else to do, ordered an atomic bomb to be dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. For no reason. No reason at all.

Last week the President of the United States visited Japan, and was expected to apologize. Although he did say a few fatuous things about some nebulous concept called evolving morality (what, really, does that mean?), he did not apologize for the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Better individuals than I have studied everything dispassionately and concluded that dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was bad. Others, also better than I, studied the same primary sources and concluded that dropping the bombs ended the war more quickly than was otherwise possible, and in doing so saved the lives of millions of Japanese as well as free-world allies. So, I don’t know. I am thankful never to have been any part of that.

Last week the prime minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, also did not apologize. He did not apologize for Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, French Indo-China, China, Dutch East Indies, Hong Kong, Borneo, Burma, Nanjing, Malaya, New Guinea, Singapore, Korea, Manchuria, Balalae Island, Andaman Islands, hundreds of death camps, forced labor, starvation, torture, the murder of civilian prisoners, the murder of military prisoners, Unit 731 and numerous other units for experimenting on live prisoners, dissection of living American prisoners at Kyushu Imperial University (but, hey, how ‘bout their football team, eh?), the Three Alls Policy, poison gas attacks, biological attacks, Alexandra Hospital massacre, Banka Island massacre, Balikpapan massacre, Laha Airfield massacre, Manila massacre, Pantingan River massacre, Sandankan massacre, Parit Sulong massacre, Suaid massacres and cannibalism, SS Behar massacre, I-8 massacres, Akikaze massacre, Attu aid station massacre, Sook Ching massacre, Sulug Island massacre, Tol Plantation massacre, Banka Island massacre, Nauru Island massacre, Wake Island massacre, Manila massacre, Bataan Death March, Burma Railway, hell ships, Panjiayu, Sandakan Death Marches, Changteh chemical weapon attack, Kaimingye germ weapons attack, and on and on and on.

There is not a dull word in the survivors’ accounts.

The same old complaint about “Why don’t they teach this in schools?” just won’t do - when the Soviets launched the first Sputnik in 1957 the concept of a broad education for all was jettisoned by the will of the people in favor of technical training. It’s mostly Chinese-made gadgets now. But you can pull up on the computer (usually made in China by a Japanese-owned company) any of the death-camp narratives, put your kid in front of it, and tell him “Boy, you read this before you complain about what a rough life you have.” You could start with the Alexandra Hospital massacre (http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/60/a8515460.shtml).

One purpose of studying history – one of those purportedly fuzzy liberal arts so despised now - is that a young man or woman might question why the government his parents and elders elected should expect him to die next year protecting Japan from China.

Yes, we have all fallen short of the glory of God. All. And that suggests humility for all.

-30-

Spring Thunderstorm II - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Spring Thunderstorm II

“I am well rebuked.” – St. Thomas More in A Man for all Seasons

An underpass is no good in a storm
You cuddle up with a half-pint of plonk
Hiding it from those who are meaner than you
But they will probably find it anyway

The young have hopes that someday this will end
Humiliation, degradation, fear
The old have only memories of hope
And die in dreams of happiness long ago

Since if you wrap yourself in an underpass
You still have nothing but cold rain and death

Spring Thunderstorm I - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Spring Thunderstorm I

A house is like a blanket; in a storm
You cuddle up with cozy walls, and pull
The roof over your head against the rain
As lightning flashes through the window pane

And thunder is a bully, all full of himself
He tries to interrupt you as you read
Or sew or listen to the radio -
How tiresome the rain, lightning, thunder, and wind!

But if you wrap the house around yourself
It’s like your favorite blanket, safe and warm

The First Supper - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The First Supper

For all who wait tables

Who sets the table for the Passover Seder
In a rented room? Hoping that the guests
Won’t pinch too many salt cellars or knives
Or stay too late while the poor waiters yawn

And hope for a generous gratuity
For having to work so late on a holiday
Muttering sourly among themselves
“Why is this night longer than other nights?”

And will they want the bill split twelve ways?
Who sets the table for the Passover Seder?

Is Your Chakra Unbalanced? - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Is Your Chakra Unbalanced?

You haven’t adjusted your chakra yet?
You’d better make an appointment with the vet!

You Can't Squeeze a Turnip out of Blood - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

You Can’t Squeeze a Turnip Out of Blood

A ship deserting a sinking rat
An envelope pushing anything else
A committee thinking inside a box
Or being reinvented by a wheel

A woman picking up the jaw she dropped
And shelves flying onto the product
A minor motion picture, unpacked jam
Something about a girl with bathroom eyes

The more change things the change more things
For the hamster turning though the wheel is dead

Estate Sale - Books $2 - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Estate Sale – Books $2

Saint Joseph Sunday missals on a shelf
Four small ribboned missals, one for each child
“Introibo ad altare Dei
Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam.”

Fifty years later, the same little books
Still in a row on the same little shelf
Waiting for the little hands that never again
Will reach for them while Dad honks the truck horn

And Mom fusses with the slow-cooker stew
On a Sunday that God remembers with joy

Sitting on the Porch - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

When I was a boy I didn’t understand why in the evenings old people liked to sit on the porch with a pipe or a cup of coffee, doing nothing:

Sitting on the Porch

Sitting on the porch, not thinking at all
About the rain dripping off the eaves
The old bird-dog dog dozing on the planks
The yapping puppy annoying the cats

Sharpening a pocketknife, not thinking at all
About boyhood, the war, marriage, children
That last letter from far away, the funeral
And has the coffee finished percolating

“Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord…” -
Sitting on the porch, not thinking at all

An Extended Family - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

An Extended Family

A recluse is always uncomfortable
Billeted in a crowded and noisy house
Roommates who simply will not get along
Arguing about the cheesecake in the reefer

And whose turn is it to wash the dishes
That radio is entirely too loud
Didn’t anyone pay the electric bill
And will you ever learn to wipe your feet

A big old House upon its Seven Hills -
A recluse is always uncomfortable

Undeclared War is Good Business - Invest Your Daughter - column

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhll46184@aol.com
22 May 2016

Undeclared War is Good Business – Invest Your Daughter

Mr. Donald Trump’s butler is said to have said ill-mannered things about the President. I don’t understand this – my butler never speaks inappropriately.

+ + +

Prime Minister Trudeau got into an almost Long Branch Saloon tussle on the floor in Parliament last week, strong-arming one MP, elbowing another, and pushing others aside, like the new sheriff coming in to clean up Wild West Ottawa. A helpful video explains the dust-up employing not cowboy metaphors but sports terminology: http://www.macleans.ca/news/unsportsmanlike-politics-kerry-fraser-refs-the-thrilla-on-the-hilla/

+ + +

Nicholas Clairmont, who writes for The Atlantic, not only opines that the un-American practice of conscription should be restored but that it should include women. Really. Nicholas Clairmont is a grown man who wants your daughter or granddaughter to be captured by press gangs, shipped out, and shot for the greater glory of Nicholas Clairmont. What a mensch, eh.

+ + +

Freedom from the Freedom from Religion Foundation – now that is a freedom much to be desired.

+ + +

Australians are experimenting with robot ranchers. These machines wander about to monitor crops and cattle while sending computer analysis to (for the present) humans. One imagines the robotic remake of Red River. Or perhaps C3PO as Matt Dillon, not in Gunsmoke but in Vague Chirpy Phaser Noises.

+ + +

Candidates for elected office are chosen by popular vote. The exception is this year’s presidential election in which the voter is expected to vote for the least unpopular. Not even prom king and queen are elected on such a goofy basis.

+ + +

The President, without bothering with Congress, has decided to sell (translation – you’ll pay) weapons to The Glorious Working People’s Peace-Loving Communist Republic of Viet-Nam and to send ships to protect them from the increasingly aggressive Glorious Working People’s Peace-Loving Republic of China. Sounds like 1963 all over again.

Viet-Nam doesn’t like us.

China doesn’t like us.

The Philippine government doesn’t like us.

Japan doesn’t like us.

They just use us against each other.

Maybe the USA could take the Switzerland option and stay out of the coming war in Asia. We could send gung-ho Nicholas Clairmont instead.

-30-

If the Universe is Mechanical - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

If the Universe is Mechanical

If the universe is mechanical
Then it is badly out of tune and time
Clattering erratically around our souls
A clockwork badly needing winding up

Whoever held the key has lost it, though
And a bent thought won’t make it go again
As it tock-ticks in the back of a shop
Of cosmic pawns there accumulating dust

From stars remaindered from a holiday sale -
If the universe is mechanical

Pick up Your Brass - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Pick up Your Brass

The rubrics of the firing range are clear
And most importantly, pick up your brass -
In learning to shoot, tidiness is most dear
And empty casings chap the sergeant’s…soul

Duck and Cover - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Duck and Cover

The duck and cover drill was never frightening
Not like arithmetic, or the teacher’s stare
For if the rockets fell, no more homework
Or switch-inducing notes to Mom and Dad

“Mack is a smart boy but needs to work harder.”
We crouched beside our desks and giggled
About old Kruschev bombing Kirbyville
Any American could whip three Commies

We had John Wayne and President Eisenhower

And so

The duck and cover drill was never frightening

Night Prayer - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Night Prayer

Tobacco smoke rises from the bowl of a pipe
Like incense or thoughts, or dreams drifting up
Into the gathering dusk, the compline hour
A liturgy at the end of the day

That celebration of needful solitude
With the philosopher’s tools of light and shade
The evening lawn, an open book unread
A dog perhaps, in somnolent repose

Surely thinking how wonderful you are -
Tranquility rises from the bowl of a pipe

About this Life Thing... - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

About this Life Thing…

“What we mean to establish is a school for the Lord’s service”

- St. Benedict

For Cody

Your final exams are not final, you know
They’re only markings on a calendar
A cluster of large numbers and small grids
Shapelets that have no meaning in themselves

For Shakespeare will push rhyme beyond all time
And Euclid charts his pi without a date
Caesar does not count days before he writes
“Omnis Gallia in partes tres divisa est”

Because

Schedules are useful things, but life itself
Is a joyful study without an end

Following a Path Worn by Pilgrims - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Following a Path Worn by Pilgrims

Doctor Zhivago, p. 75

No one is first along a pilgrim road
Other footsteps began our journey for us -
To Bethlehem, Emmaus, Damascus –
Wherever the heart is centered in hope

Someone has stepped on this cactus before
And sat on that rock to pull out the spines
And muttered about the indignity
Of a holy man pestered with stickers

But humility is part of the search

Because

No one is last along a pilgrim road

A House Without a Dog - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

A House without a Dog

Socks will not disappear
Shoes will not be chewed
Christmas ornaments will not be eaten
The floor will remain clean

But socks do not look at you with love
Shoes don’t cuddle
Christmas ornaments don’t kiss your nose
And floors don’t chase their tails

A Candidacy of Unreferenced Pronouns - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

A Candidacy of Unreferenced Pronouns

“At least he tells it like it is” – hear, now,
That unsourced “it” which centers every fear
And every diffuse anger and frustration
Capitalized by a plastic baseball cap

And prefaced by that poor excuse – “at least”
Which really is the least that can be said
(This side of throwing in an “actually”) -
To plead the so-sad sibilant “at least”

Is an evasive slither that must end
As Milton’s dismal, universal hiss

Event Staff - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Event Staff

What if we are never the stars of our lives
Or even the audience for our show
But always staff, dutiful event staff
Important, but not as much as we think

Moving chairs for others to sit upon
Selling tickets at the parish-hall door
Spaghetti supper for the Something-Youth
And their yearly convention in Houston

And finding Mrs. Grumpy’s misplaced purse –
Event staff – we are our own autographs

Chakras in the Underground - column

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Chakras in the Underground

About that restroom edict – why are people constantly surprised at having the government for which they voted?

+ + +

The democratically-elected leaders of this nation are obsessed with telling other nations what to do and how to live, but, unsurprisingly, can’t even run a short railroad.

The D.C. subway is reported to be a mess, with poor design, inadequate maintenance, fatal fires and smoke, breakdowns, delays, and questionable accounting practices. When a subway train breaks down – or begins burning – you’re trapped in a tunnel and can’t get out and walk away.

Subways are illogical. Humans are by nature surface-dwellers, not burrowers. Given that D.C. reposes uneasily upon a swamp, tunnels there are not a good idea. And even in stable rock, packing humans, machinery, fuel, and electricity into a sealed environment is a patently unsafe practice.

But perhaps the maintenance funding was routed via Iraq, Afghanistan, and the China Seas.

+ + +

The most realistic greeting card slogan for graduation might be: Congratulations! Now you’re just another unemployed American.”

+ + +

Bernie Sanders has the endorsement of the witch community in Oregon:

…she prepared to lead them in the “amplification of positive energy of Bernie Sanders and the progressive movement.”

They gathered around a small rug with four candles, flowers and an imitation ballot box adorned with Bernie stickers. Each person was handed a replica ballot and took turns declaring what they would like to see changed…

Then they circled the candles together, chanting “be the Bern, be the Bern, be the Bern…”

When they were finished, they passed around cherries and ginger lemonade. (http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-sanders-prayer-circle-20160514-snap-story.html)

At the once-Catholic University of Notre Dame this event might be confused with Sunday morning Mass.

+ + +

A current shopping-mall theology advises us that we are composed of chakras and must spend time and money balancing them. Well, hey, we mustn’t go around with unbalanced chakras.

Do you get the idea that valley-speakers who are obsessed with their chakras and reikis and gluten-free auras are the sort of people who take selfies?

+ + +

The chakras seem to have been unbalanced at a political convention in Nevada last Saturday. Things got so rough that delegate Aunt Pittypat pleaded for her smelling salts, a cup of organic rose-hip tea, Yoo-Toob time, and a lawyer.

Purse-swinging was averted only by some bored-looking deputies standing in front of the dais and asking the attendees to leave. They said “please.” And the attendees, raising their me-phones in a princess-power salute, left.

Still, that the long-obedient proletariat finally refused to be good comrades and obey the program imposed by The Party gives one hope for democracy.

-30-

The Eternal Complaint of the Elderly - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.

The Eternal Complaint of the Elderly

Old men don’t seem to recognize the world
Its shifting cultural expectations,
Unstable tectonics in music and art
The vaporous now in the confident young

Confusion and speed, meanings without words
Words without meanings, opaque cues and codes
Mutual unintended inattention
And the sense of being invisible

Old man, the world doesn’t even see you -
And it’s all probably better that way

Goodcomradechant and Goodcomradewear - two poems

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Goodcomradechant

“Hey, Hey! Ho, Ho!
(Insert this week’s Orwellian Goldstein figure without any regard for meter)
Has got to go!”



Goodcomradewear

Good comrades uniformed in baggy knee-pants
And hoodies adorned with bloody old Che
Designer haircuts to enhance the chance
Of viraling on the gossipnet today

Because the Dragon Never Forgets - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Because the Dragon Never Forgets

St. George, who fights our daily dragons for us
With golden prayers, and silver sword aloft -
Shall we neglect him on his festal day
Dismissing him as a Perseus myth?

Oh, no – for any man is more a myth
Than any saint, whose glory is in God
And not in his calendar reputation
Or in the vaporous memories of men

Even unremembered, he is our shield -
St. George, who fights our daily dragons for us

The DNA of Creation - a Variant - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The DNA of Creation – a Variant

Creation’s DNA appears to us
As blood and water flowing from a wound
Down, down into the dust all serpentine
Where sins lie hidden, rotting in the dark

Creation’s DNA appears to us
As wine and water mingled in a cup
Seldom spilling onto the carpeting
In an air-conditioned sanctuary

But nevertheless real for all of that:
Creation’s DNA is given to us

The DNA of Creation - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The DNA of Creation

The DNA of Creation appears
As blood and water flowing from a wound,
Flowing down flesh and wood, into the ground
Blood-sodden through repeated sacrifice

Scapehumans executed by the state
Some for murder, some for thinking bad thoughts
Others for love, for living happily
For helping tend and guard the Garden of life

But this one is far different, for in Him
The DNA of Creation appears

Oh, the Places You Won't Go! - column

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Oh, the Places You Won’t Go!

A wrecker driver is reported – it was on the InterGossip, so it must be true, right? - to have abandoned a woman whose car was broken down. The reason given was that he didn’t approve of the political bumper sticker on the car.

He also credited a higher power for his decision: "Something came over me, I think the Lord came to me, and he just said get in the truck and leave” (http://abc11.com/news/tow-truck-driver-refuses-to-tow-bernie-sanders-supporter/1324539/).

But let’s be fair – the cad didn’t say which lord.

You know, not even John Wayne was John Wayne – as a perfectly healthy young man he somehow managed to dodge his military obligation, just like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, and never served in other ways, such as a volunteer firefighter, auxiliary police officer, or in some other civil defense capacity. Even so, a man is obligated, in spite of all ideologies and fashions and bumper stickers, to be protective of women and children. If the story is true, the wrecker driver left a woman alone in a disabled car on a rural highway.

That man’s momma needs to have a talk with him. He should listen to her - and to a different Lord.

+ + +

Every election cycle famous people threaten to deprive the Republic of their special wonderfulness and go to Canada if Candidate X is elected. Alas that they never go.

But then there is this: has Canada invited them? Threatening to emigrate to another nation as an expression of hissy-fit-ness is like a child threatening to go live with the neighbors if he doesn’t get a Wham-O Nuclear Missile Playset for Christmas.

Canada, unlike some nations, has border controls. If Canada doesn’t want you, you don’t go there. When you approach the border a nice man or woman chit-chats with you while scanning your passport, and if the computer reports any crimes, including even a DWI from forty years ago (http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/information/inadmissibility/conviction.asp), the border services will nicely advise you that you are permitted to view Niagara Falls from the American side.

Our border agency, sadly, allowed Canadian Justin Bieber in. Well, maybe J.B. doesn’t like the new prime minister. Or he could be a refugee.

+ + +

Imagine how much happier the world would be if there were no graduation speakers other than the valedictorian and salutatorian. And they would be denied their diplomas if they talked for more than five minutes.

During graduation speeches all guests should be given a pencil and a checklist of clichés, maybe as a Bingo card:

“Education is the key that unlocks…”

“We are the future.”

“My Webster’s defines ‘commencement’ as…”

“This is not the end; this is the beginning.”

“Follow your dreams.”

“Follow your passion.”

“Make a difference.”

“As we stand on the threshold of…”

“As we go forth…”

“The torch has been passed…”

“If you can imagine it, you can achieve it…”

“Education is not a destination but a journey.”

“We’ve been through some amazing times together.”


Whoever checks off the most cliches’ wins a copy of Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

-30-

Harriet, Meet Andy; Andy, Meet Harriet - column

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aoll.com

Harriet, Meet Andy; Andy, Meet Harriet

This nation will again feature a woman on its currency, a woman who, as many have observed, was a gun-owning Republican. Harriet Tubman was a Deborah, a Joan of Arc, leading her people – and, by extension, all people - to freedom, and eminently worthy of national honor.

However, given the popular cultures most people choose to follow, one wonders if this week there will be an intergossip meme demanding that Prince replace Harriet Tubman on the twenty-dollar-bill even before she is pictured there. Last month the demand might have been for David Bowie, and before him Michael Jackson, and before him Elvis Presley.

The popularity of the eponymous Broadway musical is said to have saved Hamilton’s wiggie image on the ten, reflecting the democracy of the box office cash flow. What could be more American? So, hey, The Khardassians on the fiver, anyone? Hanna Montana twerkin’ to the Disney oldies?

Old Hickory had a long run on the twenty, though my First Nations cousins have never had any more reason to honor him than they do George Custer. A century hence a fashionable crowd will chant that Harriet Tubman was not open to multi-sex restrooms, or perhaps was too human species-ist, and she will be replaced by someone else, or maybe by a porpoise.

Civilization seems to be pretty much an Oxymandias thing – we build up nations and set up statues to ourselves and our values, and within a century our constructs are as irrelevant as a statue of Cecil Rhodes in a city park in Harare. Jackson Square in New Orleans may within a decade be renamed Place de la Good Comrades, and the gilded equestrienne statue of St. Joan of Arc by the Mississippi River might be pulled down in favor of automated figures of Michael Strahan and Kelly Ripa giving each other dirty looks. Fame and reputation are as fleeting as smoke from the riverboats.

Many nations place their current leaders on their money. North Korean banknotes have a picture of Little Tubby and a tiny sound machine that sings “Ding, Dong, the East is Red,” while Russia’s have a picture of Vladimir Putin, shirtless, wrestling a polar bear.

No, not really.

The Canadian dollar coin features a portrait of the Queen on one side and a loon – meaning the waterfowl, not the previous premier of Newfoundland – on the other, which seems suspiciously levelling.

Canadian banknotes again offer the Queen on the front but on the back a series of stern Canadian statesmen, most of whom seem to look like Benjamin Disraeli on a bad starched-collar day. If Canada ever becomes a republic they could replace the Queen on their currency with a populist Air Canada cabin attendant democratically snarling “No, we don’t have any coffee! We ran out back at Row 30! Eh!”

One does not imagine George Washington being replaced on our dollar with a FEMA functionary, or maybe one of those octopus-tentacled guys who fondles you at the airport. We continue to be honored by heroes on our currency. Harriet Tubman wanted freedom for all, not campus safe spaces, and took a pistol with her on her raids to free the oppressed. She would not have wept and wrung her hands upon seeing “Trump 2016” chalked on a sidewalk, nor would she have seen a therapist about any feelings of inadequacy.

I don’t know that she or Andy Jackson ever played the guitar, though.

-30-

“Gentlemen! You Can’t Fight in Here – This is the Institute of Peace!” - Column

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

“Gentlemen! You Can’t Fight in Here – This is the Institute of Peace!”

Daniel Berrigan has died, which will mean little to most people under fifty, who never heard of him and so didn’t know he was alive. Fr. Berrigan was a fashionable 1960s the-church-of-what’s-happen’-now priest who became famous for being against things. And in many of those things, including conscription and the undeclared war in Viet-Nam, he was right. Conscription is antithetical to the concept of a free nation, and Section 8 of Article 1 of the Constitution clearly states that only Congress is empowered to declare war. So is it fair, then, to wonder at Fr. Berrigan’s motives?

St. Thomas More wisely reminds us that we do not have a window to look into another man’s soul. Even so, Fr. Berrigan often seemed to be more anti-American than pro-justice, and appears to have ignored the deaths and sufferings of his fellow human beings under the various Communist regimes. Thousands of priests and millions of lay Christians died before Communist firing squads, on Communist scaffolds, and in Communist death camps, and one wonders if Father Berrigan, busy with his teach-ins and protests and all the other look-at-me-nesses of the 1960s, sympathized or was even aware.

+ + +

Folks living in rural Newfoundland had better read about Father Berrigan while they can. The provincial government is closing 54 of 95 public libraries in that island, and adding another 10% provincial tax on books. Books are already taxed at 5% by the federal government, so now15% of the price of a book will be in taxes. This is part of a scheme called The Harmonized Sales Tax. It doesn’t seem especially harmonious.

The closing of libraries and setting a punitive tax on books are in a province where approximately 30% of the residents never finished high school. It almost seems that the government of Newfoundland does not want literacy among its subjects, um, citizens. If people start reading and writing, they might start thinking for themselves.

Beyond that, rural libraries also serve as community centers where local meetings can be held, information exchanged, and notices posted. With the closing of 54 libraries, 54 communities, who have already lost their schools and their post offices, will continue to erode, losing their histories and cultures, and becoming little more than road signs.

One commentator defending the library closings said that people could just as easily access books via the intergossip.

That’s true for only a few. Newfoundland has never been a land of milk and honey, except for the factors who controlled the fishing industry and more recently the oil. The province is one of the poorest in Canada, and the internet is both slow and expensive. Many people make a visit to the library a part of their infrequent shopping trips to town so they access to the wifi as well as books. Now the unemployed, who cannot afford the ‘net, will lose two significant contacts with the outside world.

+ + +

Without access to the intergossip, how can people in Newfoundland learn that Warren Buffet, an 85-year-old America gazillionaire, credits his long life to drinking five cans of Coca-Cola every day and eating a diet rich in fudge and peanut brittle?

+ + +

A certain famous retail chain is said to be considering using robot employees. Perhaps the idea is that the robots will be able to hide from customers even more efficiently than its human employees do.

+ + +

The Reverend Al Sharpton avers that elements of the recent White House Journalists’ Dinner were in “poor taste.” And you know, who is more authoritative in matters of taste?

+ + +

After the correspondents’ dinner a couple of correspondents got into a fight at an MSNBC party at the U.S. Institute of peace. A fight. At the U. S. Institute of Peace.

Oh, Stanley Kubrick, thou should’st be living at this hour!

-30-

Carnivores and Casualty Lists - column

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Carnivores and Casualty Lists

At a Florida zoo there was until last week a charming young zookeeper who billed herself as “The Tiger Whisperer.” She cared for the zoo’s tigers and gave presentations about them. Sometimes she painted her face like a tiger.

So cute.

So adorable.

So dead.

The charming young zookeeper forgot the prime directive – no matter how many Disney cartoons you’ve seen, to a carnivore you are nothing more than lunch.

+ + +

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders used campaign contributions to charter a big ol’ jet plane for himself and his family to fly to Rome where he gave a ten-minute presentation on socialism. He may or may not have met the Pope. Then he and his family flew back.

Could you and I score a deal like that? We could fly in a chartered jet to conferences all over the world to talk about poverty (“Another glass of champagne over here, please…) and global warming (“Keep the engines running; we won’t be in Rome overnight.”).

+ + +

According to BuzzFeed (whatever that is), Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s speaking fees top $200,000.

$200,000 for a speech. Do you think someone might want a return on that someday?

Several years ago I gave a speech to the local volunteer fire department. They gave me supper, which was far more than I deserved. To you and me, dear reader, firefighters are heroes; to presidential candidates they are only a category of potential voters.

+ + +


But let’s be fair: Donald Trump still wears something funny on top of his head and Ted Cruz is still channeling Pee Wee Herman.

+ + +

The death total so far at a music festival in Argentina is up to five. Should music festivals feature casualty lists?

+ + +

A friend in Louisiana was displaced by the flooding and was given refuge in a location where he had no access to the intergossip. I wrote him a letter. A real letter, with heading, inside address, salutation, body, complimentary close, and signature. Then I had to find a proper envelope and a postage stamp. The experience felt so Little House on the Prairie.

How sad that there are now no letters and, really, no photographs. When today’s twenty-somethings are old they will not be able to joy in rediscovering shoeboxes of forgotten letters and pictures – and, thus, joy in rediscovering their youth - for everything is but electrical ephemera on the intergossip, deleted when the machine’s little brain is full, or lost when the gadget is stolen or traded.

-30-

Hate-Chalk - weekly column

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Hate-Chalk

Georgia’s Emory University, 180 years old, is one of the world’s great schools. Art, music, languages, literatures, science, medicine, public service – Emory is justly proud of its graduates’ accomplishments in every area of intellectual and artistic endeavor.

Unfortunately, a political slogan recently written in chalk on the sidewalks at Emory have provided a thin excuse for the usual suspects to claim the usual Aunt Pittypat vapors and demand investigations, safe spaces, and all the other victimist impedimenta of the self-indulgent.

The blood-curdling message was “Trump 2016” chalked here and there, triumphalist Trumpist trumpetings which to some forty students constituted a hate crime just like, y’know, not enough Che Guevara pizza days, and shooting Bambi’s mother, and, like, y’know, stuff. The Society for the Perpetually Offended protested to the president, James W. Wagner, who cravenly submitted to their demands and promised criminal investigations and prosecutions.

One wonders if complaints about scrawls of “Feel the Bern 2016” would have resulted in sending in the sensitivity police to arrest people.

Does anyone really want to feel the Bern? Sounds a little felony-assault creepy.

The entire student body of Emory, and by extension all university students, have been scorned on glowing electronic screens (hardly the press anymore) all over the world for their hypersensitivity and their anti-freedom demands.

And yet, as a real Emory student noted, the would-be censors of freedom constitute only about .05 % of Emory students.

As Conor Friedersdorf, no Trump fan, notes in his excellent article “How Emory’s Student Activists Are Fueling Trumpism” (http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/a-letter-to-emory-please-stop-fueling-trumpism/475356/), there is no evidence that more than one Emory student chalked Trumpetry. Further, chalked sidewalk messages are a tradition at Emory as they are on many campuses. If this chalked message is suppressed and its writer punished for free speech, then it follows that all subsequent chalked messages would be monitored through direct observation and security cameras by the Emory administration and by the campus and local police.

Now that would be insensitive.

According to Mr. Friedersdorf, the reaction (no irony intended) of the Emory student body was to criticize and mock the protestors for their demand that free speech be restrained.

Ironically, those students supporting free speech feel compelled to do so through anonymous websites. One infers that the majority of Emory students, who are in favor of freedom of speech even for candidates and causes they dislike, must argue in favor of free speech anonymously for fear of retribution from other students and perhaps elements in the administration.

Chalk is a last medium for free expression since all email, both in universities and in what we may with a wry smile refer to as the real world, is monitored. A very small number of future Stasi or OGPU functionaries at Emory now want the chalk and the sidewalks observed by police and spy cameras.

Suppression of discourse has obtained for the last half-century in universities in Cuba and North Korea, and occasional government-approved entertainments featuring geriatric three-chord commandos cannot obscure this unhappy reality. At Emory University, the happy reality is that only .05% of students disapprove of the free exchange of ideas.

The focus in this matter should be living the First Amendment, and not stereotyping Emory students or any other group.

After all, not every adult in Connecticut beats up little children for Easter eggs:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3511343/Marauding-parents-Easter-Egg-hunt-rampage-control-adults-push-children-ground-steal-buckets-leave-one-four-year-old-bloody-chaotic-free-event.html


-30-

Much Assembly Required - weekly column

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Much Assembly Required

A member of the household purchased a leaf rake last week, which is a harmless enough object that doesn’t require registration or surrendering one’s credit card for a monthly fee. The label says “MADE IN USA,” and it must be true because manufacturers and distributors never tell lies. The handle is molded of that cream-colored goop that quickly warps into dysfunction.

The business end of the rake is plastic, which is good because when the old metal tines resigned from the business of raking leaves they were dragged out of retirement by the lawn mower and recycled as projectiles.

However, this purportedly made in the USA product was not finished. On the socket a sticker pointed to a hole in the socket and said “Install screw in handle socket hole.” The screw for the purpose was provided, but, really, isn’t the point of a manufactured product that it is manufactured?

Was there no one in the MADE IN USA factory who could drill a MADE IN USA hole and fit the MADE IN USA screw into MADE IN USA place?

One imagines buying a new car with a sticker on it that says “Install tires at the ends of the axles,” or a book with “Glue the pages together yourself.” Maybe grocery stores will offer to sell the customer a quart of milk as a cow and a bucket.

Anyone who has bought a vacuum cleaner well understands that the thesis is Much Assembly Required. To open the box containing THE AMAZING REVOLUTIONARY YOUR LIFE WILL NEVER BE THE SAME EL DORADO AMERICAN-DESIGNED CIMMARON FABRIQUE EN CHINE ROCKY MOUNTAIN HOMBRE DUST DEVOURER DACHSHUND CHASING L’TORNADO MONSTER XTREEM is to be presented with a garage-sale clutter of plastic odds and ends, envelopes containing various sizes of screws, bolts, nuts, washers, and curious metal thingies, a booklet of instructions in seven languages, and enough packaging filler to exhaust the week’s garbage quota.

Some stores offer to assemble the product for you, but for an extra fee. “Yes, sir, eggs, sausage, toast, and coffee. Now cooking, plates, and flatware will be extra. And for a quarter you can have a napkin.”

For Christmas the spouse-person gave me a new fountain pen with the name of a fine old American company on it. How sad that this was only a Chinese-made pen with the old name on it, of poor quality, and without an ink reservoir. Shabby. I suppose I shouldn’t mention the brand name, only that I was Cross about it.

In a sense we humans assemble ourselves all our lives through the adventures we choose for ourselves and sometimes by those adventures given to us, whether or not we want them. We may choose to practice archery or welding or hiking or plumbing, but then find that we must also practice ill health or unemployment or loss or suffering. As our parents taught us, we sometimes aren’t given choices in life, but we can always choose how we respond to those challenges. We needn’t make shabby choices.

One does regret, however, responding to the challenge of assembling that vacuum cleaner with some shabby choices of language.

-30-

Christos Voskrese! (Second Attempt)

 

 

 

 

 

(For Tod)

The world is unusually quiet this dawn

With fading stars withdrawing in good grace

And drowsy, dreaming sunflowers, dewy-drooped,

Their golden crowns all motionless and still,

Stand patiently in their ordered garden rows,

Almost as if they wait for lazy bees

To wake and work, and so begin the day.

A solitary swallow sweeps the sky;

An early finch proclaims his leafy seat

While Old Kashtanka limps around the yard

Snuffling the boundaries on her morning patrol.

Then wide-yawning Mikhail, happily barefoot,

A lump of bread for nibbling in one hand,

A birch switch swishing menace in the other

Appears, and whistles up his father’s cows:

“Hey!  Alina, and Antonina! Up!

Up, up, Diana and Dominika!

You, too, Varvara and Valentina!

Pashka is here, and dawn, and spring, and life!”

And they are not reluctant then to rise

From sweet and grassy beds, with udders full,

Cow-gossip-lowing to the dairy barn.

Anastasia lights the ikon lamp

And crosses herself as her mother taught.

She’ll brew the tea, the strong black wake-up tea,

And think about that naughty, handsome Yuri

Who winked at her during the Liturgy

On the holiest midnight of the year.

O pray that watchful Father did not see!

Breakfast will be merry, an echo-feast

Of last night’s eggs, pysanky, sausage, kulich.

And Mother will pack Babushka’s basket,

Because only a mother can do that right

When Father Vasily arrived last night

In a limping Lada haloed in smoke,

The men put out their cigarettes and helped

With every precious vestment, cope, and chain,

For old Saint Basil’s has not its own priest,

Not since the Czar, and Seraphim-Diveyevo

From time to time, for weddings, holy days,

Funerals, supplies the needs of the parish,

Often with Father Vasily (whose mother

Begins most conversations with “My son,

The priest.…”), much to the amusement of all.

Voices fell, temperatures fell, darkness fell

And stars hovered low over the silent fields,

Dark larches, parking lots, and tractor sheds.

Inside the lightless church the priest began

The ancient prayers of desolate emptiness

To which the faithful whispered in reply,

Unworthy mourners at the Garden tomb,

Spiraling deeper and deeper in grief

Until that Word, by Saint Mary Magdalene

Revealed, with candles, hymns, and midnight bells

Spoke light and life to poor but hopeful souls.

The world is unusually quiet this dawn;

The sun is new-lamb warm upon creation,      

For Pascha gently rests upon the earth,

This holy Russia, whose martyrs and saints

Enlighten the nations through their witness of faith,

Mercy, blessings, penance, and prayer eternal

Now rising with a resurrection hymn,

And even needful chores are liturgies:

“Christos Voskrese  – Christ is risen indeed!”

And Old Kashtanka limps around the yard

Snuffling the boundaries on her morning patrol