The Moon Would Be Alone - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Moon Would Be Alone

The moon veils her presence with mist and damp
Mortals are not wanted in attendance
On such a night, when rain rises as fog
And the singing of frogs is a menacing chant

The apples of summer, the frosts of autumn
The barefoot maidens dancing on the lawns
Or old men smoking through philosophy:
All are forbidden on a night like this

Above the trees swings a half-hidden lamp -
The moon veils her presence with mist and damp

The Kettle Calling the Pot Chartreuse - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Kettle Calling the Pot Chartreuse

It was only the ice of the tipberg
When the upset was applecarted and
A sand was drawn in the line, though better
To curse the candle than dark a lightness

Or judge a cover by its book shelving
Off the flies toothed to the arm calling a
Posthole auger a posthole auger
Which was cracked at the dawn of down and hurts

In chaining a yank on the side bed of
The wrong partial wax of ball went pancreas down

Papa Ben - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Papa Ben

In that old man, that frail old man, the power
Of God is manifest in gentle love
His whispered prayers are louder than the roarings
Of wicked dragons loosed upon the world

His every beaded Ave is a hymn
Taught by an Angel and sung in the Presence
Of Our Lady Fair, our crown’ed Queen
In praise of God, and for the blessing of all

In solitude he lives for God, for us -
For in that man, that frail old man, Christ lives

War Chariots at Dawn (and a Three-Hole Paper Punch) - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

War Chariots at Dawn

(and a Three-Hole Paper Punch)

A friend was given a dream in which there was:

Deep darkness and an infinite silence
And then a soft, soft, subtle tingling sound
On the horizon impossible blue
And then more light and then a jingling sound
A line of chariots in silhouette
And led by Three in ancient robes, afoot
And all advanced upon my friend who was
Three in himself, but not capitalized:
A boy afraid, and a middle-aged man
And an old man too, to complete the three
The uncapitalized three, in the darkness
The men then urged the reluctant boy forward
For he was fearful in the face of the Three
And of the chariots on the horizon -
And there the dream ended, all unresolved

And I was given a dream in which there was:

The three-hole paper punch gone missing from
The office (of old and unrequited dreams1)

1a play on The Colony of Unrequited Dreams by Wayne Johnston

Zavalla, Texas - poem

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.co

Zavalla, Texas

In Zavalla, Texas, an old café

Beside the two-lane blacktop through the pines

Even the setting sun seems summer-tired

Aslant across an open page of Keats

The old men political over their coffee

Are silent suddenly, a surprise to all

The oldest shuffles over on his cane

And asks suspiciously “What are you?”

What are you? Each man asks that of himself

In Zavalla, or wherever he happens to be

Leafy Labor Day and Summer's Last Dragon - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

     Leafy Labor Day and Summer’s Last Dragon

In a happier world, children this day,
Barefoot children, running about in play
Would pause now at the end of summer time -
New school supplies from the old five-and-dime

Write those first smudgy lines with a new ink-pen
For tomorrow the new school year takes in
And count their cedar pencils, one, two, three
Then out again to the Robin Hood tree

A wooden sword, and a dragon to slay
In a happier world, children this day

     (Their Robin Hood wants to slay a dragon,
     and so a wrathful dragon slain shall be;
     Little children know best about these things)

There are no Millenials - column, 1 September 2016

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

There are no Millennials

After the Second World War the surviving soldiers, sailors, airmen, Coast Guard, and Marines came home to their wives and girlfriends, and then they, well, you know, resulting in a high birth rate. Years later someone said this event was a “baby boom.” Thus, children born to World War II veterans were labelled “baby boomers” and then simply “Boomers,” usually as a pejorative. Everything that was wrong in the world was said to be the fault of Boomers, who were insolent, indolent, ungrateful, self-indulgent, disrespectful, and un-American – even those 2,000,000 Boomers who fought in South Viet-Nam, North Viet-Nam, Cambodia, and Laos, and the 60,000 Boomers who were killed there because the young officers of 1941-1945 forgot their lessons as they grew grey and decided that the casual disposal of young lives in undeclared wars would be a good idea.

Some sources define a Boomer as anyone born between 1946 and 1964. Accepting this definition, a baby born at 11:59 P.M. on the 31st of December 1945 is not an evil Boomer, but one born at 12:01 A.M. on the 1st of January in 1946 is. A child born just before midnight on the 31st of December 1964 is a bad, bad Boomer, and a child born just after midnight on the 1st of January 1965 is a God-fearin’ John Wayne American standing straight and tall.

You remember John Wayne – he played Yankee Doodle American police officers, fire fighters, pilots, soldiers, and sailors in the moving pictures, but never did any of those things for real.

Why isn’t there a movie about the life of Dorie Miller?

As with all forms of stereotyping, condemning people because of their dates of birth is illogical.

The new targets of chronological prejudice are Millennials, who of course aren’t Millennials at all, but individual children of God who happened to have been born on…wait…when?

In 1987 William Strauss and Neil Howe (both Boomers) wrote academic research about the identity group whom they were the first to label as Millennials, and for them this centered on the children who would graduate from high school in the year 2000. Thus, by the original meaning, the only millennials are those who happened to have walked across a stage in May or June of 2000.

William Strauss also wrote academic research about Viet-Nam veterans, though he was never in Viet-Nam himself. How cool is that.

Millennials in their turn are said to be insolent, indolent, ungrateful, self-indulgent, disrespectful, and un-American – even those killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and every other Whosedumbideawasthisistan because the young officers of 1964-1970 forgot their lessons as they grew grey and allowed civilians who missed that whole Indo-China thing to bully them into the casual disposal of more young lives in more undeclared wars.

Resume’ enhancement and medals for the desk commandos, body-bags for the desert fighters.

All the futile arcana of Boomer / Gen X / Gen Y / Millennial is no more relevant than conversational Klingon. Let it go. As C. S. Lewis says in Prince Caspian, we are all sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, and that is glory enough and shame enough.

Anyway, when it comes to being narcissistic and self-centered, I stand alone. So to speak.

The background noise you hear comes from my fellow Boomers rattling their walkers, false teeth, and oxygen tanks in disapproval of Millennials – those lazy Millennials who are now our doctors, nurses, builders, police officers, oil drillers, fire fighters, pilots, chemists, engineers, attorneys, and on and on.

But I must go – there is a John Wayne movie on the telescreen. I can recite the dialogue in Rio Bravo from memory, but I don’t want to miss it anyway.

-30-

Thick and Thin Malarial Smears - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Thick and Thin Malarial Smears

An eye, a brain, a journey deep down a lens
Examining the secrets of the blood
Parasitic protozoans frozen in place
Artistic smudgings streaked across glass slides

Anopheles has wrought her evil work
Plasmodium slithers across the field
Unknown to the shivering nineteen-year-old
Who writhes in his government-issue cot

In the agonized mysteries of the dark
While rain, hot rain, rattles the freezing tent

Disaster Preparedness Checklist - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Disaster Preparedness Checklist

Double-A batteries, a map out of town
A tank full of gas, a mind full of plans
A flashlight, toilet paper, a radio
A can opener and cans to go, go, go

Leather gloves and duct tape, whistles
Waterproof matches, and match-proof water
Blankies and ponchos and a change of clothes
A medical kit and a pocket knife

But

No one ever lists a box of cigars,
And a Wodehouse for reading by lamplight

A Man Could Stand Up - column, 8.28.16

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

A Man Could Stand Up

“A man could stand up.”
-Ford Madox Ford

Long ago and far away there was an isolated little island named Ioto. There were about a thousand residents, one primary school, one house of worship, and one police officer. The islanders lived by fishing, farming, and sulphur mining. A government mail boat visited once a month, and a freighter less often. The children probably complained that nothing ever happened on Ioto, and the adults were probably happy that this was so.

Things change.

In English the island is known as Iwo Jima.

The story of the battle in early 1945 is well-known, but lately there has been some unnecessary controversy about the raising of the American flag on Mount Suribachi: just who raised the flag?

At least two flags were raised over Iwo Jima at different times on the fourth day of the battle, 23 February, and several pictures were taken on both occasions, with different Marines and Navy Corpsmen in the frame. The most famous picture was a hasty, unposed grab shot by civilian AP photographer Joe Rosenthal. All of this was under fire. For the first time in 4,000 years a Japanese Home Island had been invaded, and the Japanese defense was fierce. No one had the leisure to take names as if the event were a class photograph, and most of the young men in the pictures were later killed in the battle, which continued for another month.

Less than a year before, in June of 1944, some of those young Marines and Navy Corpsmen had indeed posed for pictures, their high school graduation pictures, and the contract photographer with his Speed Graphic made sure he got the names right: “Haines…now is that spelled H-a-y-n-e-s or H-a-i-n-e-s or H-a-n-e-s…?”

Within a year those same young men as Marines atop Mount Suribachi were surrounded by angry, frightened Japanese soldiers, sailors, and airmen defending their island, and the Japanese were not taking names.

On the sea, ships of the U.S. Navy and the Royal Navy (not often mentioned because American admirals, like French admirals, did not approve of the British, sometimes to the extent of forgetting who the real enemy was) shelled Japanese positions. Navy ground support aircraft made run after run. Most of the combatants on Iwo Jima were Marines, but there were also Navy Corpsmen, underwater demotion teams, chaplains, and Seabees, and Army airmen struggling to establish an air field, all of them constantly under fire, many of them killed, more of them wounded. Some of the landing craft never made the beach; they were destroyed by Japanese artillery, and their Navy crews and their Marines were killed without ever reaching the volcanic sand.

So who raised the flags over Iwo Jima?

We will probably never know the names of each man in the several pictures; the violence and confusion were that bad, and almost all those who survived 1945 have since been taken from us to join their comrades on another shore.

There should be no arguments in the matter of the flags, only quiet reflection. There should also be some kind remembrances for the Japanese defenders who, after all, were mostly teenaged conscripts misled by a bad government. That sort of thing has happened in many nations.

In a sense, every Marine on Iwo Jima, and every Navy Corpsman, Seabee, UDT, and Army Air Force soldier with the Marines, raised that flag, and in spirit the flag over Iwo Jima is still raised every day by every Marine and every Corpsman serving with the Marines.

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

-30-

Examining Room - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Examining Room

“The nurse will be with you presently, sir.”
And you are left alone in a fluorescent cube
A little desk, a screen, two plastic chairs,
A tray of quaint and curious1 instruments

And here all earthly vanities are shed
Presumptions and assumptions are laid flat
Upon a roll-sheet bed where no one dreams,
Where auguries are gently divined out

The comfort-book remains unread, time stalls -
“The nurse will be with you presently, sir.”



1Poe, of course

"Roganville! Roganville! Don't Forget Your Shoes and Grapes!" - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The conductor calls out:

“Roganville! Roganville! Don’t Forget Your Shoes and Grapes!”

The Doodle Bug rattles on the Santa Fe
Through cut-over woods and hot sunset fields
From Kirbyille, where they have a traffic light
And a picture show, and they don’t milk cows

Oh, don’t forget your shoes and sack of grapes
A brand-new shirt from Mixson’s store, for church
The memory of a soda at City Drug
And city kids, who wear shoes all the time

I’m going to live in the city someday

But for now

The Doodle-Bug rattles on the Santa Fe

Church Ladies and Chariots - column, 21 August 2016

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Church Ladies and Chariots

“School is just around the corner.” No it’s not; it’s a few miles down the road. Simply follow the big yellow bus on which the wheels go ‘round and ‘round, and be a grownup about the amber and red lights. Certain functionaries in the democratically-elected government of the State of Texas regard children as but medical waste, but we know better. Children are precious. Even when they’re making faces at you from the back window.

+ + +

Why do internet service providers and computer manufacturers seem to be universally dishonest? My latest famous-name-brand disposable computer and its shadowy operatives in Shanghai keep sending me exclamation-mark notices about important software updates which usually turn out to be camouflaged games. Settings / apps / uninstall.

+ + +

The International Olympic Committee is a shadowy organization composed of sinister, secretive, and powerful men operating from inconspicuous bases in Europe – perhaps the I.O.C. is really T.H.R.U.S.H. from The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

+ + +

Remember when Bill and Hillary were the cool kids?

+ + +

The InterGossip reports that the latest version of Ben-Hur is not doing well at the cinemas. There is much discussion about possible inadequacies in plot, casting, or direction, but few consider two other possible explanations: cartooning and color.

In the previous movie adaptations of General Wallace’s novel crowd scenes really were crowd scenes. Thousands of folks were employed to fill the stadium at Cinecitta Studios in Rome in 1959 for the chariot race. Now, with electronic cartooning, the producers need only hire a few dozen extras and then manipulate the images into unreal thousands. There is nothing ethically or artistically wrong in this, but it just doesn’t feel right. One almost expects Bugs Bunny or Donald Duck to appear in the next chariot, with Elmer Fudd as the Emperor of Rome intoning “Wet the Wames Bewin.” Cartooning is perfect for Frozen, but wrong for live-action.

The Mediterranean world is reported by reliable sources to be in color. Modern movie-makers, however, seem to want to persuade viewers that Creation is mostly sepia-toned, with little sparkle to relieve the gloom. The previews of the new ‘n’ improved Ben-Hur indicate a continuance of this drab fashion. There are two artistic choices in imaging – sharp, crisp black-and-white is one. The other is color, glorious color, color flung energetically onto the screen, color that stands up and yells “Here I am!” and not the doughy, pasty pseudo-color that looks like a palette of date-expired buttermilk.

+ + +

On Sunday the beginning of the liturgy at Notre Dame de LaSalette was paused for about thirty seconds while the in-training Nonna / Abuela / Babushka / Oma / Meme’ / Church Lady adjusted the hoods of the habits – the albs, not the behaviors – of the young altar servers. God gives us church ladies because if some things were left to men they simply wouldn’t get done, and Sunday observances would collapse in an existentially bleak wilderness of askew hoods and flowerless altars. In the hierarchy a church lady is superior to a priest (just ask the church lady) but inferior to a bishop, and more knowledgeable than either about how matters of faith and practice ought to be accomplished.

In a world of uncertainties how thankful we should be for the constancy of church ladies and young people who volunteer to serve, and for the freedom of all of us to attend divine services without being shot for doing so.

-30-

What I Learned from People Who Entitle Their Narratives "What I Learned From..." - not exactly a poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

What I Learned from People Who Entitle Their Narratives
“What I Learned from…”

O

Death of a Country Gentlemouse - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Death of a Country Gentlemouse

In a golden cloak and a white waistcoat
Reposes an elegant little field mouse
Neatly laid out for the visitation
Attended not by aunts now, but by ants

Luna-Dog, separated from her kill
Poses prayerfully at the back-door screen
Or predatorily, as it might be, before
With work-gloved hands the mouse is bade farewell

Tossed respectfully over the garden fence
In a golden cloak and a white waistcoat

She Loves You, Cough, Cough, Cough - column, 8.14.2016

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

She Loves You, Cough, Cough, Cough

A Hard Day’s Night was on Channel Siberia last week, and its charming innocence plays better now than it did in 1964. The plot, as in any musical, is but a weak thread for holding the songs together, and the Beatles could neither sing nor act, which, like an amateur musical in the parish hall, is part of the fun – all this was before they began taking themselves seriously.

The surprising strength of A Hard Day’s Night is its cinematography. The producers apparently could not afford color film, and so employed the then-unfashionable but excellent black-and-white stock which produced – and has maintained for over fifty years – crisp, clean, bright images which hit all the registers of light and dark. Except for the high-end technologies such as Technicolor, color film from the 1960s has since deteriorated, one might almost say soured, into fuzzy garish tones on the yellow end of the spectrum.

Many of the sequences are set outdoors, free of sets and CGI, and show post-war London, poor but tidy, with the ruins of bombed-out blocks still visible. The trains, busses, and taxis on screen were real, and are gone now, so the movie is a period piece about an era when people took the train to work and even the poorest man managed a much-cleaned and much-patched coat and tie for public wear instead of the current serf-livery of knee-pants and cartoon tees and plastic ball caps.

Most of the g-rated film is good-natured buffoonery, but the middle of the film changes mood for about fifteen quiet minutes of reflection as Ringo skips a rehearsal in order to take a solitary stroll along the streets and alongside a canal with his Pentax. He encounters all sort of people simply being themselves at work and play. There is little dialogue, and many of the images, as stills, would be works of art in themselves.

Because of the accidents of a low budget, monochrome, good humor, respect for the audience, a lack of artistic pretension, and an unselfconscious amateurishness in most of those in the picture, A Hard Day’s Night still has a youthful spring in its metaphorical step.

And let The People say “iconic.”

One of the recurring sub-themes in the film is the matter our lads fleeing hordes of screaming teenyboppers in beehive hairdos, reflecting the reality of the Beatles’ popularity in the 1960s. In contrast, there is a recent narrative of one of the surviving Beatles arriving at a post-awards show party for 2016’s cooler-than-cool, only to be turned away. Either no one knew who he was, or didn’t care.

1964’s A-list is still welcome at Luby’s Cafeteria.

And let The People sing “Yesterday.”

-30-

The Weather Channel - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Weather Channel

Turn around don’t drown we’re not out of the
woods yet don’t let your guard down this isn’t
over yet actually historic in
credible absolutely turn around

don’t drown we’re not out of the woods yet don’t
let your guard down this isn’t over yet
actually historic incredible
absolutely turn around don’t drown we’re

not out of the woods yet don’t let your guard
down this isn’t over yet actually

Turkey with Stuffing - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Turkey with Stuffing

Get stuff get stuff everybody get stuff
More stuff more stuff never can get enough
If you haven’t got stuff that’s just too tough
Get stuff, get stuff; you’re defined by your stuff

Kirbyville - The Santa Fe Depot - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Kirbyville - The Santa Fe Depot

I loved to sit and watch the trains go by
As they blew smoke and steam into the sky

Or sometimes paused beneath the water tower
And sat there on the siding for an hour

The crew in overalls to the café
Hamburgers and coffee most every day

They swaggered back along our old Main Street
Important working men with schedules to meet

The whistle blew, the steam escaped, the train
Breathed heavily, and lurched and clanked to gain

Escape from our small town, then down the line
A tunnel through forests of oak and pine –

In dreams of boyhood, through memory’s eye
I love to sit and watch the trains go by

Mimosa Pods - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Mimosa Pods

Mimosa pods hang heavily in the heat
Like lurking green and yellow slithery snakes
Just waiting for their hour to drop to the ground
Between the lemon and the apple trees

All is quiet in the early afternoon
Even the dragonflies repose at rest
After lunching on their kindred species
And the mocking bird has sought leafy shade

The hours drowse until September, and
Mimosa pods hang heavily in the heat

A January Tale - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

A January Tale

All pines are gothic in the winter woods
Cold pillars in a temple grim and cold
Their needles softly hissing in the wind
That shivers from the north and makes a boy cold

Do not be found among them after dark
Or else you will never be found at all
The dark is falling now, falling fast and cold
Which way is home – oh, run! The trees are cold!

Across the barbed-wire fence, torn trousers, run! -
All pines are gothic in the winter woods

Tyrannosaurus Texaco - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Tyrannosaurus Texaco

A dinosaur that doesn’t know it’s dead
Still thinks it’s eating swamp grass fresh and green
But truly after all is done and said:
It must accept that it is gasoline!

Weaving a Tapestry of Designer Alligators - column, 8.7.16

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Weaving a Tapestry of Designer Alligators

Is there a rule requiring all book reviewers to employ the tired metaphor “weaves” (as in “The author weaves a tapestry of…”) in every essay?

+ + +

For the last forty years the Navy has been playing dolly-dress-up with sailors. One recent costume faux pas, the infamous “blueberry” camouflage work uniform, is being replaced with a more woodsy camouflage. Just why an Electrician’s Mate repairing wiring harness deep in an access passage in an aging destroyer should be required to dress in camouflage at all is a concept that has eluded the admirals. But the blueberry camouflage was precious.

The admirals will award each other more medals for all this.

One wonders if the admirals have redecorated the body bags.

+ + +

The British Olympics team have banned cleaners from their rooms after a number of thefts. Too bad no one stole those ugly “designer” shirts the British team wore in the opening ceremony.

+ + +

In Texas, killing an alligator is a felony punishable by jail time and / or a fine. However, a baby human killed before birth is regarded by the state as “medical waste.”

+ + +

Hillary and Donald bikini mud wrestling.

In a malarial swamp.

With those protected alligators.

+ + +

The Jasper Newsboy last week related news of local events and local people which will be little regarded east of the Sabine or west of the Neches, but which reflect the inherent nobility in most people:

Four Burkeville and Newton fire fighters suffered heat injuries, always life-threatening, in the menace of a house fire in August. The kitchen was damaged but the rest of the house was saved, with all the necessities and little joys of life: a roof, a bed, clothes, books, and pictures of dear friends and family.

The Jasper Volunteer Fire Department, too, did some serious heat-time in raising funds for a little child suffering from leukemia. This is because the men and women of fire departments know more about the preciousness of children than the State of Texas.

In Tyler County a great many people, including law enforcement, prison staff, and just plain folks also risked their lives in the heat to search for an elderly man who was lost. They thought nothing for themselves, but all for their fellow man, who, in the end, they could not save. Their rewards in this life were a bottle of water, suffering, and sorrow, but for their gifts of service their names, too, are written in a great Book.

And finally, Jasper Mayor R. C. Horn, one of the peacemakers of whom Jesus spoke, has departed this life. In a turbulent time he faced down violence, jerks, idiots, opportunists, attention-seekers, and racists of all flavors with his quiet faith and dignity, and will always be a role model for all.

We are blessed with heroes everywhere; it’s just that we usually fail to see them and then learn from them.

-30-

A Novitiate in the World - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

A Novitiate in the World

“…you will go forth from these walls,
but will live like a monk in the world.”

-Father Zossima to Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov

Every vocation is a novitiate
And every labor a monastic prayer:
Matins and Lauds are sung over coffee,
Then Terce for the plough, the lathe, and the wheel

Sext is gratitude for the midday meal
And None is the hour for downing tools
Soft Vespers is the song of happy homes
‘Til Compline sends all good folk to their beds -

Final vows are taken at death; for now,
Every vocation is a novitiate

Medical Waste in Texas - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Medical Waste in Texas

Children are diminutive creatures who

Tease the dog
Pull the cat’s tail
Refuse to eat their vegetables
Resist daily baths
Want Goodnight, Moon read to them over and over and over and over…
Don’t give notice about upchuckings
Leave their toys on the lawn
Push little brothers down the stairs
Track mud through the house
Scream at each other
Scream for joy
Scream in frustration
Run screaming through the house
Cry for unknown reasons as well as for known ones
Tell Grandma entirely too much
Take “you’ll ruin your supper” as a challenge
Fidget during Mass
Hide notes from the teacher

Children are diminutive creatures who are not

Medical waste

S.T.E.M. - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

S.T.E.M.

A Crucifix once stood in the village square
Around it centuries grew old; it blessed
Generations of weddings, markets, and feasts
Marked by the bells of canonical hours

Desecrated and smashed in the revolutions
And then replaced not with an empty cross
But with that gift of the Enlightenment
The efficient, progressive guillotine

And now a quest for flickering Pokemans where
A Crucifix once stood in the village square

Forwarding Address - poems

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Forwarding Address

For Kathleen and Luther Lee Dockery,
of Happy Memory

A funeral is a study in awkwardness
Kleenex and hymnbooks strewn among the pews
Family and friends exchanging those well-meant words
That fail and fall from any meaning at all -

So let us remember them merry in life
Laughter and jokes, each cigarette aloft
As ensign to a verbal cavalry charge
Ideas and words volleyed in joy and love

And over coffee see them often again
For friendship is the study of forever

It's All About Family - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

It’s All About Family

A rush to change into trousers and shirt
Discarding pajamas and morning quiet
And a half-eaten breakfast burrito -
Dear God, the relatives are here again

They never ‘phone; like mayflies they appear
First peeking through the windows, and only then
Ringing the doorbell, breathless with gossip
And detailing their medical dysfunctions

They seem to settle in for the summer
While one’s soul longs for a burrito lost

Resistant to Change - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Resistant to Change

But what change would that be? A fallen oak
A leafy country lane paved into progress
Lifestyles and glowing screens instead of friends
Superior locks and fences and bolts

And childhood photographs fading away
Just like their subjects in the long ago
Christmas morning cowboys in pajamas
Cap pistols silent now in Kodachrome

Dreams crumbling into frail antiquity
Resistant to change? Yes, rigorously so.

Takeaways from the Political Klavens...um...Conventions - column

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Takeaways from the Political Conventions

“Let us become servants in order to be leaders.”

― The Prince in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot


Make America actually great again iconic what difference does it make absolutely let us actually stand absolutely as one actually unity absolutely get ‘im out of here unity iconic lock her up iconic unity actually career actually woman absolutely politician iconic dump Trump absolutely character iconic stronger together iconic hard actually work absolutely black lives actually matter absolutely undocumented iconic RINO actually progressive absolutely killary iconic Isis actually drumpf absolutely values iconic work actually dignity and respect actually values and morals actually brothers and sisters actually Code Pink iconic all lives matter absolutely boycott Israel actually the American people iconic fast and furious actually divorce absolutely immigration iconic Russia actually emails absolutely hacking iconic change-maker actually mother iconic trans-pacific partnership actually feel the Bern absolutely the only poll that counts is on election day iconic the other America actually inside the beltway absolutely outside the beltway iconic Joe Six-Pack actually the kitchen table absolutely working families iconic got the memo actually didn’t get the memo absolutely hey hey ho ho iconic the people will stand up to Washington actually build bridges absolutely build a wall iconic for the 21st century actually reach across party lines absolutely for the children iconic for the future actually at the end of the day absolutely the fact of the matter is iconic the heartland of America actually my father came to America with money in his underwear absolutely media bias iconic my amazing wife actually bromance absolutely swing state iconic populist actually glass ceiling absolutely blue lives matter iconic all lives matter actually came up short absolutely breaking news iconic woo woo actually rapid-response team absolutely technical woes iconic unity actually the base absolutely gays iconic guns actually God iconic Sandernistas actually hashtag absolutely traitor iconic raucus actually matchup absolutely syncs iconic tweets actually cyberwar absolutely treason iconic faux news actually pastor absolutely hyphen iconic I’m with her actually convention bounce absolutely plagiarism iconic evolve actually lyin’ Ted absolutely lion Ted iconic yuge actually passing the baton absolutely not for sale iconic protestors actually police barricades absolutely yes we can iconic endorsement actually teleprompter absolutely campaign manager iconic Clinton camp actually Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz absolutely under the bus iconic roar actually historic roll call absolutely Melania iconic media tents actually American flag absolutely LGBTQ iconic pivot actually midnight in America absolutely morning in America iconic I am your voice actually disaffected absolutely believe me iconic forgotten men and women actually politically correct absolutely bankers iconic Satan actually USA USA USA absolutely HILL-A-REE HILL-A-REE HILL-A-REE iconic diversity actually believe me absolutely NAFTA iconic coal miners actually Benghazi absolutely trade deficits iconic Iran treaty actually thank you God bless you and God bless America iconic actually absolutely

(Balloon drop)

-30-

High Summer - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

High Summer

High summer is but headaches, haze, and heat
Parasitical heat, malignant heat
Heat creeping through the walls, even at night
Mocking the futile thermostatic air

By day all thoughts are wither’ed away
The words of favorite books shimmer unread
On pages like an oasis vaporous
Unreachable, or by an enemy occupied

There is no healing, hope, or hope of hope:
High summer is but headaches, haze, and heat

The Cleveland Yellfest - column

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Cleveland Yellfest

Roderick Spode: “Citizens…I say to you that nothing stands between us and our victory except defeat! Tomorrow is a new day! The future lies ahead!”

Barmy Fotheringay-Phipps: “D’you know, I never thought of that.”

- Jeeves and Wooster

Three disparate groups of civilization’s dissenters are said to have flung bodily wastes at each other in Cleveland, Ohio during the first of the two summer covens. Developing one’s ideological thesis statement in one’s urinary tract system is not quite Churchillian oratory.

+ + +

The discourse in the hall where the first coven was held was not exactly Churchillian either, with all those errant adverbs flying about. Communication becomes more effective when such clutter as “actually” is removed – after all, one cannot “unactually” do, see, or experience anything.

Further, an icon (also spelled “ikon”) is a two-dimensional religious image featuring Jesus or a saint. Icons are common in the Eastern Orthodox churches, less so in the West. Referring to a person as an icon is like referring to him or her as a crucifix, a cross, or a religious painting: “And now I want to introduce to you a real crucifix of our political movement…” or “He was such a religious painting of the music world.”

+ + +

Outside the Cleveland yellfest three, oh, real Americans were photographed posing in discount-store camouflage, gas station sunglasses, and the now requisite Pictish woad while cuddling what appeared to be poorly-maintained rifles with the usual curvy fruit magazines. They averred that they were present to back up the police. What a comfort to everyone, eh? One wonders if any of them ever took any military or police training beyond perusing the lurid pictures in a Captain Leotard comic book.

They should stop it. Just stop it. If they want to be cops, then they should apply for the academy. If they want to be soldiers, then they should enlist. But first they should grow up, stop playing with guns in the street, and get out of the way of the True Blues, the men and women who endure a rigorous program of physical and mental training, including ethics and law, and who take a sacred oath.

+ + +

The Republic of Turkey does not tolerate political conventions or political dissent.

Democratically-elected Turkish President Recezp Erdogan is reported by the Daily Mail to have sacked (so far) 50,000 judges, police, military, and teachers, and forbidden them to leave the country. This is in addition to some 9,000 others previously arrested on allegations of trying to overthrow their beloved leader. Those arrested include 115 generals, 350 other officers, and almost 5,000 enlisted men. Even before the recent coup attempt the loving father of his people arrested some 2,000 of his fellow citizens, including children, for not liking him.

If true, this means Erdogan is arbitrarily removing from both high-level and low-level government positions those industrious and thoughtful citizens from solid, stable working class and middle class backgrounds who are essential to the orderly life of a nation of laws.

In contrast to Erdogan’s fuhrerprinzip, American politics are goofy and undisciplined, but seem to work most of the time. At the ‘Publican Convention the Colorado, Alaska, and several other delegations, in the best tradition of a free people, made a spirited defense against being pushed about by the party bosses. They lost, but unlike the outspoken in Turkey they weren’t arrested, stripped naked, beaten in the streets, and crowded into concrete cells while shackled to each other, there to await show trials and executions.

Our inefficient political process, despite the stupid hats and cartoon tees and mugging for selfies, is in its bumbling pretty good after all.

-30-

On the First Ballot - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

On the First Ballot

Whose are these snarling faces, grown ugly in
The primordial aggression of the pack
Made manifest through individual fears
Witch-stirred inside a cauldron adamant

Dark sorceries beneath arena lights
Ferality and fists pumping in hate
Unhappy beings robed in cartoon tees
Cruel-yelping for the blood of innocence

Now to be splashed and burned and hated more:
Whose are these snarling faces – yours? Or mine?

Iconophiles - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Iconophiles

Iconophiles are true revolutionaries
Lowering their voices but raising their hearts
Falling into a written picture-prayer
Upon a bit of board or card – Creation

Made small and held within the hand, the eye
And knowing deeper in, all that was made
And Him Who was begotten before all
Permitting us to see before we see

Hymning formlessness into light and truth -
Iconophiles are true revolutionaries

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