Memorial Day III: Something about Life - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Memorial Day III: Something about Life

“Live. Just live.”

-Yuri in Doctor Zhivago

The plane lifted, and the cheering was wild
And then pretty quickly the pilot said
“We are now clear of Vietnamese
Territorial waters.” There was joy,
Even wilder cheering for most, and quiet
Joy for a few. For one, Karamazov
To hand, peace, and infinite gratitude.
“I’m alive,” he said to himself and to God,
“Alive. I will live, after all.” To read, to write,
Simply to live. Not for revolution,
Whose smoke poisons the air, not for the war,
Not to withdraw into that crippling self-pity
Which is the most evil lotus of all,
But to live. To read, to write.
                                                 But death does come,
Then on the Vam Co Tay, or now in bed,
Or bleeding in a frozen February ditch;
Death comes, scorning our frail, feeble, failing flesh,
But silent then at the edge of the grave,
For all graves will be empty, not in the end,
But in the very beginning of all.

Memorial Day II: Bad Morning, Viet-Nam - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Bad Morning, Viet-Nam

No music calls a teenager to war;
There is no American Bandstand of death,
No bugles sound a glorious John Wayne charge
For corpses floating down the Vam Co Tay

No rockin’ sounds for all the bodies bagged
No “Gerry Owen” to accompany
Obscene screams in the hot, rain-rotting night.
Bullets do not whiz. Mortars do not crump.

There is no thin rattle of musketry.
The racket and the horror are concussive.
Men – boys, really – do not choose to die,
“Willingly sacrifice their lives,” that lie;

They just writhe in blood, on a gunboat deck
Painted to Navy specifications.

Memorial Day I: Liturgy in Time of War - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Liturgy in Time of War

I will go to the altar of God
To God who gives joy to my youth

ENTRANCE ANTIPHON

The dawn (evening) is coming, another hot, filthy, wet dawn (evening). Let us arise, soaked in sweat, exhausted, to speak with sour, saliva-caked mouths, to meet the deaths of this day (night).

GREETING

In the name of Peace in Our Time,
For the Hearts and Minds of The People,
For the Land of the Big PX
For round eye and white (black) (brown) thigh,
I greet you, brothers.

PENITENTIAL RITE

All:

I confess to almighty God
And to you my brothers
That I have sinned through my fault
In my thoughts and in my words
In what I have done
And in what I have failed to do,
And I ask Blessed Mary…

But how can I ask Her anything now?

My brothers,
Pray for me to…

But how?
Priest: (But there is no priest)

KYRIE

Lord, have mercy
Christ, have mercy
Lord, Lord, have mercy on us now

Have mercy, Lord, on a generation
That sits smugly in college lecture halls
And protests endlessly in coffee shops
The war they hear, see, on T.V., for free
Justice and peace by the semester hour
Like, y’know, peace, love, Amerika sux
Play the guitar, toke, apply to law school

Have mercy on us
Who crouch behind sand bags
And clean our weapons
And protest nothing
And kill in the heat
And die in the hear
And throw ham and lima beans away

GLORIA

Glory to God in the highest
how many bodies yesterday?
And peace to His people on earth
Vietnamese? Or us?
Lord God, heavenly King, almighty God and Father
ham and lima beans?
We worship you, we give you thanks, we praise you for your glory
Doc, I can’t go home to my wife with this clap
Lord Jesus Christ, only Son of the Father
cigarette, canteen cup of instant coffee
Lord God, Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world
playboy magazine
Have mercy on us
relief behind the sand bags
You are seated at the right hand of the Father
i rot
Receive our prayer
i want to be clean and dry
For You alone are the Holy One
clean and dry. just once.
You alone are the Lord
why do they chew that?
You alone are the most high
you mean the betel nut?
Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit, in the glory of God the Father
incoming!
Amen


PRAYER

A

Father, you make this day holy.
Let us be thankful for
The many little joys of
This day, for life, for
The chance to worship
You. In the end, bring
Us to you, so that we
May be cleansed of mud
And sweat and filth and
Guilt, and live with you
In peace forever.

B

Father, just get me through
Another day of this mess.

LITURGY OF THE WORD –

FIRST READING

From the Intensive Care Unit, NSA DaNang

A twilight world
Of neither peace nor battle
And of both

A man world
Embracing life and the grim death
Both

Peering into infected wounds
Night building shiver
Down from the black sky flares float

Broken bodies from the war somewhere
Eyes of a shattered nineteen-year-old Marine
Staring at the door to Yokosuka

PSALM

A Song of Descents

I cast down my eyes
Into the mud
Into the blood
It seems cleaner than death and drugs and casual sex
Drink Coca-Cola

I turned my eyes away from you, O Lord
And made this
Build this
Came to this
Samantha and Darren on Bewitched

Have mercy on…but how can we ask? How dare we ask?

SECOND READING

Old Man, Viet Nam

Old man, a dog is barking at your heels
Old man, with the tired, weathered face
Are you afraid to turn around and deal
This dog a kick, to put him in his place?

Or is it, old man, that you’re just too tired?
Just too tired to turn and show anger
Just too tired to have your temper fired
Beaten by years of contempt and danger

Where are you going, trudging so slowly?
What are you thinking, behind those tired eyes?

Probably not about ham and lima beans

GOSPEL

In the Cold White Mist

After an all-night run on the river
Our boats arrive in the village at dawn
Dawn is never cold along that rive
Along that steaming, green, hell-hot river
But the mist is cold, the grey-green dawn mist
And after the engines are cut – stillness
Foul brown water laps at the mudding bank
Sloshing softly with fertile, smelly death

In the cold white mist

The boats are secured, and watches posted
We step off the boats and onto wet land
And follow the track into the deep mist
It becomes the street of a little town
A dairy lane along which cows slopped home
And where dogs and chickens and children
played
Bounded by carefully swept little yards
And little wooden houses with tin roofs

In the cold white mist

But some of the houses are burnt. The smoke
Still hangs heavily in the whitening mist
The lane is littered with debris. A lump
Resolves itself into a torn, dead child
Across a smaller lump, a smaller child
Their pup has been flung against the fence, its
Guts early morning breakfast for the morning
flies
We smoke cigarettes against the death-smells

In the cold white mist

Beneath a farm tractor rots a dead man.
When they – they – had come at sunset
He had hidden there. And they shot him there
A man with bare feet and work-calloused
hands
His hair is black; his teeth need cleaning
They shot him beneath the village tractor
His blackening blood clots into the mud
And our lungs choke in the white mist of death

In the cold white mist

White mist. The path disappears into it
Smoky skeletons of little houses
In which there will be no tea this morning
No breakfasts of hot tea and steaming rice
No old widows to smile in betel-nut
No children to mock-march alongside us
Pointing at our big black boots, and laughing
At us, for wearing shoes in the summer

In the cold white mist

They are dead and rotting in the white mist
On the edge of the jungle on the edge
Of the world, here along the Vam Co Tay
And the people pour out of their houses
To greet us on the fine summer morning
A corpse across a doorway, another
Bloody-doubled across a window sill
Still another strewn down the garden path

In the cold white mist

The other patrol doubles back to us
And they tell us that the Ruff-Puff outpost
Must have been overrun the night before
He had heard their radioed pleas, and had
Run the river at night to get to them
And the ARVNs had fled through the village
And the VC had stormed in behind them
And it was knife-and-gun-club night in town

In the cold white mist

A little girl is the lone survivor
She looks may six. Cute, except for the
Bubbling, sucking, bayoneted chest wound
We patch her, and tube her, and use suction
Sort of like fixing a bicycle tire
And in the wet, gasping heat take her back
With us downriver, where a charity
Hospital leaves her on the steps to die

In the cold white mist

It will be our turn again tomorrow
Not a one of us died today. Today.
But a village is gone, burnt and rotting,
Soon to disappear into the jungle
Along the green Cambodian border
Up some obscure river. Up there. Somewhere.
A few hundred people. Their ancestors’ graves
Will fade with them untended, forgotten

In the cold white mist

Radio Hanoi might blame it on us.
But maybe not. We made our report and
Nobody really noticed; no one cared
The talk is of the VC battalion
And where it has gone, and where it might go –
Maybe into death under an air strike
“And you guys better get in some sack time,”
Says the C.O. as he turns to his maps.

In the cold white mist

HOMILY

I’m scared, and I want to go home. I don’t care any more about justice or fighting Communism or winning the hearts and minds of the people. I can’t think about all that right now, because I’m scared, and I want to go home.
I don’t care about truth or loyalty or bravery or honor. If Miss March were here she wouldn’t get cold, but she sure would get sunburnt. And in a few days her skin would start rotting. Then nobody would want to see her in the nude anymore.
I’m scared, and I want to go home.
Up the Vam Co Tay, everyone is scared, everyone is tired, everyone is sick, everyone could die: sailor, soldier, officer, priest, farmer, fisherman. Everyone rots in the wet heat. The skin bubbles and flakes and peels, and is pink again, to bubble and flake and peel again.
I’m scared, and I want to go home.
I’m Doc. I’m a scared, stupid kid with an aid bag and a few months’ training. But I’m Doc. I’ve got to fake it. I’ve got to be cool and calm because this other kid with his guts hanging out will probably make it if I don’t screw up and if the dust-off from Saigon can get out here now.
I have an old dog at home, and my folks write and tell me she sleeps outside my window at night, waiting for me to come home. Someday we’re going to run and play in the woods and fields again. She’ll bark and run wide circles, and dare me to catch her. I will laugh under the autumn leaves. But now my nights are glaring darkness, fits of sweat-soaked half-sleep, then sirens and falling glares and falling mortars, and then the Godawful racket of all our engines of destruction. There isn’t any use in all this.
I’m scared, and I want to go home.

And I don’t want any ham and lima beans.

CREED

We believe in the Land of the Big PX
In presidents in suits, and generals,
In makers of economic strategies
We believe in flak jackets and .45s and peace

We believe in swing ships and dust-offs, yes
In the dark, green omnipresent Huey
Eternally begotten of technology
Blades to rotor, windscreen to machine guns
Made, not begotten, one in being with us
Through it all things are transported to us
For us men and our hunger and our hope
It comes down from the skies
By the high power of technology
It was born of the long assembly line

For whose sake are we crucified today?
Who suffers, and who dies and is baggied?
And on the third will arrive back home
To be neatly packaged in stainless steel

But not in ham and lima beans

LITURGY OF THE EUCHARIST

Preparation of the Gifts

Celebrant:

Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation.
Through your goodness we have this cheap Algerian wine to offer,
Fruit of the vine and work of human hands.
It will become anaesthesia for our souls.

People:

Blessed be…we just don’t know

Celebrant:

Pray, brothers, that our sacrifice may be acceptable to God, the almighty Father, to somebody. Maybe.

People:

May the Lord, or the baggies, accept the sacrifice we offer with
our own burnt hands
For the praise and glory of…of what?
For our good, and the good of all His Church.

PRAYER OVER THE GITS

Little green cans, and I don’t care
Little green cans, and I don’t care
Little green cans, and I don’t care
Air cover’s gone away.

EUCHARISTIC PRAYER

Preface for the Monsoon Season:

Father, all-powerful
And ever-living God,
We do well always and everywhere
To give You thanks
Through Jesus God our Lord
Even with diarrhea
thanks
When the mail doesn’t come
thanks
When we rot
thanks
When the heat sucks at our brains
thanks
When the mud sucks at our boots
thanks
When the horror sucks at our souls
thanks
We’re alive
thanks

SANCTUS

Holy, holy, holy, Lord, God of power and might
The bunkers are full of blood and death.
Hosanna in the mud. Blessed is he who comes with the mail. Hosanna in the mud.

EUCHARISTIC PRAYER

The Kien Tuong Province Canon:

A sailor is silhouetted against the dawn
Along a steamy river
Mostly helmet and flak jacket
Above dark plastic gunwales

The sailor has lost his New Testament
But there’s a Playboy around somewhere
Naked, willing women –
Miss March wants to be an actress

He also carries an old plastic Rosary
To touch occasionally
While whispering a hurried Hail Mary
He hopes She understands

Those who in bell-bottoms and head-bands
Fight Fascism
In Sociology 201
Will never forgive him

A sailor is silhouetted against the dawn
This day he is to be elevated
His body broken and his blood shed
For you and for all men

OUR FATHER

Our Father, who art in Heaven
this ain’t it
Hallowed be thy name
Thy kingdom come
this ain’t it
On earth as it is in Heaven.
Give us this day…
not ham and lima beans
And forgive us our trespasses
as we shoot them that trespass against us
And lead us not into ambush
But deliver us from evil

SIGN OF PEACE

Peace on you.

AGNUS DEI

Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world: have mercy on us.

Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world: have mercy….

Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world: grant us peace.

Priest:

(But there is no priest)

People:

Lord, I am not worthy to receive you,
But only say the word and I shall be killed.

COMMUNION ANTIPHON

They ate, and were not satisfied
They killed, and were not without fear.

PRAYER AFTER COMMUNION

Lord,
If we do not get out of this
Make some sense of it to those who remain
May we go home. Home. Or if not,
Take us unto you, in mercy.
Home. Where you reign, for you are Lord
Forever and ever. Amen

BLESSING

May you walk on grass that does not explode
May you sleep without rot
Without fear
May you never see or smell ham and lima beans again.
May you live
May you play with puppies
May you find forgetfulness
May you find peace
In the Name of Him who took your death for you

DISMISSAL

This is to certify that_________________is Honorably Discharged from the________________on the____day of_______________. This certificate is awarded as a testimonial of Honest and Faithful Service.

CLOSING HYMN

Old men, smoking in the sunshine
Exiled outside the doors of life
Old uniforms, old pajamas
The chrome of wheelchairs, shiny, bright

Inside, polished wooden handrails
Line the hot, polished passages
Something to cling to on the way
To the lab, to x-ray, to death

And more old men, shuffling along
In a querulous route-step march
From Normandy, from The Cho-sen,
From the Vam Co Tay, from the deserts,
Past the A.I.D.S. ward and the union signs
On waxed floors to eternity

Portions previous published:

“Closing Hymn” is from “Outpatient Surgery – Veterans’ Hospital,” Juried Award, Houston Poetry Fest 1993

“In the Cold White Mist” is a Juried Award, Houston Poetry Fest 1991

“Old Man, Viet-Nam,” was published in Pulse, Lamar University, 1982

Clinic Waiting Room with French Impressionists - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Clinic Waiting Room with French Impressionists

The ball-capped men, old men, sit motionless
Arms folded in existential disapproval
They read not, no, and neither do they toil1
Over boxes that light up and make noise

French impressionist lilies soften the walls
Echoing with educational racket
A cartoon shark counting the numbers off
To a child embalmed in a plastic box

While his mee-maw looks to eternity
Through a door that opens from the other side

1Saint Matthew 6:28-29

The Fifth Karamazov - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Fifth Karamazov

When young we identify with Alyosha
His optimism and his innocence
His fragile, flowering Orthodox1 faith
A happy, almost-holy fool for Christ

When older, the sensual Dimitri,
With irresponsible lusts and desires
Grasping for the rewards of the moment
Now, ever now, wanting everything now

Then older still, as intellectual Ivan
Sneeringly aloft, above all faith and flesh
A constructor of systems and ideas
From the back pages of French magazines

Though never do we identify with
Nest-fouling, leering, lurking Smerdyakov
Our secret fear, unspoken fear, death-fear:
That he might be who we untruly are

But hear, O hear, the holy bells of Optina2
Those Russian messengers3 singing to us
Inviting us to meet Alyosha again
At Father Zosima’s poor4 hermitage


1Russian Orthodox
2The name of the real monastery upon which Dostoyevsky modeled his fictional one
3The Brothers Karamazov was first published as a serial in The Russian Messenger
4Poor only by earthly standards

On the Occasion of the Firing of the Director of the F.B.I. - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

On the Occasion of the Firing of the Director of the

Federal Bureau of Investigation

Immaculately vested in suits and ties
Men fly about in executive jets
And pay each other to investigate
Each other for paying each other

To fly about in executive jets
And pay each other to investigate
Each other for paying each other
To fly about in executive jets

And again investigate each other,
And laugh with each other on the golf course

Hymn of the Holy Drum Set - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Hymn of the Holy Drum Set

A middle-aged man in an open shirt
A shaped and sculpted five-0 shadow fuzz
An earring and a tat, sneaks and jeans because
He wants to reach the kids where they’re at

And where they’re at is in suppressed giggles
At an old man with a pimple-microphone
Around his face like mucous on a wire
They pocket-text each other angelically

“Can I have an ‘amen?’”

He puts the devil in a world of hurt
That middle-aged man in an open shirt

A Morning Dialogue with One's Self - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

A Morning Dialogue with One’s Self

I.

(As both the alarm clock and the smart phone make unpleasant noises)

Today is the first day of the rest of…
Put a sock in it, all right? It’s too early
For optimism. Two feet to the floor
Yes, two feet, same number as last night

II.

(The bed does not care whether it is made up)

Not making the bed. Those two feet forward
North to the kitchen and the coffee pot
Switch on. Window humidity-streaked
Cats posing prettily in the dawn-light

III.

(The coffee machine gurgles happily)

A fresh new day, and with it new adventures
Still not making up that bed. Don’t gotta.

Graduation Speech Soup

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Graduation Speech Soup – Simply Stir and Serve

Keep the torch alive to pass to a new generation with the key that unlocks the road to the future follow your passion the unemployment will follow we’ve been through some amazing times together make a difference to thine own self be true commencement means a beginning not and ending as we go forth life is a journey not a destination we made it all the hard work we’ve put forth to this point in time these are the best time in our lives as one door closes another door opens because a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step to make the world a better place trust your instincts you don’t find education in books we are the future bright with promise some see the future and ask why but we see the future and ask why not Habakkuk 2:7 we did it I can’t believe we’re here believe in yourself live your dreams to be all that you can be God has a plan for you we have the responsibility to build a new world if opportunity doesn’t know build a door don’t follow the path blaze a trail because there is no one like you because you are an individual just like those other hundred or so people your age and dressed just alike because life is what happens while you’re making plans live, laugh, love you have to look through the rain to see the rainbow dance like nobody’s looking (even though they are, and laughing) aim for the moon and if you miss you’ll hit the moon (or something) life is not waiting for the storm to pass it’s about dancing in the rain because you are a new generation called to miss 100% of the shots you don’t take because we were all one big family who have lived, laughed, and loved together hey and remember the time (name) barfed on the stairs we’ll all that that shared moment to remember together we can’t save all the starfish but I can make a difference for this one because as a great man Robert Frost said in “The Road Not Taken” we can make a difference for all the starfish in the sea of life today is the first day of your rest of your life oh, the places you’ll go like maybe eternal stasis in front of a smartphone I don’t know why they asked me to be the speaker shout-out to Mom wear sunscreen because your future’s so bright close your eyes and remember when hey, an air horn, that’s so cool, no one’s ever done that before woo-hoo I want to congratulate each of your on your incredible talents and abilities as you begin your journey to a bright and shining future because we are the best class (name of school and a shout-out to the mascot)) has ever graduated (since last year) a dream is a wish your heart makes and you can become anything you dream to be or wish to be or something #lifehack #hashtag now go forth and make your lives exceptional although on Monday morning we’ll wake up and realize we’re just some more unemployed Americans.

-30-

Jury Duty - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Jury Panel in a Republic

A man with a gun tells the people to rise
And as the judge enters the room, they rise
The judge tells the people to sit; they sit
Dividing out twelve to determine reality

Republics dispose of liturgies,
Because duties, hierarchies, and honors
As freely given and freely received
Are odious in the sight of the people

Those free, brave people who will not stand for kings -
So a man with a gun tells them to rise

Children at the Harvest - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Children at the Harvest

A little girl with basket held in hand
Can choose and pick a bouquet in the spring
And play in peace on the warming-sun land
With flower-colors to sort and songs to sing

A little older and the strong girl now
Helps with the harvest in September’s haze
And through hard work with tractor, rake, and plow
She grows through honest work and well-earned praise

Unless –

Before a screen a girl decays, beguiled,
For now the screen is the machine that harvests

                                                                               the child

The Buddhas of Bamiyon - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Buddhas of Bamiyon

What secular new gods will be carved out
Of cultures and of stone, and heaved up to
The pedestals of corrasable truth
To be adored or else ignored in turn?

Make velcro now the test of reality
And transience transcendence in pale mists
As Plato’s shadows flickering in the cave
Denied in turn by fresh eternal truths

And in a century, when new gods frown
What creakery old gods will be thrown down?

URGENT! SOFTWARE SECURITY UPDATE AND LATEST PATCHES WITH THE U.K. / U.S.A. INTERFACE FOR REPAIRING THE PENGUIN CLASSICS PAPERBACK EDITION OF DON QUIXOTE

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Urgent! Software Security Update and

Latest Patches with the U.K. / U.S.A. Interface for Repairing the

Penguin Classics Paperback Edition of

Don Quixote

Scotch
Tape

The Most Boring American Legion Meeting Ever - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Most Boring American Legion Meeting Ever

A Monologue in Two Parts

I.

Voice:

“Ya wanna talk prostrate1 cancer? I’ll tell ya
About prostrate cancer those PSAs
Don’t mean nothing and those doctors don’t know
Nothin’ I’ve had 15 on my PSA

“Ever since when and I ain’t got prostrate cancer
But this feller I knew he had a one on his
PSA and he had stage five cancer
And he died, so don’t tell me nothin’ about

“Prostrate cancer ‘cause I go the meetings
And so I know, I tell ya, yessir, I do…”


1Prostate, of course

II.

Same Voice:

“Say, did y’all have any good buffets in Iraq
Or that other place Afghanistan
The buffets in Manila were expensive,
I tell ya, expensive, they cost forty dollars,

“Yessir, they did, and that was right down the street
From the embassy and that was too much
Just too much for what ya got, I tell ya
And they gave us ‘phone cards and they were made

“Right there and sixty minutes disappeared
Off it right when you dialed the number, yessir…”

L’Envoi

A Second Voice (in pain, weak, much like the voice of the Bleeding Sergeant in Macbeth):

“I move we adjourn.”

Withdrawal Symptoms - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

[again violating my rule never to write in the first person]

Withdrawal Symptoms

So I’m not going to change the world after all
That’s okay; it was doing fine without me
The moon arose last night without my supervision
This morning the sun was up before I was

And, true, there are bad men and women about
But I didn’t do so very well myself
It’s better that I didn’t change many things
And better had I worked on changing myself

Age is aware of its own absurdity
And wisely it withdraws from messing things up

     A cup of coffee now would be so nice

All Settings on Auto-Destruct - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

All Settings on Auto-Destruct

“a man enthroned as if it were a committee”

-Yevtushenko, from “Zima Junction”

Senator Pelosi has her head blessed
By the loving hands of The Dalai Lama
And Comey’s looking for a brand-new gig
Maybe as Cassandra’s Mrs. Blossom

J. Edgar’s iron men are said to be in tears
Special investigators rub their tentacles
In delicious anticipation of
A feast of scandals and expense accounts

     “Well, doctor, what have we got?”
     “A republic, if you can keep it.”

Cats and the Office of Prime - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Cats and the Office of Prime

With the dignity of an abbess the cat
Enthrones herself upon the morning fence
To welcome with due solemn liturgies
The daily rising of the given sun

Her slow lavabo accomplished, she turns
Offering the peace of Cat to the assembly:
The lesser cats, the even lesser dogs
The night-chilled lawn, the dewy leaves, the light

She blinks her blessings there upon the day

     And all is complete

When happy children then come out to play

You're Not Really Country - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

You’re Not Really Country

You’re not country if you have trash pickup
And running water, electricity
Flush toilets, a satellite on the roof
And thirty channels of John Wayne TV

You’re not country if you have carpeting
A pickup truck that runs or a Volkswagen
That doesn’t, more books than hunting rifles
And a toilet-paper personal preference

You’re not really country if you have these things –
Be sure to give God thanks for that, y’hear?

Neither a Menshevik nor a Bolshevik Be - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Neither a Menshevik nor a Bolshevik Be

                                                            What is’t you do?

                                                                                                  A deed without a name.

-Macbeth IV.1.48-49

This is not a matter of recusancy
To wish a blessing on your houses both
That in the Grace of God you amend yourselves -
But go away and do it somewhere else

And take with you your posings and your twootings
Your alligator shoes, expense accounts
Your plastic soldiers all saluting you
And your designer plots of great import

And leave good folk alone to their good work
With sweat-stained hands in clean domestic peace

"Withdrawn from Salem Public Library" - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

“Withdrawn from Salem Public Library”

“Salem Public Library, East Main Street,
Salem, VA 24153”
A happy book, thought-stained, and often-read
An anthology of Russian poetry

Salem, Virginia must be a marvelous town
A library stocked with poetry, and stocked
With poetry readers who have turned again
And again to favorite pages here and there

Long-ago poets murdered by the Soviets
But finding love at last in Salem, Virginia

Adventures with an Olivetti - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Adventures with an Olivetti

(In which the scrivener violates his rule never to write in the first-person)

My bed was a Sears & Roebuck sleeping bag
And my world headquarters that old MG;
An Olivetti portable processed
My words, my fresh young words, that no one read

I owned more books than clothes, and only those few
That could be stowed in the passenger seat;
I fancied myself the new Rod McKuen
And I wasn’t - but I remember the road

When the world was new, adventures every day
And I miss that - but mattresses are nice

Where do I Apply to be Corrupted? - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

True Faith and Allegiance

A retired admiral peddles insurance to
“My fellow veterans,” still ripping off
The enlisted with bogus bonhomie
About how they all were merry shipmates

Retired generals ooze into something new
Suits for the business of dealing in souls
Souls bought and sold internationally
Where careless talk could cost discreet kickbacks

The surviving enlisted, wounded and sick,
Are doled out vouchers for a bus ride home

The Flying Squadron of Church Ladies - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Flying Squadron of Church Ladies

At First Communion the Flying Squadron
of Church Ladies surround the children to:
Reprove, reproach, command, censor, chastise,
Berate, exhort, implore, upbraid, adjust

Chastise, upbraid, embarrass, harangue, rebuke,
Enjoin, dictate, direct, require, apprise,
Advise, inform, beseech, explain, uphold,
Impart, compel, remind, forewarn, correct:

Because since Peter’s time, all this is what
The Flying Squadrons of Church Ladies do

Western Civilization Will Collapse if You Don't Buy Someone's Book About the Collapse of Western Civilization - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Western Civilization Will Collapse if You Don't Buy Someone's Book

About the Collapse of Western Civilization

There was a review in The University Bookman…

Western civilization is in a state
Of imminent collapse, which someone says
In a review of a book which I ought
To buy if I love Jesus and the West

And somehow all this is my fault because
I haven’t finished The City of God -
Oh, Kirk-Centered sir, I really do love
The Good, the True, and the Beautiful, but

I’m not going to buy your book
Because your attitude is in a state

Thirteen Reasons Why Not - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Thirteen Reasons Why Not

We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny.

But what we put into it is ours.

-Dag Hammarskjold

1. God made you; you can never be replaced
2. God made you for some purpose – live to find it
3. Someone is blessed in knowing you each day
4. You must live so that others may live
5. Someone desperately needs your kindness right now
6. You haven’t yet written your book, your story, your song
7. When you offer up your suffering, you help others
8. Children running barefoot through the flowers of spring
9. Children running barefoot through the leaves of autumn
10. Dachshund puppies. And leaves. And flowers. And children
11. Coffee and a talk with a good friend
12. Breakfast and the Sunday morning funnies
13. That empty pew God has saved just for you

Approach the Pierian Spring Carefully - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Approach the Pierian Spring Carefully

From an idea suggested by

Rev. Raphael Barousse, OSB

I would that I could taste the Pierian Spring
But he who drinks unworthily the sacred
Will lose even the little that he has
And wither into mummification

One’s poor attempts at innocent, ill-formed verse
May be forgiven because of their innocence
But a little learning, as the man1 once said,
Means duty, and might not be forgiven

If used intemperately or harshly; still -
I would that I could taste the Pierian Spring

1Alexander Pope

But What About the Dog? - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

But What About the Dog?

Bedtime is a poem written with love:
You change into your jammies at 8 o’clock
You wash your hands and face, you brush your teeth
You kneel beside your bed and say your prayers

And then the dog leaps up onto your pillow
And then your mother says the dog can’t stay
And then you plead, and doggie looks so sad
And then your mother sighs and says, “All right,

“But only for tonight,” then kisses you

(but not the dog)

Childhood is a poem written with love

Trapped in the Coffee Shop of Lingering Death - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Trapped in the Coffee Shop of Lingering Death

He knows everything about every war
Because although he never went to one
He had good friends who did, and they told him
All about it, and about Patton, so there

He knows all about Jesus, and, like, stuff
The Templar tunnels beneath the Pentagon
The Seal of Solomon lost on Oak Island
And Mexico’s lost Tribe of Israel, so there

Which can lead the unsaved to tell a lie:
“Oh, gosh, I have to rush, I forgot about…”

So there.

For Rod McKuen - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

[From 2015]

For Rod McKuen

The gentle singer of our youth has died
The poet of empty Sunday afternoons
And solitary strolls through Balboa Park
Among lovers and Frisbee-chasing dogs

Of laughing with shipmates while cleaning rifles
Because we knew more than the armorer
About dreaming away from learning war
About pretty girls laughing in the sun

And a chansonnier in sweater, sneaks, and jeans:
The gentle singer of our youth has died

The Washington Post Asphyxiates Itself - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Washington Post Asphyxiates Itself

“Democracy Dies in Darkness,” you say –
But your arguments die under your popups, okay?

Emmaus isn't on the Map - poem

/Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Emmaus isn’t on the Map

The road from Emmaus is not in the book
Emmaus isn’t even on the map
Still, people walk to Emmaus every day
And then they go away to somewhere else

Because while everyone visits Emmaus
It’s only for supper and a new assignment
Although the directions seem somewhat vague
Those who have been there seem to know the way

The road to Emmaus is in the book
The road out of town is mapped in the heart

Prisoners in Our Own Cells - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Prisoners in Our Own Cells

Sometimes we are prisoners in our own cells
Obsessed with approval from The Other
Still wanting to sit at the cool kids’ table
In the junior high cafeteria of life

But we are meant to live near an open door
And make a tabernacle of the cell
From whence, long since, a stone was rolled away,
And welcome to the modest Table there

All of outcast humanity to taste
The good, the true, and the beautiful

Mr. Hall Proposes a Toast - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Mr. Hall Proposes a Toast

Ladies and gentlemen, I propose a toast:
What will you have – wheat? White? Honey or jam?
Sourdough for me, lightly-browned, almost golden
With lots of butter, melted all through the crust

Let the warm scene of our merriment be
A café in winter, beneath a large window
All steamy, with rain or snow outside
And we don’t have to go anywhere

Or do anything but talk over our coffee –
Ladies and gentlemen, I propose a toast

The Impatience of the Nineteenth Century - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Impatience of the Nineteenth Century

The impatience of the nineteenth century
Left us the genocide of the twentieth
With all the progressive apparatus of death:
Infanticide, death camps, firing squads, gas

And now unto the twenty-first – smart bombs
Are flung by geosynchronous satellites
Deep, deep into the imperfect souls of men
Thus breaking bodies for the perfect state

In victory the dying last voice will croak
“At least we freed ourselves from those awful kings”

The Archaeology of the Weekly Trash Pickup - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Archaeology of the Weekly Trash Pickup

Q-tips that know too much about your ears
A banana peel that’s lost its appeal
A church bulletin out of date for years
The festive lid from a microwave meal

The vacuum cleaner’s latest bag of dust
A toilet paper roll facing its end
A razor blade that now must go to rust
A coffee can (that rare Colombian blend)

A family’s weekly story goes out with the trash:
But I hear the truck – I had better dash!

Instructions from the Colonial Office - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Instructions from the Colonial Office

(Poetry is Everywhere)

Adjuncts if you teach online or off-campus
I am attaching detailed instructions
Assessment masters and tally sheet masters
As Word files you can copy these and score

Your assessments by hand fill out the tally
Sheets and e-mail them to me if you need
To have your assessments in Blackboard
E-mail me and I can send these to you

As Zip files with instructions for how you
Load them into Blackboard adjuncts if you

Counting Dachshunds - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Counting Dachshunds

Some people go to sleep by counting sheep
But I instead must count two dachshund pups
Who are not comforted by box or crate
Or fluffy towels upon the bedroom floor

Astrid and Luna commandeer the pillows
By right of conquest over human hearts
And there recline like princesses royal
Throughout the watches of the dreaming night

O sleepy little carnivores, you bless
Both nights and days with doggie happiness!

"Oh, Look, the Humans have Returned" - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

“Oh, Look, the Humans have Returned”

In spring our little hummingbirds return
And geese begin to vee their way back north
The front-yard squirrel continues to fatten himself
Upon the cardinal-contested seeds

Aggressive mockingbirds dive-bomb the cats
Pale butterflies dance lightly in the sun -
But none of these can be the same who met
Us on an autumn day in the long ago

Someday others will live here, and the birds
Will say “Oh, look, the humans have returned.”

Coffee and Dead Alligators to Go - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Coffee and Dead Alligators to Go

The Flying J, Orange, Texas

Dinosaurs are said to be gasoline
But under the gas-station gift shop fluorescents
Three shelves are lined with alligator skulls –

     Small, medium, large -

The dinosaurs must be at the gas pumps

Crocodylia to alligatoridae
To alligator, and onto the shelf
Between the “Don’t Mess with Texas” tee-shirts

     Hecho en China / Fabrique en Chine

And the “Don’t Mess with Texas” travel mugs

Whaddaya know, gotta go, cuppa joe
Don’t need no dead alligator head, no

Poets Without Boudoirs - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Poets Without Boudoirs

Je suis occupy #hashtag support us
Resistance transcultural support us
Committee manifesto support us
Ministry of culture, yes, support us

Empowerment crucial space support us
Initiatives nonprofit support us
Weaves a layered tapestry support us
Conceptual identity support us

Fresh new voices unflinching support us
Iambs are oppressivist support us

A Man Talking with an Empty Table at McDonald's - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

A Man Talking with an Empty Table at McDonald’s

Forty-cent old-people coffee – love it
You’re not supposed to admit you like McDonald’s
But – yeah, it’s good. Fresh coffee whenever
And a happy bunch behind the counter

The usual dawn people – but who’s this?
Someone new here. Dashiki from the 70s
Talking to the air – “hey, man!” - to a chair
And then serious stuff with an empty table

Some relationships are complicated
But then – who are the rest of us talking to?

Searching for a Lost Jungle in the City - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Searching for a Lost Jungle in the City

The city is mysterious, a grid
Of paths, most of them laid wonderfully straight
Upon which brave explorers roam, well-armed
Against the strange and hostile denizens

How curious to leave a jungle known
And go in search of a jungle not known
Predicated upon legends and yarns
Lost forever in a tangle of dreams

Among the still uncharted traffic lights
In a gridded city of mystery

Funny Hat Day in Pyongyang and Berkeley - column, 16 April 2017

Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Funny Hat Day in Pyongyang and Berkeley

Is every day in North Korea a Funny Hat Day?

Same for Berkeley – with their grubby watch caps everyone seems to channel Jack Nicholson’s role in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Cuckoo’s nest – well, yeah, Berkeley.

President Trump and Fearless Leader of the Glorious North Korean Workers’ and Peasants’ Republic of Earthly Delights Kim Jong Un have something in common – really bad hairdos. Perhaps they could bring peace through a beauticians’ summit. Getting a nice haircut somehow makes a man feel better, maybe not-starting-a-nuclear-war better.

Does Kim Jong Un’s office staff play Secret Santa?

Kim Jong Un desperately wants one of those M.O.A.B. bombs – he’s got another sleepy uncle and an ex-girlfriend or two to dispatch.

When Donald Trump says “You’re fired,” that means you have to find another job. When Kim Jong Un says “You’re fired,” that’s the signal for an artillery officer to shoot you with a big ol’ cannon.

The Day of the Sun parade in Pyongyang was a matter of thousands of people in uniforms strutting and goose-stepping and driving hundreds of motorized missile launchers in millimeter precision. In contrast, the Trumpistas and Anti-Trumpistas of Berkeley couldn’t even organize pushing a dumpster down the street.

Berkeley’s Saturday milling-around event was better than Kim Jong Un’s Look-at-me-I’m-a-Hitler-wannabe stomp, though. In Berkeley people yelled at each other for a few hours, threw a few punches, and then went for coffee, while Kim Jong Un’s nicely-uniformed slaves marched on and on and on into the night.

A young woman in a tailored skirt can be elegant; a thousand young women goose-stepping in short skirts and waving swords about in the streets of Pyongyang is just plain weird. And since young women in Berkeley appear to dress out of rag barrels from behind resale shops, they’re just weird too.

In Pyongyang young people march about in step while staring vacantly and holding their Kalashnikovs at arm’s length. In Berkeley young people stumble about while staring vacantly into their little Orwellian telescreens held at arm’s length.

North Korean generalissimos wear dozens of medals and spend all their time clapping. Every time Kim Jong Un moves, the generals clap. When a missile launcher rolls by the generals clap. The generals don’t stop clapping until Kim Jong Un says they stop clapping. All those medals those generals wear must be for excellence in clapping, which is a bad case of the clap.

Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un bikini mud wrestling. Discuss.

All those old men with missiles and guns and bad hair and attitudes – this is not good. One wishes that Pyongyang and Berkeley could twin as sister cities. Young North Koreans could teach young Berkely-istas how to bathe more often and dress a bit better, while Berkeley’s young people could teach North Koreans how to idle away their lives over adjective coffees instead of threatening war all the time.

No hope for the funny hats, though.

-30-

The Social MePhone Justice Commandos of Toxic Doom - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Social MePhone Justice Commandos of Toxic Doom

In the unending quest for social justice
Schoolroom shootings, unisex bakeries
Tornados, a steak, a snake, get off the plane
They’re all the same to the Omigod cult:

“Omigod Omigod Omigod O
Migod Omigod Omigod Omi
God Omigod Omigod Omigod
Omigod Omigod Omigod O!

“Chapsnat bookface tubeyou my relationship
It’s complicated Omigod Omi”

The Apocalyptic Battle of the Dumpster of Our People Before the Gates of Kaplan College, Berkeley, Holy Saturday 2017

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

They Shall Not Pass the Dumpster!

The Apocalyptic Battle of the Dumpster of Our People

Before the Gates of Kaplan College

Berkeley, Holy Saturday 2017

“Then shall he strip his sleeve and show his tats,

And say ‘this ink I had on Saturday’”

-not Henry V

In Berkeley, tumult; a protestor screams:
“They have opened the dumpster, and taken away
My Antifi poster of Cosmic Peace –
I’m going to kill someone! Death to Fascists!”

A Trumpi throws a traffic cone in love
Of the Constitution, and rallies then
The Go-Pro squaddies of the ball-capped cause
And bravely cries “To the dumpster, young heroes!”

And there upon that garbage barricade -
Oh, my children, history
                                        was
                                                not
                                                       made

"Chocolate Eggs and Jesus Risen" - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

“Chocolate Eggs and Jesus Risen”

“I have been told of a very small boy who was heard murmuring to himself on Easter morning…

'Chocolate eggs and Jesus risen.’”

-C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms

This evening is not Ordinary Time
Not even close, with Eastertide just begun
But put we now our mourning clothes away
And with them too our Easter morning best

And dress again in ordinary life
The relatives have finally gone away
The house is quiet, the dishes are washed -
That chocolate bunny is an object of desire

Almost of pagan worship (by God’s grace)
This evening - it is ordinary enough!

Christos Voskrese! - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Christos Voskrese!

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.

Easter Vigil, Sort Of

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Easter Vigil, Sort Of

A vigil, no, simply quiet reflection
Minutes before midnight, with all asleep
Little Liesl-Dog perhaps dreams of squirrels,
For she has chased and barked them all the day;
The kittens are disposed with their mother
After an hour of kitty-baby-talk,
Adored by all, except by Calvin-Cat,
That venerable, cranky old orange hair-ball,
Who resents youthful intrusion upon
His proper role as object of worship.
All the house settles in for the spring night,
Anticipating Easter, early Mass,
And then the appropriately pagan
Merriments of chocolates and colored eggs
And children with baskets squealing for more
As children should, in the springtime of life.

Good Friday - A Night of Fallen Nothingness - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Good Friday - A Night of Fallen Nothingness

The Altar stripped, the candles dark, the Cross
Concealed behind a purple shroud, the sun
Mere slantings through an afternoon of grief
While all the world is emptied of all hope.
The dead remain, the failing light withdraws
As do the broken faithful, silently,
Into a night of fallen nothingness.

Maundy Thursday - Mass of the Last Supper - poem

Maundy Thursday – Mass of the Last Supper

“Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang”

-Shakespeare

The air is thurified – the incense given
Our Lord upon His birth is fumed at last;
The censer’s chains, clanking like manacles
Offend against the silence at the end of Mass

Supper is concluded; the servants strip
The Table bare of all the Seder service:
Cups, linens, and dishes, leaving in the dark
An Altar bare, prepared for sacrifice

In Gethsemane the flowered air is sweet
But iron-heeled caligae offend the night

The Luna Moth - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Luna Moth

The moon does not in fact wax anything,
She does not wane; she simply ever-is;
She rules the softly-sung, soft-summer nights,
A willing queen, and willingly obeyed.
The luna moth, her winged votary,
Clings to indulgent oaks of their kindness,
Their moon-sent goddess from another world,
And strangely robed and crowned in lunar green,
Pheroming softly for some other moth
To come perform with her those rituals
Of love illogical, of sacrifice;
For all a luna moth can do is live
A summer week or so, but in those hours

She loves

In lunar beauty, strangely eternal
Who needs a dying luna moth?
                                                       We do.

Sean Spicer Never Metaphor He Didn't Like - doggerel

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Sean Spicer Never Metaphor He Didn’t Like

Walk back those Spicerian goosesteps, dude
(And while you’re there, unblame the Russians)
Similes using Hitler are always rude
And now you’ll suffer Tweeter concussions

Cops will drag you away from your lectern
Like that screaming fellow aboard the plane
And make each reportorial neck turn
Heads swiveling to see where you’ve left your brain

Blame everything on the Russians? You bet!
It must be true; it’s on the GossipNet

Whack-a-Cabinet Secretary - doggerel of the meanest sort

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Whack-a-Cabinet Secretary

The New Children’s Game for Old Children

One pops up; someone whacks him down
Two more pop up; we can only frown
After the third, we take the hint:
We have no stable government

Does Anyone Sing the National Anthem These Days? - poem (kinda / sorta)

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

This began as a criticism of overproduced, hammy, look-at-me, as-arranged-by interpretations of the National Anthem. It deteriorated. I blame the Russians.

Does Anyone Sing the National Anthem These Days?

Because Francis Scott Key was all about Who-Whoa-Whoa and Yay-Yay-Yay

A minute or so of recorded music
Over-produced in that insta-emo style
Then followed by “Whoa whoa yay oh yay whoa
Whoa yay yay yay whoa oh yay whoa whoa whoa

Whoa yay oh yay whoa whoa yay yay yay whoa
Oh yay whoa whoa whoa whoa yay oh yah
Yay whoa whoa yay yay yay whoa oh yay whoa
Whoa whoa whoa yay oh yay whoa whoa yay yay

Yay whoa oh yay whoa whoa whoa yay yay
It’s all about me-me-me-me-me-meeeeeeeeeeemeeeeeeeeeeeemeeeeeeee!”

Followed by –

Baseball: “Play ball!”

Racetrack: “Gentlemen, start your engines!”

Rodeo: “Gentlemen, start your cattle!”

The federal government’s Outer Continental Shelf oil & gas Lease Sales
Close: “Ladies and gentlemen, let’s open your sealed bids!”

School: “Teachers, start your sophomores.”

Austin, Texas City Council: “And now Comrade Muffin Snort-Ponsonby,
BA, MA, MEd, Chair Emerita of the Travis County Sensitivity League, will chant
her original composition, “Spiritual Wind-Song Ode to Comrade Stalin.”

Palm Sunday in Egypt - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Palm Sunday in Egypt

9 April 2017

Revelation 20:4

Poor bleeding Egypt, Mother of martyrs
Whose sands receive the gift of sacred blood
Almost without an end: the Apostle Mark,
Saint Katherine, and even on this day:

A child in the narthex scampering about
Although his mother told him to behave
A man waiting for a friend, passers-by
Someone hoping that the sermon is short

O may they now with Christ enter into
Golden Jerusalem, now and forever

Buy a Pepsi for Syria in the Tonkin Gulf While Rockin' to Radio Gleiwitz - column

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Buy a Pepsi for Syria in the Tonkin Gulf While Rockin’ to Radio Gleiwitz

Last week (if anything on the news is true), our president sent 59 cruise missiles to fall upon an air base in Syria. The next day (if anything on the news is true), Russian and Syrian warplanes were again operating out of that air base. Each cruise missile (if anything on the news is true) costs close to a million dollars. Given that and the expenses of operating warships, American workers - because who else can pay taxes? - gave up maybe a hundred million dollars of their Churchillian blood, toil, tears, and sweat to damage a few buildings on an airbase in another country.

Why?

Has Syria invaded the U.S.A.? Has Syria threatened to invade the U.S.A.? Is Hitler hangin’ by the pool at Assad’s palace?

Syria, which has not been a nice place to live since the French Mandate of 1923-1946, suffers a civil war among, according to New York magazine (http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/10/guide-groups-fighting-iraq-and-syria.html), the Assad government, ISIS, The Kurdish People’s Protection Movement, Jabhat al-Nusra, Khorasan Group, Al Quaeda, Islamic Front, Free Syrian Army, Hezbollah, Peshmerga, Russia, the United States, and others, all shifting their alliances and allegiances without any sense of pattern.

According to the New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/09/world/middleeast/us-troops-syria.html) there are perhaps 800 American soldiers, Marines, and sailors (Navy Corpsmen serve with the Marines) in Syria.

I don’t know why they are there, and I don’t know what they are expected to accomplish with the Assad government, ISIS, The Kurdish People’s Protection Movement, Jabhat al-Nusra, Khorasan Group, Al Quaeda, Islamic Front, Free Syrian Army, Hezbollah, Peshmerga, and Russian soldiers and airmen.

In a not irrelevant aside, Christianity has existed in Syria since before Saint Paul fell off his horse on the road to Damascus. Of all the combatants in Syria, only Russia has expressed a desire to protect the surviving Christians there.

This nation can’t even keep the peace in Chicago, which is much smaller than Syria.

Last week we all saw photographs. But of what? Were children gassed? Were adults gassed? By whom? With what? Says who? From what nation’s stocks of poisons? Were the toxins those WMD that Saddam had and then didn’t have and then hid in Syria? Were they from Libya?

Does no one in our government and media remember the Gleiwitz incident on the border between German and Poland on 31 August 1939?

How about the Gulf of Tonkin incident on 2-4 August 1964?

Or Article 1 of Section 8 of the Constitution?

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

A catalogue of questions does not constitute and effective narrative, but neither does it constitute a basis for a war, and nothing constitutes a basis for war without a declaration of war by our increasingly Merovingian Congress, who will investigate a baseball team but not stand up for the Constitution.

This week two young friends, kids I watched grow up, are off to join the Marines. And good for them. But their commander-in-chief is a man who avoided Viet-Nam because of a heel spur. Have you noticed the limp? The former Secretary of State (who also never made the first day of recruit training) also expressed enthusiasm for sending our young men and women to war in Syria, but since she was not elected, what difference does it make?

On the day after the cruise missiles fell upon a Syrian air base a local television station broadcast informal interviews with some young Syrian men idling and smoking huqqas in a Syrian restaurant in Houston. I did not record the broadcast, so I could be wrong in this, but I do not remember that any women were present. Maybe they were rockin’ to some heavy tunes on Radio Gleiwitz with Bill O’Reilly or Bill Clinton.

The young Syrian men expressed their gratitude that the United States bombed their country, but are disappointed that this nation has been dilatory in bombing those Syrians that these Syrians did not like.

So here’s another question: why are healthy young American men fighting in Syria while healthy young Syrian men are sitting on their dead (huqqas) in Houston, Texas?

-30-

Well Done, Thou Good and Faithful Cat - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Well Done, Thou Good and Faithful Cat

for Calvin

Yes, surely there will be another cat
But not this Cat, not this Big Orange Dust-Mop
Lounging “with abs of steel and sex appeal”
At his window, hungry for hummingbirds

Or lurking there behind that door to swat
His Sarah, who served as his household staff,
For failing to render due obeisance
To him, the superior MagnifiCat

Dear Calvin –

For now, farewell, until that better World,
O happy, leaping, loving childhood friend

Fifty Shades of Cruise Missiles - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Fifty Shades of Cruise Missiles:

The Night of 6 April 2017

The news appears on the glowing telescreen:
“50+ Missiles Aimed at Syria”
The typeface set in a lurid shade of red
With a flashing cartoon police-car light

And because I was walking in the fields at dusk
I am still armed for a war against age
With a walking stick propped inside the door
Proof against nothing but instability

Useless against missiles or poison gas
I had better go to bed with a good book

Poetry - Why must There be Iambs? - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Poetry - Why Must There be Iambs?

Iambics are the sky through which words fly
Formations sweeping all five seasons across
In order royal and in right service to
The aspirations of all noble youths

For verses built without a careful plan
Fall but as clutter on a wasted page
Their meanings and intents broken apart
And lost (like sophomores between each class)

Free verse is only an unanswered why:
Iambics are the sky through which dreams fly



(none o’ yer godless trochees or dithyrambs, eh!)

Make Hope America and Again Great Change - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Make Hope America and Again Great Change

Slick runway haircuts and bribery gowns
Armored tank-mobiles and gun-guarded walls
And condescending slogans that mock the poor
Just like those once-every-four-years flannel shirts

They investigate each other back and forth
Always holding hearings but never hearing
The sigh of a waitress counting her tips
Gas for her twenty-year-old Ford Focus

The Party-proud sneering at her trailer park
Where dreams live only on cable tv

All Change at Zima Junction - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

All Change at Zima Junction

For Yevgeny Yevtushenko, 1932-2017

Everyone changes trains at Zima Junction
Changes lives; nineteen becomes twenty-one
With hardly a pause for twenty and then
Everyone asks you questions you can’t answer

And then they say you’ve changed, and ignore you
The small-town brief-case politician still
Enthroned as if she were a committee
And asks you what are you doing back here

And then you go away, on a different train:
Everyone changes trains at Zima Junction

“I went, and I am still going.”1

1Yevtuskenko: Selected Poems. Penguin,1962

April is Poetry Month - and aTribute to Yevgeny Yevtushenko - column, 2 April 2017

Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

April is Poetry Month – Let Slip the Dogs of Iambic Pentameter

Yevgeny Yevtushenko, one of the bold young poets of the 1960s, died this week at the age of 84.
When I returned from Viet-Nam I bought for 75 cents a new copy of the Penguin Modern European Poets edition of Yevtushenko: Selected Poems at the airport in San Francisco. I had read many short stories by Anton Chekhov and Solzhenitsyn’s “The Incident at the Krechetovka Station” (an English translation of The Gulag Archipelago was several years away), and was working through Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. I had begun to understand that Tolstoy was a hairy-airy old proto-hippie, but I hadn’t enough history to understand Yevtushenko at the time. I had no idea what Babi Yar was, and of course poetry just can’t be translated.

Russian words can be rendered only approximately into English words – and the other way ‘round – by someone equally at home in both languages, but, still, the emphases, the rhythms, the subtleties of language will be lost. Imagine, for instance, trying to translate “Well, I’ve got friends in low places” into another language. What, exactly, does “well” mean? What kind of friends? Those few close ones among whom there are almost no secrets? Co-workers? The Saturday-morning coffee-shop pals? Are the friends mention in the poem / song airline pilots and navigators? Unemployed steelworkers? Two welders, a dentist, and a CPA who play country music on the weekends? What are “low places?” Is “low” rendered as altitude or attitude?

So I didn’t understand much of Yevtushenko. After a few years’ study, including my own indiscriminate reading, I did. Without some basic knowledge of Russian history one cannot understand what a bee-slap in the collective (so to speak) faces of Stalin and his successors some of Yevtushenko’s poems were.

Just why Yevtushenko wasn’t “disappeared” is a matter of speculation. Some of his peers accused him of being a government stooge, but his poetry was not obedient to the censors. The line “Don’t tells lies to the young” is a typical Yevtushenko rebuke to the Soviet government. Had Stalin lived beyond 1953, Yevtushenko would not have; he would be a footnote lost in an unmarked mass grave, like Osip Mandelstam, Lydia Chukovskaya, Nikolay Punin, and thousands of others.

That edition of Yevtushenko: Selected Poems is still available; Amazon.com.pretty.much.owns.the.planet.com lists it from several sources from $3 to $50.

The ragged copy I bought in the long-ago – ragged because I finally read it, and have re-read it many times - is beside me on my desk as I type this. The filler on the back cover reads “Yevgeny Yevtushenko is the fearless spokesman of his generation in Russia. In verse that is young, fresh, and outspoken he frets at restraint and injustice…”

Except for that forbidden “he” – one person is now “they” on the orders of our own soviet censors – that fifty-year-old blurb could be pretty much the advertising copy for any new book of scribbles.

But Yevtushenko was real. “Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord…”

-30-

Jesus Via PowerPoint in the Parish Hall - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

A Meeting in the Parish Hall

To the arrhythmia of mostly futile clicks on a hand-held gadget

No food or drinks in game room can someone
Please get the lights no not there over there
PowerPointlessness uh-oh can someone
Please get the lights okay I’ve got it now

Uh-oh oh wait these slides are all mixed up
Can someone get the lights again okay
I’ve got the sound now hospitality
Ministers what does “Eucharist” mean

Foam-cup coffee penitential folding chairs
No cell phones please dear God why am I here

+Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.cokm

+Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Yevgeny Yevtushenko died today.  The Penguin Modern European Poets edition of Yevtushenko: Selected Poems was the first book I bought upon returning from Viet-Nam, in the airport in San Francisco.  That paperback is on the desk beside me as I type.


"Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and make perpetual Light to shine upon him."

Yes, Lady-in-the-Back-With-Your-Arms-Folded-in-Disapproval - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Yes, Lady-in-the-Back-With-Your-Arms-Folded-in-Disapproval

“Excuse me. Excuse me. Could I ask a question?
Okay, I’ve got a question actually I’ve got
Two questions okay maybe it’s one question
I don’t mean to interrupt or anything

“Ha ha but sometimes us old folks don’t understand
So well ha ha but about what you said about
Just now what was it oh yes now I remember:
When I was young back in the stone ages

“Ha ha we were taught one way and right now
You’re telling us this way and that’s not right…”

A Reception Perception: Deception - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

A Reception Perception: Deception

Hi how are you so good to see you again
Do try this cheese dip we’re so going to miss
You around here you have such a gift for
Lighting up a room well golly I haven’t

Seen you in so long how are the kids doing
A grandchild really rotator cuff surgery
I remember when you first came to work here
Yes but God always has a plan you know

Has it been so long oh my time sure flies
Hi how are you so good to see you again

Get Your Free Navy Seal Flashlight Now - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Get Your Free Navy Seal ™ ® Flashlight Now

Genuine Navy Seal ™ ® Secrets that they
Don’t want any Real Americans to know
Secret Navy Seal ™ ® muscle building techniques
Secret Navy Seal ™ ® camouflage gear

Look like a real GENUINE Navy Seal ™ ®
Confuse the Deep Illuminati ™ ® with
Your secret Navy Seal ™ ® Decoder Ring
Let’s not forget your Navy Seal ™ ® Duct Tape

MAKE AMERICA (and Shanghai) GREAT AGAIN
And get your free Navy Seal ™ ® flashlight now

Free shipping with orders over $50

The Revolution is a Corpse - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Revolution is a Corpse

The revolution is a stinking corpse
And spreading béarnaise sauce all over a corpse
While chanting “It’s alive!” doesn’t make it so
Because a revolution can never live

Artists are never revolutionaries
Because artists work up the good and true
From the foundation of creation
While revolutionaries obey diktats

Rearranging a corpse is never art
And revolution is always a corpse

Electromagnetic Lust - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Electromagnetic Lust

They wander about, each connected device
Talking to other connected devices
Looking into each electronic soul
In which no secret can ever reside

They speak of batteries and images
Of apps, restarts, resets, and memory
Measured by quantity of something-bytes
Each in electrical love with itself

They wander about, each connected device
Wishing to be free of its human host

The Russians Hacked my Homework - Column, 26 March 2017

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Russians Hacked my Homework

Why is any murderous loser referred to as a “lone wolf?” “Lone reptile” is more appropriate.

Let us not sentimentalize wolves; they are carnivores who eat calves, colts, sheep, rabbits, housepets, children, joggers, and each other. They are not rational beings and cannot exhibit any sense of mercy, pity, or ethics. Even so, they are superior to the sort of human who, although blessed with a brain, a soul, and a universe in which to pursue the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, can only obsess on his own grievances and resentments (cf. C. S. Lewis’ A Preface to Paradise Lost).

+ + +

Do congressmen have to worry about insurance premiums, deductibles, and co-pays? No? That’s the affordable care act the rest of us want.

+ + +

The Writers’ Guild of America (which isn’t really a guild since they do not have a patron saint or a parish church they support) is threatening to go on strike. And one understands: the daily terror of possibly being crushed by a falling laptop computer, the risk of toxic chemicals in fashion coffees, heatstroke while lounging by the pool, being gored by a rogue pencil, and the back-breaking agony of re-typing Beauty and the Beast every few years must be soul-destroying.

Yes, the idlers spending leisurely days at the bottom of coal mines and on factory floors and high up on utility poles during storms understand the agony of the WGA. After all, how can Americans survive these challenging times without the literary wit and ethical uplift of each weekly episode of Mom?

Are carpenters, bricklayers, plumbers, roofers, and electricians paid residuals every time a house they built long ago is bought and sold? No?

+ + +

In our Republic’s capital reposes an institution styling itself Excel Academy Public Charter School. Just why a school requires four adjectives to identify itself is unclear. Further, a charter school is a public school, and “academy” is synonymous with “school,” so this accumulation of puffery could read “Excel Academy Public Public Academy” or “Excel School Charter Charter School.”

That’s the sort of non-thinking that leads committees to re-name libraries “learning resource centers.” If you plop down a lot of polysyllabic words the children will magically become better readers and thinkers, right?

+ + +

This month’s Imprimis from Hillsdale College features Christopher Caldwell’s excellent article about why Americans don’t understand Russia and why Russians don’t understand Americans: https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/think-vladimir-putin/. An acquaintance suggests that the most salient sentence in the article is this: "Most Russians have come to believe that democracy is what happened in their country between 1990 and 2000, and they do not want any more of it."

-30-

CPAs for Christ - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

CPAs for Christ

Voice: an old-time numbers warrior

“I just didn’t feel welcome in a traditional church,
You know, the stuffy cowboys for Christ church,
With latte’ splatters on my alligator shoes
And ink stains on my computer-worn fingers

“Here I’m welcome to keep my green eyeshade on
Because Jesus loves everyone, even CPAs
It’s like the old times when at night accountants
Swapped stories around the expresso machine

“There’s just something real plain and honest here,
Praisin’ that Great Auditor in the Sky.”

#Winston Churchill Defies the Nazis - poem ("of a sort, sir" as Jeeves might say)

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

#Winston Churchill Defies the Nazis

#Intersectionality come together
#As one we are cliché strong privileged
#Patriarchy ethically sourced all options
#Are on the table chilling effect quagmire

#Teutons behaving badly doomsday clock
#Transgressive sustainable Guccifer
#Renewable change the gender binary
#Wiretapped microinequity

#Unity in diversity is strength
#Build bridges not borders no fascists here

And let The People say “#Meme”

POSS MARIJ - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

POSS MARIJ

A smart and funny kid, lanky and tall
Cliché mop of hair which on him looks good
Personality-plus, new jokes each day
He makes the day better by being around

He’s not around today. But here’s his name
His date of birth. Some words that don’t make sense…
So that’s why no one’s seen him since…since when?
But when you ask, no one says anything

A smart and funny kid, lanky and tall
No one can hear him crying in the holding cell

Lady Day - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Lady Day

And now comes Lady Day, a new year’s day
When happier hours to summering begin
And farmers follow their ploughs among new fields
While in the hedgerows early snowdrops bloom

Old debts are settled, new agreements made
And the oldest promise of all proves True
On this the day of the Annunciation
As spring comes early in Galilee, and here

And all because our Lady said yes to Life
On this our Lady’s day, a new year’s day

Night Court - Allergens for the Prosecution - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Night Court - Allergens for the Prosecution

For the Prosecution: Spring Allergens
For the Defense: Anti-Histamines and Acetaminophen

If only headaches went away at night
They don’t, and a fresh catalogue of pills
Does nothing except fog reality
The world spins on and on, and sometimes off

The pillow is a bitter accuser
Detailing again all of life’s mistakes
The sheets and blankets wrinkle in disdain
The world’s last spring-wound clock grinds through the hours

Maybe the world will stabilize at dawn
If only the headaches will go away

Big Bird Leaps the White House Fence - column

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Big Bird Leaps the White House Fence

Jumping the fences at the White House has become as fashionable as soccer. Last week one fellow climbed the fence (“Goalllllllll!”) and roamed around the grounds for about fifteen minutes before he was arrested. Why fifteen minutes? Perhaps he finally had to wake up the Secret Service himself.

Was the jumper Senator Tim Kaine, hoping and hopping to get a leap ahead for 2020?

On another occasion a Secret Service secret agent left in her car a Secret Service secret computer, a Secret Service secret access card, a Secret Service secret radio (“Is that you, Agent 99?”), Secret Service secret lapel pins, and maybe a Secret Service secret Sergeant Preston of the Secret Yukon secret decoder ring. In her driveway. Overnight. Soooooooooo secret.

All this Secret Service secret spy stuff was secretly liberated from the secret agent’s secret car by the C.I.A. Or the F.B.I. Or the E.I.E.I.O. Or that sock-puppet from the trash can on Sesame Street. Or the rascally Russians taking their secret orders from Rachel Maddow via secret short-wave bowls of borsht.

But we mustn’t worry; Secret Service secret spokesguy Shawn Holtzclaw (his secret code name is surely “The Claw”) assures us that Secret Service secret laptops do not contain secret stuff, and are protected by secret layers of secret security. Like secret car windows.

Maybe they should have built a wall, a really Yuge wall, around the car. Or bridges. Or something.

If Secret Service secret computers do not contain secret stuff, why are they protected by secret layers of secret security?

Instead of defunding the Secret Service (“From the files of Police Squad”), President Trump is threatening to defund Public Broadcasting, which receives some of its income from taxpayers and some from advertising. Given that the wavy airs are clogged with multiple providers of entertainment and propaganda, is continued public funding of PBS important? It doesn’t seem to provide anything not already available on other slushy channels. It’s just a television network, and that some small part of its funding is through the ideology of press gangs doesn’t give it a halo. Let Big Bird find a gig on Doctor Phil, or on that show with all those harridans shrieking at each other.

But this must be said in defense of PBS – they have never broadcast even one episode of Mom.

-30-

Free Shipping with Orders over Fifty Dollars - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Free Shipping with Orders over Fifty Dollars

Free shipping with orders over fifty dollars
Let’s see – add Colin Dexter, John Updike
And a few pounds of Graham Greene, perhaps
John Steinbeck, Rex Stout, and Ford Madox Ford

Packed in foam peanuts with T. S. Eliot
The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Olivia Manning, Henrietta’s War
“Leaf by Niggle” for a few ounces more

Tolkien and Lewis, those Oxford scholars -
Free shipping with orders over fifty dollars

Grandfather's Vespers - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Grandfather’s Vespers

His rocking chair pendulums in the dusk
His coffee cup’s half-empty, what’s left’s gone cold
His newspaper’s folded and set aside -
In the evening light he doesn’t see so well

Mist rises from the neighbor’s new-mown field
Shy rabbits nibble along the old fence row
Grandchildren escape from supper into the yard
Chasing lightning bugs while Grandfather smokes

His rocking chair pendulums in the dusk
And so helps stabilize the universe

Speech of Freedom - in rebuke of certain Middlebury College students

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Speech of Freedom

I will listen – now tell me what you think
And tell me what you think, not what you feel
Not what you were commanded by bullhorns
Not chants beginning with “Hey! Hey! Ho! Ho!”

I will listen – now tell me that you think
You, not a crowd, a hive, a swarm, a shoal
You, not a mood, a whim, a committee
You, not a photocopied manifesto

Because I want to hear you – you, not echoes
I will listen – now tell me what you think

Saint Joseph the Just - poem

Saint Joseph the Just

for every man

Saint Joseph in a dreary winter night
Took to himself a Newborn not his own
Yet who is always his, the Child of Light
Whose crib Saint Joseph knew to be a throne

Saint Joseph shows men truth: each child is ours
Adopted by each good man upon birth
True fatherhood ordained in starlit hours
And ratified in Heaven and on earth

Saint Joseph is the man who looked into
The eyes of Mary in her happy youth
This strong man looked into her eyes and knew
She bore within her all eternal Truth

Our witness is Saint Joseph, ever just:
God calls each man to take each child in trust