Heat Advisory - But Whom Does the Heat Advise? - heat-stressed poem of no significance

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Heat Advisory – But Whom Does the Heat Advise?

“Heat advisory issued as temps expected to reach triple digits”

-Houston Chronicle, 29 July 2017

Hey, temps, you’ve been reaching for those digits
For centuries. Always you reach, sometimes
you grasp, those urged indoor activities
while counting up to three in Fahrenheit

And not in that ungodly Celsius
Which is simply not our kind of measure
We need no Frenchified logic like that
For the Bible is free of decimals

Hey, temps, you’ve been reaching for those digits -
Now cuddle up with an air-conditioner


(This is drivel devoid of meaning; it's just too da(r)ned hot to think!)

Sarah's Kittens - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Sarah’s Kittens

Java and Chai are enjoying a busy day:
Learning that refuse bins tumble easily
And that falling into the water dish
Is baptismal redemption from that fall

That lusting for the flesh of hummingbirds
Safely a-buzz beyond the window panes
Is a joyful way of passing an hour
Before attending to the doggies’ bowl -

The kittens’ dish is full, but they want more -
What is a home without a carnivore?

Or two!

Dunkirk - column

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Dunkirk

Attorney, actor, and historian Joshua Levine has written a scholarly, accessible movie tie-in book about Dunkirk (French: Dunkerque) called, well, Dunkirk. Mr. Levine is a true historian, not some internet keyboard commando recycling such drivel as “stuttering machine guns” or “the rattle of small-arms fire.” These engines of destruction neither stutter nor rattle; they are really LOUD and scary. As a scholar he avoids the incessant hyperbole (OMG!) of our time, and makes his writing more effective through understatement: “A(n)…anti-tank shell removed the gunner’s head” (P. 162).

In the tradition of popular but solid historians such as Cornelius Ryan and Walter Lord, Mr. Levine makes brilliant use of primary sources, including original documents and interviews with veterans who were there: his list of sources runs to five pages. Like journalist Ernie Pyle he includes in his narrative many personal stories that give the reader a sense, as far as this is possible, of what the situation was like for individuals who were given the vaguest of orders, were not permitted to know what was going on outside their immediate areas of operation, and did not know if they would find anything to eat today or be alive tomorrow:

Bugler Edward Watson…remember watching a sergeant-major yelling at a man with a large hole in his back. The man was flat on the found crying as the sergeant-major yelled at him to get up. And then, to Watson’s amazement, the man did as he was told: “I thought this sergeant-major was a rotten sod – but he really made the fellow move.” (170)

Mr. Levine avoids sentimentality and its equally erroneous opposite, back-filling the past with contemporary fashions. He faults the Totenkopf units for their mass-murder of prisoners, not for sexism, and the topics of pollution, marijuana, and unisex restrooms appear nowhere in his narrative.

Some reviews of the film fault the young for not knowing anything about Dunkirk, but I can’t remember not knowing; I learned about it – and so much more about history – from my parents, for they, not a glowing screen the size of Connecticut, were my first teachers

When I was a lad the veterans of The Great War were in their fifties and sixties, the veterans of The Second World War were young men, and the veterans of Korea were hardly out of their teens. I didn’t know many men who had not been in the wars as servicemen or merchant seamen, or in shipbuilding, oil refining, manufacturing, or other war-related activities. My father was a sergeant in a tank destroyer battalion, in Zwickau on the Czech border when the war ended, and my mother’s first husband, second officer on the SS Muskogee, died when that ship was torpedoed in 1942. Even to a child who wasn’t paying much attention to anything except The Lone Ranger and The Cisco Kid on the radio, history was all around and unavoidable, a part of daily conversation at home, in the street, in the stores, in the movies. 20th century wars weren’t taught in school then because everyone knew about them. After Sputnik, American schools were required to focus on the fashionable S.T.E.M., and history, literature, music, and art were pushed to the rear of that metaphorical bus, leading to great careers for late-night comics and their ambush-questioning of people who ought to know that when a camera and microphone appear, shut up and get away.

You will observe that Mr. Watters never ask his victims questions about science, technology, engineering, or mechanics.

Mr. Watters – and we – might do better to ask why a government with very few veterans in elected office is so enthusiastic about sending the young to kill and be killed far away wars without a declaration war as required by Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution (which is taught in school, and violated by our democratically-elected government) and without any apparent purpose.

There is no point in parents giving young people money to attend a concert in which thousands of young people in submissive unity obediently dry their armpits in adoration of some middle-aged man in funny clothes (Hitler, eh?) who appears to be attempting sexual relations with an electric guitar, and then complain that the young people know nothing of Dunkirk, Chancellorsville, The Somme, the Soviet gulags, or the average daily caloric intake of an American worker in 1938.

To the ancient Greeks and Romans, physical labor and technical training were for slaves, an attitude echoed in The Great Escape in a probably fictional exchange when the German commander criticizes the British prisoners for their ungentlemanly work in gardening.

The artificial division between S.T.E.M and everything else is an innovation dating only from 1957. Saint Benedict, in his Rule (still a steady seller after 1,500 years), advises us that for the Christian life should be a balance of work, study, and prayer, and so the gardening rake, the shelf of worthy books, and participation in divine services should be part of every day. A child needs to know history, music, literature, and the other arts, he needs to know how to build a fence, and he needs to be in the pew on Sunday mornings.

My review is inadequate; the book is brilliant:

Levine, Joseph. Dunkirk: The History Behind the Major Motion Picture. New York: HarperCollins. 2017.

And are there ever any minor motion pictures?

-30-

New Moon Over an Old Planet - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

New Moon Over an Old Planet

A thin lunette, silver reflecting gold
Assumed into its dance among the stars -
It was, it is; it will forever repose
Within the shining monstrance of creation

Some will adore, some will deny, but still
The sun, the moon, and the stars obey, and move -
Truth is not dependent upon perception
Or upon lies loudspeakered into our cells

The bearer, even if unseen, is forever -
A thin lunette, silver reflecting gold

Sarahan Dust - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Saharan Dust

The sky is a visitor from Africa
Come all the way to the Americas
To say hello, and bless these skies awhile
With a hemispheric umbrella pearl-grey

How like an overcast of dreams it seems
Shielding the land away from the summer heat
Shading the green into an all-day dusk
Almost iridescent in glowing layers

The sun will return soon, but for now
The sky is a visitor from Africa

Ode to the Trumpet - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Ode to the Trumpet

The trumpet is a gift of Greece and Rome
Blown straight within the palaces of kings
Then curved into a circle for the wars
And finally folded in upon itself

No one knows when in bondage a hero
Took up a trumpet bold as brass, and said
“Trumpet, I bless you now with Africa”
And made it sing the winds of the Sahel

Layers of nations, cultures, dreams, and art:
The trumpet sings from the musician’s heart

Dia de Muertos in a Parking Lot - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Dia de Muertos in a Parking Lot

23 July 2017

The big trucks roll along the interstates
And bear in their wombs the American soul:
Made-in-China shoes, ‘phones, dolls, cartoon tees
Scented soaps, baseball bats, and hipster hats

And the dead. Disposable merchandise
In the commerce of nations, the subjects
Of learned discourse and bigoted rant
Everyone in America wants to be famous

Coyotes dispose of their human cargo

And

How easy for us to say we didn’t know

Does the Point Vanish? Or do We? - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Does the Point Vanish? Or do We?

In poetry there is no vanishing point
No lines converging in flat distances
Upon a gessoed plane of pleynt and paint
Skillfully rendered for the imagination

In poetry lines flow as languid streams
Or sometimes storm the soul as wilding floods
For seldom do they pause and build a pose
Because lines are imagination

No

Lines converge in flat dis

Tances because in

Poetry there

Is no van

Ishing

.

Cassandra and Simon - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Cassandra and Simon

Rose and Neil eloped to America
Mrs. Blossom is forever silent now
Mortmain in solitude emends his drafts
And Topaz dances under the summer moon

Even The Shape seems to have withdrawn itself
From Godsend Castle, where Cassandra writes
Shaping into meaning the wreckages
For she will build a life true to herself

Whether or not Simon ever returns
But wait – the foot of the lane – those car lights…

School is Ratcheting Up and Up and Up - column

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

School is Ratcheting Up and Up and Up

For the next month there is not a newspaper, radio station, or television station in this great land of saints and scholars that will refrain from employing the cringe-making wheeze “School is gearing up.”

No, school is not gearing up. It has never geared up. It will never gear up. Except for maybe Cousin Les’ auto shop class. Let us make our first lesson of the Michaelmas term a caution against using tired metaphors.

There is no adverb less useful than “actually.” After all, one cannot “unactually” do something. And then there is “absolutely,” a useless four-syllable construction meaning “yes.” Say “yes” to clear usage.

The May equivalent of gearing up is that school is winding down. No, it doesn’t. School is not a mechanical watch – which no one under forty has ever seen anyway – and so does not wind down.

“School is just around the corner” – it is if you live around the corner. If you live down the street then school is down the street. If you live in Magnolia Springs school is way off yonder in town.

Back-to-school ads feature adorable little kidlets with big grins modelling the cooler-than-cool new shirts and skirts and jeans and sneaks, and maybe a notebook. The children in school ads never carry, oh, you know, books. Have you ever seen a b-t-s ad in which the kid was carrying a copy of The Brothers Karamazov or The Road to Magdalena or maybe a Jane Austen? Nope, and you won’t see those books in the kid’s house, either; a big ol’ television the size of Rhode Island is the usual home altar and cultural center now. Who needs 2,000 years of Christian scholarship, music, and art when everyone can now lapse into a fuzzy-eyed stasis, the Lot’s-wife-as-a-pillar-of-salt thing, in front of the latest episode of Flip This Dancing House Cooking Show off the Island of Machine Gun Fire and Dead Bodies?

Is there a Texas Education Agency rule that school administrators must shave their heads and grow odd tufts of hair on their chins?

Dress codes and professional demeanor are issues that really annoy principals: slovenly clothes, weird hair, gang signs, flip-flops, tattoos, cartoon tee shirts, tardiness, inappropriate language – and that’s the faculty and parents; the kids tend to do better.

Just a joke, guys, just a joke.

Did you know that algebra is now taught in junior high middle school? That’s wicked. Jesus never said, “Solve for X.”

Did you know that your daughter can learn to weld in high school?

Did you know that your son can venture beyond the microwave and learn real cookery in high school?

Did you know that Julius Caesar and Macbeth are about American politics?

When I was in school, about the time my ol’ dad and the boys got home from the Battle of Hastings, we kids learned about telling time by using construction paper and brads and crayons to construct a clock face on a pie tin. I suppose now children print out a picture of a Fit-Bit and hot-glue it to a take-out pizza box.

But busses are still yellow (and their wheels still go ‘round and ‘round), new pencils (especially cedar, if you can find them) smell like your own childhood, the first day of school is exciting, 6th-grade band concerts are painful to the ear but symphonic to the soul, new clothes are nice, the first look at amoebae through a microscope is to visit a new world, sophomores should fitted tracking devices, seniors pretty much rule the universe, Robert Frost makes more sense than Congress, and voting in a school board election remains a lonely experience.

-30-

The Running of the Bullssss in Pamplona - column

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Running of the Bullssss in Pamplona

If we were to add a few letters, as in “The Running of the Bulls***,” one might think we were speaking of our freely elected government. But not today.

This is the season in Spain when many stupid tourists and a very few stupid locals, who really ought to know better, make a point of taking on bulls in the narrow streets of Pamplona. The point of running with the bulls is that you can’t outrun the bulls; they outrun you, and if you survive your self-endangerment you can boast of your stupidity. It’s sort of like having ENRON on your resume’.

Let us not conclude from the merriment in Pamplona that Spaniards are generally stupid – they have, for instance, bought control of much of the banking in the United Kingdom and the USA, including my little local branch. Thus, young Americans and Brits travel to Spain to spend their pounds and dollars getting drunk, getting arrested, and getting killed by stampeding bulls while young Spaniards are quietly acquiring that part of American finances not yet controlled by the Chinese and the Germans.

Spanish bulls are not as effective as they might be, though; they leave some of the runners alive. Now if the organizers of this event were to import a number of lithe and nimble Jersey bulls, the mortality rate among the humans – at times an inferior species – would rise precipitously.

Why would a young American spend money to be killed by bulls in another country? He – invariably a “he” – could stay conveniently in this country and chant “USA! USA! USA!” while being killed by domestic livestock.

We don’t have anything like the running of the bulls on this continent, but if we did, here are some possibilities:

The Running of the Newark – each contestant is fitted with a nice wristwatch, a Rolex or Tag-Heuer, and if he can run two blocks through Newark without being relieved of the watch, he gets to keep it.

The Running of the Air Canada – in this race, the contestants try to walk the length of an Air Canada aircraft without being savaged by a snarling cabin attendant.

The Running of United Airlines – much like the Running of Air Canada, but in this version you get beaten up by another passenger and you have to pay United extra for the luggage that was misrouted to Baltimore. USA! USA!

The Running of the Movies – Hollywood runs yet more CGI cartoons of look-alike, sound-alike thirty-somethings emoting and hope anyone notices.

The Running of the Houston Birds – the trick here is to run to your car without being attacked by grackles and crows in the nesting season.

The Running of the Russians – Boris and Natasha are lurking everywhere! They’re everywhere! We’re doomed to be a nation eating borscht and drinking vodka! There’s no escape!

Not sure what borscht is, though.

-30-

A Rainbow Bends toward Eternity - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Rainbow Bends toward Eternity

A rainbow bends toward Jerusalem
Constantinople too, and holy Rome
(Though some have said the last cannot be so!)
And makes each dome glow in reflected Light

And whether the Cross is signed left to right
Or right to left, only let it be signed,
And with the work-worn hand of an ‘umble man
Who prays each day in offering up himself

Seasons sail by, like ships upon the sea

and still

A rainbow bends toward Eternity

Always Check for Scorpions in Your Boots - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Always Check for Scorpions in Your Boots

If in Viet-Nam you enjoyed the right
Of taking off your smelly boots at night
You kept them close to you, lest they march away
You didn’t want to be barefoot at break of day

Then when some idiot yelled “Boots and saddles!”
(He’d seen too many films, and was somewhat addled)
(True, “saddles” and “addled” don’t really rhyme)
You checked for scorpions every old time

Though now your uniforms are ties and suits
You always check for scorpions in your boots


(Read the scorpions in the last line as metaphor.)

A Veteran of the Wars - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Veteran of the Wars

This old warrior has many tales to tell:
He’s sailed among the distant Philippines
Built ships all over the world, repaired tanks
In Germany, was in the desert wars

He served with the Marines, and the Navy too
And can tell you everything about the Aegis -
And does –
                        but he was never in the service;
He’s a sacker at the supermarket

This poor old man; he never got it right
But God bless him – he had his own wars to fight

The Canals on Mars - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Canals on Mars

From an allusion by Robert Royal1

Martians spent centuries building canals
Across great continents to irrigate
Their fields, and on barges of marvelous design
Voyage across their picturesque red lands

They watch us through wonderful telescopes
And send out ships whose missions seem to be
To crash into Earth’s deserts with little green men –
Alas that none of this was ever true!

There are no canals, only an optic blur:
We will miss those Martians who never were


1Robert Royal: “Are Americans from Mars?” The Catholic Thing, 17 July 2017.

Robert A. Heinlein’s boys’ books were part of my childhood. I am sorry that I will never meet a Martian.

A Little Girl on a Wagon Seat - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Little Girl on a Wagon Seat

Of her deep thriftiness, Grandmama Hall
Saved every button that passed through her hands
And banked them in a large glass jar from which
She could withdraw an investment in clothing:

New dresses cut and sewn from bolts of cloth
(The styles from 1900 served just fine)
From Mixson’s Store in town, and buttons for all
From her accumulated waste-not, want-not

Wisdom and skill, and girlhood memories
Of when she came to Texas in a covered wagon

15th Sunday in Ordinary Time - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

15th Sunday in Ordinary Time

We are scattered, like the Tribes of Israel
Sown not in rejection but as word and work
Planted everywhere, and commanded to grow
In the rich earth of divine Creation

There is no veto in birds, rocks, or thorns
Let them instead serve in their own poor ways
As dutiful as humans, maybe more so
Unfallen either as seed or as beings

To tend and guard the ancient unities
That grow forever in Jerusalem

A Carpenter's Hammer - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Carpenter’s Hammer

A craftsman does not hammer with a hammer -
He wields it with surprising subtlety
As delicately as a scalpel poised
Or as an artist’s most elegant brush

A hammer is balanced to mind and hand
Its journey planned and scheduled with great care
To bring about something that was not before:
Through muscle and thought it falls, it dives, it drives

And when the hammer strikes the waiting nail
It sings to Creation a workman's hymn

The Happy Little Guillotine - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Happy Little Guillotine

Oh, happy guillotine, who blesses us
With your great gift of freedom, so that we
Will never again suffer the cruel torments
Of faith and friendship, air, love, light, and breath

Oh, do lop off our heads, and make us free
To gurgle hymns to The Revolution
By our hundreds free, nay, our thousands free,
To rot in the streets, gloriously free

Oh, holy guillotine, come to our aid
And make us one beneath your healing blade!

The Evolution of Sophomores - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Evolution of Sophomores

Poor sophomores like polliwogs within
Their small Samsaric Sea do swim about
And seemingly without purpose or point
Startled by shifting shadows or loud noises

But polliwogs in time absorb their tails
Then grow their legs, and hop ashore to eat
Mosquitoes, moths, and flies and dragonflies;
Sophomores acquire their driving licenses

And seemingly without purpose or point
Do drive about their small Samsaric Sea

After Their Divorce - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

After Their Divorce

In his garage he takes a break, and sits
Among all the mechanical debris
Of an inventor born a century late:
Unsorted hopes, tools, dreams, and engine parts

The project car that he and his son will never
Rebuild together on Sunday afternoons
An old guitar, an ashtray full of ends
A midden of beer cans crushed in memories

He should be loading his truck and trailer, but
In his garage, in bitterness, he waits

Did the Burning Bush Send Moses a Monthly Bill? - column

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Did the Burning Bush Send Moses a Monthly Bill?

Mark Zuckerberg is said to have said that Facebook could be a replacement for religion. But one never knows; as George Washington wrote in Grant’s Farewell Address to His Soldiers in 1918, “Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.”

Mr. Z is said to have said in an interview on CNN (eek) that Facebook is like a church, and that “connecting people is not enough…Facebook has a responsibility to manage its communities.”

Now we know the latest manifestation of Voldemort.

Great Zuckerberg will manage you, so bow before him, and obey.

Pens and paper, typewriters, CB radios, semaphores, smoke signals, mirrors, newspapers, the telegraph – all these are forms of communication, but probably no one has ever perceived these as manifestations of God.

Imagine kneeling in private prayer before an Underwood typewriter and whispering, “O Great Underwood, let thy keys speak unto me and share with me thy mysteries.”

No one has ever suggested of a problem, “Let’s take it to an 80% cotton sheet of bond paper in prayer.”

No one in a theological discussion has ever declared a Sheaffer fountain pen to be the inspired pen of God, and that a Parker pen is a heretic to be cast into the outer darkness of a dumpster behind The University of Where Circuit City and Radio Shack Used to Be.

No one has proclaimed, “For God so loved the world that He gave His beloved Zuckerberg to be His only-begotten distributor of gossip.”

How, then, can a little plastic box made in China be an Epiphany?

In the end, an anti-social medium is but a back fence that lights up and makes noises: gossip, recipes, Amelia Earhart sightings, unmarked UN helicopters ferrying Real Americans to concentration camps in abandoned Wal-Marts, and pictures of kittens and puppies.

Yes, that’s all somewhere in Genesis.

When your wife or husband dies, or your child has been arrested, or you’re suffering a terrible illness, will God’s Chosen Manager Zuckerberg come to your house at three in the morning? Or maybe he will only manifest himself (or Himself) as a recorded voice, urging you to place your hands on that glowing, noisy little plastic box that has indeed become a god to many, and ask the electrons for a blessing.

Gentle Reader, you probably identify with a religion. As part of that there is a local minister. He – or she – probably isn’t cool, doesn’t sport a Rolex watch, doesn’t wear a designer hairpiece, doesn’t fly all over the world in a private jet having his picture taken, and doesn’t have a tellyvision show or a media empire. But he has you. And he’ll come to the house and be there for you when your life falls apart in the dark of the night.

An Underwood typewriter won’t.

And besides, who would be the cranky coffee lady after the Sunday morning service?

-30-

Sixth Mass Extinction - poem in two parts

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Sixth Mass Extinction

Earth's sixth mass extinction event under way, scientists warn

-The Guardian

The headmaster has shaved his head egg-smooth
Shifted his hair to the point of his chin
And his sunshades to the top of his scalp
His petrol-station SAS sunshades

He often boasts he doesn’t even own a tie
And hasn’t read a book since Upper-Sixth
Something transgender post-colonial
About Guevara (who is on his tee)

Not a form master, but a master of forms
A way-cool disciple of Ofsted norms


Variant for the American Market

Sixth Mass Extinction

Earth's sixth mass extinction event under way, scientists warn

-The Guardian

Like, you know, the principal shaves his head

Like, absolutely, OMG

Got him a goatee, like, actually

Cheap gas-station Official USA Navy Seals™® shades, mannnnnnnnnnnnnnn

Not cool, OMG, actually

I had to help him with the big words in Goodnight, Moon

Absolutely, like

Yosemite Sam™® on his faunky ol’ tee

His office has, like, stuffed fish and, like, football pictures, like, and his Dallas Cowboys™® baseball cap, like, actually

Kafka's Coffee Cup - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Kafka’s Coffee Cup

A poor petitioner spoke unto a grille;
His need was simple, coffee ‘gainst the dawn.
A voice metallic, disembodied, chill
Chanted a liturgy through the speaker ‘phone:

“And would you like some sweetener with that?
Sugar? Or chemicals, yellow or pink?
Creamer, perhaps, no gluten and no fat;
The selection is yours; what do you think?

“And, oh, yes, would you like to supersize
Your order with a little bit of nosh?
A doughnuts or bagel, some curly fries,
Or a croissant with cream cheese, by gosh!”

(The reader pauses, then speaks the last two lines slowly)

Years passed, as did this tale of Kafka’s woe:
He died while waiting for that cup of joe.

A Secret University - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Secret University

You registered for university
When in the womb you were beloved of God
Your classes then began when you were born
When you awoke, and saw your mother’s eyes

And in them all the possibilities
Of life, of golden life, given to you
Upon this planet with its flowered fields
Forests and rivers beneath its moon and sun

And all these tell you, in eternal Song1
That all the world’s your university


1 In The Kalevala, in Lewis’ Narnia, and in many faiths, God sings the world into being.

Reclining Nude with Pet Frog - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Reclining Nude with Pet Frog

Hobby Lobby got caught smuggling artifacts
Vaticanos got caught snuggling each other
Putin and Trump are loose with their facts
The governor of New Jersey is BIG Brother

The Republicans blame the Democrats
The Democrats blame the Russians
The Russians blame the plutocrats
And the Norks won’t join the discussions

All of them make big ol’ messes each day
And they expect us to shut up and pay

Still Life with Ant Poison - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Still Life with Ant Poison

A summer’s dusk, a rustic garden bench
Deep-weathered from the cycles of seasons and years
And burdened with those homely implements
Beloved of the philosopher-gardener:

Clay pots at rest after nursing young plants
An old birdhouse in need of repair, a trowel
A pair of old cloth gloves, a watering can
A cylinder of painful death for ants

And for the old philosopher’s Vespers
An inch
              (or two)
                            of therapeutic single-malt

The Bishop of DaNang - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Bishop of DaNang

In Grateful Memory:

Pierre Marie Pham Ngoc Chi,14 May 1909 – 21 January 1988

What did he think of his Americans
Some six or so, just kids, in jungle greens
Receiving from his hands the Sacrament
Of Confirmation there, among Marines

A Quonset hut chapel in the morning sun
Blistering the steel in its passage to noon
Anointing all with gun oil and with sweat
“Do you reject Satan and all his works…?”

The Word and his blessings, a group picture -
And what did the NVA think of him?

#What's in a #? - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

#What’s in a #?

#“What's in a #? That which we call a #

By any other # would smell as #...”

-#Shakespeare?

You are, by the Grace of God, as you speak;
You are not a #; you are not an @
You are not a consumable to be
Tagged, twitted, labeled, renamed, and recycled

Honor the languages of your ancestors
Who gave to you, through work and dignity,
The Muses Nine of civilization
And not vague scratchings in the muck of now

Write nobly, not in # @ noises weak -
You are, by the Grace of God, as you speak

I am so Boring That... - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

I am so Boring That…

Morpheus takes my correspondence course
I teach the House of Lords how to induce snores
I make strong men yawn with my tired metaphors
I am on retainer with all the best sleep clinics

I am the reason the grooms in Macbeth slept
Hypnos and Nix envy me and my skills
Rip Van Winkle was wonked out by my rhymes
My verses make for Odin’s yearly sleep

I wield my Sword of Soporificity
And the condemned oversleep their executions

Look upon my cliches’, ye mighty, and despair, hahahahahaha…!

Is That a Prophet on Your Roof? - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Is That a Prophet on Your Roof?

A woman of Shunem gave to Elisha
A small room on her roof, furnishing it with
A bed, a chair, a table, and a lamp
And, truly, what more does a man of God need?

It’s possible that the neighbors gossiped
About keeping a prophet on the roof
And what did the owners’ association say
About extra rooms and extra prophets?

A little room in which to pray and sleep,
And friends – what more does a man of God need?

Juvenile Court Day - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Juvenile Court Day

So sullenly he sneers and slouches there
Behind a menu that he will not read
His mother smiles apologetically
And orders milk and cereal for him

He sulks beneath his franchise baseball cap
And grunts into a little plastic box
Then shoves it back into his pressed knee-pants
His mother smiles apologetically
                                                       tips apologetically
                                                       pays apologetically

The waitress with her chalice takes communion‘round
Refills the cups at each creaky table
Newspaper stories, what is this world coming to,
Bacon and eggs, toast, orange juice, refills, life

Beyond the misted glass the old court house
Begins to take the early morning light
Like an old man taking his first cup of the day
Having another go at civilization

A rural Thomas More parks his old truck
This Chaucerian sergeant of the law
Will plead the usual catalogue of not-his-faults
The lad will smirk and feign apologies

The creaky tables of the ancient laws
To be served with irrelevant custom
The lad demands change for the Coke machine
His mother yields
                               Apologetically.

Canada Day - Just One? - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Canada Day -  Just One?

With love from an ‘umble Yank

But every day is Canada Day!

The afternoon plane lands in Halifax
When the hatch is popped, cool air rushes in
Even the fog is happy in Canada

The Muskogee never made landfall here
And so we pilgrimage for her, complete
Her voyage from ’42 to Canada

Wolfville, Grand Pre’, Le Grande Derangement
The Deportation Cross and beer cans
Well, God forgive the Redcoats anyway

Newfoundland
Is a bold
Anapest

The church spires in a line, the light is green
The bold young captain shoots the narrows wild
Can you find your way to your painted house?

To walk again the cobbles of Ferryland
And smell the very blue of the Atlantic
The sea-blown wind is cold in Canada

Blue Puttees and a mourning Caribou
Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord
Good children sing “We love thee, Newfoundland”

Quebec – royal city of New France
May Le Bon Dieu bless the Plains of Abraham,
And may God bless
The signs an English driver cannot read

The Coca-Cola streets of Niagara Falls
Yanks laugh at made-in-China Mountie mugs
And buy them, happy to be in Canada

A cup of Toujours Frais from – well, that place
But to us in your southern provinces
Below Niagara, Tim too is Canada

Though Canada goes on, these scribbles must not -
Your grateful guest wishes only to say
That every happy day is Canada Day!

Picket Fences at Camp Tien Sha - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Picket Fences at Camp Tien Sha

There were picket fences at Camp Tien Sha
And a sign that read “Welcome to Viet-Nam”
And nobody ever asked why that should be
Both the fences and – just why were we there?

Picket fences – so could it be that bad?
Concrete transient barracks built by the French
Hot, foul, dark, and dank – it could be that bad
Mortars in the night – Welcome to Viet-Nam

Waiting for orders – did they forget us?
There were picket fences at Camp Tien Sha

Strelnikov is Still Wrong - poem

Lawrence Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

Strelnikov is Still Wrong

          I used to admire your poetry…I shouldn't admire it now. I should find it absurdly personal. Don't you agree?    
          Feelings, insights, affections...it's suddenly trivial now. You don't agree; you're wrong. The personal life is dead in
          Russia. History has killed it.

– Strelnikov in Doctor Zhivago (film)

Don’t write to be approved by masters who
Wear Rolexes in the Name of the People
Don’t write to be approved by masters at all
But be your own authority and see

Your life – yours - is nobler than manifestos
The latest noisy Ghibellines and Guelphs
All Power to the Constituent Assembly
One folk, one nation, one waffle with syrup

Write freedom through verses, and disobey
Anyone who pushes you what to say

Swamp the Drain - poem

Lawrence Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

Swamp the Drain

Now once upon a time there was a drain
A happy little drain that all day drained
Which is the nature of what good drains do
Letting things flow away, off to the sea

One day a blustering bullfrog strutted about
And croaked that the drain was not any good
He said he’d swamp that drain with a huuuuge dam
A beautiful dam – his audience was riveted

And he croaked and he croaked and still he croaked
                                                                                     all day
But the happy little drain drained his croaks
                                                                                     away

Setting the Night Watch - poem

Lawrence Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

Setting the Night Watch

Nature exists without anyone’s permission:
At dusk the loud cicadas in the oaks
And the soft crickets dwelling in the grass
Sing an evening hymn to the setting sun

Sparrows and mockingbirds leave off their wars
And all make wing to Shakespeare’s rooky wood
While little dogs patter the day’s last patrol
Snuffling the bounds as true as timber wolves

And as a tourist comes a straying man
Oblivious to the changing of the watch

A Soldier Smoking a Cigarette - poem

Lawrence Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

A Soldier Smoking a Cigarette

A soldier lay beside a railway line
Smoking a cigarette, not thinking of much
Among some hundreds of other conscript lads
Upon a grassy glacis above the fields

The boxcars waited in the stilly heat
The soldiers waited like young summer wheat
Occasionally stirred about by winds unseen
And finally stirred about by orders unheard

They rippled into the cars, and were taken away -
A shadow lay beside a railway line

For a Methodist Minister Newly Posted - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

For a Methodist Minister Newly Posted

We feel sometimes, we know sometimes, that we
Are aliens here, exiles and witnesses
As Abraham was sent from his father’s house
And Moses as a child was set adrift

The Apostles upon their voyages
By blood declare there is no lasting home,
Not here, so trusting in God to guide His ark
We thus are cast upon the waters of baptism

For on this planet each of us arrives
Afloat and in a Hebrew blanket wrapped

Alter Christus, Alter Vir - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Alter Christus, Alter Vir

For Reverend Angelo J. Liteky

He died three times, for other men
Who lived because he died – once in Indochina
Once in his vocation, and one last time
Forgotten in a poor hospital bed

Soul-wounded in the false, incessant wars
Humanity inflicts upon itself
Fallenness falling again, ever fallen
And the ever-falling fell upon him

Though he lifted his love – always for others
He died again – and who will live for him?

The University of Old Lawn Chairs - poem

Lawrence Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

The University of Old Lawn Chairs

The new lawn chairs are now the old lawn chairs
How many summers - has it been that long?
Their runners are rusty, their paint is pale -
The flip-this parvenus would disapprove

Not rusty but rustic, these fine old seats
Of learning have weathered many terms
Supporting the front-yard sciences and arts
Of lightning bugs, conversations, and scotch

The cicadas’ songs, the rising of stars
With us enthroned as luxuriously as czars

Arc of the Solstice - poem

Lawrence Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

Arc of the Solstice

High summer’s solstice is the year’s proud crown:
The sun has reached his apogee, and now
Will linger through July’s life-ripening days
Then drift into a worn Augustan gold

September is a sort of seasonal coup
Who in the equinoctial treaty signs
For a slow dissolution of the sun
And all his ancient power to rule and reign

In his old age the sun is seldom seen –
Diana, then, is crowned as winter’s queen

Jenny's - as a poem

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

It’s Bad Only if Jenny’s Fried Chicken is Closed

Warnings and categories – a tropical storm
It’s really bad if Jenny’s has to close
No fried chicken, no electricity
No lights, no burgers, no coffee, no fries, no hope

A flashlight in the night is weak and pale
Our manna in exile - crackers and Spam
And coffee from a Thermos, not enough
To lift the spirits of the chicken-deprived

But now the sun is up, the storm has passed
O tell us that Jenny’s is open at last!

It's Bad Only if Jenny's Fried Chicken is Closed - column, 21 June 2017

Lawrence Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

It’s Bad Only if Jenny’s Fried Chicken is Closed

Let us remember the seven categories of storms during hurricane season:

1. Tropical storm
2. Category 1 hurricane
3. Category 2 hurricane
4. Category 3 hurricane
5. Category 4 hurricane
6. Category 5 hurricane
7. Category Mr. Frank has to close Jenny’s Fried Chicken

Some decades ago a Galveston television reporter interviewed a young mother who after a lesser storm complained that she had no food and no milk for her baby. “THEY should have been better prepared for this!” she exclaimed angrily.

Let no one resort to stereotyping with the useless pejoratives of “millennials” or “snowflakes,” for in illo tempore everything wrong in the world was the fault of “baby boomers,” and the fantasy of global warming hadn’t yet been dreamed up.

And as for keeping food, diapers, canned milk, clean clothes, a pocket knife, a gas grill (for use OUTSIDE) or at least a nifty little Sterno stove (for use OUTSIDE), that is not a matter of hurricane preparation; that is a matter of good household management in every generation.

The loud a.m. radio boys advertise disaster food stores capable of feeding that famous Family of Four for a month after nuclear annihilation and / or the collapse of the Euro, and the non-panicky can only ask why. Isn’t the household well-stocked anyway?

At this point someone will bring up “the good old days when…” but it’s not about those days that really weren’t all that good. All thoughtful householders have, well, things – things like food, water, clean clothes, alternative ways of cooking, lots of paper plates and plastic utensils, flashlights, battery radios, jugs of drinking water, and a good, sturdy, American-made pocket knife.

About the only special hurricane preparation anyone should need to make are some buckets of water standing by for flushing the toilets.

A useful addition to home preparedness is a portable car battery charger, essentially a car battery residing in an attractive plastic shell and with a handle for carrying. Jumper cables are stowed on either side of the gadget. Instead of trying to maneuver cars and connect their batteries via 20-foot cables, you simply place the battery charger on a fender or other support and charge from that.

But, wait – there’s more! The more expensive battery chargers also contain an air pump and hose for inflating a tire, cigarette-lighter sockets, ports for charging MePhones and other electronic gadgets, a 110-volt outlet, and a built-in flashlight. These take a charge, good for months, from a household outlet. Always follow instructions.

No, you can’t run an air-conditioner from a portable battery charger, but you can operate a fan and a reading lamp.

If you have a fan and a can of Spam and a light for reading, you’ll get through the night just fine, while the prodigal fanless and Spam-less gnash their uncharged MePhones in the outer darkness. In the morning Jasper-Newton Electric will have the power restored, and as Vera Lynn did not sing, there’ll be blue birds over the white cliffs of Dover and the sun will shine again as Mr. Frank and his merry band re-open Jenny’s Fried Chicken.

-30-

Old Communist Movie Director - poem

Lawrence Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

Old Communist Movie Director

From the Criterion Collection

The object now of film-school interviews
His gravelling, decades-gone voice echoing
Into a recorder his decades-gone news
How wonderful he was, and all-knowing
About Thuh Fascists, Thuh Workers, and Thuh Jews
Hugging his resentments, and loudly crowing
About the Blacklist through his smokes and booze
How bravely he defied the Rightists, going
In exile to England on a luxury cruise.

Shakespeare in the Pork - poem

Lawrence Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

Shakespeare in the Pork

Is this a protest which I see before me,
Clichés to abuse the script? Come, let me meme thee.
I have a master’s degree, so hold still.
Art thou not, sign waver, a Democrat?

Or art thou but a pale Republican
Proceeding from the heat-oppres’sed brain?
(that swamp metaphor, remember?)
I see thee yet, in form as palpable
As a 1950s fraternity boy

Civility thickens, and threatens life’s play
So all you ideologues, just
                                              go
                                                      away

The Dog Not Taken - doggerel indeed!

Lawrence Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

The Dog Not Taken

Two roads diverged on a paper ballot
Rejecting both, I voted for my dog

Sangerhalle fur Kinder - poem

Lawrence Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

Sängerhalle für Kinder

A happy child with sunlight in her hair
Joyfully shrieking her own An Die Freude
Splashes her friends with water and mud and fun
And they, as happily, splash in reply

The children assemble in a muddy creek
Instead of the Sangerhalle at Die Wartburg
Not making revolution, but childhood songs
Manifestos of freedom to fling about

The forest, then, is their true singers’ hall
A celebration of innocence for children all

Some More Existential Questions - column, 15 June 2017

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Some More Existential Questions

Why do fruiterers (that’s a real word) place company logos on bananas? Do people have strong brand loyalties with regard to fruits and veggies? Do they have bumper stickers that read “My Other Fruit is a Pitaya?”

Have you ever seen a jaw drop? Really?

The ads on the InterGossip often say that a concept or an isolated fact is insane. How can this be? Only a person can be insane. An income might be low or high, but it cannot be insane. If you were in Paris and fell into the river you’d be in-Seine. Thank you, thank you very much; you’re a great audience.

Other than it being a Ye Old English tradition, why must all twelve jurors agree on a conviction? Ten of the twelve, or even eleven, would save face for the holdout and, further, provide a little protection for jurors in cases involving gangs and revenge.

Why is it that those who loudly demand answers (“demanding answers” is a big buzz-phrase just now) don’t ask a question in the first place?

Why is it that shooting someone is now often the first resort in responding to a negative external stimulus? There are two methods of making an argument – that is, to state and defend a thesis – logical and emotional. Promoting good gas mileage in a car advertisement is an appeal to logic. The suggestion that the car is so aesthetically appealing that the guy who buys it might at last get a date for the prom is an appeal to the emotions. Both arguments can be valid. But shooting someone is an appeal to nothing but infantile rage.

What was the appeal of “The Soup Nazi?” Why would anyone purchase food based on the likelihood of being verbally abused by the seller?

Why do people say “actually?” as in “I actually met Prince Harry” or “It was actually awesome.” Can one unactually meet Prince Harry? If something is awesome, can it be unactually awesome? Adverbs are a curse. Actually. Absolutely. Get rid of them.

Were our high school biology teachers lying to us when they said there are only two genders? How is it that global warming is “settled science” (the “or else” is implied), while biology is not?

Finally, what does “existential” mean? When I was at university, just before I flunked out, all the cool kids said “existential,” along with “Trotskyite,” “conspicuous consumption,” “what’s your bag,” “deconstruction,” “karma,” “phenomenology,” “post-structuralism,” and “revisionist,” all of which could be prefixed with “neo” or “reactionary.” Thus someone could be dismissed as an “existential neo-reactionary Trotskyite,” or perhaps as a “neo-deconstructionist post-revisionist existentialist.”

Existentially speaking.

-30-

Pomona at Play - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Pomona at Play

Pomona dances among the apple trees
Light-footed through the glowing amber light;
At dusk, kissed by the last rain-drops, the breeze
Begins to sigh, and falls, to sleep the night.

And then pale Cynthia, the silver-crowned,
Rises to breathe upon each leaf and flower
Her sacred mists, softly and softly around,
And blesses dreams through many a silent hour.

Bold Helios will wake the sleeping east
And laugh away the magic of the dark;
He sets out daylight as a merry feast
And measures out his work with compass and arc

But later, them, for sweet Pomona’s play
Now celebrates the golden end of day.

A Poem - or, rather, a petitionary prayer

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

For the Faithful Departed

Do we all holy rites.

Let there be sung Non nobis and Te Deum

-Henry V, 4.viii.115-116

Workmen approved indeed1, from far away
Like Abraham, exiled from the fields of home
But leaving here in their adopted land
Their blessings always, through family and faith

And so we ask Our Lady in several voices -
     Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe
     Notre-Dame de LaSalette
     Our Lady of the Americas -

To welcome Luis and Oscar to God’s Home,
That promised Place of refreshment, light, and peace2


1 2 Timothy 2:15
2 from several Catholic prayers for the departed

Of your kindness pray for the repose

of the souls of Luis Castro and Oscar Rivera

Camping on the Edge of Forever - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Camping on the Edge of Forever

For HM3 Michael Dean Marconett, USN

of happy memory

Wild stars, beyond a Sterno stove’s tame glow,
We’ll live forever as we live this night:
Coffee and cigarettes and comradeship,
Our backs against the sun-warmed Sierras
As the cold falls from infinite darkness
To keep the snow in place another night,
To smile in ancient silence back at you,
To make a glowing, slumberous twilight until dawn.
Those C-rations were good after a day
Of scrambling among prehistoric rocks
Made musical by the dinosaur creek,
Water as cold as the dark end of time.
San Diego glows in the south-southwest,
Silently, inefficiently, light lost.
But you, wild, happy star, will still shine down
On dreaming youths, tonight and other nights,
Counting for us, for them, each millennium.

The Forces of Happiness - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Forces of Happiness

“There will be music, dancing, happiness…by order.”

-Town Crier in Dance of the Dead, an episode of The Prisoner

The Forces of Happiness are released
To worry out of their burrows those poor
Unfocused souls who mumble about their days
In happy, innocuous solitude

With books and cups of tea and scribbled lines
Of happy wonderings and teasing thoughts.
And such is not acceptable to those
Who suffer not any individuals –

To herd them into organized submission
The Forces of Happiness are released

A Necktie for Fathers' Day - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

A Necktie for Fathers' Day

Roaming around lost in the 1970s
Dull advertising writers still forbid
The purchase of neckties for Fathers’ Day –
As if DNA ever wears a tie

It’s all knee-pants and advertising now
On cartoon tees and baseball caps and sneaks
Admiring his tattoos in his MePhone
And cadging guy-support from his live-in

While watching his collection of action films:
“I’ll look for a job tomorrow, babe, okay?”

Boris and Natasha - column, 11 June 2017

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Boris and Natasha

“We can’t go arresting people for what they say in a private conversation…I’ve no doubt we shall come to that eventually, but at the present stage of our struggle for freedom, it just can’t be done.”

-Colonel Plum in Evelyn Waugh’s Put Out More Flags

Some of our federal government overlords seem to do little other than spy on each other and stage mutual investigations for show – some committee or other holds hearings and the members take turns posturing for the camera, asking questions of other federal employees and interrupting them when they try to answer. After that another committee holds hearings to investigate the first committee and asks them questions – perhaps “What did you not know and when did you not know it?” – while fluffing their feathers for the cameras.

One suspects that at the end of the day they all retire to a walled and guarded country club in Alexandria, Virginia to treat each other to expense-account single-malt and cigars, and for a good laugh.

This season’s cycle of fashionable and well-funded investigations is about whether the Russians snoop into the companies that build and program voting machines.

Perhaps they do, along with the North Koreans, the South Koreans, the Chinese, and any 16-year-old with a discount-store computer and an idle hour.

A more salient question would be why any enemy would want to interrupt this nation’s self-destruction. The free-floating temper tantrums which used to be our political parties are, through the inadequate and even malevolent candidates they present to the American people, more of a menace to the Republic than any foreign operatives.

Vladimir Putin surely considers that while gazing at a photograph of Francis Gary Powers and indulging in a schadenfreude-ish bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha over his glass of vodka.

Everything I know about Russia I learned from Dostoyevsky, Pasternak, Yevtushenko, Ahkmatova, Solzhenitsyn, Vodolaskin, Chekhov, Tolstoy, and Alexievich (her Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War, is the best book ever about life and death for American enlisted men in Viet-Nam), and I imagine modern Russians ignore them even as as modern Yanks ignore Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Robert Frost, Stephen Crane, John Steinbeck, Willa Cather, and Ernest Hemingway.

So I know little about Russia. I can’t even find Krasnoyorsk on a map.

But I know how we can vote without the possibility of Russians, Koreans, or The Dork Avenger in his mom’s basement in Corner Brook, Newfoundland manipulating our computerized voting machines:

Don’t use computerized voting machines at all.

Let the poll watchers see to it that each voter is provided with a marker and a blank sheet of paper because Boris and Natasha can’t hack paper. Upon this sheet of paper the voter writes or prints the name of the man or woman the voter wishes to be president. If an American wishes to vote for his friend across the street, that should happen. Let the American people be free from the limited selections trickled down to them by political parties.

As with the Constitution up until 1804 (we’d have to do something with the 12th Amendment), let the first-place winner be president and the second-place winner be vice-president.

After all, Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton deserve each other.

And we the people deserve better.

-30-

Dawn at the Waffle House - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Dawn at the Waffle House

The official Waffle House “Good morning!”
This morning is a barely audible solo
An exhausted night-shift-ending yawn-out
From a waitress who has served eight hours of hope

The morning cops, all uniformed and young
Pop in to caffeinate; an old man owns
His corner booth, still searching for the truth
And a signal among the fluorescents

The celebrant elevates the coffee pot

And now the sun will rise, the night will pass
And all will celebrate this morning mass

Navigation Lights - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Navigation Lights

Like spirits of the ancients, veiled fireflies
Patrol as appointed the haunted dusk
Their cold lights winking secret messages
From lawn to tree, and then across Creation

And silent in her elegance the Moon
Escorted by strong Jupiter the bold
Is pleased to grace the skies with her presence
Herself obedient to that once-seen Star:

We are never adrift in our own dark nights
For they are marked with navigation lights

Anna Apples - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Anna Apples

Apples, which last week made the orchard trees
A festival of red among the green,
Are disappearing now, and hard to find
And hard to reach, high up and hidden away

Their joyful season is fading in early June
Their mothering trees are in mourning now
For the late-winter blooms that grew so soon
And ripened into transient perfection

Like happy children playing hide-and-seek
They slip away into the leaves and years

Restless Hope Syndrome - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Restless Hope Syndrome

At two in the morning the great ideas
Are fluttering shadows on the moonlit lawn
The old clock clanks, the new clock hums, and hours
Are an accusation against one’s works

At three in the morning one’s ambitions
Are not even shadows as the moon sails on
The old clock clanks, the new clock hums, and hopes
Crowd around the bed in disappointment

At four in the morning the silent noise
Begins withdrawing before the stale new day

Foxy John's: Beer, Wine, Good Food, Low Prices - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Foxy John’s:

Beer, Wine, Good Food, Low Prices

Between class and the night shift, Foxy John’s:
Books and ideas, an old Sheaffer pen
Notes scribbled on a yellow pad, a pipe
Of Holland House, coffee, another cup
The old MG stands loyally outside
The San Diego night smells of the sea
Damp and cool out beyond the fluorescents
And at dawn, between the night shift and class
More coffee, more tobacco, weary eyes
Ill-focused on Henry at Canossa
And the ocean tides and the morning fogs,
Turning the seasons, mark shifts and studies.

How curious never to meet ol’ John
And so to learn just why he is foxy





[I wonder if Foxy John's is still there, down the hill from the University of San Diego]

Making a Song in a Time of Sorrow - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Making a Song in a Time of Sorrow

Making a song in a time of sorrow
Isn’t possible, you know; it doesn’t work
All hope is disconnected from the hands
And any sense of meter breaks apart

The rhythm of the self is out of tune
The patterns of existence are but smoke
Adrift among the greyscaped wreckage of life
Cascading power failures of the soul

Just drop it for now; maybe tomorrow
Rebuilding then a life out of the sorrow

Sleep Study - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Sleep Study

Do I have to buy the book? The SparkNotes?
Will this material be testable?
But all I have to do is go to sleep
In a lovely bed in a lovely room

To sleep, adorned with little EKG pads
And little wires a-running here and there
Like the wiring harness of a Packard
In need of a tuneup since ‘48

I cast aside a novel about spies
And in a bit begin to study sleep

          Number Six: "How did I sleep?"

          Number Two: "Sound as a bell. Have a nice day."

                              -The Prisoner

Climate Change on London Bridge, column, 4 June 2017

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Climate Change on London Bridge

Climate change has really been rough in England the past few weeks.

Seven dead and fifty wounded in eight minutes of climate change on a Saturday evening in London – but, hey, let’s not overreact. The Spitfire, the Tommy, and the Royal Navy are obsolete, replaced with strategic teddy bears, candles, hashtags, teary-eyed selfies, and platitudes: London Strong, 1 Strong, We Are One, We Stand Together, Love Trumps Whatever, Love is Stronger than Hate, Always Choose Love, Hug the Stranger Next to You.

Yeah, that’ll work.

We have lived to see lines of British subjects with their hands up being herded down the streets of Manchester and London by British police, like a scene from Len Deighton’s SS-GB. The Nazis couldn’t manage that, but the British have now surrendered and herded themselves into captivity.

Winston Churchill said to the British people “We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”

The current government says to the British people “Run. Hide. Tell.”

One young police officer didn’t run, hide, or tell; he charged three terrorists all by himself. He was armed only with a stick, because British police are still mostly unarmed. He lost. He is in intensive care but will live. When he has recovered his own government will file charges against him as is now their custom. If Field Marshal Montgomery were still alive he would be court-martialed for insensitivity to Nazis.

Far above the dead in the streets of London and Manchester practically perfect pretty posh people fly about in luxury jets to and from climate conferences where they sit about in great conference rooms giving speeches and signing documents. They’re public servants. They’re for the people.

Farmers, workers, small businesses, police, and the military are regulated, given impossible tasks, and incessantly criticized, and people are murdered in the streets, but as long as the gluten-free champagne flows in the great halls of the great capitals of the great republics, all is well for the carbon-credit Leader Class.

The only thing we have to fear is climate change itself.

-30-

Lighting a Candle before Mass - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Lighting a Candle before Mass

We light a candle for

     All good people
     All bad people
     And all good causes

Because

     All people are good
     All people are bad
     And we’re working on the causes

Sometimes in Korea, Sometimes Not - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Sometimes in Korea, Sometimes Not

He wears clean overalls, a nice new shirt
A collection of small tools in his pockets
A cap that reads “U.S. Army Retired”
And for some reason his Sunday go-to-church shoes

He mumbles his Mac-Something breakfast meal
A presentation in cellophane and foam
Organic-free or gluten-full or something
And seems to visit with someone long gone

A middle-aged woman in a Daewoo
Arrives to help him up and take him home

Prologue to The Canterbury Downloads - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Prologue to The Canterbury Downloads

There is a pilgrimage which no one plans
For youth and age, across a room, a poem
Sending each other ordinary English words
One by email, the other by Pony Express

Some journey to Canterbury to pray
To God at good Saint Thomas Becket’s shrine
Some to the Burgate for a coffee shop
And texting over a mocha “The droghte of March”

One asks about the rising middle class
Of a lad who hasn’t a date for the prom

Night Class - Cellphonia in F Flat - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Night Class – Cellphonia in F Flat

A chamber piece for two sulks and a soda

He yawns, his head propped up against a wall
Of head-stained, head-banged green fluorescent blocks
In the back of the room, in Marlboro Country
Reposing in sad, sullen insolence

Furtively strumming a silent keypad
Flinging his unique existential angst
Into cool, pure, plasticized electrons
And out into the meta-fusional night

Where there’s real life, man, not these books and stuff,
Real life; you wouldn’t understand. I’m me
And you don’t know who I am, man. I am:
An inspirational singer-songwriter

My own me journeying onward to me
An artist, a great soul misunderstood
Raging against a machine that isn’t there:
An angry rebel on government grants.

A Dairy Queen Waitress in Tuscany - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

A Dairy Queen Waitress in Tuscany

Eat, drink, pray, love, hamburger, shake, and fries
Boyfriend, baby, trailer park, sad tired eyes
Creepy men, cranky boss, and ice-cream floats
A wheezing Honda with overdue notes

Cinder-blocks, fluorescents, grilled cheese to go
No child-support this month, another cup of joe
Ten-year-reunion, can’t go, how time flew
Two shifts that day, the trailer rent is due

Baby at Mama’s, boyfriend still in bed
He’ll look for work tomorrow, that’s what he said
“Order up!” the fry cook hollers, and she
Dreams of a someday-summer in Tuscany

The Road to Magdalena, New Mexico - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Road to Magdalena, New Mexico

The wind is cold, a Colorado cold,
Blowing the summer back to Mexico
From whence it came; it sat upon this land
For dreary months of heavy, lifeless heat.
But now the desert dawn is blue; the stars
Make one last show before withdrawing to
The Caves of Night beyond the timberline,
Where no man walks, for fear of ancient gods.

This desert dawn is blue with promises;
The road to Magdalena creeps beneath
The ridges where the Watchers of the night
Seem now content to still their thunderstorms,
And grant a grateful pilgrim sunlit hours.
There will be coffee in Magdalena,
And not much else. The cattle drives have ceased,
And the railroad is gone; the school is closed,
As are the saloons.  But there should be coffee.

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