Friday, January 19, 2018
We're All Icons Now - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Is there anything left that isn’t iconic?
Each sports hero, actress, and tummy-tonic
Now let The People say “iconic”
Each recipe and coffee colonic
And every writer said to be Byronic
And let the reviewer chant “iconic”
Famous lovers, erotic or platonic
Mountains and islands, and plates tectonic
And let The Newsies type “iconic”
Animals natural or bionic
All weather systems, calm or cyclonic
And let Mr. Meteor cry “iconic!”
Every magazine is stuffed with “iconic”
Which any Byzantine would find ironic
And let the Romans cry “three dimensions!”
Wait...dimensions…declensions…these don’t rhyme with iconic…
Oh, and don’t forget that for every reviewer every writer weaves that same old layered tapestry of…something or other
And when you go home tonight just be sure to hug your children
mhall46184@aol.com
We’re All Icons Now
Is there anything left that isn’t iconic?
Each sports hero, actress, and tummy-tonic
Now let The People say “iconic”
Each recipe and coffee colonic
And every writer said to be Byronic
And let the reviewer chant “iconic”
Famous lovers, erotic or platonic
Mountains and islands, and plates tectonic
And let The Newsies type “iconic”
Animals natural or bionic
All weather systems, calm or cyclonic
And let Mr. Meteor cry “iconic!”
Every magazine is stuffed with “iconic”
Which any Byzantine would find ironic
And let the Romans cry “three dimensions!”
Wait...dimensions…declensions…these don’t rhyme with iconic…
Oh, and don’t forget that for every reviewer every writer weaves that same old layered tapestry of…something or other
And when you go home tonight just be sure to hug your children
Thursday, January 18, 2018
This is not August - column re winter, snow, cardinals, burst pipes...
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
As my MawMaw, of happy memory, used to say, the weather has been “airish.”
In yet another example of the settled science (cough) of global warming the temperatures dropped ‘way below freezing last week and, because there was a little bit of snow the newsies again and again filled time and space with vain repetitions of the tiresome and false “winter wonderland.”
Those who wake up on a 15-degree morning to discover a burst water line do not wax poetic about winter wonderlands.
One does not imagine that linemen, road crews, tow truck operators, police, fire, ambulance services, and others have ever alluded to working ten or more hours a day in freezing rain / sleet / hail as any sort of winter wonderland experience.
Because snow is uncommon here, the first flakes falling and swirling in eddies are fascinating. The cliché is that no two snowflakes are alike, but they seem to be, cold fluffs “that fall on my nose and eyelashes” (The Sound of Mucous) and look exactly alike, differing only in size.
As the snow accumulates it softens the contours of everything, and bounces the available alight around so nicely that it seems almost to be a light source itself. The dark winter woods gradually become light winter woods, and somehow quieter.
During freezes the squirrels and birds work the feeders, which need frequent re-fillings (hint – chicken scratch from the feed store is much less expensive than designated bird seed, and the critters are just as fat and sassy on their proletarian diet). The cardinals especially stand out in winter.
In cold weather the neatly stacked firewood from three summers of carefully saving trimmed limbs as neat billets descends further every day. Turning over the bottom course means turning hibernating frogs and worms and fierce-looking horned beetles out of their winter homes. One trusts that they simply grumble a bit and then dig deeper and resume their sleep.
After a day or so, when the sun reappears, the barometer aspires to higher things and the air seems to harden, the snow is like that last guest, the one who won’t go away. Ice melting from the roof drips musically from the icicles and to the ground, and road surfaces steam as the dark asphalt converts sunlight into heat through radiationless transition (and let the people say “Thermodynamics”).
The aging snow lurks along fencerows, the bases of trees, and dark corners, seeming to withdraw into itself. It is not pretty anymore, and hangs around for days until one afternoon you realize that, like your firewood, it is all gone.
Just as the parental complaint that “Your room looks like it was hit by a hurricane!” is not necessarily a metaphor in August, “It’s freezing in here!” is not necessarily a metaphor in January.
And this is not August!
Mhall46184@aol.com
This is not August
As my MawMaw, of happy memory, used to say, the weather has been “airish.”
In yet another example of the settled science (cough) of global warming the temperatures dropped ‘way below freezing last week and, because there was a little bit of snow the newsies again and again filled time and space with vain repetitions of the tiresome and false “winter wonderland.”
Those who wake up on a 15-degree morning to discover a burst water line do not wax poetic about winter wonderlands.
One does not imagine that linemen, road crews, tow truck operators, police, fire, ambulance services, and others have ever alluded to working ten or more hours a day in freezing rain / sleet / hail as any sort of winter wonderland experience.
Because snow is uncommon here, the first flakes falling and swirling in eddies are fascinating. The cliché is that no two snowflakes are alike, but they seem to be, cold fluffs “that fall on my nose and eyelashes” (The Sound of Mucous) and look exactly alike, differing only in size.
As the snow accumulates it softens the contours of everything, and bounces the available alight around so nicely that it seems almost to be a light source itself. The dark winter woods gradually become light winter woods, and somehow quieter.
During freezes the squirrels and birds work the feeders, which need frequent re-fillings (hint – chicken scratch from the feed store is much less expensive than designated bird seed, and the critters are just as fat and sassy on their proletarian diet). The cardinals especially stand out in winter.
In cold weather the neatly stacked firewood from three summers of carefully saving trimmed limbs as neat billets descends further every day. Turning over the bottom course means turning hibernating frogs and worms and fierce-looking horned beetles out of their winter homes. One trusts that they simply grumble a bit and then dig deeper and resume their sleep.
After a day or so, when the sun reappears, the barometer aspires to higher things and the air seems to harden, the snow is like that last guest, the one who won’t go away. Ice melting from the roof drips musically from the icicles and to the ground, and road surfaces steam as the dark asphalt converts sunlight into heat through radiationless transition (and let the people say “Thermodynamics”).
The aging snow lurks along fencerows, the bases of trees, and dark corners, seeming to withdraw into itself. It is not pretty anymore, and hangs around for days until one afternoon you realize that, like your firewood, it is all gone.
Just as the parental complaint that “Your room looks like it was hit by a hurricane!” is not necessarily a metaphor in August, “It’s freezing in here!” is not necessarily a metaphor in January.
And this is not August!
-30-
When We Flew Among the Stars - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
When we were children we lay in the grass
And counted the stars, but only up to
A hundred or so, because we got lost
But not out there in space, right here in space
For space had fallen here, all around us
Oh, don’t you remember? We were among
The stars, flying wildly through the silences
Beyond all time, beyond all sense of self
We almost found the secrets of Creation -
And then our mothers told us to come inside
mhall46184@aol.com
When We Flew Among the Stars
When we were children we lay in the grass
And counted the stars, but only up to
A hundred or so, because we got lost
But not out there in space, right here in space
For space had fallen here, all around us
Oh, don’t you remember? We were among
The stars, flying wildly through the silences
Beyond all time, beyond all sense of self
We almost found the secrets of Creation -
And then our mothers told us to come inside
Wednesday, January 17, 2018
Neo-Post-Colonial Artificial Intelligence Deconstructed - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
All intelligence is artificial
We do not huddle in burrows, issuing forth
Only to chase down other living things
Beat them to death, drink their blood, and eat them
We moderns huddle in cubes above the ground
With indoor plumbing through pipes that sometimes freeze
While we are gazing, searching for lost truths
In glowing screens made in slave-labor camps
And we have stopped slaughtering other creatures -
We have machines to do that for us now
mhall46184@aol.com
Neo-Post-Colonial Artificial Intelligence Deconstructed
All intelligence is artificial
We do not huddle in burrows, issuing forth
Only to chase down other living things
Beat them to death, drink their blood, and eat them
We moderns huddle in cubes above the ground
With indoor plumbing through pipes that sometimes freeze
While we are gazing, searching for lost truths
In glowing screens made in slave-labor camps
And we have stopped slaughtering other creatures -
We have machines to do that for us now
Tuesday, January 16, 2018
Little Plastic Army Men in Action on a Snow Day - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
If I were a boy
I’d range my toy soldiers before the fire
Vast armies of plastic in green and grey
With the cannon blasting the enemy -
A glorious victory again today!
If I were a boy
I’d eat my morning cereal with Robin Hood
Propped up in his Whitman book before me
Its pages open to an England where
Every day is summer, green upon the lea
If I were a boy
My mother would remind me, to my sorrow
That I have a ‘rithmetic test tomorrow
mhall46184@aol.com
Little Plastic Army Men in Action on a Snow Day
If I were a boy
I’d range my toy soldiers before the fire
Vast armies of plastic in green and grey
With the cannon blasting the enemy -
A glorious victory again today!
If I were a boy
I’d eat my morning cereal with Robin Hood
Propped up in his Whitman book before me
Its pages open to an England where
Every day is summer, green upon the lea
If I were a boy
My mother would remind me, to my sorrow
That I have a ‘rithmetic test tomorrow
Monday, January 15, 2018
About that False Alarm in Hawaii... - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Flare light
Flare bright
First flare I see tonight
I wish I may
I wish I might
Not be blown to death tonight
Subtle beep
Subtle beep
‘wakening me from my sleep -
Oh, no! I’m going to die!
Not meeeeeee! Don’t wanna fry!
It’s all about ME – boo-hoo!
Poor ME! Poor ME! I’m gonna SUE!
mhall46184@aol.com
I. From a Vietnamese / Cambodian / Egyptian / Israeli / Lebanese /
Sudanese / Syrian / Afghan Child’s Garden of Verses
Flare light
Flare bright
First flare I see tonight
I wish I may
I wish I might
Not be blown to death tonight
II. From an American Man’s Twooter of Self-Pity
Subtle beep
Subtle beep
‘wakening me from my sleep -
Oh, no! I’m going to die!
Not meeeeeee! Don’t wanna fry!
It’s all about ME – boo-hoo!
Poor ME! Poor ME! I’m gonna SUE!
Sunday, January 14, 2018
A Take Away from the Take Away Steak Fingers - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
King Henry II: Forks?
Thomas Becket: Yes, from Florence. New little invention. It's for pronging meat and carrying it to the mouth. It saves
you dirtying your fingers.
King Henry II: But then you dirty the fork.
Thomas Becket: Yes, but it's washable.
King Henry II: So are your fingers. I don't see the point.
Encapsulated in bivalves of foam
As bottom feeders in the fast-food chain
Small fragments of a poor dead cow, chopped, shaped
And formed into cow fingers that are not
For it behooves the diner thus to know
That cows haven’t any fingers at all
But the dear diner does, and digitally
Renders the cow fingers as nutrition
And that is all there is about cow fingers -
Not a topic on which the gourmet lingers
mhall46184@aol.com
A Take Away from the Take Away Steak Fingers
King Henry II: Forks?
Thomas Becket: Yes, from Florence. New little invention. It's for pronging meat and carrying it to the mouth. It saves
you dirtying your fingers.
King Henry II: But then you dirty the fork.
Thomas Becket: Yes, but it's washable.
King Henry II: So are your fingers. I don't see the point.
-Becket, 1964
Encapsulated in bivalves of foam
As bottom feeders in the fast-food chain
Small fragments of a poor dead cow, chopped, shaped
And formed into cow fingers that are not
For it behooves the diner thus to know
That cows haven’t any fingers at all
But the dear diner does, and digitally
Renders the cow fingers as nutrition
And that is all there is about cow fingers -
Not a topic on which the gourmet lingers
Saturday, January 13, 2018
...Who Gives Joy to my Youth - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
A child thinks joy is all about the child
And so it is. And maybe an old man feels
That joy just isn’t for him anymore
To kneel his creaking joints before the truth
But it is
A wise man knows that he is still a child
An infant playing before the cave of winds
A Moses borne upon the ancient Nile
A shivering youth stepping into the Jordan
Though the lad be strong and the man be frail
Both are joyful children at the altar rail
mhall46184@aol.com
…Who Gives Joy to my Youth
Introibo ad altare Dei. Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam.
I will go in to the altar of God: to God who giveth joy to my youth.
-Daily Missal, 1962
For Brother Simon
A child thinks joy is all about the child
And so it is. And maybe an old man feels
That joy just isn’t for him anymore
To kneel his creaking joints before the truth
But it is
A wise man knows that he is still a child
An infant playing before the cave of winds
A Moses borne upon the ancient Nile
A shivering youth stepping into the Jordan
Though the lad be strong and the man be frail
Both are joyful children at the altar rail
Friday, January 12, 2018
"Did Y'all Read About Those Chips in the Bible?" - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
“Did y’all read about those chips in the Bible?
Yessir, they got these chips now, and we ain’t
Gonna be able to buy or sell nothing
Without these here chips in our bodies
The C.I.A., some of those people got’em,
Yessir, and you ain’t going to the grocery store
And buyin’ nothin’ without ‘em. I read
Where it’s in th’ Bible, and, yessir, it is
Me, I’m standin’ on th’ World of th’ Lord
And I ain’t havin’ no chip put in, nossir”
mhall46184@aol.com
“Did Y’all Read About Those Chips in the Bible?”
In the Supermarket Checkout Line
“Did y’all read about those chips in the Bible?
Yessir, they got these chips now, and we ain’t
Gonna be able to buy or sell nothing
Without these here chips in our bodies
The C.I.A., some of those people got’em,
Yessir, and you ain’t going to the grocery store
And buyin’ nothin’ without ‘em. I read
Where it’s in th’ Bible, and, yessir, it is
Me, I’m standin’ on th’ World of th’ Lord
And I ain’t havin’ no chip put in, nossir”
Thursday, January 11, 2018
"Go Inside Your Houses, Please" - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
“Sorry, that page doesn’t exist!”1 You are
Well advised not to ask questions about
What happened here. Just move along;
There was never anything to see here.
“Go inside your houses, please. All these people
will be taken care of.”2 “You can search Twitter
using the search box below or return
to the home page.”1 Go inside your screens, please
All this awkwardness will be taken care of
Go inside your screens, please. Go inside. Please.
1 NBC
2 Doctor Zhivago, 1965
mhall46184@aol.com
“Go Inside Your Houses, Please.”
“Sorry, that page doesn’t exist!”1 You are
Well advised not to ask questions about
What happened here. Just move along;
There was never anything to see here.
“Go inside your houses, please. All these people
will be taken care of.”2 “You can search Twitter
using the search box below or return
to the home page.”1 Go inside your screens, please
All this awkwardness will be taken care of
Go inside your screens, please. Go inside. Please.
1 NBC
2 Doctor Zhivago, 1965
Wednesday, January 10, 2018
What Do You Take in Your Coffee Enema? - column
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
A famous actress – let us call her Ms. Coffee – suggests a somewhat different way of taking one’s morning cuppa.
Is there something wrong with the way we take our coffee now?
Coffee is a celebration of humanity. The morning cup of reveille pleasantly eases us from the happiness of sleep and into a quiet determination to make the work day a brilliant success.
The driver packs his Thermos along with his bills of lading, the office or factory worker takes ten for a recharge with others around the table in the break room, the copper takes a break from patrol down at the Stop ‘N’ Rob, retirees cluster at the supermarket coffee table every morning around nine, the Navy chief petty officer is out of uniform without his paws grasping a coffee cup, and the Air Canada cabin attendant dutifully snarls to the passengers that there is no coffee.
From chalices of glass, ceramics, paper, foam, or plastic, drinking coffee or tea with co-workers and friends almost seems to constitute a rite of secular communion. Except on Air Canada, where there is no coffee, and how dare you ask.
Ms. Coffee, though, suggests that we should take our coffee through the other end of the alimentary canal.
This would probably displace the mirth (Macbeth III.iv.109) at the corner table. Or any table. “Well, hey, I’d better get back to the shop floor; that number three machine’s been acting wonky…”
Ms. Coffee alludes to the, um, assumption of coffee via the nether regions as a deep detoxification, a supercharge, and a whole lotta other stuff using buzzy words. Further, Ms. Coffee refers the reader to a site that for over a hundred dollars sells an appliance for this, um, experience.
The drugstore sells such medical appliances a whole lot cheaper. If you’re interested, that is.
Ms. Coffee’s own website is amusing – she’s even got a real, live shaman who shaves his head and looks all spiritual and stuff – and she’s got lots of pills and merchandise to sell you, and she is herself that famous metaphorical picture of health.
But – with one t – we are all well-advised to visit a nurse-practitioner or physician for our health care needs, not a website.
And, hey, how do you take your coffee?
mhall46184@aol.com
How Do You Take Your Coffee?
A famous actress – let us call her Ms. Coffee – suggests a somewhat different way of taking one’s morning cuppa.
Is there something wrong with the way we take our coffee now?
Coffee is a celebration of humanity. The morning cup of reveille pleasantly eases us from the happiness of sleep and into a quiet determination to make the work day a brilliant success.
The driver packs his Thermos along with his bills of lading, the office or factory worker takes ten for a recharge with others around the table in the break room, the copper takes a break from patrol down at the Stop ‘N’ Rob, retirees cluster at the supermarket coffee table every morning around nine, the Navy chief petty officer is out of uniform without his paws grasping a coffee cup, and the Air Canada cabin attendant dutifully snarls to the passengers that there is no coffee.
From chalices of glass, ceramics, paper, foam, or plastic, drinking coffee or tea with co-workers and friends almost seems to constitute a rite of secular communion. Except on Air Canada, where there is no coffee, and how dare you ask.
Ms. Coffee, though, suggests that we should take our coffee through the other end of the alimentary canal.
This would probably displace the mirth (Macbeth III.iv.109) at the corner table. Or any table. “Well, hey, I’d better get back to the shop floor; that number three machine’s been acting wonky…”
Ms. Coffee alludes to the, um, assumption of coffee via the nether regions as a deep detoxification, a supercharge, and a whole lotta other stuff using buzzy words. Further, Ms. Coffee refers the reader to a site that for over a hundred dollars sells an appliance for this, um, experience.
The drugstore sells such medical appliances a whole lot cheaper. If you’re interested, that is.
Ms. Coffee’s own website is amusing – she’s even got a real, live shaman who shaves his head and looks all spiritual and stuff – and she’s got lots of pills and merchandise to sell you, and she is herself that famous metaphorical picture of health.
But – with one t – we are all well-advised to visit a nurse-practitioner or physician for our health care needs, not a website.
And, hey, how do you take your coffee?
-30-
If Sneezes were Horses, then Beggars Would...Sneeze, Probably - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
O man – what art thou? Thou’rt not mighty
Clingingly pathetically to a Kleenex box
Instead of wielding a conqueror’s sword
Lifting patent medicines, not wine, to thy lips
Thy sneezing and wheezing will not win thee worlds
The book unread though open in thy lap
Thy darked-orbed eyes unseeing and unseen
Thy wretched, reddened nose – all is despair
And snot that runs in foul, polluted streams
O man – thou art little more than Nyquil-dreams!
mhall46184@aol.com
If Sneezes were Horses, then Beggars Would…Sneeze, Probably
O man – what art thou? Thou’rt not mighty
Clingingly pathetically to a Kleenex box
Instead of wielding a conqueror’s sword
Lifting patent medicines, not wine, to thy lips
Thy sneezing and wheezing will not win thee worlds
The book unread though open in thy lap
Thy darked-orbed eyes unseeing and unseen
Thy wretched, reddened nose – all is despair
And snot that runs in foul, polluted streams
O man – thou art little more than Nyquil-dreams!
Tuesday, January 9, 2018
A Meditation Upon Matters of Faith and Math - some of the shabbiest doggerel ever...
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Our Saviour never said “Now solve for X”
Such is not written in any sacred tex(t)
Saints Paul and Barnabas on journeys Psidian
Did not refer to topics Euclidian
The Corinthians were divided only by factions
Never were they divided by fractions
Good St. Paul wanted all to comprehend
The truth, and not some subtle subtrahend
But still…
But still (to me it is a great frustration)
Numbers are how we measure Creation
With them we plant the Garden that is earth
Building it up with word and work and worth
So that we feed and clothe and mend and tend
With crop rows plowed, panels welded, cattle penned
Airplanes launched, fires put out, and light bulbs lit
Messages sent – there is no end of it!
So brew yourself a cup of coffee
Find your Euclid and dust it off(y)
Work those angles on your protractor
Add, subtract, calculate, and factor
Apply yourself most assiduously
Soon you’ll be an engineer, you’ll see!
Admired by all, a man of great knowledge –
And it began in community college
mhall46184@aol.com
A Meditation Upon Matters of Faith
And the Worthy and Diligent Study
of the Arcana of Mathematics
as Recommended to Industrious and Thoughtful
Young Men and Women
For Kyle,
Who is Enduring His First College Maths
Our Saviour never said “Now solve for X”
Such is not written in any sacred tex(t)
Saints Paul and Barnabas on journeys Psidian
Did not refer to topics Euclidian
The Corinthians were divided only by factions
Never were they divided by fractions
Good St. Paul wanted all to comprehend
The truth, and not some subtle subtrahend
But still…
But still (to me it is a great frustration)
Numbers are how we measure Creation
With them we plant the Garden that is earth
Building it up with word and work and worth
So that we feed and clothe and mend and tend
With crop rows plowed, panels welded, cattle penned
Airplanes launched, fires put out, and light bulbs lit
Messages sent – there is no end of it!
So brew yourself a cup of coffee
Find your Euclid and dust it off(y)
Work those angles on your protractor
Add, subtract, calculate, and factor
Apply yourself most assiduously
Soon you’ll be an engineer, you’ll see!
Admired by all, a man of great knowledge –
And it began in community college
Monday, January 8, 2018
An Old Man Running While Carrying a Volume of The World Book Encyclopedia - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Cups of coffee are reverently borne
Along the bright hospital corridors
By nurses, doctors, technicians, and all
Scrub-suited healers on their dutiful rounds
But wait! A lean, energetic old man
His wild white hair brimming his gimme cap
Dodges among the sacred cups, and runs
Up the stairs to the ICU waiting room
Clutching an old encyclopedia
Like a dispatch from the front –
I wish I’d asked
mhall46184@aol.com
An Old Man Running While Carrying a Volume of The World Book Encyclopedia
A Scene from a Hospital Waiting Room
Cups of coffee are reverently borne
Along the bright hospital corridors
By nurses, doctors, technicians, and all
Scrub-suited healers on their dutiful rounds
But wait! A lean, energetic old man
His wild white hair brimming his gimme cap
Dodges among the sacred cups, and runs
Up the stairs to the ICU waiting room
Clutching an old encyclopedia
Like a dispatch from the front –
I wish I’d asked
Kirbyville Elementary School, 2nd Grade, 1955-1956 - photograph
Photograph by D.T. Kent, Jr., of happy memory
Sunday, January 7, 2018
Feast of the Epiphany - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Grey days recede into dreary, drizzling dusks
Baptismal rains across the windows slip
And even the candlelight is not proof
Against the gathering gloom of heartfall
Shakespeare leans uncertainly on the shelf
And agonizes over his writer’s block
Milton is writing yet another tract
On faith while smoking Players cigarettes
Warnie and Jack are out for a brisk walk
And Tollers is busy correcting proofs
Under a yellow puddle of lamplight
Bleak Spenser in his grief Kilcolman weeps
We all hold castles abandoned and burnt
Friendships grown mouldy, squabbles unresolved
Walks not taken, rough drafts uncorrected
Pipes gone quite out, cups of tea gotten cold
Has it been that long since I saw you last?
Come in; I’ll put the kettle on for tea
Just leave your coat and brolly by the door
Come sit by the fire; come, and talk with me
mhall46184@aol.com
Feast of the Epiphany
Grey days recede into dreary, drizzling dusks
Baptismal rains across the windows slip
And even the candlelight is not proof
Against the gathering gloom of heartfall
Shakespeare leans uncertainly on the shelf
And agonizes over his writer’s block
Milton is writing yet another tract
On faith while smoking Players cigarettes
Warnie and Jack are out for a brisk walk
And Tollers is busy correcting proofs
Under a yellow puddle of lamplight
Bleak Spenser in his grief Kilcolman weeps
We all hold castles abandoned and burnt
Friendships grown mouldy, squabbles unresolved
Walks not taken, rough drafts uncorrected
Pipes gone quite out, cups of tea gotten cold
Has it been that long since I saw you last?
Come in; I’ll put the kettle on for tea
Just leave your coat and brolly by the door
Come sit by the fire; come, and talk with me
Saturday, January 6, 2018
Russian Children on Christmas Eve - poem
Russian Children on Christmas Eve
Good children dress warmly to watch for the star
The star of Bethlehem, the shepherds’ star
The star of the magi, true-guiding star
And more than all of these, the children’s star
If children fall asleep during the Royal Hours
It is fitting and just; they too are royal,
Princes and princesses of the Emperor
And of that Child who in the manger slept
Then home to kutya, and so to their beds -
The Saviour blesses all dear little sleepyheads!
S rozhdyestvom Hristovym!
(In Orthodoxy the 6th of January is Christmas Eve)
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Friday, January 5, 2018
Snowlight - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
White snowlight, glowlight, brightening the woods
By praying down the sky to float among
The dark and creaking pillars of ancient oaks
Whose trunks and limbs are black with clinging ice
Drear, mouldering autumn leaves now lie at rest
Beneath soft-shoaling ripples of rare snow
Pale, iridescent light dances between
The clouds and the ground, and then back again
Shadowless colorings, pearlings, and frosts
At play with miracles in January.
mhall46184@aol.com
Snowlight
White snowlight, glowlight, brightening the woods
By praying down the sky to float among
The dark and creaking pillars of ancient oaks
Whose trunks and limbs are black with clinging ice
Drear, mouldering autumn leaves now lie at rest
Beneath soft-shoaling ripples of rare snow
Pale, iridescent light dances between
The clouds and the ground, and then back again
Shadowless colorings, pearlings, and frosts
At play with miracles in January.
Thursday, January 4, 2018
Down at the Auto Repair - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Blah blah blah Trump blah blah blah Bannon blah
Blah blah blah da(ng)ed schools blah blah it’s all
Fake news blah blah blah double-blah media
Clintons blah blah blah kids these days blah blah
Blah buzz buzz buzz that wouldn’t have happened
In my day blah blah blah I can’t believe
What they’re charging blah blah blah FEMA blah
Blah Trump blah blah they don’t want us to know
Blah blah blah da(ng)ed schools blah blah it’s all
Fake news blah blah blah double-blah Jesus
(You can turn it over if you want, but the other side’s just the same)
mhall46184@aol.com
Down at the Auto Repair - A Waiting Room Discourse
Blah blah blah Trump blah blah blah Bannon blah
Blah blah blah da(ng)ed schools blah blah it’s all
Fake news blah blah blah double-blah media
Clintons blah blah blah kids these days blah blah
Blah buzz buzz buzz that wouldn’t have happened
In my day blah blah blah I can’t believe
What they’re charging blah blah blah FEMA blah
Blah Trump blah blah they don’t want us to know
Blah blah blah da(ng)ed schools blah blah it’s all
Fake news blah blah blah double-blah Jesus
(You can turn it over if you want, but the other side’s just the same)
Wednesday, January 3, 2018
Meditation on a Ten-Dollar Timex Watch - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
A watch doesn’t really tell time, you know
Its tiny mechanism sweeps three hands
Around a dial locked in a little case
Upon a strap buckled around your wrist
And there it imitates the planet’s spin
And the planet’s spin is ordained by God
And the watch’s spin is ordained by man
So that we get to our haircuts on time
The solar system is a mighty work -
And a visit to the barber is nice
mhall46184@aol.com
Meditation on a Ten-Dollar Timex Watch
A watch doesn’t really tell time, you know
Its tiny mechanism sweeps three hands
Around a dial locked in a little case
Upon a strap buckled around your wrist
And there it imitates the planet’s spin
And the planet’s spin is ordained by God
And the watch’s spin is ordained by man
So that we get to our haircuts on time
The solar system is a mighty work -
And a visit to the barber is nice
Tuesday, January 2, 2018
Is the End Near for Religion? - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
No one will ever acknowledge a MePhone
As the Lord of the universe, or as
The Creator from before created time
Born of an IBM Selectric
True plastic of true limited resources,
Sing Advent hymns unto an Apple II,
Whisper aves on a strand of transistors,
Or genuflect before a Model T
No consecration will ever obtain
Upon the altar of a microchip
mhall46184@aol.com
Is the End Near for Religion?
-news item
No one will ever acknowledge a MePhone
As the Lord of the universe, or as
The Creator from before created time
Born of an IBM Selectric
True plastic of true limited resources,
Sing Advent hymns unto an Apple II,
Whisper aves on a strand of transistors,
Or genuflect before a Model T
No consecration will ever obtain
Upon the altar of a microchip
Monday, January 1, 2018
A New Day of Freedom - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
A new dawn of freedom? May it be so
Even in this artificial shift of time
According to those calendars and clocks
Who still attribute virtues to old Janus
For this is Mary’s day, especially so,
This last day in the Octave, now at dawn
And She is our new Dawn of freedom given,
Our Porta Caeli, Bearer of Our Lord
Now with the light we rise to greet the Light
A new dawn of freedom – and it is so
mhall46184@aol.com
A New Dawn of Freedom
A new dawn of freedom? May it be so
Even in this artificial shift of time
According to those calendars and clocks
Who still attribute virtues to old Janus
For this is Mary’s day, especially so,
This last day in the Octave, now at dawn
And She is our new Dawn of freedom given,
Our Porta Caeli, Bearer of Our Lord
Now with the light we rise to greet the Light
A new dawn of freedom – and it is so
Sunday, December 31, 2017
Janus Laughs - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Old Janus surely laughs at our mistakes
In thinking that the world begins again,
That pages turned in calendars and books
Reduce mysteries into measurements
mhall46184@aol.com
Janus Laughs
Old Janus surely laughs at our mistakes
In thinking that the world begins again,
That pages turned in calendars and books
Reduce mysteries into measurements
Saturday, December 30, 2017
Man Screams at Trump Robot Doll - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Just why would anyone scream at a doll?
A Disney doll in the Hall of Presidents
Apped up to creak and speak, but not to hear
(For even human presidents don’t listen)
So yelling safely at a dummied-down
Emmanuel Goldstein 1 of wires and wax
Is not unlike protesting a doorknob
Or verbally abusing a thermostat
Poor old rebel dude – is this all he’s got?
Whatever he feels he is, he’s surely not
1 1984
mhall46184@aol.com
Man Screams at Trump Robot Doll
-news item
Just why would anyone scream at a doll?
A Disney doll in the Hall of Presidents
Apped up to creak and speak, but not to hear
(For even human presidents don’t listen)
So yelling safely at a dummied-down
Emmanuel Goldstein 1 of wires and wax
Is not unlike protesting a doorknob
Or verbally abusing a thermostat
Poor old rebel dude – is this all he’s got?
Whatever he feels he is, he’s surely not
1 1984
Friday, December 29, 2017
The Beggar at Canterbury Gate - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
The beggar sits at Canterbury Gate,
Thin, pale, unshaven, sad. His little dog
Sits patiently as a Benedictine
At Vespers, pondering eternity.
Not that rat terriers are permitted
To make solemn vows. Still, the pup appears
To take his own vocation seriously,
As so few humans do. For, after all,
Dogs demonstrate for us the duties of
Poverty, stability, obedience,
In choir, perhaps; among the garbage, yes,
So that perhaps we too might live aright.
The good dog’s human plays his tin whistle
Beneath usurper Henry’s1 offering-arch
For Kings, as beggars do, must drag their sins
And lay them before the Altar of God:
The beggar drinks and drugs and smokes, and so
His penance is to sit and suffer shame;
The King’s foul murders stain his honorable soul;
His penance is a stone-carved famous name
Our beggar, then, is a happier man,
Begging for bread at Canterbury Gate;
Tho’ stones are scripted not with his poor fame,
His little dog will plead his cause to God.
1 Henry VII, who built the Cathedral Gate in 1517, long after the time of Henry II and St. Thomas Becket
mhall46184@aol.com
The Beggar at Canterbury Gate
The beggar sits at Canterbury Gate,
Thin, pale, unshaven, sad. His little dog
Sits patiently as a Benedictine
At Vespers, pondering eternity.
Not that rat terriers are permitted
To make solemn vows. Still, the pup appears
To take his own vocation seriously,
As so few humans do. For, after all,
Dogs demonstrate for us the duties of
Poverty, stability, obedience,
In choir, perhaps; among the garbage, yes,
So that perhaps we too might live aright.
The good dog’s human plays his tin whistle
Beneath usurper Henry’s1 offering-arch
For Kings, as beggars do, must drag their sins
And lay them before the Altar of God:
The beggar drinks and drugs and smokes, and so
His penance is to sit and suffer shame;
The King’s foul murders stain his honorable soul;
His penance is a stone-carved famous name
Our beggar, then, is a happier man,
Begging for bread at Canterbury Gate;
Tho’ stones are scripted not with his poor fame,
His little dog will plead his cause to God.
1 Henry VII, who built the Cathedral Gate in 1517, long after the time of Henry II and St. Thomas Becket
Thursday, December 28, 2017
Hitler's Ride is for Sale - column
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
One of Hitler’s sets of wheels, a ‘way-happenin’, straight-eight 1939 Mercedes 770K Grosser convertible, is up for auction in Arizona next month. You might want to drop by Scottsdale and kick a few tires.
Some features might still be under warranty. There is some slight damage from Vladimir Putin bench-pressing it.
Next year’s model will be made in China.
One imagines Hitler and Stalin, who were BFF until they began tiffing in June of ’41, drag racing along their demarcation line through Poland.
The big Mercedes was a good car for its time, but wasn’t a match for the American Studebaker. Or the Sherman.
Hitler’s car features armored glass and panels, which makes it just the thing to cruise American cities these days. The convertible top makes catching some rays as easy as strudel.
There is no mention of how many miles to the gallon, kilometers to the liter, or broken treaties to the leader.
The Mercedes Grosser doesn’t come with a sound system, and the radio is A.M. and with only one station, Radio Berlin. You might find a retro-fit at Montgomery Ward’s Electric Avenue. Siriusly.
There is no backup camera because anyone that close just didn’t need to be there, so tough keks.
Inside the glove compartment is a 1943 catalogue of Eva Braun’s spring clothing line. She was quite the designer. And her perfume – “When It’s Air-Raid Time in Heidelberg #6” – was a blast. There is also a road map showing the quickest routes home from Stalingrad, a fan letter from the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, a Margaret Sanger fan magazine, and a picture of Ernst Rohm in a swim suit. More than just friends?
No doubt some guy will ask the seller if he will take a post-dated check: “Like, I don’t get paid until next week, like, you know, but I’m good for it; like, you can ask anyone around here who knows Ol’ Skeeter. Yeah, like, they’ll go ‘Yeah, Ol’ Skeeter’s good for it, like, you know.’”
“So what will you give me on this Ford Fiesta for a trade?”
Hitler was certainly a guy for our time – he was a teetotaler, a non-smoker, and a vegetarian, and sported some quirky face-fuzz. Outfit him in some knee-pants and a Che’ tee-shirt and he’d fit right in the queue at a coffee house in Seattle.
And his car – simply to die for.
But who would want that thing?
mhall46184@aol.com
Hitler’s Ride
One of Hitler’s sets of wheels, a ‘way-happenin’, straight-eight 1939 Mercedes 770K Grosser convertible, is up for auction in Arizona next month. You might want to drop by Scottsdale and kick a few tires.
Some features might still be under warranty. There is some slight damage from Vladimir Putin bench-pressing it.
Next year’s model will be made in China.
One imagines Hitler and Stalin, who were BFF until they began tiffing in June of ’41, drag racing along their demarcation line through Poland.
The big Mercedes was a good car for its time, but wasn’t a match for the American Studebaker. Or the Sherman.
Hitler’s car features armored glass and panels, which makes it just the thing to cruise American cities these days. The convertible top makes catching some rays as easy as strudel.
There is no mention of how many miles to the gallon, kilometers to the liter, or broken treaties to the leader.
The Mercedes Grosser doesn’t come with a sound system, and the radio is A.M. and with only one station, Radio Berlin. You might find a retro-fit at Montgomery Ward’s Electric Avenue. Siriusly.
There is no backup camera because anyone that close just didn’t need to be there, so tough keks.
Inside the glove compartment is a 1943 catalogue of Eva Braun’s spring clothing line. She was quite the designer. And her perfume – “When It’s Air-Raid Time in Heidelberg #6” – was a blast. There is also a road map showing the quickest routes home from Stalingrad, a fan letter from the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, a Margaret Sanger fan magazine, and a picture of Ernst Rohm in a swim suit. More than just friends?
No doubt some guy will ask the seller if he will take a post-dated check: “Like, I don’t get paid until next week, like, you know, but I’m good for it; like, you can ask anyone around here who knows Ol’ Skeeter. Yeah, like, they’ll go ‘Yeah, Ol’ Skeeter’s good for it, like, you know.’”
“So what will you give me on this Ford Fiesta for a trade?”
Hitler was certainly a guy for our time – he was a teetotaler, a non-smoker, and a vegetarian, and sported some quirky face-fuzz. Outfit him in some knee-pants and a Che’ tee-shirt and he’d fit right in the queue at a coffee house in Seattle.
And his car – simply to die for.
But who would want that thing?
-30-
Rachel, Weeping for Our Children - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
No soldiers come, with glaring eyes, with death
To drag our children out into the road
To thrust away their lives into the dust
With pilum, gladius, or manly fist
No Romans as advisors standing by
Amid obscenities, curses, and screams
A fog of witness for that old excuse:
It’s all about the quality of life
Confusion now persuades with soft, soft breath
And therapists come, soothingly, with death.
mhall46184@aol.com
Rachel, Weeping for Our Children
From an idea suggested by Kelly Rogers
No soldiers come, with glaring eyes, with death
To drag our children out into the road
To thrust away their lives into the dust
With pilum, gladius, or manly fist
No Romans as advisors standing by
Amid obscenities, curses, and screams
A fog of witness for that old excuse:
It’s all about the quality of life
Confusion now persuades with soft, soft breath
And therapists come, soothingly, with death.
Wednesday, December 27, 2017
The Desperate Princewives in Toronto - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
On Christmas eve a lineman hoists herself
Far up into the blowing ice to mend
The power that keeps our children warm at night
While waiting for good Santa Claus to come
On Christmas Day a cop patrols the streets
Alone against snipers with ‘47s
Keeping us safe while we grumble about cops
She’s left her children with her mom to watch
The morning after Christmas another mom
Jump-starts her ten-year-old car so she can drive
The slushy streets to her shift at Dairy Queen
For her career ladder at the deep fryer
In a studio in Canada two men
Well-guarded by their secret services
Well-fed, well-dressed well-chauffeured in their ‘zines
Escorted, piloted, guided, scripted
Express their happiness that working folk
Are wealthier and healthier than ever
mhall46184@aol.com
The Desperate Princewives in Toronto
On Christmas eve a lineman hoists herself
Far up into the blowing ice to mend
The power that keeps our children warm at night
While waiting for good Santa Claus to come
On Christmas Day a cop patrols the streets
Alone against snipers with ‘47s
Keeping us safe while we grumble about cops
She’s left her children with her mom to watch
The morning after Christmas another mom
Jump-starts her ten-year-old car so she can drive
The slushy streets to her shift at Dairy Queen
For her career ladder at the deep fryer
In a studio in Canada two men
Well-guarded by their secret services
Well-fed, well-dressed well-chauffeured in their ‘zines
Escorted, piloted, guided, scripted
Express their happiness that working folk
Are wealthier and healthier than ever
Tuesday, December 26, 2017
Children Visiting for Christmas - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
“No! I mean no! Don’t make me get out of
this chair! No! In or out! No! Be inside or
outside! No! Don’t touch that! No! I said no!
No! No candy before lunch! No! Okay, but
No more! No! I said no and I mean no!
I mean no! No! Don’t make me get out of
this chair! No! In or out! No! Onnnne…Don’t make me
Go to two! Don’t touch that! No! I said no!
Onnnne…! I mean it this time! I said no! No!
No! Don’t make me get out of this chair! No!”
“No, YOU! No! You can’t make me! No! No! No!
I want outside! No! I want inside! No!
No! I don’t have to! No! You can’t make me!
No! But I want it! Don’t tell me no! No!
I tell YOU no! You can’t tell ME no! No!
No! You can’t make me! No! No! No! No!
I want outside! No! I want inside! No!
No! I don’t have to! No! You can’t make me!
No! But I want it! Don’t tell me no! No!
I tell YOU no! You can’t tell ME no! No!”
mhall46184@aol.com
Children Visiting for Christmas – a Tragedy in Two Parts
I. A Mother to Her Child
“No! I mean no! Don’t make me get out of
this chair! No! In or out! No! Be inside or
outside! No! Don’t touch that! No! I said no!
No! No candy before lunch! No! Okay, but
No more! No! I said no and I mean no!
I mean no! No! Don’t make me get out of
this chair! No! In or out! No! Onnnne…Don’t make me
Go to two! Don’t touch that! No! I said no!
Onnnne…! I mean it this time! I said no! No!
No! Don’t make me get out of this chair! No!”
II. A Child to His Mother
“No, YOU! No! You can’t make me! No! No! No!
I want outside! No! I want inside! No!
No! I don’t have to! No! You can’t make me!
No! But I want it! Don’t tell me no! No!
I tell YOU no! You can’t tell ME no! No!
No! You can’t make me! No! No! No! No!
I want outside! No! I want inside! No!
No! I don’t have to! No! You can’t make me!
No! But I want it! Don’t tell me no! No!
I tell YOU no! You can’t tell ME no! No!”
Monday, December 25, 2017
Within the Octave of Christmas - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
The wan, weak winter sun has long since set
And on the edge of stars a merry fire
Sends sparks to play among the tinseled frost
That decorates the fields for Christmas-time.
Within this holy octave, happy men
Concelebrate with beer, cigars, and jokes,
This liturgy of needful merriment.
Because
The Holy Child is safe in Mary’s arms,
Saint Joseph leans upon his staff and smiles,
The shepherds now have gone to watch their sheep,
And all are safe from Herod for a time.
Our Christmas duty now is to delight
In Him who gives us joy this happy night.
mhall46184@aol.com
Within the Octave of Christmas
For Eldon Edge, Patron of Christmas Bonfires
The wan, weak winter sun has long since set
And on the edge of stars a merry fire
Sends sparks to play among the tinseled frost
That decorates the fields for Christmas-time.
Within this holy octave, happy men
Concelebrate with beer, cigars, and jokes,
This liturgy of needful merriment.
Because
The Holy Child is safe in Mary’s arms,
Saint Joseph leans upon his staff and smiles,
The shepherds now have gone to watch their sheep,
And all are safe from Herod for a time.
Our Christmas duty now is to delight
In Him who gives us joy this happy night.
Sunday, December 24, 2017
But the Animals were First - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
The ox and ass are in the Stable set
In service divine, as good Isaiah writes
A congregation of God’s creatures met
In honor of their King this Night of nights
And there they wait for us, for we are late
Breathless in the narthex of eternity
A star, a road, a town, an inn, a gate
Have led us to this holy liturgy:
Long centuries and seasons pass, and yet
The ox and ass are in the Stable set
mhall46184@aol.com
But the Animals were First
“We read in Isaiah: ‘The ox knows its owner,
and the ass the master’s crib….’”
-Papa Benedict, The Blessings of Christmas
The ox and ass are in the Stable set
In service divine, as good Isaiah writes
A congregation of God’s creatures met
In honor of their King this Night of nights
And there they wait for us, for we are late
Breathless in the narthex of eternity
A star, a road, a town, an inn, a gate
Have led us to this holy liturgy:
Long centuries and seasons pass, and yet
The ox and ass are in the Stable set
Saturday, December 23, 2017
Horseshoe, and it Crucified - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
A hoodie girl outside the truck stop leans
Against a wall, huddled against the wind
While no one’s looking, sneaking a cigarette
A vision of desperation through the windshield
She’s selling Cowboy-Jesus “for the missions”
A table of lacquered cypress crosses
But instead of the Corpus a horseshoe
A horseshoe crucified – and, too, a girl
A poor, sad girl outside the truck stop leans
She’s selling Cowboy-Jesus for some boss
Or else
mhall46184@aol.com
Horseshoe, and it Crucified
A hoodie girl outside the truck stop leans
Against a wall, huddled against the wind
While no one’s looking, sneaking a cigarette
A vision of desperation through the windshield
She’s selling Cowboy-Jesus “for the missions”
A table of lacquered cypress crosses
But instead of the Corpus a horseshoe
A horseshoe crucified – and, too, a girl
A poor, sad girl outside the truck stop leans
She’s selling Cowboy-Jesus for some boss
Or else
Friday, December 22, 2017
How we Teach our Children Hymns and Carols - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Joy to the world at Canadian Tire
And free shipping until sing of Mary
Amazon roasting on an open fire
And no payments until January
O holy night down at the shopping mall
Adeste fidelis in a traffic jam
I saw three ships in large, medium, and small
O Christmas tree buy a Pajamagram
A new Rolex watch on this silent night -
But park with your packages out of sight
mhall46184@aol.com
How we Teach our Children Hymns and Carols
“We have seen His star in the east at a 20% discount”
Joy to the world at Canadian Tire
And free shipping until sing of Mary
Amazon roasting on an open fire
And no payments until January
O holy night down at the shopping mall
Adeste fidelis in a traffic jam
I saw three ships in large, medium, and small
O Christmas tree buy a Pajamagram
A new Rolex watch on this silent night -
But park with your packages out of sight
After-Christmas Christmas - column
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
From 2010
Liturgically, Christmas begins at midnight on Christmas Eve and continues until the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6. The four Sundays before Christmas constitute Advent, not Christmas, and certainly not the dreary “Christmas Season” for so long inflicted on a suffering world. Too few understand this, and those who follow the Christian season as intended are to be found only in the history museum, between the reconstructed mastodons and the faux cavemen warming themselves at the flickering light-bulb fire behind school-trip-fingerprinted glass.
Christmas trees are nice at any time, though, and Bing Crosby singing “White Christmas,” presents, candles, decorations, cards, festive meals, happy-sad remembrances of those who now grace an even happier Table, and the liturgy on Christmas Eve.
After Christmas dinner there is sometimes a feeling that Christmas is over for another year, but in reality the season is only beginning. And this works out nicely because now one can enjoy Christmas itself, free of the sometimes unreasonable demands of the preceding month.
If the weather is fair, the kids can go outside to kick the new football – and each other, kids being kids. If not, they have plenty to do inside with new games, new books, and new toys, and the adults can have coffee and a second helping of pie, and then maybe another nibble of that turkey. No one has to go to the store for anything, and no one has to dress up for yet another do of any kind.
Yes, there is much to be said for the low expectations of Christmas afternoon.
The tree, compounded of toxic chemical waste in a country far, far away, need not be taken down anytime soon, though getting rid of the Komsomol-Operative-on-a-Shelf spying on your household and reporting any incorrect speech or behavior to Stalin-Claus is tempting.
One acquaintance concluded that the Tattle-tale-on-the-Shelf is a way of preparing American children for a life of surveillance. Once upon a time little boys and girls wanted to be cowboys and doctors and firemen and railroad engineers; now they are prepped to function as OGPU and STASI operatives: Big Elf is Watching You. Another acquaintance dismissed the Fink-on-a-Shelf as creepy, a Peeping-Tom-on-a-Shelf.
Once upon a time, little boys were made of sterner stuff, ripping off the heads of their sisters’ Barbies, but now they fear to take the Commie elf outside and dispatch him with their plastic pirate swords or Robin Hood bows and arrows. And that is if boys are now permitted plastic pirate swords or Robin bows and arrow at all: “Gee. Mom and Dad. A Greasy-Bake oven. In pink. Just what I’ve always wanted. Thanks. Wow. You shouldn’t have. Really.”
Soon enough the Epiphany will be here, and everyone will have to get down to the serious business of winter without colored lights and festive music. No matter what your shift is, you go to work in the dark and come home in the dark, and comfort yourself with the thought that at least January is not August with its merciless heat.
And then sometimes you can dig into the sofa cushions and find a chocolate candy misplaced during December’s merriment, and chocolate tastes even better in January.
If you find a plastic Easter egg from last year, well, that’s fun too, but you probably shouldn’t eat the goodies inside.
Happy, happy after-Christmas, everyone.
mhall46184@aol.com
From 2010
After-Christmas Christmas
Liturgically, Christmas begins at midnight on Christmas Eve and continues until the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6. The four Sundays before Christmas constitute Advent, not Christmas, and certainly not the dreary “Christmas Season” for so long inflicted on a suffering world. Too few understand this, and those who follow the Christian season as intended are to be found only in the history museum, between the reconstructed mastodons and the faux cavemen warming themselves at the flickering light-bulb fire behind school-trip-fingerprinted glass.
Christmas trees are nice at any time, though, and Bing Crosby singing “White Christmas,” presents, candles, decorations, cards, festive meals, happy-sad remembrances of those who now grace an even happier Table, and the liturgy on Christmas Eve.
After Christmas dinner there is sometimes a feeling that Christmas is over for another year, but in reality the season is only beginning. And this works out nicely because now one can enjoy Christmas itself, free of the sometimes unreasonable demands of the preceding month.
If the weather is fair, the kids can go outside to kick the new football – and each other, kids being kids. If not, they have plenty to do inside with new games, new books, and new toys, and the adults can have coffee and a second helping of pie, and then maybe another nibble of that turkey. No one has to go to the store for anything, and no one has to dress up for yet another do of any kind.
Yes, there is much to be said for the low expectations of Christmas afternoon.
The tree, compounded of toxic chemical waste in a country far, far away, need not be taken down anytime soon, though getting rid of the Komsomol-Operative-on-a-Shelf spying on your household and reporting any incorrect speech or behavior to Stalin-Claus is tempting.
One acquaintance concluded that the Tattle-tale-on-the-Shelf is a way of preparing American children for a life of surveillance. Once upon a time little boys and girls wanted to be cowboys and doctors and firemen and railroad engineers; now they are prepped to function as OGPU and STASI operatives: Big Elf is Watching You. Another acquaintance dismissed the Fink-on-a-Shelf as creepy, a Peeping-Tom-on-a-Shelf.
Once upon a time, little boys were made of sterner stuff, ripping off the heads of their sisters’ Barbies, but now they fear to take the Commie elf outside and dispatch him with their plastic pirate swords or Robin Hood bows and arrows. And that is if boys are now permitted plastic pirate swords or Robin bows and arrow at all: “Gee. Mom and Dad. A Greasy-Bake oven. In pink. Just what I’ve always wanted. Thanks. Wow. You shouldn’t have. Really.”
Soon enough the Epiphany will be here, and everyone will have to get down to the serious business of winter without colored lights and festive music. No matter what your shift is, you go to work in the dark and come home in the dark, and comfort yourself with the thought that at least January is not August with its merciless heat.
And then sometimes you can dig into the sofa cushions and find a chocolate candy misplaced during December’s merriment, and chocolate tastes even better in January.
If you find a plastic Easter egg from last year, well, that’s fun too, but you probably shouldn’t eat the goodies inside.
Happy, happy after-Christmas, everyone.
-30-
Thursday, December 21, 2017
Never Trust a Guy Who Irons His Jeans - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Strong canvas is the stuff of adventure
Like a cowboy lassoing horses wild
It captures the ocean’s galloping winds
And to even wilder ships harnesses them
Strong canvas is the stuff of manly work
Defense against fierce cactus and desert dust
Loops for the hammer, pouches for the nails
Sacred vestments anointed with sweat and dirt
A good man works hard, and says what he means
But never trust a guy who irons his jeans
mhall46184@aol.com
Never Trust a Guy Who Irons His Jeans
Strong canvas is the stuff of adventure
Like a cowboy lassoing horses wild
It captures the ocean’s galloping winds
And to even wilder ships harnesses them
Strong canvas is the stuff of manly work
Defense against fierce cactus and desert dust
Loops for the hammer, pouches for the nails
Sacred vestments anointed with sweat and dirt
A good man works hard, and says what he means
But never trust a guy who irons his jeans
Wednesday, December 20, 2017
Love in the Corner Booth - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
His ducktail haircut from 1957
Fading to white, her voice without makeup
Sharing scripture verses and something about
Her latest operation and her miseries
Outside along the row of pickup trucks
A green-haired waitress smokes a cigarette
The fuzz of her Harley-Davidson coat
Pressed flat for love against the window glass
They’ve got a sale on tires down at Wal-Mart
Along the four-lane Christmas passes by
mhall46184@aol.com
Love in the Corner Booth
Somewhere along US 96
His ducktail haircut from 1957
Fading to white, her voice without makeup
Sharing scripture verses and something about
Her latest operation and her miseries
Outside along the row of pickup trucks
A green-haired waitress smokes a cigarette
The fuzz of her Harley-Davidson coat
Pressed flat for love against the window glass
They’ve got a sale on tires down at Wal-Mart
Along the four-lane Christmas passes by
Tuesday, December 19, 2017
A Conversation about Whiteness - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Wedding dresses, clouds in a summer sky
Those new tenny-runners in junior high
The towels the Navy issued all of us
Liquid Paper™ for covering typos
Wild geese winging the seasons, moved by God
The much-prayed pages in MeeMaw’s Bible
A sidewalk made playground with colored chalk
A blank page in the typewriter positioned
Ready, waiting for the next Langston Hughes
To write about rivers, or about…you
mhall46184@aol.com
A Conversation about Whiteness
Wedding dresses, clouds in a summer sky
Those new tenny-runners in junior high
The towels the Navy issued all of us
Liquid Paper™ for covering typos
Wild geese winging the seasons, moved by God
The much-prayed pages in MeeMaw’s Bible
A sidewalk made playground with colored chalk
A blank page in the typewriter positioned
Ready, waiting for the next Langston Hughes
To write about rivers, or about…you
Monday, December 18, 2017
Why do We Write? - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
If we accept that art helps us reveal
The hidden structures of the universe
As beauty transcendent in color and form
Harmonious truth in music, word, and dance
Then choosing sides in old men’s deadly games
Is merely empire-building, trunkless legs2,
And focusing upon our hurts and harms
Is but a dark Endorian3 conceit
If we build art in love, not for ourselves,
But for all others, we live beyond all time
1 Prince Myshkin in The Idiot
2 Shelley, “Ozymandias”
3 1 Samuel 28
mhall46184@aol.com
Why do We Write?
“Beauty will save the world.”1
-Dostoyevsky
If we accept that art helps us reveal
The hidden structures of the universe
As beauty transcendent in color and form
Harmonious truth in music, word, and dance
Then choosing sides in old men’s deadly games
Is merely empire-building, trunkless legs2,
And focusing upon our hurts and harms
Is but a dark Endorian3 conceit
If we build art in love, not for ourselves,
But for all others, we live beyond all time
1 Prince Myshkin in The Idiot
2 Shelley, “Ozymandias”
3 1 Samuel 28
Sunday, December 17, 2017
Saint Mary Magdalene's Recycled Mobile 'Phone - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Her ‘phone was passed on to a parish priest
But they forgot to change the numbers and so
Her client-base kept telephoning him
At night, when the moon and the johns were full
“Confessions on Friday evening at seven”
Didn’t ring-a-ding anyone’s ding-ding
Maybe the lonely men in lonely rooms
Remembered then what their dear mamas said
And maybe they didn’t – life falls apart
Both in the street and at the Airport Inn
(predicated on a real event)
mhall46184@aol.com
Saint Mary Magdalene’s Recycled Mobile ‘Phone
Her ‘phone was passed on to a parish priest
But they forgot to change the numbers and so
Her client-base kept telephoning him
At night, when the moon and the johns were full
“Confessions on Friday evening at seven”
Didn’t ring-a-ding anyone’s ding-ding
Maybe the lonely men in lonely rooms
Remembered then what their dear mamas said
And maybe they didn’t – life falls apart
Both in the street and at the Airport Inn
(predicated on a real event)
Saturday, December 16, 2017
The World in Your Hands - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
A little bead between your fingers slips
And then another, and another yet
Linked with a bit of cord, in corde1 linked
Like planets all in rhythm with their sun
Each bead is our created world in small:
Each ocean a baptism, each island a hope
Each wind a prophecy whispering to
An exiled people waiting for the dawn
And for your fiat mihi to that Light
A little bead between your fingers waits
I 1n corde - "in the heart" from "In corde Iesu," "in the heart of Jesus"
2 Fiat mihi - St. Luke 1:38
mhall46184@aol.com
The World in Your Hands
A little bead between your fingers slips
And then another, and another yet
Linked with a bit of cord, in corde1 linked
Like planets all in rhythm with their sun
Each bead is our created world in small:
Each ocean a baptism, each island a hope
Each wind a prophecy whispering to
An exiled people waiting for the dawn
And for your fiat mihi to that Light
A little bead between your fingers waits
I 1n corde - "in the heart" from "In corde Iesu," "in the heart of Jesus"
2 Fiat mihi - St. Luke 1:38
Friday, December 15, 2017
"Dear Valued Customer" - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Dear Valued Customer:
Old Hearth & Home Mutual Bank & Trust
Is changing its name to Cosmos Banking
And now to Financial Solutions Inc
And tomorrow to New Heritage Bank
Same familiar faces, same great service
A broader range of personalized products
Because, neighbor, you’re still our good neighbor
(We’ll need two kinds of identification)
But that’s enough bank sign-changing for now -
We’re all out of two-sided Velcro® tape
mhall46184@aol.com
“Dear Valued Customer”
Dear Valued Customer:
Old Hearth & Home Mutual Bank & Trust
Is changing its name to Cosmos Banking
And now to Financial Solutions Inc
And tomorrow to New Heritage Bank
Same familiar faces, same great service
A broader range of personalized products
Because, neighbor, you’re still our good neighbor
(We’ll need two kinds of identification)
But that’s enough bank sign-changing for now -
We’re all out of two-sided Velcro® tape
Thursday, December 14, 2017
Hobo Jungle - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
It’s a jungle out there – across the road
A hoodie-man carrying a shopping bag
A turn, a thought, a blink, a pause – he’s gone
Like the silent lynx, disappeared among the trees
The stock market is up, the woods are dark
Beyond the lights, the refuge of lost men;
The old folks spoke of hobo jungles back when
Along the tracks, not near an office block
Beyond the glass, beyond the walls, beyond:
It’s a jungle out there – across the road
mhall46184@aol.com
Hobo Jungle
It’s a jungle out there – across the road
A hoodie-man carrying a shopping bag
A turn, a thought, a blink, a pause – he’s gone
Like the silent lynx, disappeared among the trees
The stock market is up, the woods are dark
Beyond the lights, the refuge of lost men;
The old folks spoke of hobo jungles back when
Along the tracks, not near an office block
Beyond the glass, beyond the walls, beyond:
It’s a jungle out there – across the road
Christmas in Exile - column
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
The citizens of William’s Harbour, Labrador, will not celebrate Christmas in their old homes because now, except as a geographical expression, there is no William’s Harbour.
The 1992 moratorium on cod fishing ended the island’s chief industry, and summer tourism and subsistence fishing and harvesting were not enough to sustain the small and aging community. The government of Newfoundland and Labrador (now there is a forced marriage) set out a schedule for ending all services and offered everyone compensation in exchange for the titles to their homes.
Beginning in August the people of the island began boarding the ferry with their household goods for new lives away. And now William’s Harbour is dark, and the ferry sails no more.
While governments compute in terms of housing stock – not homes – and budgets, those subject to the probably necessary decisions in St. John’s have said farewell to their homes, their fisheries, their trap lines, St. Andrew’s Church on its little hill, and the graves of their ancestors.
Resettlement in denotation is neutral; in connotation one is reminded of the many misuses of the word as a euphemism: the many Trails of Tears of the First Nations, the Hitlerian "resettlement to the east," the Communists' resettlement of peoples in every land that ideology has ever infected, Le Grand Derangement of the Acadians, and Smallwood's forced resettlement of people from Newfoundland's outports.
There were no soldiers with bayonets dragging the people of William’s Harbour out of their homes or forcing them onto boats, but still the thoughtful man or woman can only be uncomfortable with the destruction of a culture as well as the dislocation of individuals and families by the decisions of distant rulers.
And, after all, the rulers will be in their own warm homes this Christmas.
On Christmas Eve the exiles will find other churches for the liturgies, maybe even another St. Andrew’s, but it won’t be on their island. As they light the candles and sing the ancient hymns at midnight they will know that over their old church and over Mama and Papa’s graves there is only darkness, only silence, only the cold Atlantic winds.
For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care:
No children run to lisp their sire's return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.
mhall46184@aol.com
Christmas in Exile
The citizens of William’s Harbour, Labrador, will not celebrate Christmas in their old homes because now, except as a geographical expression, there is no William’s Harbour.
The 1992 moratorium on cod fishing ended the island’s chief industry, and summer tourism and subsistence fishing and harvesting were not enough to sustain the small and aging community. The government of Newfoundland and Labrador (now there is a forced marriage) set out a schedule for ending all services and offered everyone compensation in exchange for the titles to their homes.
Beginning in August the people of the island began boarding the ferry with their household goods for new lives away. And now William’s Harbour is dark, and the ferry sails no more.
While governments compute in terms of housing stock – not homes – and budgets, those subject to the probably necessary decisions in St. John’s have said farewell to their homes, their fisheries, their trap lines, St. Andrew’s Church on its little hill, and the graves of their ancestors.
Resettlement in denotation is neutral; in connotation one is reminded of the many misuses of the word as a euphemism: the many Trails of Tears of the First Nations, the Hitlerian "resettlement to the east," the Communists' resettlement of peoples in every land that ideology has ever infected, Le Grand Derangement of the Acadians, and Smallwood's forced resettlement of people from Newfoundland's outports.
There were no soldiers with bayonets dragging the people of William’s Harbour out of their homes or forcing them onto boats, but still the thoughtful man or woman can only be uncomfortable with the destruction of a culture as well as the dislocation of individuals and families by the decisions of distant rulers.
And, after all, the rulers will be in their own warm homes this Christmas.
On Christmas Eve the exiles will find other churches for the liturgies, maybe even another St. Andrew’s, but it won’t be on their island. As they light the candles and sing the ancient hymns at midnight they will know that over their old church and over Mama and Papa’s graves there is only darkness, only silence, only the cold Atlantic winds.
For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care:
No children run to lisp their sire's return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.
-Gray, “Elegy in a Country Churchyard”
-30-
Wednesday, December 13, 2017
Saint Garden Gnome - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
An obscure barefoot friar in Italy
Long labored in the Perugian sun,
Heaped rocks upon rocks, and then other rocks,
Up to a wavery roof of broken tiles,
Repairing with his bleeding hands God’s church
Then, better known – it wasn’t his fault – this friar,
With others in love with Lady Poverty,
In hope and penance trudged to far-off Rome
To offer there his modest Rule of life,
Repairing with his mindful words God’s Church
Along the delta of the steaming Nile
He waved away the worried pickets, crossed
Into the camp of the Saracens
Preaching Christ to merciful Al-Kamil,
Offering with a martyr’s heart God’s Faith
Saint Francis is depicted in fine art
In great museums and in modest homes -
And you can find him too, down at Wal-Mart,
Between the plastic frogs and concrete gnomes.
mhall46184@aol.com
Saint Garden Gnome
An obscure barefoot friar in Italy
Long labored in the Perugian sun,
Heaped rocks upon rocks, and then other rocks,
Up to a wavery roof of broken tiles,
Repairing with his bleeding hands God’s church
Then, better known – it wasn’t his fault – this friar,
With others in love with Lady Poverty,
In hope and penance trudged to far-off Rome
To offer there his modest Rule of life,
Repairing with his mindful words God’s Church
Along the delta of the steaming Nile
He waved away the worried pickets, crossed
Into the camp of the Saracens
Preaching Christ to merciful Al-Kamil,
Offering with a martyr’s heart God’s Faith
Saint Francis is depicted in fine art
In great museums and in modest homes -
And you can find him too, down at Wal-Mart,
Between the plastic frogs and concrete gnomes.
Tuesday, December 12, 2017
Hello Poetry - unreliable
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Hello Poetry, aka HelloPoetry, He Po, and other unfortunate variants, is a free and enjoyable way of sharing poetry. Many of the submissions are, as one would expect, me-me-me-I-I-I free verse self pityings, but many others are thoughtful in content and artistic in construction. Given that verse has suffered a century-long decline in quality and appreciation as a part of popular culture, that any poetry is written at all is a marvel.
However, in the months I have participated in Hello Poetry the functionality of the site has been undependable – sometimes it has been down for days, and at other times it blocks submissions. Appeals to the webmaster are never answered.
Yesterday an attempt to post was blocked with a large “FORBIDDEN” and a code. Considering the possibility that my computer was infected or was sending false signals, I examined the system, cleaned the cookies, and backed up to several hours before the metaphorical wall was raised. Submissions were still blocked, and later, notes to other writers. This morning I attempted to submit via another computer in another location, and was again “FORBIDDEN.”
The site is free, and the webmaster may choose to accept or reject submissions as he wished, and I am free not to indulge erratic service and ill manners. My poor efforts will continue to be available on reactionarydrivel.blogspot.com (which is not really reactionary, though it may well be drivel).
Cheers,
Lawrence
mhall46184@aol.com
Hello Poetry, aka HelloPoetry, He Po, and other unfortunate variants, is a free and enjoyable way of sharing poetry. Many of the submissions are, as one would expect, me-me-me-I-I-I free verse self pityings, but many others are thoughtful in content and artistic in construction. Given that verse has suffered a century-long decline in quality and appreciation as a part of popular culture, that any poetry is written at all is a marvel.
However, in the months I have participated in Hello Poetry the functionality of the site has been undependable – sometimes it has been down for days, and at other times it blocks submissions. Appeals to the webmaster are never answered.
Yesterday an attempt to post was blocked with a large “FORBIDDEN” and a code. Considering the possibility that my computer was infected or was sending false signals, I examined the system, cleaned the cookies, and backed up to several hours before the metaphorical wall was raised. Submissions were still blocked, and later, notes to other writers. This morning I attempted to submit via another computer in another location, and was again “FORBIDDEN.”
The site is free, and the webmaster may choose to accept or reject submissions as he wished, and I am free not to indulge erratic service and ill manners. My poor efforts will continue to be available on reactionarydrivel.blogspot.com (which is not really reactionary, though it may well be drivel).
Cheers,
Lawrence
Monday, December 11, 2017
Vouchsafest Thou? - just for fun
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Do you enjoy the word "vouchsafe" as much
As I? It isn't as musical as the phrase
"Thence forward," or “joylich,” “leman,” and such
Or "confusticate" - who says that these days?
“Wherefore,” “abroche,” let us now celebrate
“Antic” English words: “aforetime,” “perforce”
“Slowcoach,” “freshet”, “befall” - at this late date?
And dear “daffadowndilley” (but of course!)
“Declaim,” “forsooth,” “marchwarden,” and “descry,”
And let us not forget the sweet “day’s-eye!”
mhall46184@aol.com
Vouchsafest Thou?
Do you enjoy the word "vouchsafe" as much
As I? It isn't as musical as the phrase
"Thence forward," or “joylich,” “leman,” and such
Or "confusticate" - who says that these days?
“Wherefore,” “abroche,” let us now celebrate
“Antic” English words: “aforetime,” “perforce”
“Slowcoach,” “freshet”, “befall” - at this late date?
And dear “daffadowndilley” (but of course!)
“Declaim,” “forsooth,” “marchwarden,” and “descry,”
And let us not forget the sweet “day’s-eye!”
Sunday, December 10, 2017
Upon Re-Reading Doctor Zhivago - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Love lost along abandoned railway lines,
Grave-cold, grave-still, grave-dark beneath dead snow,
A thousand miles of ashes, corpses, ghosts -
Sacrarium of a martyred civilization.
A silent wolf pads west across the ice,
The rotting remnant of a young man’s arm,
Slung casually between its pale pink jaws -
A cufflink clings to a bit of ragged cloth.
Above the wolf, the ice, the arm, the link
A dead star hangs, dead in a moonless sky,
It gives no light, there is no life; a mist
Arises from the clotted, haunted earth.
For generations the seasons in darkness slept,
Since neither love nor life were free to sing
The eternal hymns of long-forbidden spring -
And yet beneath the lies the old world sighs
The old world sighed in sudden ecstasy
A whispered resurrection of the truth
As tender stems ascended, pushed the stones
Aside, away into irrelevance.
And now golden sunflowers laugh with the sun
Like merry young lads in their happy youth
Coaxing an ox-team into the fields,
Showing off their muscles to merry young girls.
The men of steel are only stains of rust,
Discoloring fragments of broken drains,
As useless as the rotted bits of brass
Turned up sometimes by Uncle Sasha’s plow.
For this is Holy Russia, eternally young;
Over her wide lands high church domes bless the sky,
While Ruslan and Ludmilla bless the earth
With the songs of lovers in God’s eternal now.
(The 1965 movie version is brilliant, and the recent mini-series is good, but these worthy endeavors are but shadows of the novel.)
mhall46184@aol.com
Upon Re-Reading Doctor Zhivago
for two friends
Love lost along abandoned railway lines,
Grave-cold, grave-still, grave-dark beneath dead snow,
A thousand miles of ashes, corpses, ghosts -
Sacrarium of a martyred civilization.
A silent wolf pads west across the ice,
The rotting remnant of a young man’s arm,
Slung casually between its pale pink jaws -
A cufflink clings to a bit of ragged cloth.
Above the wolf, the ice, the arm, the link
A dead star hangs, dead in a moonless sky,
It gives no light, there is no life; a mist
Arises from the clotted, haunted earth.
For generations the seasons in darkness slept,
Since neither love nor life were free to sing
The eternal hymns of long-forbidden spring -
And yet beneath the lies the old world sighs
The old world sighed in sudden ecstasy
A whispered resurrection of the truth
As tender stems ascended, pushed the stones
Aside, away into irrelevance.
And now golden sunflowers laugh with the sun
Like merry young lads in their happy youth
Coaxing an ox-team into the fields,
Showing off their muscles to merry young girls.
The men of steel are only stains of rust,
Discoloring fragments of broken drains,
As useless as the rotted bits of brass
Turned up sometimes by Uncle Sasha’s plow.
For this is Holy Russia, eternally young;
Over her wide lands high church domes bless the sky,
While Ruslan and Ludmilla bless the earth
With the songs of lovers in God’s eternal now.
(The 1965 movie version is brilliant, and the recent mini-series is good, but these worthy endeavors are but shadows of the novel.)
Saturday, December 9, 2017
On the Vigil of the Nativity - poem (still unsure re the title)
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
In a Capuchin friary, on a wall
In faded letters from the long ago
A simple sign asks the casual visitor
“Why Are You Here?”
And that’s a fair question; it always is
If I am in one place, I am not in another;
Unless someone has forced me otherwise
I have made a choice to be where I am
So why do I kneel here (and half asleep)
In a Stable, among cattle and sheep?
mhall46184@aol.com
On the Vigil of the Nativity
In a Capuchin friary, on a wall
In faded letters from the long ago
A simple sign asks the casual visitor
“Why Are You Here?”
And that’s a fair question; it always is
If I am in one place, I am not in another;
Unless someone has forced me otherwise
I have made a choice to be where I am
So why do I kneel here (and half asleep)
In a Stable, among cattle and sheep?
Friday, December 8, 2017
Pilgrimage Along the A1, from Peterborough to Chesterton - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
From Peterborough drops a road
Across the Fens, into the past
(Where wary wraiths still wear the woad);
It comes to Chesterton at last.
And we will walk along that track,
Or hop a bus, perhaps; you know
How hard it is to sling a pack
When one is sixty-old, and slow.
That mapped blue line across our land
Follows along a Roman way
Where Hereward the Wake made stand
In mists where secret islands lay.
In Chesterton a Norman tower
Beside Saint Michael’s guards the fields;
Though clockless, still it counts slow hours
And centuries hidden long, and sealed.
And there before a looted tomb,
Long bare of candles, flowers, and prayers,
We will in our poor Latin resume
Aves for old de Beauville’s cares.
mhall46184@aol.com
Pilgrimage Along the A1
From Peterborough drops a road
Across the Fens, into the past
(Where wary wraiths still wear the woad);
It comes to Chesterton at last.
And we will walk along that track,
Or hop a bus, perhaps; you know
How hard it is to sling a pack
When one is sixty-old, and slow.
That mapped blue line across our land
Follows along a Roman way
Where Hereward the Wake made stand
In mists where secret islands lay.
In Chesterton a Norman tower
Beside Saint Michael’s guards the fields;
Though clockless, still it counts slow hours
And centuries hidden long, and sealed.
And there before a looted tomb,
Long bare of candles, flowers, and prayers,
We will in our poor Latin resume
Aves for old de Beauville’s cares.
Thursday, December 7, 2017
A Bitcoin for Your Thoughts? - column
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Does anyone in our federal government do anything except call each other rude names and investigate each other? If we tell our children and grandchildren about the good old days when there were grownups in the White House and in Congress, the little kids will think we’re palming more Santa Claus yarns off on them.
“Once upon a time there were two fine men, President Reagan and Speaker of the House O’Neill, and although they didn’t agree about everything they respected each other and loved their country very much…”
+ + +
George P. Bush is Texas’ land commissioner and a fine man. His vision for preserving the physical elements of the history of our republic and now our state is brilliant. But he needs to shave. The Don Johnson / Justin Trudeau look is soooooooooooo 1970s.
+ + +
Hey, how about visiting San Francisco this year? If you are murdered in the streets the judge and jury will show their love for the murderer. For you, nothing.
+ + +
“Merry Christmas” has always been acceptable. I have never encountered any situation in which an organization declared “Merry Christmas” inappropriate. I keep reading about that on the GossipNet, and hearing about it from the druggie draft dodger on midday radio, and maybe banning “Merry Christmas” has happened, but I’ve never encountered it. Andy Williams, of happy memory, long ago recorded a song called “Happy Holidays,” and that’s fine too.
+ + +
Jim Nabors has died. Shazam! Citizen’s arrest! Citizen’s arrest! He was a great comic actor and a singer. You can find him, as PFC Gomer Pyle, singing “The Impossible Dream” before the Marine Corps orchestra on YouTube.
+ + +
Bitcoins – just remember the stories about magic beans and golden eggs.
+ + +
Like typewriters, passenger trains, short stories, radios, fountain pens, and telephones, wristwatches had a run of about a century. You seldom see them anymore.
Once upon people wore wristwatches; now they appear to have MePhones surgically attached to their hands.
+ + +
Hey, it’s ‘way past time to throw out the last of that Thanksgiving turkey. There’ll be more for Christmas!
Mhall46184@aol.com
A Bitcoin for Your Thoughts?
Does anyone in our federal government do anything except call each other rude names and investigate each other? If we tell our children and grandchildren about the good old days when there were grownups in the White House and in Congress, the little kids will think we’re palming more Santa Claus yarns off on them.
“Once upon a time there were two fine men, President Reagan and Speaker of the House O’Neill, and although they didn’t agree about everything they respected each other and loved their country very much…”
+ + +
George P. Bush is Texas’ land commissioner and a fine man. His vision for preserving the physical elements of the history of our republic and now our state is brilliant. But he needs to shave. The Don Johnson / Justin Trudeau look is soooooooooooo 1970s.
+ + +
Hey, how about visiting San Francisco this year? If you are murdered in the streets the judge and jury will show their love for the murderer. For you, nothing.
+ + +
“Merry Christmas” has always been acceptable. I have never encountered any situation in which an organization declared “Merry Christmas” inappropriate. I keep reading about that on the GossipNet, and hearing about it from the druggie draft dodger on midday radio, and maybe banning “Merry Christmas” has happened, but I’ve never encountered it. Andy Williams, of happy memory, long ago recorded a song called “Happy Holidays,” and that’s fine too.
+ + +
Jim Nabors has died. Shazam! Citizen’s arrest! Citizen’s arrest! He was a great comic actor and a singer. You can find him, as PFC Gomer Pyle, singing “The Impossible Dream” before the Marine Corps orchestra on YouTube.
+ + +
Bitcoins – just remember the stories about magic beans and golden eggs.
+ + +
Like typewriters, passenger trains, short stories, radios, fountain pens, and telephones, wristwatches had a run of about a century. You seldom see them anymore.
Once upon people wore wristwatches; now they appear to have MePhones surgically attached to their hands.
+ + +
Hey, it’s ‘way past time to throw out the last of that Thanksgiving turkey. There’ll be more for Christmas!
-30-
Happy Merry Hallothanksmas - column
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Halloween, an occasion of insanity for which no honest pagan would ever take credit, is long over, and we are now in a season not quite as bizarre.
Having suffered weeks of debates about who offered the first thanksgiving, and where, our attention is now turned (whether or not we wish it to be turned) to the next debate, The True Meaning of Christmas.
The four weeks prior to Christmas are the Christian season of Advent. Christmas properly begins on midnight on the 24th of December and ends with the Feast of Epiphany on the 6th of January.
But perhaps we should mention Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany only in the past tense.
These Christian seasons, along with All Saints and All Souls, have long been culturally censored by the Macy’s-Amazon Continuum, and organically recycled into one long distraction, Hallothanksmas. Some call it The Christmas Season, but this is the one thing it categorically is not. Hallothanksmas begins around the first of September and concludes with the beginning of Mardi Gras on December 26.
This cobbled-together season is honored in television shows about the Proletariat camping on the concrete outside Mega-Much-Big-Box stores the size of the Colosseum in Rome. At the appointed hour the electric bells ring out and an official opens the Gates of Consumer Heaven so that The People can crash against them and each other in a blood-sacrifice combining elements of the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona and a jolly good riot between the Greens and the Blues in Constantinople.
The modern Proletariat compete not for a crown of laurel or of gold, which moths and rust consumeth, but for the everlasting honor and street cred of purchasing a made-in-China television set (in the vernacular, a “flatscreen”) much like the ones they already have, no matter how many of their fellow worshippers must be wounded and killed for it.
The old Christian seasons were predicated on the salvation story, gratitude, and good, healthy merriment; Hallothanksmas is ornamented with casualty lists.
Although Hallothanksmas is mostly about consumption, theft, and violence, it is also marked with ritual meals for the survivors during which the liturgy of the word is to share gory narratives about past and anticipated surgeries and illnesses. Turkey and dressing are just not complete without a look at everyone’s laparotomy, appendectomy, and open-heart-surgery scars and detailed accounts of the children’s latest bowel movements.
But soon all this must end with the beginning of Mardi Gras and its joyful excesses and proud public exhibitions of projectile emesis.
And let The People say “Woo! Woo!” as they bow their heads reverently before their MePhones.
Mhall46184@aol.com
Happy Merry Hallothanksmas
Halloween, an occasion of insanity for which no honest pagan would ever take credit, is long over, and we are now in a season not quite as bizarre.
Having suffered weeks of debates about who offered the first thanksgiving, and where, our attention is now turned (whether or not we wish it to be turned) to the next debate, The True Meaning of Christmas.
The four weeks prior to Christmas are the Christian season of Advent. Christmas properly begins on midnight on the 24th of December and ends with the Feast of Epiphany on the 6th of January.
But perhaps we should mention Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany only in the past tense.
These Christian seasons, along with All Saints and All Souls, have long been culturally censored by the Macy’s-Amazon Continuum, and organically recycled into one long distraction, Hallothanksmas. Some call it The Christmas Season, but this is the one thing it categorically is not. Hallothanksmas begins around the first of September and concludes with the beginning of Mardi Gras on December 26.
This cobbled-together season is honored in television shows about the Proletariat camping on the concrete outside Mega-Much-Big-Box stores the size of the Colosseum in Rome. At the appointed hour the electric bells ring out and an official opens the Gates of Consumer Heaven so that The People can crash against them and each other in a blood-sacrifice combining elements of the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona and a jolly good riot between the Greens and the Blues in Constantinople.
The modern Proletariat compete not for a crown of laurel or of gold, which moths and rust consumeth, but for the everlasting honor and street cred of purchasing a made-in-China television set (in the vernacular, a “flatscreen”) much like the ones they already have, no matter how many of their fellow worshippers must be wounded and killed for it.
The old Christian seasons were predicated on the salvation story, gratitude, and good, healthy merriment; Hallothanksmas is ornamented with casualty lists.
Although Hallothanksmas is mostly about consumption, theft, and violence, it is also marked with ritual meals for the survivors during which the liturgy of the word is to share gory narratives about past and anticipated surgeries and illnesses. Turkey and dressing are just not complete without a look at everyone’s laparotomy, appendectomy, and open-heart-surgery scars and detailed accounts of the children’s latest bowel movements.
But soon all this must end with the beginning of Mardi Gras and its joyful excesses and proud public exhibitions of projectile emesis.
And let The People say “Woo! Woo!” as they bow their heads reverently before their MePhones.
-30-
The Insolent Gas Pump - column
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
In the first episode of Get Smart (in glorious black-and-white) Agent Maxwell Smart’s shoe begins ringing like a solid old Bell telephone while he is at a concert (as in music, not existential yowling). The shoe-phone gag, complete with a large rotary dial, was sustained over the life of the series, along with many other logical and illogical gadgets.
Gadgets are fun – telephones, typewriters, Italian Army knives, illuminated magnifiers, barometers, cuckoo clocks, can openers, self-changing record players, the sort of technology that knows its place and doesn’t give itself airs.
But civilization comes to a skidding Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote stop with talking gas pumps that show movies.
Once upon a time when you wanted gas for your car you stopped at the filling station and a nice man wearing a Texaco shirt and a bowtie (miss you, George) filled your car’s tank and checked under the hood, whatever checking under the hood meant. In illo tempore a gallon of gas cost about the same as a cup of coffee, and, come to think of it, still does.
But now you have to get out of the car, produce a plastic card, and negotiate with the pump according to questions and instructions legible on the screen only when the sun is at exactly the right angle, usually around dawn on the the summer solstice.
And then the gas pump puts on a moving picture show. First, there’s the weather. Snow? I don’t think so. But the next day there was snow.
The other day there was a trivia quiz, followed some gossip about Miley Kardashian or somebody like that who’s going to marry the king of Crete, I think.
There was no Roadrunner cartoon or a John Wayne, so what’s the point of a talking gas pump with movies?
But here’s where things get awkward – you find yourself talking back to the gas pump.
This is one of those, like, you know, existential moments, and, like, when you pause midway through the journey of life and find yourself in a gloomy forest of gas pumps (it’s in Dante if you want to look it up).
When you find yourself arguing with a gas pump, you’ve reached an existential whatchamacallit.
Look, on my home planet you just don’t converse with gas pumps. Toasters, maybe. Thermostats, rarely, and only on general topics, like the weather.
But never gas pumps.
Gas pumps, because they light up and show you talking pictures, are like the tenant’s wife in Barchester Towers who now has a piano in the parlour and so feels free to address an archdeacon at the squire’s garden party as if they were social equals.
We just can’t have that.
The next time the gas pump talks to me I’m going to keep my responses polite but just this side of curt.
You know Curt; we all went to school together.
Talking gas pumps. Harrumph. What next – will the coffee maker begin exchanging gossip with the microwave?
mhall46184@aol.com
The Insolent Gas Pump
In the first episode of Get Smart (in glorious black-and-white) Agent Maxwell Smart’s shoe begins ringing like a solid old Bell telephone while he is at a concert (as in music, not existential yowling). The shoe-phone gag, complete with a large rotary dial, was sustained over the life of the series, along with many other logical and illogical gadgets.
Gadgets are fun – telephones, typewriters, Italian Army knives, illuminated magnifiers, barometers, cuckoo clocks, can openers, self-changing record players, the sort of technology that knows its place and doesn’t give itself airs.
But civilization comes to a skidding Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote stop with talking gas pumps that show movies.
Once upon a time when you wanted gas for your car you stopped at the filling station and a nice man wearing a Texaco shirt and a bowtie (miss you, George) filled your car’s tank and checked under the hood, whatever checking under the hood meant. In illo tempore a gallon of gas cost about the same as a cup of coffee, and, come to think of it, still does.
But now you have to get out of the car, produce a plastic card, and negotiate with the pump according to questions and instructions legible on the screen only when the sun is at exactly the right angle, usually around dawn on the the summer solstice.
And then the gas pump puts on a moving picture show. First, there’s the weather. Snow? I don’t think so. But the next day there was snow.
The other day there was a trivia quiz, followed some gossip about Miley Kardashian or somebody like that who’s going to marry the king of Crete, I think.
There was no Roadrunner cartoon or a John Wayne, so what’s the point of a talking gas pump with movies?
But here’s where things get awkward – you find yourself talking back to the gas pump.
This is one of those, like, you know, existential moments, and, like, when you pause midway through the journey of life and find yourself in a gloomy forest of gas pumps (it’s in Dante if you want to look it up).
When you find yourself arguing with a gas pump, you’ve reached an existential whatchamacallit.
Look, on my home planet you just don’t converse with gas pumps. Toasters, maybe. Thermostats, rarely, and only on general topics, like the weather.
But never gas pumps.
Gas pumps, because they light up and show you talking pictures, are like the tenant’s wife in Barchester Towers who now has a piano in the parlour and so feels free to address an archdeacon at the squire’s garden party as if they were social equals.
We just can’t have that.
The next time the gas pump talks to me I’m going to keep my responses polite but just this side of curt.
You know Curt; we all went to school together.
Talking gas pumps. Harrumph. What next – will the coffee maker begin exchanging gossip with the microwave?
-30-
"Found a Dead Body This Mornin' Early" - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Rainy and cold. Breakfast at the café
Early. Warm inside. Windows all steamy
Still dark. That first cup of thank-God coffee
Sausages, eggs, and wheat toast on the way
An old friend walks in. Hangs up his wet coat
“Coffee, please. Pancakes.”
“Are you off to work?
How about that early project?”
“Naw, I’m done
Think I’ll go home and hit the recliner;
Found a dead body this mornin’ early”
mhall46184@aol.com
“Found a Dead Body This Mornin’ Early”
Rainy and cold. Breakfast at the café
Early. Warm inside. Windows all steamy
Still dark. That first cup of thank-God coffee
Sausages, eggs, and wheat toast on the way
An old friend walks in. Hangs up his wet coat
“Coffee, please. Pancakes.”
“Are you off to work?
How about that early project?”
“Naw, I’m done
Think I’ll go home and hit the recliner;
Found a dead body this mornin’ early”
Wednesday, December 6, 2017
The Talking Gas Pump Down at the Conoco - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
The talking gas pump down at the Conoco
“Please enter your zip code and press the pound”
Says the temp will be thirty tomorrow
“Will this purchase be credit or debit?”
And that snow is a possibility
“Please remove nozzle and select product”
And that we must watch the road conditions
“Begin fueling now (beep beep beep beep beep)”
In a whisper:
But that’s the number 6 pump saying so,
And that one acts all weird in Bible class
mhall46184@aol.com
Premium Leaded, Leaded, News, and Weather -
The Talking Gas Pump Down at the Conoco
The Talking Gas Pump Down at the Conoco
The talking gas pump down at the Conoco
“Please enter your zip code and press the pound”
Says the temp will be thirty tomorrow
“Will this purchase be credit or debit?”
And that snow is a possibility
“Please remove nozzle and select product”
And that we must watch the road conditions
“Begin fueling now (beep beep beep beep beep)”
In a whisper:
But that’s the number 6 pump saying so,
And that one acts all weird in Bible class
Tuesday, December 5, 2017
The Plane, the Mist, and the Moon - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
An evening walk: a plane, its vapour trails
All golden in the setting sun, sails west
A rising mist on darkening fields below
Creeps Grendel-ish along the forest line
And framed in branches skeletal, the moon
Observes and rules all in the chilling dusk
Without a wind dry oak leaves stir about
And then are still again, and no one knows
Disparate thoughts on a quiet evening walk
Along with the airplane, the mist, the moon
mhall46184@aol.com
The Plane, The Mist, and the Moon
An evening walk: a plane, its vapour trails
All golden in the setting sun, sails west
A rising mist on darkening fields below
Creeps Grendel-ish along the forest line
And framed in branches skeletal, the moon
Observes and rules all in the chilling dusk
Without a wind dry oak leaves stir about
And then are still again, and no one knows
Disparate thoughts on a quiet evening walk
Along with the airplane, the mist, the moon
Monday, December 4, 2017
On an Inscription from Katya to Gary in a Pushkin Anthology Found in a Used-Book Sale - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Whatever happened to Katya and Gary?
Their names appear in an anthology
Of Pushkin in a nifty Everyman
Astray on a table of orphaned books
One hopes they read those sweet words each to each
Over Blue Mountain in a coffee shop
Forgetting to feed the parking meter
While planning lives of meaning, deep and rich
Or is each but a memory to the other -
Whatever happened to Katya and Gary?
mhall46184@aol.com
On an Inscription from Katya to Gary
in a Pushkin Anthology Found in a Used-Book Sale
Whatever happened to Katya and Gary?
Their names appear in an anthology
Of Pushkin in a nifty Everyman
Astray on a table of orphaned books
One hopes they read those sweet words each to each
Over Blue Mountain in a coffee shop
Forgetting to feed the parking meter
While planning lives of meaning, deep and rich
Or is each but a memory to the other -
Whatever happened to Katya and Gary?
Sunday, December 3, 2017
Advent Remains Unoccupied - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Advent remains at peace, unoccupied
There are no Advent trees to buy or steal
No seasonally-discounted lingerie
No Advent hymns background the lite-beer ads
At Mass: a wreath, a candle every week
And music set to God, not to the sales;
The missal now begins again, page one
And through the liturgy so too do we
Almost no one notices this season, and thus
Advent remains at peace, unoccupied
mhall46184@aol.com
Advent Remains Unoccupied
Advent remains at peace, unoccupied
There are no Advent trees to buy or steal
No seasonally-discounted lingerie
No Advent hymns background the lite-beer ads
At Mass: a wreath, a candle every week
And music set to God, not to the sales;
The missal now begins again, page one
And through the liturgy so too do we
Almost no one notices this season, and thus
Advent remains at peace, unoccupied
Saturday, December 2, 2017
Dreams Ride the Rails like Hoboes from the Past - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
This day will be just like so many others
An empty rusting boxcar creaking and grinding
Along behind other rusting boxcars
And followed by yet more rusting boxcars
Along a railway line from nowhere to nowhere
Across far plains, dry, featureless, and void
Dreams ride the rails like hoboes from the past
But they never seem to arrive anywhere
An empty rusting boxcar creaking and grinding
This night will be just like so many others
mhall46184@aol.com
An Empty, Rusting Boxcar
This day will be just like so many others
An empty rusting boxcar creaking and grinding
Along behind other rusting boxcars
And followed by yet more rusting boxcars
Along a railway line from nowhere to nowhere
Across far plains, dry, featureless, and void
Dreams ride the rails like hoboes from the past
But they never seem to arrive anywhere
An empty rusting boxcar creaking and grinding
This night will be just like so many others
Friday, December 1, 2017
Historic Presidential Tweets
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
The tweeter of the free world tweets:
Speak loudly and carry a big tweet
54-40 or tweet
We have nothing to tweet but tweet itself
The twitteral of democracy
Ask not what your tweetry can do for you
We must dare to be tweet
The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the tweet
Government of the tweet, by the tweet, for the tweet
I know in my heart that man is tweet
(In context “tweet” and “twitter” might be copyrighted terms, although just why anyone would copyright baby noises is a concept that eludes the thoughtful.)
mhall46184@aol.com
The President Tweeted his Outrage
The tweeter of the free world tweets:
Speak loudly and carry a big tweet
54-40 or tweet
We have nothing to tweet but tweet itself
The twitteral of democracy
Ask not what your tweetry can do for you
We must dare to be tweet
The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the tweet
Government of the tweet, by the tweet, for the tweet
I know in my heart that man is tweet
But now - the tweet stops here
(In context “tweet” and “twitter” might be copyrighted terms, although just why anyone would copyright baby noises is a concept that eludes the thoughtful.)
Thursday, November 30, 2017
A Pilgrim Out of Time - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
A frail old man bent with the weight of his pack -
He seemed to be carrying a long-dead world
From around 1967 or so
Or maybe he was still looking for truth
Slowly, slowly along the diagonal
Beneath the traffic lights where eight lanes cross
But his strange trail led through another world
And of our reverence for him we paused for him
His journey was his own, his own, alone
That frail old man bent with the weight of his past
mhall46184@aol.com
A Pilgrim Out of Time
A frail old man bent with the weight of his pack -
He seemed to be carrying a long-dead world
From around 1967 or so
Or maybe he was still looking for truth
Slowly, slowly along the diagonal
Beneath the traffic lights where eight lanes cross
But his strange trail led through another world
And of our reverence for him we paused for him
His journey was his own, his own, alone
That frail old man bent with the weight of his past
Wednesday, November 29, 2017
Ye Olde All-Natural Organic Cleverly-Named Rustic Soap Purveyors, Ltd. - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Our licensed soap-istas take dried wasp-poop
And whatever stuff the hay-baler missed
And through our hand-made, slow-cold processes
Crank out our pure, adjective-cluttered soaps
Sustainable, certified, organic
we harvest trashy ditch water legally
And extra-virgin jimpson weeds (so extra-
virgin they’ve never been out on a date)
We’re your natural neighbors; your major
credit card welcome
(but, psssst, it’s just soap)
mhall46184@aol.com
Ye Olde All-Natural Organic Cleverly-Named Rustic Soap Purveyors, Ltd.
Our licensed soap-istas take dried wasp-poop
And whatever stuff the hay-baler missed
And through our hand-made, slow-cold processes
Crank out our pure, adjective-cluttered soaps
Sustainable, certified, organic
we harvest trashy ditch water legally
And extra-virgin jimpson weeds (so extra-
virgin they’ve never been out on a date)
We’re your natural neighbors; your major
credit card welcome
(but, psssst, it’s just soap)
Tuesday, November 28, 2017
Suburban Christianity - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
O pray in silence at the foot the Cross
In humility before the Altar of God
The ancient usages honored aright
Befitting the dignity of His Church
And place all hopes and sorrows quietly there
Along with any haloes, skipping the selfies
And the waving moments of look-at-me
He knows, you know, so let the drama go
Suburban Christianity? Well, yes:
Golgotha is a suburb of Heaven
mhall46184@aol.com
Suburban Christianity
“I have no window to look into another man’s soul.”
-attributed to St. Thomas More and others
O pray in silence at the foot the Cross
In humility before the Altar of God
The ancient usages honored aright
Befitting the dignity of His Church
And place all hopes and sorrows quietly there
Along with any haloes, skipping the selfies
And the waving moments of look-at-me
He knows, you know, so let the drama go
Suburban Christianity? Well, yes:
Golgotha is a suburb of Heaven
Monday, November 27, 2017
The Cruise of the Sun - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
To say goodbye to good old Sol as he
Slips west beyond the trees and sails away
Is not an errant childhood sentiment,
For his appointed tasks are dutiful
Pacing the planet like a sailor on watch,
Seeing to the safety of every space.
His battle-lantern can be seen aloft
From California to those lonely isles
Where pirates’ bones lie mouldering on the beach,
And then to far Nippon and old Cathay
To watch obscure philosophers brush verse.
A course steered west above the Hindu Kush
He notes that India is still in place.
The solar voyage continues at best speed
Above the desolate plain where now-ruined Troy
Once stood defiantly against the Greeks
For the allure of glory transient.
A meander above the Meander
Soon leads to noble, marbled Italy
Where art and wine and Latium’s dark-eyed arts
Beguile the world with visions of the eternal.
The Mediterranean beneath his keel,
Sol courses the Pillars of Hercules
And singing, soars above the Atlantic
The cold, austere Atlantic, deep blue tomb
Of shadowy civilizations ancient
Before Atlantis was born, when the Nile
Flowed as a shaded brook ‘neath forests green
The sun soars west, to where he’s happiest,
And that is wherever you happen to be;
And when at dawn he sails back home again,
He brings you a present - light from a star.
mhall46184@aol.com
The Cruise of the Sun
To say goodbye to good old Sol as he
Slips west beyond the trees and sails away
Is not an errant childhood sentiment,
For his appointed tasks are dutiful
Pacing the planet like a sailor on watch,
Seeing to the safety of every space.
His battle-lantern can be seen aloft
From California to those lonely isles
Where pirates’ bones lie mouldering on the beach,
And then to far Nippon and old Cathay
To watch obscure philosophers brush verse.
A course steered west above the Hindu Kush
He notes that India is still in place.
The solar voyage continues at best speed
Above the desolate plain where now-ruined Troy
Once stood defiantly against the Greeks
For the allure of glory transient.
A meander above the Meander
Soon leads to noble, marbled Italy
Where art and wine and Latium’s dark-eyed arts
Beguile the world with visions of the eternal.
The Mediterranean beneath his keel,
Sol courses the Pillars of Hercules
And singing, soars above the Atlantic
The cold, austere Atlantic, deep blue tomb
Of shadowy civilizations ancient
Before Atlantis was born, when the Nile
Flowed as a shaded brook ‘neath forests green
The sun soars west, to where he’s happiest,
And that is wherever you happen to be;
And when at dawn he sails back home again,
He brings you a present - light from a star.
Sunday, November 26, 2017
Heaves of Gas - a lapse into free verse
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
I sing the bodiless electronic
Manly working man blank verse flannel shirt
All gone now
Pajamas and video games
Cupcake competitions instead of schoolyard tug-o’-war
A gap-toothed grilled-cheese sandwich singing under the sea
Bi-polar bears alt.yawn Revolutionary Proletarian Art with Selfie Sticks
Banana Daiquiri Republic
Must be nice to be a thinker all great
Adored by all, and subsidized by the state
Made in Nicaragua by free-range artisans, I think
Re-Presentation
Rhinestone tattoo flipflopped knee-pantsies and a cartoon tee
Die, Webinar, Die
Up the Revolution you can’t make me clean my room
Machine against the rage on the cosmic app
Renewable green sanctions
Double-double boil and bubble a froth’ed mocha decaf with a tinkling of
Cinnamon
We are the drones we have been waiting for
mhall46184@aol.com
Heaves of Gas
I sing the bodiless electronic
Manly working man blank verse flannel shirt
All gone now
Pajamas and video games
Cupcake competitions instead of schoolyard tug-o’-war
A gap-toothed grilled-cheese sandwich singing under the sea
Bi-polar bears alt.yawn Revolutionary Proletarian Art with Selfie Sticks
Banana Daiquiri Republic
Must be nice to be a thinker all great
Adored by all, and subsidized by the state
Made in Nicaragua by free-range artisans, I think
Re-Presentation
Rhinestone tattoo flipflopped knee-pantsies and a cartoon tee
Die, Webinar, Die
Up the Revolution you can’t make me clean my room
Machine against the rage on the cosmic app
Renewable green sanctions
Double-double boil and bubble a froth’ed mocha decaf with a tinkling of
Cinnamon
We are the drones we have been waiting for
Saturday, November 25, 2017
High Noon at the Bird Feeder - a Dachshund and a Squirrel - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
A little dog, a streak of dachshund red,
Across the grass speeds to a squirrel’s doom
She wants its blood, she wants its flesh, she wants it dead;
Ripped, shredded, and torn; it will need no tomb.
The fat old squirrel, a fluff of forest grey,
Is unimpressed by doggie dementia;
To Liesl’s grief he leaps and climbs away -
Never underestimate the Order Rodentia!
Liesl’s squirrel clings to a low-hanging limb
And rattles abuse at the angry pup
Who spins and barks and spins and barks at him
Laughing among the leaves, and climbing higher up.
So Liesl snorts and sneers, and marks the ground;
She accepts not defeat, nor lingers in sorrow;
For Liesl and squirrel it’s their daily round;
They’ll go it again, same time tomorrow.
mhall46184@aol.com
High Noon at the Bird Feeder
A little dog, a streak of dachshund red,
Across the grass speeds to a squirrel’s doom
She wants its blood, she wants its flesh, she wants it dead;
Ripped, shredded, and torn; it will need no tomb.
The fat old squirrel, a fluff of forest grey,
Is unimpressed by doggie dementia;
To Liesl’s grief he leaps and climbs away -
Never underestimate the Order Rodentia!
Liesl’s squirrel clings to a low-hanging limb
And rattles abuse at the angry pup
Who spins and barks and spins and barks at him
Laughing among the leaves, and climbing higher up.
So Liesl snorts and sneers, and marks the ground;
She accepts not defeat, nor lingers in sorrow;
For Liesl and squirrel it’s their daily round;
They’ll go it again, same time tomorrow.
Friday, November 24, 2017
Borodin: On the Steppes of Central Asia - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Borodin: On the Steppes of Central Asia
Lost in a remote province of the mind
A youth attends to the cheap gramophone
Again: On the Steppes of Central Asia,
A recording by a mill town orchestra
Of no repute. But it is magic still:
While washing his face and dressing for work
In a clean, pressed uniform of defeat,
For ten glorious minutes he is not
A function, a shop-soiled proletarian
Of no repute. Beyond the landlord’s window,
Beyond the power lines and the pot-holed street,
He searches dawn’s horizons with wary eyes
For wild and wily Tartars, horsemen out
To blood the caravans for glory and gold.
A youth greets the day as he truly is:
A cavalryman, a soldier of the Czar,
Whose uniform is glorious with victory.
mhall46184@aol.com
Borodin: On the Steppes of Central Asia
Lost in a remote province of the mind
A youth attends to the cheap gramophone
Again: On the Steppes of Central Asia,
A recording by a mill town orchestra
Of no repute. But it is magic still:
While washing his face and dressing for work
In a clean, pressed uniform of defeat,
For ten glorious minutes he is not
A function, a shop-soiled proletarian
Of no repute. Beyond the landlord’s window,
Beyond the power lines and the pot-holed street,
He searches dawn’s horizons with wary eyes
For wild and wily Tartars, horsemen out
To blood the caravans for glory and gold.
A youth greets the day as he truly is:
A cavalryman, a soldier of the Czar,
Whose uniform is glorious with victory.
Thursday, November 23, 2017
Happy Merry Hallothanksmas - column
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Halloween, an occasion of insanity for which no honest pagan would ever take credit, is long over, and we are now in a season not quite as bizarre.
Having suffered weeks of debates about who offered the first thanksgiving, and where, our attention is now turned (whether or not we wish it to be turned) to the next debate, The True Meaning of Christmas.
The four weeks prior to Christmas are the Christian season of Advent. Christmas properly begins on midnight on the 24th of December and ends with the Feast of Epiphany on the 6th of January.
But perhaps we should mention Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany only in the past tense.
These Christian seasons, along with All Saints and All Souls, have long been culturally censored by the Macy’s-Amazon Continuum, and organically recycled into one long distraction, Hallothanksmas. Some call it The Christmas Season, but this is the one thing it categorically is not. Hallothanksmas begins around the first of September and concludes with the beginning of Mardi Gras on December 26.
This cobbled-together season is honored in television shows about the Proletariat camping on the concrete outside Mega-Much-Big-Box stores the size of the Colosseum in Rome. At the appointed hour the electric bells ring out and an official opens the Gates of Consumer Heaven so that The People can crash against them and each other in a blood-sacrifice combining elements of the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona and a jolly good riot between the Greens and the Blues in Constantinople.
The modern Proletariat compete not for a crown of laurel or of gold, which moths and rust consumeth, but for the everlasting honor and street cred of purchasing a made-in-China television set (in the vernacular, a “flatscreen”) much like the ones they already have, no matter how many of their fellow worshippers must be wounded and killed for it.
The old Christian seasons were predicated on the salvation story, gratitude, and good, healthy merriment; Hallothanksmas is ornamented with casualty lists.
Although Hallothanksmas is mostly about consumption, theft, and violence, it is also marked with ritual meals for the survivors during which the liturgy of the word is to share gory narratives about past and anticipated surgeries and illnesses. Turkey and dressing are just not complete without a look at everyone’s laparotomy, appendectomy, and open-heart-surgery scars and detailed accounts of the children’s latest bowel movements.
But soon all this must end with the beginning of Mardi Gras and its joyful excesses and proud public exhibitions of projectile emesis.
And let The People say “Woo! Woo!” as they bow their heads reverently before their MePhones.
mhall46184@aol.com
Happy Merry Hallothanksmas
Halloween, an occasion of insanity for which no honest pagan would ever take credit, is long over, and we are now in a season not quite as bizarre.
Having suffered weeks of debates about who offered the first thanksgiving, and where, our attention is now turned (whether or not we wish it to be turned) to the next debate, The True Meaning of Christmas.
The four weeks prior to Christmas are the Christian season of Advent. Christmas properly begins on midnight on the 24th of December and ends with the Feast of Epiphany on the 6th of January.
But perhaps we should mention Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany only in the past tense.
These Christian seasons, along with All Saints and All Souls, have long been culturally censored by the Macy’s-Amazon Continuum, and organically recycled into one long distraction, Hallothanksmas. Some call it The Christmas Season, but this is the one thing it categorically is not. Hallothanksmas begins around the first of September and concludes with the beginning of Mardi Gras on December 26.
This cobbled-together season is honored in television shows about the Proletariat camping on the concrete outside Mega-Much-Big-Box stores the size of the Colosseum in Rome. At the appointed hour the electric bells ring out and an official opens the Gates of Consumer Heaven so that The People can crash against them and each other in a blood-sacrifice combining elements of the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona and a jolly good riot between the Greens and the Blues in Constantinople.
The modern Proletariat compete not for a crown of laurel or of gold, which moths and rust consumeth, but for the everlasting honor and street cred of purchasing a made-in-China television set (in the vernacular, a “flatscreen”) much like the ones they already have, no matter how many of their fellow worshippers must be wounded and killed for it.
The old Christian seasons were predicated on the salvation story, gratitude, and good, healthy merriment; Hallothanksmas is ornamented with casualty lists.
Although Hallothanksmas is mostly about consumption, theft, and violence, it is also marked with ritual meals for the survivors during which the liturgy of the word is to share gory narratives about past and anticipated surgeries and illnesses. Turkey and dressing are just not complete without a look at everyone’s laparotomy, appendectomy, and open-heart-surgery scars and detailed accounts of the children’s latest bowel movements.
But soon all this must end with the beginning of Mardi Gras and its joyful excesses and proud public exhibitions of projectile emesis.
And let The People say “Woo! Woo!” as they bow their heads reverently before their MePhones.
-30-
Black Friday - Human Lives at Deep Discounts - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
When the last American has exhausted
The last extension on the last credit card
The last order is dropped by the last drone:
The last electronic talking flashlight
The last Your Team’s Name Goes Here baseball cap
With the patented adjust-o-matic
Sizing strap that will be the envy of
All the ‘way cool guys in the neighborhood -
Will then the drones be ordered far away
To search for credit on other planets?
mhall46184@aol.com
Black Friday: Because Humanity was Created
for the Buy-One-Get-Two Sale
When the last American has exhausted
The last extension on the last credit card
The last order is dropped by the last drone:
The last electronic talking flashlight
The last Your Team’s Name Goes Here baseball cap
With the patented adjust-o-matic
Sizing strap that will be the envy of
All the ‘way cool guys in the neighborhood -
Will then the drones be ordered far away
To search for credit on other planets?
Wednesday, November 22, 2017
A Sentimental and Heartfelt Thanksgiving Poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Relatives are why
There are dead-bolts fitted to
All the inside doors
mhall46184@aol.com
Thanksgiving – It’s All About Family
Relatives are why
There are dead-bolts fitted to
All the inside doors
Tuesday, November 21, 2017
Gone to Glory Wearing a Beer Advert - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Found by a walker wandering through the woods:
Fragments of flesh, and bitten bits of bones
An ankle joint still jammed into a shoe
Sporting a checkmark, a fashionable sneak
And his tee-shirt, boasting a famous beer,
Unread in those months among the leaf-mold
As lonely winds and seasons passed over him
And the name brands abandoned to the mists
He’s gone to glory wearing a beer advert
And no one knows what any of that means
mhall46184@aol.com
Gone to Glory Wearing a Beer Advert
Found by a walker wandering through the woods:
Fragments of flesh, and bitten bits of bones
An ankle joint still jammed into a shoe
Sporting a checkmark, a fashionable sneak
And his tee-shirt, boasting a famous beer,
Unread in those months among the leaf-mold
As lonely winds and seasons passed over him
And the name brands abandoned to the mists
He’s gone to glory wearing a beer advert
And no one knows what any of that means
Monday, November 20, 2017
A Processional with MePhones - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
In greeting students on their way to class
One speaks only to the tops of their heads
As they process in ‘tudes of ‘umble prayer
In silence each bowing to her small god
(Or “his” as the gendered pronoun might be)
Speaking to no one, detached from the world
Navigating as does the sightless bat
By strange sensations known only to them
One ‘phone, one soul – that is the ratio
And each dull brain stilled ever in statio
mhall46184@aol.com
A Processional with MePhones
From an idea suggested by Anthony Germain,
The Duke of Suffix after the Order of Scrabble©™
In greeting students on their way to class
One speaks only to the tops of their heads
As they process in ‘tudes of ‘umble prayer
In silence each bowing to her small god
(Or “his” as the gendered pronoun might be)
Speaking to no one, detached from the world
Navigating as does the sightless bat
By strange sensations known only to them
One ‘phone, one soul – that is the ratio
And each dull brain stilled ever in statio
Sunday, November 19, 2017
"We Use Cookies to Track Usage and Preferences" - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
We print free verse about revolution
And deconstructing colonialism
The power and urgency of the story
Post-masculine dystopia redeemed
Visit our online submission system
Against the occupation resistance
As activist performance artisans
Who shape our unconventions for ourselves
Fists of ink against oppressionism
And that is why we track your usage
mhall46184@aol.com
“We Use Cookies to Track Usage and Preferences”
About Clever Us, the Magazine of Poetry and Thinky-ness
We print free verse about revolution
And deconstructing colonialism
The power and urgency of the story
Post-masculine dystopia redeemed
Visit our online submission system
Against the occupation resistance
As activist performance artisans
Who shape our unconventions for ourselves
Fists of ink against oppressionism
And that is why we track your usage
Saturday, November 18, 2017
In a Wheelchair - His Body Mostly Broken
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
In a wheelchair – his body mostly broken:
“I wish I could go fishing. I was a welder.
How long’s that doctor going to be? I’m tired.
I just don’t know how I can pay for this.
“I was doing okay ‘til I fell and broke my back.
Thirty-seven surgeries, would you believe it?
And my arm too. This catheter’s infected.
The last doctor just wouldn’t take it out.
“My Workman’s Comp’s all gone. I just don’t know.”
In a wheelchair – his body mostly broken
Culled from a waiting-room conversation (mostly a monologue)
mhall46184@aol.com
The Finest Health Care System in the World
In a wheelchair – his body mostly broken:
“I wish I could go fishing. I was a welder.
How long’s that doctor going to be? I’m tired.
I just don’t know how I can pay for this.
“I was doing okay ‘til I fell and broke my back.
Thirty-seven surgeries, would you believe it?
And my arm too. This catheter’s infected.
The last doctor just wouldn’t take it out.
“My Workman’s Comp’s all gone. I just don’t know.”
In a wheelchair – his body mostly broken
Culled from a waiting-room conversation (mostly a monologue)
Friday, November 17, 2017
A Ritual is Never Hollow - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
A ritual is never hollow; sweet words,
Happy ancient words from the dawn of time,
Sung through the air, refreshing as a waterfall
Discovered at dusk on a marching day:
A ploughman bidding his beads to Jerusalem
A child who’d rather not sit still during Mass
A holy sister hymning along the Rhine
A wise man seeking still that elusive Star
Heal chaos through their living in the Hours -
Oh, no – a ritual is never hollow
mhall46184@aol.com
A Ritual is Never Hollow
A ritual is never hollow; sweet words,
Happy ancient words from the dawn of time,
Sung through the air, refreshing as a waterfall
Discovered at dusk on a marching day:
A ploughman bidding his beads to Jerusalem
A child who’d rather not sit still during Mass
A holy sister hymning along the Rhine
A wise man seeking still that elusive Star
Heal chaos through their living in the Hours -
Oh, no – a ritual is never hollow
Thursday, November 16, 2017
The Super-Golly-Gee-Whiz Dog Food as Advertised on the Radio - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
The Super-Golly-Gee-Whiz Dog Food as Advertised on the Radio
O Alpha and Omega 3 Fish Oil
Now leach into Pup’s liver with great lust
Bring Old Blue’s lycopene to a steamy boil
Resurrect my beagle, O, yes, you must!
O fatty magnesiumed manganese
Seep into Fluffy’s geriatric joints
Pureed from a genuine Portuguese
(Lusitanian flesh never disappoints)
Heart arrhythmia, rashes, and lumbag-eeh-oh -
Trust your pet’s health to an ad on the radio!
mhall46184@aol.com
The Super-Golly-Gee-Whiz Dog Food as Advertised on the Radio
O Alpha and Omega 3 Fish Oil
Now leach into Pup’s liver with great lust
Bring Old Blue’s lycopene to a steamy boil
Resurrect my beagle, O, yes, you must!
O fatty magnesiumed manganese
Seep into Fluffy’s geriatric joints
Pureed from a genuine Portuguese
(Lusitanian flesh never disappoints)
Heart arrhythmia, rashes, and lumbag-eeh-oh -
Trust your pet’s health to an ad on the radio!
Wednesday, November 15, 2017
A Rosary from Jasna Gora - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
A little string of wooden gift shop beads
Each bead a hymn along the pilgrimage
From Nazareth to Bethlehem to - to us
Praying again the Angel’s greeting-song
A hymn of the universe sung and told,
And written 1 by Saint Luke upon a board
From the Table where all have come to share
Both feast and Feast, until the world shall end
O Lady of the Mountain Bright, please bless
Us through these humble wooden gift shop beads
1 In Orthodoxy an ikon is said to be written
mhall46184@aol.com
A Rosary from Jasna Gora
For, as always, Our Lady of Czestochowa
and for Kirk Briggs
A little string of wooden gift shop beads
Each bead a hymn along the pilgrimage
From Nazareth to Bethlehem to - to us
Praying again the Angel’s greeting-song
A hymn of the universe sung and told,
And written 1 by Saint Luke upon a board
From the Table where all have come to share
Both feast and Feast, until the world shall end
O Lady of the Mountain Bright, please bless
Us through these humble wooden gift shop beads
1 In Orthodoxy an ikon is said to be written
Tuesday, November 14, 2017
Moonlight Saving Time - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Oh, let the moonlight
Fall upon the leaves, and through
The leaves, upon…you
mhall46184@aol.com
Moonlight Saving Time
Oh, let the moonlight
Fall upon the leaves, and through
The leaves, upon…you
Monday, November 13, 2017
After The Soviet Revolution - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
You see them, sometimes, lurking in the shadows
Slipping away furtively, trying not to be seen
They’d rather clutch a volume of Dostoyevsky
Than try to act like good, plain, honest folks
They always thought they were something special
Always thinking about stuff, reading books
Not chanting the day’s slogans when they’re told
Not joining in, still thinking the old thoughts
We don’t need them. Our Leader will provide
You see us, sometimes, dying for ration cards
mhall46184@aol.com
More Former People
You see them, sometimes, lurking in the shadows
Slipping away furtively, trying not to be seen
They’d rather clutch a volume of Dostoyevsky
Than try to act like good, plain, honest folks
They always thought they were something special
Always thinking about stuff, reading books
Not chanting the day’s slogans when they’re told
Not joining in, still thinking the old thoughts
We don’t need them. Our Leader will provide
You see us, sometimes, dying for ration cards
Sunday, November 12, 2017
A Visitor from Canada - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Across the border she discreetly slipped
Not bothering the ICE with paperwork
They’ve got enough to do in their little booths:
“And is this visit for business or for pleasure?”
So here she is, on a bright five-pence piece
All elegant in profile, crowned and just,
Mistaken for a democratic dime
In a handful of republican change
What really is the reason for her visit?
To ‘mind us of our own nobility
mhall46184@aol.com
A Visitor from Canada
Across the border she discreetly slipped
Not bothering the ICE with paperwork
They’ve got enough to do in their little booths:
“And is this visit for business or for pleasure?”
So here she is, on a bright five-pence piece
All elegant in profile, crowned and just,
Mistaken for a democratic dime
In a handful of republican change
What really is the reason for her visit?
To ‘mind us of our own nobility
Saturday, November 11, 2017
Remembrance Day / Veterans' Day, 2017 - The Library of Alexandria in Our Seabags
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
The barracks was our university
So too the march, the camp, the line for chow
McKuen shared our ham and lima beans
John Steinbeck helped with cleaning guns and gear
(You’re not supposed to call your rifle a gun)
The Muses Nine were usually given a miss
But not Max Brand or Herman Wouk
Cowboys and hobbits and hippie poets
And a suspicious Russian or two
Tattered paperbacks jammed into our pockets:
All the world was our university
mhall46184@aol.com
The Library of Alexandria in Our Seabags
…in the army…(e)very few days one seemed to meet a scholar, an original,
a poet, a cheery buffoon, a raconteur, or at the very least a man of good will”
-C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy
The barracks was our university
So too the march, the camp, the line for chow
McKuen shared our ham and lima beans
John Steinbeck helped with cleaning guns and gear
(You’re not supposed to call your rifle a gun)
The Muses Nine were usually given a miss
But not Max Brand or Herman Wouk
Cowboys and hobbits and hippie poets
And a suspicious Russian or two
Tattered paperbacks jammed into our pockets:
All the world was our university
Friday, November 10, 2017
Remembrance Day / Veterans' Day - 8, If Wars were Subject to Copyright
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
If wars were subject to a copyright -
Then candidates would have to pay a fee
Each time they appeal to the glorious past
When standing for the election, the proceeds
To fall like bloody manna on the dead
Who can never cash the checks anyway
If wars were subject to a copyright -
Then Hollywood movies should pay their dues
Whenever a bold-scripted commando,
Body-waxed muscles glistening with makeup,
Advances up Hamburger-Helper Hill
With a patriotic song on his lipstick
If wars were subject to a copyright –
The generals’ memoirs, the admirals’, too,
Would pay to lighten the blighted young lives
Of soul-fragmented lads whose pain and blood
Gave the air-conditioned another star
And unctuous applause at the officers’ club
If wars were subject to a copyright -
The President would have to pay his bill
Each time he banged the lectern for a war,
The glorious dux bellorum dux-ing
From the rear, while a squadron of pigs fly
Above, powered by pixie-dust and dreams
mhall46184@aol.com
If Wars were Subject to Copyright
If wars were subject to a copyright -
Then candidates would have to pay a fee
Each time they appeal to the glorious past
When standing for the election, the proceeds
To fall like bloody manna on the dead
Who can never cash the checks anyway
If wars were subject to a copyright -
Then Hollywood movies should pay their dues
Whenever a bold-scripted commando,
Body-waxed muscles glistening with makeup,
Advances up Hamburger-Helper Hill
With a patriotic song on his lipstick
If wars were subject to a copyright –
The generals’ memoirs, the admirals’, too,
Would pay to lighten the blighted young lives
Of soul-fragmented lads whose pain and blood
Gave the air-conditioned another star
And unctuous applause at the officers’ club
If wars were subject to a copyright -
The President would have to pay his bill
Each time he banged the lectern for a war,
The glorious dux bellorum dux-ing
From the rear, while a squadron of pigs fly
Above, powered by pixie-dust and dreams
Thursday, November 9, 2017
Remembrance Day / Veterans' Day - 7, Something About Life
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
The plane lifted, and the cheering was wild
And at that happy moment 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 comes,
Then up 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.
mhall46184@aol.com
Remembrance Day / Veterans' Day - 7
Something About Life
Strelnikov: “What will you do in Varykino?”
Yuri: “Live. Just live.”
-Doctor Zhivago
The plane lifted, and the cheering was wild
And at that happy moment 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 comes,
Then up 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.
Wednesday, November 8, 2017
Remembrance Day / Veterans' Day - 6, Ever England
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Brave Hurricanes and Spits still claw and climb
Far up into the English summer sky
At the lingering end of a golden time
As wild young lads and aging empires die
The Hood and Rodney still the Channel guard
Against the strident Men of Destiny
Then shellfire falls; the helm is over hard
But the brave old ships keep the Narrow Sea
Dear Grandpa and the boys sport thin tin hats
In Sunday afternoon’s invasion drill
Gram says he’s too damned old for all of that
But she too smells the smoke of Abbeville
Faith does not pass with ephemeral time:
Brave Hurricanes and Spits still claw and climb
mhall46184@aol.com
Ever England
Brave Hurricanes and Spits still claw and climb
Far up into the English summer sky
At the lingering end of a golden time
As wild young lads and aging empires die
The Hood and Rodney still the Channel guard
Against the strident Men of Destiny
Then shellfire falls; the helm is over hard
But the brave old ships keep the Narrow Sea
Dear Grandpa and the boys sport thin tin hats
In Sunday afternoon’s invasion drill
Gram says he’s too damned old for all of that
But she too smells the smoke of Abbeville
Faith does not pass with ephemeral time:
Brave Hurricanes and Spits still claw and climb
Tuesday, November 7, 2017
Remembrance Day / Veteran's Day - 5, For the War Correspondents Who Get it Right
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
The wisdom of the desert is dispersed
Among the industrial monuments
To mechanized murder, wireless chaos,
And war-porn for touch-screen degenerates
On this Ash Wednesday night while smoky flares
Obscure, with false, flickering fumes, the stars
God sent to dance above those ancient lands,
You choke and weep among the ashes of
More victims of pale Herod’s shopping trips.
So of your kindness grant that we, your friends,
May wear your ashes for you on this night,
For you, a truth-teller among the liars,
And for the weary innocents who flee
The ashes of their burnt and blasted world
mhall46184@aol.com
Ash Wednesday in Libya
For Anthony Germain of the CBC
The wisdom of the desert is dispersed
Among the industrial monuments
To mechanized murder, wireless chaos,
And war-porn for touch-screen degenerates
On this Ash Wednesday night while smoky flares
Obscure, with false, flickering fumes, the stars
God sent to dance above those ancient lands,
You choke and weep among the ashes of
More victims of pale Herod’s shopping trips.
So of your kindness grant that we, your friends,
May wear your ashes for you on this night,
For you, a truth-teller among the liars,
And for the weary innocents who flee
The ashes of their burnt and blasted world
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