Memorial Day Speech, 2018

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Memorial Day Speech Given at the Veterans' Memorial, Kirbyville, Texas, 2018

Mayor George, Judge Folk, Mr. Chandler, Mrs. Herrin,
Mrs. Freeman, Mr. Smith, Mr. Ozan, Mr. Kyle, Mr. Wood, Mrs. Bush, Doc Stanley, Chaplain Wiltshire, Mrs. Adams, Mr. Tibbits, veterans, honored guests, and all here today who love our nation.

Thank you for the honor of being with you today, and for asking me to speak very briefly.

Memorial Day is said to have begun during the Civil War as Decoration Day, when the fresh graves of the war dead were decorated with flowers in their memory. Numerous towns, north and south, claim to have begun the tradition of decorating the graves of all soldiers of both sides. Wherever this noble custom began, honoring those who served is what civilized nations do.

Today we honor the loyal departed, both our home folks and all American servicemen and servicewomen everywhere.

Last month, a C130 of the Puerto Rico Air National Guard went down with the loss of its entire crew.

These fine young men recently served our nation throughout the Caribbean in evacuation and supply duties for months after Hurricane Maria.

As we now know, they were flying their aging C130 to Tucson to be scrapped. Some sources say the plane was 40 years old; some say 50 and some say 60. What we do know is that the plane was older than any of its crew.

I want to recognize these fine young men:

Major José Rosado, pilot

Major Carlos Serra, navigator

1st Lieutenant David Albandoz, co-pilot

Senior Master Sgt. Jan Paravisini, mechanic

Master Sgt. Jean Audriffred

Master Sgt. Mario Braña, flight engineer

Master Sgt. Víctor Colón

Master Sgt. Eric Circuns, loadmaster

Senior Airman Roberto Espada

We did not know these young men who died for us, but let us praise them now, and honor them, and let us remember these three things about them:

1. All of these young men served in the Air National Guard – you know, that allegedly safe duty. For decades some who never made the first day of recruit training have claimed that the Reserves and the National Guard are easy billets, a nice soft way of avoiding hazardous duty.

Rupert Brooke wrote in 1914 “If I should die, think only this of me / There is some corner of a foreign field that is forever England.”

Well, we can write that there are lots of corners of lots of foreign fields that are forever American Reserves and National Guard.

2. All of these young men were millennials – you know, that generation of delicate snowflakes who just lay around the house playing video games and who won’t demonstrate initiative. The reality is that our military, our emergency and police services, our workforce – they’re millennials, the generation that came of age at the turn of the century and who now are entering early middle age.

3. And they were not eligible to vote in federal elections. Residents of Puerto Rico have been, since 1917, citizens of the United States, and yet they may not vote in federal elections. These nine young men, as part of their oath of enlistment, pledged personal loyalty to their president, and they could not, by law, vote for their president. They could not vote for the government of the nation for which they died in active military service.

I think we should do something about that.

I return to Senior Airman Roberto Espada – how old was he? 21? 22? – who is survived only by his grandmother, his meemaw. We can infer that his meemaw raised him. And she raised a good young man. And he won’t be going home to her. And yet some are pleased to dismiss Roberto as a millennial, a snowflake. His meemaw knows better, and we do too.

In closing (and let the people say “At last!”), a few words from Lawrence Binyon, who in 1914 was in his fifties and so was too old to enlist. However, Mr. Binyon volunteered as a medical orderly, and served in forward hospitals up against the front, within artillery range.

Mr. Binyon was a writer, an art critic, and a good man, but he was perhaps not a very good poet. In 1914 he wrote “For the Fallen,” and most of it is forgettable, florid, late-Victorian parlor poetry. However, within this poem there are four brilliant lines, as brilliant as sharpened steel, which we have all heard. And they are worth hearing again now:

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn
At the going down of the sun, and in the morning
We will remember them.

Thank you.

-30-

What's Wrong with America? It's the Shortage of Poker-Playing Dogs - column

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

What’s Wrong with America? It’s the Shortage of Poker-Playing Dogs

What’s wrong with America?

Well, as Tevye the Dairyman didn’t say, I’ll tell you – everything went wrong when we got rid of the pictures of those poker-playing dogs.

The other day I visited to the salon of the nice lady who cuts my hair every two weeks, and realized that an essential facet of Americana was missing – pictures of dogs playing pokers, especially that great American classic, “A Friend in Need.”

Oh, sure, the licenses and health certificates are amusing reading (unless Texas laws have been changed recently, acquiring a balloon pilot’s license to take people up into the air and then drop them to their deaths is easier to acquire than a beautician’s license). Last month’s copy of Texas Monthly, fine, fine. It’s not Field and Stream, of course. Flowers, fine. Smelly candle-thingies, okay.

But what’s really missing is an uplifting picture of dogs playing poker.

Early in the twentieth century, Cassius Marcellus Coolidge, aka “Cash,” was a jack-of-all-trades but a master of painting anthropomorphic dogs for an advertising firm. His most famous series is known as Dogs Playing Poker (although his dogs were also known to play football and practice law), and they became a staple artistic statement in saloons, waiting rooms, and, most especially, barber shops.

It was poker-playing dogs that made America great.

As Keats would have said were he an American, where are the poker-playing dogs of yesteryear; aye, where are they?

When we had poker-playing dogs we still had a good ten-cent cigar.

When we had poker-playing dogs all our children were good, did their homework, helped out on the farm, and went to Sunday school.

When we had poker-playing dogs we had real battleships, by golly.

When we had poker-playing dogs our airplanes had propellers just as Wilbur and Orville intended, and not those funny-looking jet things.

But now that we’ve gotten rid of the poker-playing dogs, where are we? Hah?

We need those pictures of poker-playing dogs back, yes, sir. I think we should place them next to pictures of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln in the classrooms of America.

When children pledge Allegiance to the Flag every morning they should be able also to see those poker-playing dogs, and be proud of what this great nation has accomplished in art.

Every barber shop and every hair salon in the Land of the Free should display poker-playing dogs as an inspiration to our fine young men and women.

Restore the poker-playing dogs, and make America unselfconsciously proletarian again!

Shave and a haircut – six bits!

-30-

The Troublesome Life and Lamentable Death of Christopher Marlowe - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Troublesome Life and Lamentable Death of Christopher Marlowe

Marlowe! Dark and dangerous Kit Marlowe
Whose hooded eyes, like a subtle serpent’s, held
In mysterious charms Hero, and too
Leander, perhaps, in the ways of night

And in the councils of foul Walsingham
Where innocence and guilt knew not each other
Through sly reptilian tangles of false oaths
Among the pale queen’s writhing coils of shame

Beneath which altar, then, or perhaps none
Was the famous reckoning paid, and done?

What's Wrong at Connie's Beauty Shop? - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

What’s Wrong at Connie’s Beauty Shop?

For Connie, a Friend Indeed

There are no pictures of poker-playing dogs!
The health certificates make for dull reading
And last month’s issue of Texas Monthly
Has not the old cache’ of Field and Stream

There are no pictures of poker-playing dogs!
Among the snaps of Baby’s First Haircut
Children and grandchildren in cute little frames
And lovely young girls all styled for the prom

There are flowers and scents and catalogues

But –

There are no pictures of poker-playing dogs!

Woof!

The Stuffed Men Who Praise Our Soldiers on Independence Day - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Stuffed Men Who Praise Our Soldiers on Independence Day

1.

Stuffed men who never made a single day
Of training make brave speeches on this day

Surely each one of them has his reward -

A government SUV
And bodyguards
And a household staff
And a clean, dry place to sleep
And an income
And medical care
And a pension
And a book deal
And a library
And maybe an eternal flame

2.

And the nation’s enlisted daughters and sons
Who sweat among the rocks, not on the golf course

Have their reward from a grateful nation -

Taking cover behind a blown-up Hummer
They are the bodyguards
They dig holes in the rocks and sand
MREs contracted by the lowest brother-in-law bidder
They stand-to all night under fire
They are paid something less than the president’s special, um, assistant
They will be ignored by the DVA
Their eternal flame is the memory of a death-burnt friend
They are dismissed as millennials and snowflakes
          By the Keyboard Kommandos who learned about war
          Just like our stuffed men in Washington
          By watching Patton over and over

The stuffed men bray every hollow cliché,
But this is what the stuffed men really say:

“Thank you for your service; now shut up and go away

Until we want another photo-op on Remembrance Day”

Solzhenitsyn at Harvard - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Solzhenitsyn at Harvard

Some prophets spoke before the thrones of kings
And others at the gates of Jerusalem
One stood upon a rock and split the sea
And others heard God in the soft, soft wind

A prophet of our time at a table stood
Before a cafeteria table draped in cloth
Fronted a trinity of microphones
And split complacency that rainy day

Umbrellas were dripping, the sky was low
A prophet spoke to us, and we did not know

Should Children be Allowed to Watch This? - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Should Children be Allowed to Watch This?

A woman. A knife. A very sharp knife.
She has waited for this hour, this moment
Her eyes – they gleam with passion dark upon
A figure recumbent upon a slab

She is not alone; she is being watched
But no one will dare cry for her to stop
They have all made their agreement, their bond
And now the woman lifts the knife…she strikes…!

She has cut the heart from an artichoke
And the studio audience applauds

Canada Day - Only Once a Year? - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Canada Day? Just One?

With love from an ‘umble Yank

But every day is Canada Day!

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

The Muskogee 1 never made landfall here
And so we pilgrimage for her, completing
Her voyage from ’42 to Canada

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

Newfoundland
Is a bold
Anapest

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

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

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

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

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

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

Though Canada goes on, these scribbles must not –

Your grateful guest wishes only to say
That every happy day is Canada Day!


1 My mother's first husband, Claude Blanchette, was second officer on the oiler Muskogee, torpedoed with the loss of  all her crew while en route from the Caribbean to Halifax in 1942.  My wife and I took Mother to Halifax shortly before her death.

The 10,000-Year-Old Girl - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The 10,000-Year-Old Girl

She is a 10,000-year-old girl
Although she is rather younger today
Only 240 or so
While taking coffee with James Madison

She has discussed the weather with Gilgamesh
Given Keats her handkerchief for his cough
Danced with the fairies on Midsummer Eve
And captured the castle with Cassandra

Because she has listened when the Nine have sung
An old soul she is, and so
                                                          forever young

Soulfight in a Locked Room - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Soulfight in a Locked Room

In the end, they had to break into his room
He was dead in his chair, and quite alone
Self-exiled from his family for years
Alone in a shell, silent, and alone

The accidentals of life were cast away:
A coffee pot, a coat over a door
His schedule for the methadone clinic
A note to meet with his parole officer

But the pathologist’s tox screen was clean -
Better than most of us, he went down fighting

A Tool of the Establishment - column

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

A Tool of the Establishment

Stopping for bright, shiny things lying on the road is seldom a good idea, but since there was no other traffic on a rural road the other morning I stopped to pick up a bright, shiny thing.

Said bright, shiny thing is a spark plug wrench with a handle welded at a right angle. The handle can also be used as a flat-blade screw driver or a pry. The handle is stamped with “STIHL” and a sequence of numbers, so presumably this is a tool which came with one of Stihl’s highly-valued chainsaws.

Most such small-engine spark plug wrenches are double-ended, offering two sizes so that the tool can be packaged with different models. The pronounced asymmetry of this one suggests that the owner hacksawed off the other end, presumably to help manipulate the needed spark plug socket in an awkward space. Your mechanic could tell you many narratives about how the engineers who design gasoline engines sometimes seem determined that spark plugs be placed in almost inaccessible locations.

This wrench is a nice thing someone has lost off a trailer or a pickup, and I hope I can return it to the owner.

Hand tools are in themselves good, honest things, but are now mostly cobbled together out of pot metal in Shanghai, which is why hitting the yard sales for American, German, or Finnish tools is useful. Even if you don’t need another screwdriver, wrench, socket, or chisel right now, you will eventually, and you might as well pick up good used hand tools now instead of paying more for crumbly junk later.

Besides, you might run across some of the good stuff stolen from my garage by those among us whose concept of ownership of the means of production is more from Marx-Lenin-Stalin than from Jesus.

In an aside we may note that Marx, Lenin, and Stalin often spoke of the nobility of the working man, though like many of our modern leaders they seem never to have busted a sweat themselves except on the tennis court or the golf course. (Our state representative, James White, and our federal representative, Brian Babin, are intimately familiar with stringing barbed wire, shoveling ****, pushing a broom, and working the night shift to get through school. That is part of why they are work-boots-on-ground effective. I imagine many of their colleagues just don’t get it.)

There is no app for a properly balanced hammer, for the hammer is the app. It is not programmed, nor can it be recharged. A good steel file responds to the craftsman’s hands, not to a code. A wrench, once purchased, serves the careful owner for the rest of his life, and is not subject to a densely-worded and deceptive contract. Your grandpa’s pocket knife has lasted three generations without losing a satellite signal.

I will never be a good comrade, because I know that books (I’m speaking of Keats, Wordsworth, Lewis, Chesterton, Viktor Frankl et al, not Barbara Cartland [shudder]) are as essential to civilization as hunting, fishing, and good, honest work. This nation needs men and women in “all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war” (John Milton), men and women who know their way around Paradise Lost, the pea patch, iambic pentameter, and a good socket set.

-30-

Hesychasm as Practiced at Midday - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Hesychasm as Practiced at Midday

Cicadas contribute to the silence
With their impious reproductive racket
A cloud of whistles, whirrs, buzzes, and clicks
In the otherwise still and stiller noon

An old man rests his shovel and himself
And sits in the flickering shade awhile
To think of nothing while sweet incense rises
Up from the sacred bowl of his Peterson’s pipe

The Eternal breathes silently over all
(Them cicadas sure is noisy, though)

Because We Respect Words, We Wrestle With Them - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Because We Respect Words, We Wrestle With Them

Suggested by a Thought from Temporal Fugue

Because we respect words, we wrestle with them
And because they respect us, they wrestle back;
We shape them in order serviceable 1
And they refuse to be pinned as cliches’

We fling a needful verb against a noun
To make a thought complete, but then adverbs
And adjectives begin cluttering lines
And then we all must take a coffee break

Because we respect words, we wrestle with them
For every scrap of story, verse, or hymn


1 Cf. John Milton, “Hymn on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity”

Everyone has a Clothing Line These Days - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Everyone has a Clothing Line These Days

Well, okay, it’s out there in the back yard
Where on display you’ll see: old boonie hats
Uncool, but good when working in the heat
And cotton khakis from the discount store

Just washed, and drying in the summer sun
Admired by every Merry Little Breeze 1
Skivvies and socks sewn in Cambodia
And work shirts stitched together in Viet-Nam

Nothing by Versace or Calvin Klein
Just old clothes drying on the old clothes line


1 Thornton W. Burgess’ Mother West Wind stories

An Immigration Czar (do we have any spare Romanovs about?) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

An Immigration Czar

Someone demands an immigration czar
Which could be interesting: a crown, a throne
A double-eagle flag, the border guards
Singing a Troparian while on patrol

On the Steppes of Central Texas 1
The Czar in progress royal comes to see
His happy villagers waving MREs
From behind the merry Potemkin wire

The Czar, contented, turns his escort then
To Petersburg, and lunch at the Little Red Hen

1 cf. Borodin's "On the Steppes of Central Asia"

Let no one take this scribble as anything more than a bit of fun about the use of “czar” in a mixed republic / democracy. I am about a thousand miles from the border and don’t know what’s going on there, and prudently do not trust any news source.

The Prophet and the Dancing Girl - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Prophet and the Dancing Girl

When the kitchen staff did the washing-up
They could not but notice, among the bowls
And serviettes, spoons, knives, pitchers, and plates,
One of the best silver trays, blotchy with blood

And scraps of vertebrae, ruining the shine
“Oh, bother; these stains will never come out,”
Muttered the old woman in charge of such things
But she scrubbed and polished, did a good job

With that and with each costly silver cup
When the kitchen staff did the washing-up

The First Blast of the Trumpet (if not the Trump) Against the Monstrous Regiment of Social Media - poem (not much of one, though)

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The First Blast of the Trumpet 1 (if not the Trump) Against

the Monstrous Regiment of Social Media

V: Follow us on Facebook or Twitter
R: No


1 No apologies to the odious John Knox

Every Page is Open to the Sun - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Every Page is Open to the Sun

In my religion we're taught that every living thing, every leaf, every bird, is only alive because it contains the secret word for life. That's the only difference between us and a lump of clay. A word. Words are life, Liesel.

- Max to Liesel in Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief

We cannot walk with Dostoyevsky as
Guards drag him chained before a firing squad
Comfort Saint Joan against the English flames
Or pray with good Saint Thomas in his cell

We cannot slosh through sodden trenches in France
With Lieutenant Lewis on his birthday
Argue with Akhmatova at The Stray Dog
Or with Frankl at Auschwitz bury dead friends

Unless we read, and then through words we see
The morning sun upon Byzantium

The Existential Sorrow of Waiting Room Art - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Existential Sorrow of Waiting Room Art

Sunlit sailboats in daubs of orange and red
And mass-produced impressionist barn owls
In flight above an unsecured wire rack
Of greasy copies of Reader’s Digest

Behind the receptionist’s hole-in-the-wall
Children of the Cornbread centered in plastic
Jesus-frames grin against their will, freeze-posed
Among department-store studio trees

Across the walls some glued-on murals roam
(But at least this isn’t the funeral home)

The Summer Solstice as Not Celebrated in Texas - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Summer Solstice as Not Celebrated in Texas

One might as well call this an equinox
For night and day are equinoxious now:
Mosquitoes, soul-withering heat and damp
Itch-allergens and rattlesnakes not featured

In advertising fantasies about
Bugless, unbitten happy families
Posing with plates and carnivorous smiles
Before neighbor-envious chromium grills

And playing free of heat rash and pustules
Around surgically sterile swimming pools

Instant Canonization (no cannons, though) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Instant Canonization

Don’t bother about being a saint so rare-y;
They’ll make you one in your obituary!

Shhh - TITANIC was Sunk by a Bilderberg - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Shhhhh - Titanic was Sunk

by a Bilderberg

Albino rabbis, the Illuminati,
Protocols of the Elders of Zion -
The evidence seemed a little spotty
‘Til a radio guy had us wonderin’ and sighin’

Fluoridation by the New World Order
Backed by the Trilateral Commission
A scheme to open our southern border
To crop circles – that’s his suspicion

Area 51, the Templar Knights
FEMA lurking in the Bohemian Grove
Perfidious Rothschilds through menace and fright
Guarding a Jewish-Viking treasure trove

Poor Newfoundland is Occupied by Commie rats
Who scheme in secret tunnels beneath St. John’s
Brewing magic potions in Macbethian vats
In Rodentian rituals from the Age of Bronze

The Priory of Sion, runes, swastikas, the Vril
Roswell and the Thule Society
No wonder the air is darkly chill:
We all live within a conspiracy.


From Paleo-Hippies at Work and Play, p. 166, available on amazon.com via Kindle and as nicely-bound fragments of dead trees.

Our Fathers' Stories - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Our Fathers’ Stories

Our fathers told of hard times on the farm
Of walking barefoot down the road to school
And walking home again to get the cows back up
From woods and fields to the old dairy barn

And joining the Army at seventeen
Sleeping later in boot camp than on the farm
Coming home from the war to look for a job
Thirty years at the sawmill – then laid off

And in his turn a New Man proudly says:

I scored real high on Minecraft on my ‘phone
While standing in line for my free school supplies

Shall I Compute Thee to a Summer's Day? - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Shall I Compute 1 Thee to a Summer’s Day?

A Lament for the Unlettered

They launch no voyages of discovery
To sail beyond the sunset 1 of their dreams
No pages open to them; no books, no boots,
No paths lead them to Constantinople or Rome 3

For the horns of Elfland 4 they listen not
Nor for the unheard pipes on a Grecian urn 5
The Red Book of Westmarch 6 is forever closed
And lines of lyric verse sing not to them

They cling to their precious palantiri 7
And launch no voyages of discovery


1 As Shakespeare did not say

2 From Tennyson’s “Ulysses.” Heinlein used the phrase as the title for his final novel.

3 Patrick Leigh Fermor and Hilaire Belloc

4 C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy

5 Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”

6 Tolkien, Lord of the Rings

7 Tolkien again

Did Canada Burn Down the White House? - column

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Did Canada Burn Down the White House?

The question has been asked: Did Canada burn down the White House?

Well, no, not exactly.

In 1812 Congress declared war on Britain, thinking that the several provincial Canadas of that time (Canada did not become a Dominion until 1 July 1867) would easily be conquered and absorbed into the land of the free, whether or not they wanted freedom imposed by conquest and absorption. Irony, eh?

Britain was at war with Napoleonic France, and her army and navy were committed to the defense of the home islands and to distant campaigns against the French Empire. The D.C. war hawks (as always, hawkish with the lives of other men and their sons, not with the lives of themselves and their sons) in congress envisioned a quick and victorious campaign over the British regulars, English militias, French-Canadian militias, and the allied First Nations.

Thomas Jefferson, slaveowner (https://www.monticello.org/site/plantation-and-slavery/thomas-jeffersons-attitudes-toward-slavery) and former president, said that the conquest of Canada would be a matter of marching. He, however, did not march. He never marched. Thomas Jefferson fought in the wars by writing thinky-stuff and attending diplomatic receptions.

During the campaigns United States forces burned York (now Toronto), the capital of Upper Canada, and other towns, and in 1814 regular British forces in their turn burned much of Washington and other towns.

Apparently there were no Canadian militia units involved in torching our capital, but instead regular British soldiers and militia from the Caribbean. Canadians claim the honor anyway, and since they remain part of the British Empire, one can with a grain of salt and a cup of Tim Horton’s coffee admit their claim.

When the war ended in 1814, and everyone signed The Treaty of Ghent on Christmas Eve, the boundary between the several Canadas and the United States was exactly where it had been two years before. Some 50,000 American, British, Canadian, French Canadian, and First Nations soldiers, and far more civilians, died for the irresponsible ambitions of the War Hawks (who did not themselves hawk to war, not even for the defense of their own capital).

So God bless Canada, and us, and everyone. Let’s drop the tariffs and the passport requirements, apologize nicely for ill manners shown to this nation’s best friend, shake hands all ‘round, send the prime minister some socks appropriate for grownups, and go catch a Toronto Blue Jays game.

-30-

An Ikon of Saint Seraphim of Sarov among Birch Trees - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

An Ikon of

Saint Seraphim of Sarov among Birch Trees

Saint Seraphim among the birch trees, bent
In penitential pain – O pray for us
A thousand souls depending on your peace
And then a thousand more for each, and more

Saint Seraphim among the birch trees, bent
And leaning on your axe-stave now become
Your staff of office among foxes and bears
Please consecrate in us your Spirit of love

Saint Seraphim among the birch trees, bent -
Dear friend of penitents, dear Heaven-sent

Two Kiddie Pools in the Back Garden, with Honeybees and a Dachshund - doggerel with a real dog

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Two Kiddie Pools in the Back Garden,

with Honeybees and a Dachshund

The dachshund loves her kiddie pool
The honeybees love theirs
The dachshund splashes to get cool
The bees mind their affairs

(Honeybees cannot launch from water, so I keep freshly-cut leafy limbs in their pool.)

Drunk Girl Crying in the Parking Lot - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Drunk Girl Crying in the Parking Lot

Drunk girl crying in the parking lot
     Always begins her ‘plaints with “I”
Dull boy whining on an email screen
     Always begins his notes with “I”
Mean girl screaming in the shopping mall
     Always begins her rage with “I”
Sad boy sucking on a cigarette
     Always begins his verse with “I”
‘Lone girl staring at a tv set
     Always begins her sigh with “I”

And why?

Because they overdose on I, ME, MY

The Hegelian Dialectic on Garbage Day - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Hegelian Dialectic on Garbage Day

Thesis and antithesis became one
And synthesis became thesis again
Another synthesis antithesis
And they became a higher synthesis

And the higher truths rose higher and higher
Higher and higher in a spiraling spire
Of conceptualizations like holy fire
Thoughts far above all earthly muck and mire

until

Until Mrs. Hegel told Mr. Hegel
That he ought to get off his lazy geist
And begin helping out around the house,
And set the weltseele out on the curb

Tactical Thirty-Year-Old Tactical Children Tactical - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Bedrooms of Thirty-Year-Old Children

                        “I am looking for a some what tactical bible cover. I would prefer that it have hook and loop
                        some were on it, so I can put moral patches on it.”

-https://www.ar15.com/forums/general/-/135-1549758/

Each tactical gun and each tactical knife
Made in China by tactical slaves
Tactical gear for tactical strife
(Tactical guys to their tactical graves)

Tactical undies and tactical pen
Tactical chocolate and paintball paint
Tactical everything for wannabe men
Desperate to be whatever they ain’t

Tactical shelters for when it’s raining –

But

They never made Day One of army training

Eek! Who Burned Down the White House? - a limerick

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Eek! Who Burned Down the White House?

Someone once burned down the White House!
Someone who was wearing a red blouse
The British claim it loudly
But others more proudly:
“We Canadians burned down the White House!”

In 1812 Congress declared war on Britain, thinking that the several provincial Canadas of that time (Canada did not become a Dominion until 1 July 1867) would be easily conquered and absorbed. During the campaigns United States forces burned York (now Toronto), the capital of Upper Canada, and in 1814 regular British forces in their turn burned much of Washington. Apparently there were no Canadian militia units involved in torching our capital. Canadians claim the honor anyway, and since they were part of the British Empire, one can with a grain of salt and a cup of Tim Horton’s coffee admit their claim.

God bless Canada. Let’s drop the tariffs and the passport requirements, apologize nicely for ill manners shown to this nation’s best friend, shake hands all ‘round, and go catch a Toronto Blue Jays game.

Upon Finding a Souvenir of Canterbury in a Desk Drawer - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Upon Finding a Canterbury Remembrance in a Desk Drawer

Astride his horse, the gift-shop blisful martir
Raises his glov’ed hand in priestly blessing
For those who wear his token in evidence
Of a devout pilgrimage to Canterbury

By tour bus those who wolden ryde there
To seek a blessing (and a souvenir)
In brass Saint Thomas and his horse and groom
Forever stand; Saint Thomas asks of us:

“Sin you have seyn the paving wher I deyd –
Let now Iesu forever be your gyde”

When Computers, Eggs, and Airplanes Go Bad - Column

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

When Computers, Eggs, and Airplanes Go Bad

“Have you no idea of progress, of development?"

"I have seen them both in an egg," said Caspian. "We call it 'Going Bad' in Narnia”

-C. S. Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader

In a careless moment the other day I pushed the wrong response when a software provider named – let us say MacroPlop – suggested that their latest update would make the world of personal computing much better, leading my internet experience into the broad, sunny uplands or something or other.

I have spent the last two days repenting of my misplaced trust in the blandishments of MacroPlop by roaming through Dante’s Darksome Wood while trying to follow the software provider’s wonderfully opaque instructions on how to remediate the mess they made while improving my computer:

Error 500 this will take a few minutes please leave your computer online now Error 370 and a yo-ho-ho check the cleverly named icon which is nowhere on your screen you may need to restart your computer to make this update take effect can’t rename because a file ERROR with that name already exists the application failed to initialized because the window station is being shut down you must restart window to complete the program removal failure unknown error you may need to restart your computer to make this update take effect an error occurred ERROR the following information might help you resolve the error if an wah-wah error is returned which is not defined in the standard woo-woo filter, it is converted to one of the following errors which is guaranteed to be in the filter you may need to restart your computer to make this update take effect in this case information is lost you may need to restart your computer to make this update take effect however, the folder correctly handles the exception (doobydoobydo) if there are any messages that are stuck, follow these steps to clear those messages in outlook, click the send/receive tab, and then click work offline note this stops outlook from trying to send all email messages select the outbox you can now take one of the following actions move the message move the message to the drafts folder you may need to restart your computer to make this update take effect…

My favorite message advises the frustrated computer user to go online to seek help about the computer that is unable go online.

But I caught up on some reading.

While waiting hours for the several this-may-take-a-few-minutes remedies to download I finished reading John Mortimer’s Rumpole and the Age of Miracles. Given that I am a slow reader and easily distracted – oh, look, a squirrel! – a better reader could work his or her way through the Old Testament, St. Augustine’s City of God, William Manchester’s Churchill trilogy, or McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove while waiting for MacroPlop promises.

You can find the books online if your machine isn’t offline.

And speaking of going offline, modern passenger planes are built with the control surfaces connected only by computer signals, not by cables. When those computers system crashes, so will the airplanes.

Progress.

-30-

Oh, Please, Not Another Tapestry! - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Oh, Please, Not Another Tapestry!

Slowly weaves a magnificent…tapestry 1
O’Murchu weaves a tapestry of science and spirit 2
A brilliant tapestry of love, pain and dogs 3
Quartet weaves a tapestry to serve as background 4

Weaves a tapestry of contemporary life 5
The Banner saga weaves a tapestry 6
Local author weaves a…tapestry 7
Weaves itself into Toronto’s tapestry 8

Weaves a tapestry of two romances 9
Burke weaves a tapestry of unique characters 10


1 http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2012/08/the-english-war-and-peace-paul-scotts-raj-quartet.html

2 https://www.ncronline.org/books/2017/08/o-murchu-weaves-tapestry-science-and-spirit

3 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB985905633270438842

4 http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1988-10-26/news/8802100482_1_fluegelhorn-soul-eyes-art-farmer-quartet

5 https://www.dallasnews.com/arts/books/2012/09/20/in-between-days-by-andrew-porter-weaves-a-tapestry-of-contemporary-life-and-hot-button-issues

6 https://www.vg247.com/2014/01/09/the-banner-saga-weaves-a-tapestry-of-loss-morality-and-hope-impressions/

7 http://www.reformer.com/stories/local-author-weaves-together-a-tapestry-of-conflicting-emotions,372745

8 https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/canadian-hindu-temple-weaves-itself-into-torontos-tapestry/article1079566/

9 https://bookpage.com/reviews/6557-sandra-brown-tough-customer#.WmOZAkly7IU

10 https://www.bookbrowse.com/bb_briefs/detail/index.cfm/ezine_preview_number /6557/feast-day-of-fools

Alienation is the Constant Theme - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Alienation is the Constant Theme

Alienation is the constant theme
A child for whom the family dinner table
Is the scene of nightly interrogations
Can never be at home outside himself

Alienation is the constant theme
When every word is dissected by others
For any taint of beauty, love, or truth
And any deviation from today

Alienation is the constant theme
When trust is but a morning-broken dream

Microsoft Windows Latest Update - a caution

Microsoft Windows Latest Update

 

Windows 10

Fails again

 

 

 

I was an hour or so repairing the mess made by the latest Microsoft update.  In the end, the only remedy was to purge the update via the control panel

 

Beware of progress.

Upon Reading a Graduation Program Which Features a Clumsily-Formed Sentiment Wrongly Attributed to Shakespeare - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Upon Reading a Graduation Program Which Features

a Clumsily-Formed Sentiment Wrongly Attributed to Shakespeare

Scorn not the printed word, O thoughtful soul,
As Wordsworth 1 did not say, and do not set
An electric machine to grind through files
In search of gobbets all thinky and stuff

For Shakespeare set in iambs clean and neat
All the transcendent ideas of the good,
The beautiful, and the eternal true
Sustained in meters of steel and words of gold



Shakespeare never

                                     wobbled
all over the paper in unmetered rubbish
                                                                                                                  lines
of disconnected babble about stars and selves 2 without any citations for verification
stirred around in a sort of it-sounds-like-Shakespeare-kinda-sorta-they-won’t-care-anyway soup to be copied and pasted onto sheets of 8 1/2” by 11” fake parchment woodpulp because, like, y’know, that’s what you do for graduation ceremonies



1 Wordsworth, “Scorn not the Sonnet”
2 Possibly a misremembering of Cassius’ words to Brutus in Julius Caesar: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” If so, the quotation has been, like Caesar, assassinated.

Monday Morning after Graduation - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Monday Morning after Graduation

For thirteen years one’s life is organized
By Mom and Dad and the glorious state 1
Passive behavior rewarded and prized
Just work your sums on an electric slate

Bubble in circles with a number two
Glitter-glue posters for every right cause
School’s all about state scores, not about you
And state exams, according to state laws

For thirteen years you were controlled and toyed -
Today you’re just one of the unemployed



1 You are the state. A school will be exactly what you and the other citizens want it to be. Always vote in your local school board elections; self-government is not a spectator sport.

Life High the Red Cuppa, Rather - a mildly amusing couplet

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Lift High the Red Cuppa, Rather

A proper English Communist, I say,
Should drink only that tea called Comrade Grey

The People Gather to Honor Their Children Graduating from High School - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The People Gather to Honor Their Children Graduating from High School

To the Accompaniment of “Land of Hope and Glory” on a CD Player

Piped to Speakers on the Artificially Turfed Football Field

 

“Here, sir, the people govern”

-attributed to Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, and others

Beards flowing over beer-swollen bellies
Tattoos, tee-shirts reading “I’m With Stupid”
Knee-pants, hairy legs, knives worn openly -
And some of the men are dressed that way too

Bubba caps worn defiantly during the pledge
Cell ‘phones at full wail during the opening prayer
Too few genetic codes and too few teeth
Rattling loudly during the valedictory

And air-horn cousins out on probation
To lend some elegance to graduation

A Doctor Seuss-Free Graduation Poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

On a Morning in June – a Doctor Seuss-Free Graduation Poem

The earth is all before me: with a heart
Joyous, nor scar’d at its own liberty,
I look about, and should the guide I chuse
Be nothing better than a wandering cloud,
I cannot miss my way.

- Wordsworth, Prelude, I.15-19

Soon you’ll depart for your own pilgrimage,
Seafaring through the life God has given you,
To the golden Canterbury of your heart,
Along the sunlit road you’ve chosen to walk,
A pilgrimage, perhaps, to Orwell’s dusty room,
Or deep into the mind of Thomas More
Or far-off Saint James of the Field of Stars,
Or sea-passages swift to Denmark’s shores,
Or fields of sonnets singing in the dawn -
All these you’ll find along your pilgrim road.

Take then, your haversack, and neatly pack
Your book, your song, your dream, a change of clothes
(Your dreams are happier when you wear dry socks)
A prayer that your parsoun will write for you
A cup, a bowl, a pocketknife, a pen;
And do take care to pack those useful words
Learned, shaped, and sharpened, polished from your youth:
The baby-sounds for supper, sandwich, cat,
The childhood sounds for play and your best friend,
Then words from Mom and words from books - and words from  
     you.

Words flown by you in dreams like sunlit sails
Then shaped again in pencil or in ink
And flung in hope upon a waiting leaf
Words made by you for honest purposes
And never employed in wicked deceit,
For thieves might steal your book, your song, your hopes,
And time decay your purposes and strength
But your own words, oh, yes, your good, strong words,
Like an old pair of boots will see you through
To your heart’s desire at your journey’s end.

Existential Ants - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Someone mentioned existential angst the other day. At first I misread “existential angst” as “existential ants,” and so I dedicate this doggerel (why is there never catteral?) to all of you who suffer existential angst or existential ants:

Existential Ants

All creepy ants are existential ants
If ants across your old blue jeans advance
And bite into your tender skin by chance
You leap into an existential dance

And swear profane, wild, existential chants
Your good companions look at you askance
Each with a wondering existential glance
They seem to be in an existential trance

As you flail among the flowering plants
Because of those wicked existential ants!

Attack of the Robot Disposable Plastic Cups - column

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Attack of the Robot Disposable Plastic Cups

A fast-food joint in California features a robot burger-flipper-robot-thingie (“Mustard, Will Robinson!”) that grills 300 hamburgers a day. A human short-order cook must marvel at the concept of only 300.

The restaurant says that no humans are losing jobs because of automation, and given the robot’s leisurely pace that’s probably true.

Any true burger-meister will want only a human cook, Clyde or Maria or Junior or Jorge or Bobbie-Ann, laughing and joking, building a burger with one hand while making coffee with the other, and at the apex of culinary creation calling out your number with a voice reminiscent of one of Bertie Wooster’s brassy aunts, loud enough to call the cattle home across the Sands of Dee.

The robot is not going to approach your table with a coffee refill, pop chewing gum, tell a joke, or ask you how your day is because it’s not programmed to move from its assigned spot on the floor and in any event is broken down again.

No robots, thank you, either in the fast-foodery or in the big-box store; there are no ethics or economy in firing a loyal, long-time local worker in order to lose money on an expensive gadget that never functions as it should and which requires constant maintenance and adjustment while the customers, tired of waiting, drift away to stores staffed by humans.

On the other hand, or grasping robotic arm, the manager of a taco stop in Chicago stabbed one of his employees in an argument over a woman. Possibly a robot worker would not flirt the boss’s girlfriend: “Hey, good-looking, do you ever go out with Chinese robots who dig Microsoft and The Big Bang Theory?”

The Scottish parliament has banned single-use coffee cups, a menace to the environmental purity of the highlands often related in iambic tetrameter in Sir Walter Scott’s yarns. In The Lady of the Lake the real crime of Roderick Dhu is not that he murdered a fellow knight in a sghian dubh-free zone and betrayed his king but because he drank his morning dram of whisky (with a frothy layer of latte and lightly dusted with cinnamon) from a plastic cup.

And then threw it away. Gasp!

This ban on nefarious plastic and paper cups applies only to parliament buildings for the present, saving the heather from the depredations of 450,000 cups a year. Given that Scottish parliamentarians drink 450,000 cups of coffee and tea each year, hardworking Angus in Dundee must wonder what his elected representatives do except sit around and quiver from atrial fibrillation.

The Scottish parliament has also appointed a high-level commission to study (translation: vacations under the guise of fact-finding missions) the elimination of the scourge of other fast-food disposables from Scottish society.

All good Scots still mourn the loss of Stirling Castle in 1304 to an attacking English force better armed with semi-automatic paper cups, wall-breaking plastic clamshells, and unregistered drinking straws.

From California to Scotland the theme seems to be the betterment of the world through the eradication of human workers and plastic cups. This continues the theme that since gasoline comes from a pump (now with a little television screen), electricity from a socket in the wall, and milk from the market, we don’t need those nasty, polluting oil wells, generating stations, and farms.

Once the purge is accomplished, no one will ever again be in want, and whales (vegetarian whales, of course) will frolic in the Sacramento River and in the Solway Firth.

-30-

School Websites - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

School Websites

A solution driven technology
Committee…paying it forward…globally
Competitive…peace poster…this flu season
We have had extra reminders in place

To wash hands and be contentious1 of spreading
Germs…child-centered learning…preparing your child
For the twenty-first century…a vibrant
And diverse living-learning environment

A cross-section of the district’s stakeholders

And, as ever,

Home of the Fighting Something-or-Others


1"Contentious of spreading germs" is the wording on the site during 'flu season.

A Modest Celebration of the Dipthong - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Modest Celebration of the Dipthong

A dipthong - this is not a foolish man
Inappropriately dressed for sea or sand
Nor yet a verbal dipping, nor a thong
Nor yet a tropic river that flows along

A dipthong is two vowels in harmony
One with another dancing gracefully
Without a consonant to interrupt
Through a harsh, hinging sound that’s too abrupt

The poorly called but sweetly sounded dipthong
Is just another name for a little song

The Rodent vs. the Reptile - column

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Rodent vs. the Reptile

No, no, I’m not talking about the latest squabble at an office meeting.

Recently a couple of those roadside chain giganto gas ‘n’ gulp ‘n’ gorge places got into a legal tiff about one’s reptile logo looking too much like the other’s rodent logo.

Since neither establishment serves rodents or reptiles as takeout, what’s the point?

As Al said on the radio, if a driver can’t tell the difference between a giant rodent and a giant reptile, maybe he shouldn’t be driving at all.

Indeed, if the health department were to find rodents or reptiles in the food service spaces, a Godzilla of citations would be released into the wilds of the sandwich kiosks.

Another point of contention is that the rodent people accused the reptile people of copying the rodent people by bragging about their clean restrooms. That makes no sense. One can’t imagine any establishment advertising with, “Come on in; our restrooms are vile and disgusting!”

Of course no one’s restrooms would be vile and disgusting if The People, bless them, didn’t trash them constantly with populist incontinence.

The rodent people and the reptile people – those sound like new categories for a reality show. The competitions could be parking-lot drag races, the highest-decibel screaming children, and map-and-compass navigation of the souvenir area. The losing team would be voted to spend a night, without either weapons or anti-witch powder, in the truck stop restroom across the street, the one with the cologne dispenser because there’s nothing that says lot lizard magnet like cologne from a truck stop restroom.

According to Wookiepedia (or something like that), one of the rodent locations features “120 fueling positions, 83 toilets, 31 cash registers, 4 Icee machines, and 80 fountain dispensers.” All that is mildly interesting, but a cafeteria offering of 83 toilets hardly makes the place a vacation destination.

Texas has put a lot of miles (or maybe those godless Napoleonic kilometres) on the tires from the Ye Olden Days gas station along the two-lane, with a couple of pumps, a screen door, fizzy drinks in a tank of ice water, ceiling fans stirring the flypaper strips in the desert heat, and a couple of old geezers sitting on a wooden bench out front, whittling and watching the decades pass. Now we have sanitized giant rodent and giant reptile gargantua plazas with air-conditioning and 80 toilets and lawsuits.

Progress, I guess.

-30-

"We Will Remember Them" - Column, Memorial Day, 2018

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

"We Will Remember Them"

Memorial Day is said to have begun during the Civil War as Decoration Day, when the fresh graves of the war dead were decorated with flowers in their memory. Numerous towns, north and south, claim to have begun the tradition of decorating the graves of all soldiers of both sides. Wherever this noble custom began, honoring those who served is what civilized nations do.

On Memorial Day we still honor the loyal departed, those who died in war and those who passed on in peace.

Last month, a C130 of the Puerto Rico Air National Guard went down with the loss of all its crew.

These fine young men and their aircraft recently served our nation throughout the Caribbean in evacuation and supply duties for months after Hurricane Maria.

As we now know, this aging C130 was being flown to Tucson to be scrapped. Some sources say the plane was 40 years old; some say 50 and some say 60. In any event, the plane was older than any of its crew.

Maybe it’s always been true that this nation sends its finest young men and women to fight contemporary wars with the leftovers from past wars.

Those young men are:

Major José Rosado, pilot

Major Carlos Serra, navigator

1st Lieutenant David Albandoz, co-pilot

Senior Master Sgt. Jan Paravisini, mechanic

Master Sgt. Jean Audriffred

Master Sgt. Mario Braña, flight engineer

Master Sgt. Víctor Colón

Master Sgt. Eric Circuns, loadmaster

Senior Airman Roberto Espada

We did not know these young men who died for us, but let us praise them now, and honor them, and let us remember these three things about them:

1. All of these young men served in the Air National Guard – you know, that safe duty. For decades some who never made the first day of recruit training have claimed that the Reserves and the National Guard are easy billets, a nice soft way of avoiding hazardous duty.

Rupert Brooke wrote in 1914 “If I should die, think only this of me / There is some corner of a foreign field that is forever England.”

Well, we can write that there are lots of corners of lots of foreign fields that are forever American Reserves and National Guard.

2. All of these young men were millennials – you know, that generation of delicate snowflakes who just lay around the house playing video games and who won’t demonstrate initiative. The reality is that our military, our emergency and police services, our workforce – they’re millennials, the generation that came of age at the turn of the century and who now are entering early middle age.

3. The nine who died were not eligible to vote in federal elections. Residents of Puerto Rico have been, since 1917, citizens of the United States, and yet they may not vote in federal elections. These nine young men, as part of their oath of enlistment, pledged personal loyalty to their president, and they could not, by law, vote for their president. They were not permitted to vote for the government of the nation for which they died in active military service.

We should do something about that.

I return to Senior Airman Roberto Espada – how old was he? 21? 22? – who is survived only by his grandmother, his meemaw. We can infer that his meemaw raised him. And she raised a good young man. And he won’t be going home to her. And yet some are pleased to dismiss Roberto as a millennial, a snowflake. His meemaw knows better, and all true Americans know better too.

Shakespeare, 400 years ago, wrote about young Roberto. In Act V of Macbeth:, a warrior who has fought against the tyrant Macbeth is told that his young son – let us call him Roberto – was killed in the battle. Macduff says to the grieving father:

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

Senior Airman Roberto Espada only lived until he was a man.

On Memorial Day let us remember him, his crewmates, and all the loyal departed with Lawrence Binyon’s fine words:


They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn
At the going down of the sun, and in the morning
We will remember them.

-30-

When We Were Sailors - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

When We Were Sailors

To the tune of Detroit Diesels

When we were sailors we seldom thought about
Being sailors. We thought about, well, girls
And happenin’ tunes from AFVN
‘Way down the river in happenin’ Saigon

We thought about cars and beaches and girls
And would a swing ship bring any mail today
In big red nylon sacks of envelopes
Love postmarked in a fantasy, The World

We thought about autumn and home and girls
While sandbag stacking and C-Rat snacking
We thought about being clean and dry again
While pooping and snooping in Cambodia

When we were sailors we thought about our pals
And what they were, and who
                                                   before the dust-offs flew

Right Wings and Left Wings - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Right Wings and Left Wings

Well, yes, there are wings, right wings and left wings -
If a bird is missing a wing, right or left
It cannot fly, it cannot lift away
From the cat-haunted lawn, and so is eaten

There are water-wings, and buffalo wings
(Although buffalo don’t really have wings)
And in the cafeteria chicken-ring-things
And other metaphors that just won’t fly

But you and I, we both belong to God
And not to a wing (that would be quite odd)

Thirteen Reasons Why Not - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Thirteen Reasons Why Not

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

But what we put into it is ours.

 

-Dag Hammarskjold

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



from Coffee and a Dead Alligator to Go, 2017

Special and Awesome Spring Concert in the Parish Hall - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Special and Awesome Spring Concert in the Parish Hall

Well, gosh, thank you for being here today
I am honored to be the conductor
Of this very special and awesome group
So let me introduce them one by one
To this special and awesome audience
It’s been an awesome season, and we’re glad
You could share this moment with us today
We’d like to give a special shout-out to
(Name and name) for making this wonderful space
Available to all of us today
As you know this is the last performance
Of the season, and the last here for (name)
Who is being transferred to Albuquerque
And we want to wish her well; she has been
A cornerstone-rock-heart of our little group
And also for (name) who is retiring
After thirty years with (name-name, inc)
And is looking forward to spending time
With his family and traveling about
With his awesome and patient wife (name-name)
And also with his awesome and patient dogs
Although of course he would never say that they
Are more awesome than his sweet wife ha-ha
You will notice that our program today
Features a diversity of pieces to appeal
To all sorts of tastes because the pieces
We have selected in their diversity
Are meant to appeal to all sorts of tastes
Oh, wait, did I say that already ha-ha
Because we all believe that music speaks
To the hearts of all in their special ways
Because music is the language of all
From Tchaikovsky and Wagner to Elvis
From the stuffiness of grand old Vienna
To ‘way-cool happenin’ New Orleans
Or as they like to say down there Naw-lins
Ha-ha music is the language of all
Because it is inclusive and diverse
And speaks to all our hearts with love
And, like, you know, stuff, so now we begin
With some traditional classic pieces
And then some popular tunes you can tap
Your toes along to, and then at the end
We will enjoy a good ol’ sing-along
And maybe some audience participation
Ha-ha but we’ll let that be a surprise
Our first piece now is by Paganini
Who was neither a pagan nor a ninny
Ha-ha so let me give you’re a little background
On this piece…

A Brief Discourse on the Subject of Standing or Not Standing for the National Anthem at Sporting Events That You and I Can't Afford to Attend Anyway

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Brief Discourse on the Subject of Standing or Not Standing for the National Anthem

at Sporting Events That You and I Can’t Afford to Attend Anyway

You don’t have to stand up, but I wish you would -
Standing up for the flag is standing up
For each other, me for you, you for me
But if you don’t, forgive me anyway

You don’t have to stand up, but I wish you would -
Because some fifty years ago That Man’s
Heel spurs kept him from crawling through the mud
With us; he’s not much of a stand-up guy

You don’t have to stand up, but if you do –
I would be humbly honored to stand with you

Gap Year for the Children of the Poor - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Gap Year for the Children of the Poor

Just cruising through the endless sunny days
Along a rainforest river lingering
Hatless, shirtless, catching some serious rays
Listening to the national radio

A practical internship in cultural studies
Interacting with the authentic locals
And sampling their authentic cuisines
And learning so much from authentic them

The authentic locals had much to teach us,
And they did - during our gap year in Viet-Nam

We Do Not Burn Books in America - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

We Do Not Burn Books in America

We do not burn books in America
We just ignore them, for we light our nights
And burn away our individual souls
Upon an altar green, clean plastic grass

Come together as one unto the lights
The concept of the tablets now writ large
An electronic scoreboard – and if we’re good
We’ll see our snaggly grins all ten feet tall

Eighty-thousand dollars of education
Beaming civilization six nights each year

Snake Interruptedruptedruptedrupted - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Snake  Interruptedruptedruptedrupted - A Song of Spring

Our merry springtime is a glorious feast
Of joyful sights and scents and happy sounds,
Of breezes turning warmly from the east
Of bustling bees winging their flowery rounds

Above, around, and through a world of green
In dreams of life that move the seasons along
Where each day’s sunrise halos a Creation scene
And every blossom is its own soft song

But the sweetest sound echoing through the glades
Is a snake being shredded by the lawnmower’s blades

A Pastoral Scene (without firearms) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Pastoral Scene (without firearms)

A fine wine’s not for us; we want cheap red
In paper cups beneath the apple trees
with cheese and bread upon the grasses spread
And you singing along each merry breeze

This fine day’s made for us; we want to kiss
Creation as we kiss each other’s lips
In celebration of sweet summer bliss
While soft away the dreamy twilight slips

Our fine moon’s rising, silvering the air -
She tells us we have kisses yet to share

Ceremonies of Innocence - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Ceremonies of Innocence

“The ceremony of innocence is drowned”

-W. B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”

The ceremonies of innocence live,
All of them: youthful lovers holding hands
Bees watering beneath a dripping tap
Good farmers tending summer’s ripening fields

Things fall apart, but gather we the bits
And carefully love them together again
With cups of coffee, lines of verse, kind words
And all the liturgies of worship and hope

The ceremonies of innocence live:
They mend the time through the blessings we give

A Makeshift Shrine - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Makeshift Shrine

 

for those who mourn...

Teddy bears ribboned to a chain-link fence,
Plastic-wrapped flowers stacked like compost,
Dime-store candles flickering in the exhaust
Of passing mini-vans. The inanity
Of filler-language falls, descends upon
The shattered souls of the barely alive,
The dead cliches’ of well-planned camera-grief:
“Our hearts and thoughts go out to you.”
What does that mean? Nothing but conventional noise
For generations of lovers and mourners
Long-ago looted of reality,
Programmed with state-sanctioned hyperbole,
And mourners now are left with nothing but
An existential howl against the light,
Sodium-vapor upon broken glass,
While strident Men of Destiny
There rake for votes among the ashes of death.


from The Road to Magdalena, 2012

Negotiating with Honeybees - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Negotiating with Honeybees

The squirrel makes a fuss - he must discuss
Drink-sharing with the thirsty honeybees
Who hover greedily above the bowl
And claim all water rights for bees alone

The squirrel pleas with “Please!” to all the bees;
In conclave met they buzz, and grant the fuzz-
Y neighbor limited let to get wet
If when drinking his fill he holds real still

And the bees’ pet human has come and gone –
He leaves them water, then leaves them alone

An Open Poem to His Royal Highness Prince Henry of Wales, Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

An Open Poem to

His Royal Highness Prince Henry of Wales,

Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order

Shave

Matthias - a Substitute Teacher - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Matthias – a Substitute Teacher

Perhaps Matthias is the patron saint
Of substitute teachers – called in rather late
And sent where he had never been before
Unsure of what might be expected of him

Without even a book of lesson plans
But ever willing to give it a go
To face a crowd incurious, hostile
Demanding of him: “What are you doing here?

Mostly ignored, his sign-in sheet misplaced
Late-called, but still, as he was called
                                                                he went

Bush-Hogging - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

(Mostly a remembrance of my father; I am very happy that bush-hogging [and milking cows, and plowing, and planting, and…] is not a part of my adult life.)

Bush-Hogging

Light fog, dense air - how should one think of them
The sun – he seems to be holding his breath
Until, oh, nine or so, when he exhales
Soul-sucking heat upon the steaming earth

The Massey-Ferguson sits patiently
Through all its dawn-lit diagnostic chores:
Check the oil, check the gas, and lube the points
Safety checks all ‘round before the mowing begins

Old hat, old gloves, old boots, a fresh cigar
And old eyes focused on a field afar



(Bush-Hog is a brand of farm-tractor-mounted rotary mowing machines and other types of farm equipment. Bush-Hog enjoys an excellent reputation, and so to mow fields and pastures, even with another brand, is referred to as bush-hogging)

The Bird Mark 7 Respirator - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Okay, a poem about a machine is suspiciously redolent of Socialist Realism, but I’m not ready to write an ode to a tractor factory.

The Bird Mark 7 Respirator

In memory of Forrest Bird, who saved the lives of millions

A little Bird, singing all through the night
A plastic box of green mechanicals
Its soft, subtle hiss-click there breathing life
Into and through the wreckages of boys

Americans, mostly, Vietnamese
Koreans, Cambodians, Lao, Hmong
And one who might have been a Russian (shhhhh….) -
The pretty Bird sang in their languages

And when they woke, the soft song that they heard
Was whispered to them by a little green Bird

Thoughts on a Picture of Two Men in Dinner Jackets - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Thoughts on a Picture of Two Men in Dinner Jackets

If they were Of The People they’d tog in tees
The uniform of the Proletariat
To demonstrate their unique specialness
And admire each other’s piercings and tats

Sitting at a bar in dinner jackets
Without any irony, just two men
And talking with each other, not to ‘phones
Quiet voices – so totally not cool

Having a few after a semi-do
They’ve been noticed1 - not Good Comrades, these two


1“Your attitude’s been noticed.” – Commissar to Yuri in Doctor Zhivago

A Study of Situational Poverty in the Rural South - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Study of Situational Poverty in the Rural South

Raggedy barefoot children in the five and dime
With a Saturday morning quarter each
Plastic toy soldiers, Nazis and Yanks
Or a wind-up car – but that’s a dollar

Whitman adventure books for fifty cents
If nothing this week, then maybe the next
The Call of the Wild, with noble dog Buck
But what about marbles in a little net bag?

Tables of treasures at the variety store
Aladdin’s Cave (with a swept wooden floor)

The All-Seeing I - column. This one's pretty good

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

The All-Seeing I

When, Gentle Reader, you open a newspaper or a conversational site on the InterGossip and note that a column, article, poem, or letter-to-the editor begins with that first-person “I,” skipping that item and going on to something else is almost always a good call.

When a written piece of work includes the phrase “When I was in graduate school…” skipping that is always the right thing to do. That one has been in a classroom is irrelevant; we have all sat in classrooms, usually looking at the clock and in silent prayer pleading with the Divinity, “How long, O Lord, how long?!”

Recently your ‘umble scrivener noted on a news site from far away a report about a young man who had spent some time in prison but had now redeemed himself with the gift of music. While he was in prison he rented a guitar for a nominal sum and taught himself to play it.

The redeemed was pleased to talk about himself, his tattoo celebrating his release from prison, his progress in making himself a better person now, his feelings, his soul, and his music.

And then the viewer was treated to him singing one of his original compositions celebrating himself.

Once upon a time your ‘umble scrivener watched in fascinated horror as a king snake fought and then devoured a rattlesnake while the rattlesnake was still alive.

The purported musician’s performance was rather like that, so whiney-nasal in the vocalization, so self-obsessed in the lyrics, and so brutal in the abuse of the chords and the poor guitar that the interest was in how awful (not awesome) an exhibition of narcissism could be.

But, hey, there were thousands of InterGossip hits (sic), so the music was aesthetically pleasing to some.

When the unhappy noises were ended and the segment was closed with the usually filler-language praising this, oh, experience, the thoughtful observer could only note that the redeemed never expressed any concern about those whom he had hurt.

There was a too-common catalogue of crimes in this young person’s life, according to the interviewer, one of which including breaking into an elderly woman’s house and robbing her.

The inspirational singer-songwriter never mentioned her or any of his victims. He made no apologies, he never expressed any regret, he never suggested in any way that he had broken the norms of civilized behavior. He never mentioned having a job

All he discussed was his therapy, his redemption, his music, his vision, his feelings in the incessant I, I, I, me, me, me that so often constitutes public discourse.

Common generational snobbery would dismiss this self-obsessed young person as a millennial, ignoring the salient fact that the good a man does, or the evil that a person does, is not connected with the date of birth. The reality is that most folks born between 1983 and 2001 – the much maligned millennials – now form the core of this nation’s military, police and fire services, medical professionals, and work force. Passing on clichés about millennials is a disservice to our concepts of honor and honesty – after all, almost all our fine young men and women fighting in the deserts are (gasp) millennials.

And, after all, self-obsession is not defined by date of birth; a individual chooses to grow up and kinda / sorta try to act like a man, or he can just sit around and feel sorry for himself.

The first-person voice is sometimes necessary for advancing a narrative, but it is a risky thing to do.

Even so, one would like to hear more first-person voices from those who have done hard time in Afghanistan or with the police or fire services, and not from those who have enjoyed the leisure to learn the guitar on the taxes and labor of those in Afghanistan (did you know that a soldier’s combat pay is taxed?), the fire and police services, and in the sweat of honest work.

-30-

The In-Laws of Other In-Laws Who Happened to be in the Neighborhood and Decided to Stop by for Just a Minute - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The In-Laws of Other In-Laws Who Happened to be in the Neighborhood

and Decided to Stop by for Just a Minute

Oh yeah that’s right we met at now where was it
Uncle Skinny’s funeral now I think that
was now when was that dear? Oh, it
was at Cousin Verlis’ wedding okay
I’m sure stove up from my last surgery
yeah, me an’ Bubba worked the tugboats for years
Then he fired me we lived there for years
but sold the place and we’re still living there
now it was all flooded up there to where
the Baptist Church was so we couldn’t go
they say Interstate Ten’s a mess this summer
we need to go I got to take my pills
that’s why rice farmers just leave their combines
in the field to rust ‘cause the government’s
all mixed up in it I guess there ain’t many
of us left we all grew up together
I got me this new gun now where’s my ‘phone
Oh it’s in the truck I’ll get it
                                                  now here
I can’t make this thing work I know it’s in
my pictures oh there it is wait it’s gone
we need to go I’ve got to take my pills
now was Cousin Skeeter buried with his parents
no wait that was his son joined the Marines
but they kicked him out ‘cause he was no good
we need to go I’ve got to take my pills
now they was both buried in California
I guess I seen ‘em in 1968 last
These chairs is too low I’m all stove up
I don’t know why the government ain’t prepared
For hurricanes they dug this big drainage ditch
But what if the water backs up along it
Then what am I going to do
We need to go I’ve got to take my pills
I ain’t never met a stranger, no, sir
That’s what they always said about me
Now when I was in school if I had said
“computer” they’d-a sure-’nough kicked me out
We didn’t need all that stuff we learnt just fine
We need to go I’ve got to take my pills
(a ten-minute monologue about a couch
goes here) so I ended up buying a new couch
my first job was with Caterpillar but
after ten years he left and went to work
down’t Port Arthur now if you’re ever
down our way be sure to stop by
we’d sure be glad to have you come on by
We need to go I’ve got to take my pills


[The morning’s interrupted projects and chores
Are resumed, but somehow in a milieu
Of existential despair.]

Some Observations on the Habits of the American Cardinal - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Some Observations on the Habits of the American Cardinal

The Cardinal knows that he is a pretty bird
Splendidly attired in feathers bright and gay
He publishes loudly; he will be heard
Among the squawks of mockingbird and jay

He gobbles and scatters husks, rusks, and seeds
In self-indulgent abandonment
He ignores all others in his wants and needs
They’re secular birds; they can take a hint

The Cardinal certainly loves to be seen
At the public feeder in all his pride
Attentive to fashions, and always keen
For the Best Birds to be posed at his side

But then one day

A few remnant feathers, a ripped cardinal’s hat -
He seems to have forgotten the watchful cat


From Paleo-Hippies at Work and Play, 2014, available from amazon

"Why Aren't You in Class? Who's Your Teacher?" - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

“Why Aren’t You in Class? Who’s Your Teacher?”

No one seems to care; no one really listens
If you don’t play football, baseball, or basketball
Nobody cares. Most teachers don’t know me
And I don’t know them. We need orange jumpsuits

You can’t ever talk to the principal;
He’s too busy, and if you do, he finds
Something wrong with you, and gives you a sermon
Maybe his Jesus loves me, but he sure doesn’t

The assistant principal doesn’t know us
Or care about us; she just screams at us
Unless you’re an athlete. She likes athletes
Everybody just seems so uncomfortable

Or like they don’t want to be here…

“WHY AREN’T YOU IN CLASS?! WHO’S YOUR TEACHER?!”

Contra William Carlos Williams - a rather boring poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Contra William Carlos Williams

The only realism in art is of the imagination. It is only thus that the work

escapes plagiarism after nature and becomes a creation.

-Spring and All, p. 35

A leaf sometimes might seem to be a bee
Afloat upon the humming summer air
The tiny tree-ness of some greater Tree
Or brolly of a fairy-lady fair

A leaf may be presented as a shield
In chlorophyllic marching order trimmed
Its veins as dents received upon the field
The eye of each woody cell dying and dimmed

But even so

In this, inter-warriors, come not to grief
For in the end, a leaf is still a leaf

Dreamcatchers Along a Navajo Road - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Dreamcatchers Along a Navajo Road

“…the war…often seems to have happened to someone else.”

-C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy

A pickup truck beside a Navajo road
Tables of souvenirs, a Thermos of coffee
Clotheslines of dreamcatchers catching the sun
For now; the dreams must wait for sleepless hours

“You were in Viet-Nam,” the old man said
To another old man. No mystery;
He simply took a chance to make a sale
And did, for both had known the Vam Co Tay

Old men along the road, catchers of dreams
Who burned their chances in the long ago

Thoughts of a Man Deferentially Silent During a Conversation Between his Daughter and his Wife - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Thoughts of a Man Deferentially Silent

During a Conversation Between his Daughter and his Wife

How is it that a man can live a long
And happy life in the service of God
And humanity without ever having made
A deep study of the cultivation
Of eyelashes?

0300, and all is not well - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

0300, and all is not well

“…or if we must be wakeful, cheerful…”

-from St. Thomas More’s evening prayer in A Man for all Seasons

Soft, healing sleep now rolls away, away
One’s senses flicker unreliably
The electronic weather panel glows
The CPAP whispers a leaking-air hissssssss

Awake. And why? The day was cruel enough
And now the night reproaches with things done
And things not done, all mixed in raw reproach
Life-choices laughing, mocking, taunting

Perhaps sleepless Macbeth can tell us why
With mirth displaced, all through these haunted hours

When a Plan That Wasn't Made Doesn't Come Together - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

When a Plan That Wasn’t Made Doesn’t Come Together

One loves it when a plan that wasn’t made
Doesn’t come together in a hall that wasn’t hired
By a man who was never told to hire
The hall by a committee that never met

And thus the event which was never held
Was not postponed by the man never told
To postpone the event that was never planned
By a committee that never met anywhere

One loves it when a plan that wasn’t made
Leaves one at peace with book and pipe and Scotch

The Tragic Death of a New World Vulture - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Tragic Death of a New World Vulture

Cruisin’ best speed, foot lightly on the gas
But suddenly, alarm, alack, alas!
Around a curve, vultures lunching en masse
(On ‘possum de jour, a rotting, sodden mass)
One panicked bird leaped up to fly and pass
But wobble-crashed into the windshield glass
He bumped, he bounced, he bonked upon his (brass)
His life flailed out among the roadside grass

Off the Beaten Cliche' - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Off the Beaten Cliché

Upon Reading Literary Reviews

Off the beaten path – is that part of the trail
That was blazed after the door to the future
Was unlocked with the key of somethingness
As an imaginative entrée, hmmmmmmm?

How dangerous it now must be to walk
Beneath that stress-fractured ceiling of glass
Paving the way that was blazed and unlocked
With the key to the future where dreams live

The oppressed voiceless up in champagne class
In resistance to the something-archy

And let The People yawn “iconic”

The Arts Community is Watching You Carefully - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Arts Community

First Member of Social Group to Number Forty Two: “All right, you say you're a poet and you were composing, and you failed to hear Number Ten's greeting.”

Second Member of Social Group, accusingly: “Neglect of social principle.”

Number Six: “Poetry has a social value?

Number Forty Two to Number Six: “You're trying to undermine my rehabilitation! Disrupt my social progress!”

Number Six: “Strange talk for a poet.”

-The Prisoner, “A Change of Mind”

The arts community unmutuals
The individual who dares presume
To work outside The Committee’s deep love
For democratic creativity

The arts community instructs us all
In unison chanting freedom of thought
Painting, writing, and thinking within the lines
As set before us harmoniously

The arts community sets us all free
As long as we are free obediently