Existential Despair in the Ohp...Opht...Eye Doctor's Waiting Room - poem

Lawrence Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

Existential Despair in the Ohp…Opht…Eye Doctor’s Waiting Room

Orderly rows of padded chairs among
Funeral home décor, fluorescent lights
HGTV eternally on TV
A really big and wide hi-def TV

On which attractive thirty-somethings yip
As they enter rooms: “OMYGOD! OMYGOD!”
What would they say if they encountered God –
OMYATTRACTIVELYFURNISHEDROOM!
OMYATTRACTIVELYFURNISHEDROOM!

And how many people with eye problems
Drive themselves to the ophthalmologist?

And did I spell “ophthalmologist” right?

Murder in Constantinople - column

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Murder in Constantinople

“When you come to the point, it does go against the grain to murder an Archbishop.”

-Second Knight in T. S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral

After murdering Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral, the knights in Eliot’s play Murder in the Cathedral pause the action and address the audience in contemporary speech. Up to this point the play’s dialogue has been formal and in a broken sort of verse (apologies to Eliot-ans, but the man’s attempts at verse are obscure), but here the knights attempt to excuse their actions in prose. They are as evasive and as full of it as contemporary politicians covering their (tracks).

In real life King Henry, after his “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest!” moment, had the four knights disappeared, as fans of John Le Carre’ might say. Assassins are as disposable as archbishops and journalists who forget their places.

Last week Jamal Kashoggi, a Saudi subject on some business or other, entered the Saudi consulate in Constantinople (only the ill-taught refer to that ancient city on the Golden Horn as Istanbul). He has not been seen since.

Rumor Control & Gossip Central have said that Mr. Kashoggi was murdered and dismembered, maybe not in that order, by Saudi secret agents and that his screams were broadcast by his exercise watch to his cell ‘phone outside the Saudi consulate. Maybe. Can exercise watches broadcast audio?

If there was a murder there will be no witness, for the operatives, like Mr. Kashoggi, will never be seen again. The Saudi crown prince has made friends and functionaries disappear in the past.

Recep Erdogan, the Turkish president who has stuffed lots of Turkish news correspondents into his prisons, purports to be outraged at someone else’s apparent rough treatment of a news correspondent.

Some foreign news sources have suggested that Jamal Kashoggi was a spy. Americans maintain that he was merely a journalist working for amazon.com’s in-house sheet The Washington Post.

That Mr. Kashoggi lived as long as he did is a surprise. According to our own overseas propaganda service, The Voice of America (https://www.voanews.com/a/who-is-jamal-khashoggi/4610403.html), Mr. Kashoggi’s family and pals include arms dealers, Osama Bin Ladin, former directors of the Saudi secret service, and Dodi Fayed. He may also have been associated with something called The Muslim Brotherhood. He was hired and fired and re-hired and re-fired by numerous news outlets, and after the assumption of power (in a coup?) by Saudi Arabia’s latest crown prince Mr. Kashoggi escaped from Saudi Arabia and into the arms of Jeff Bezos and The Washington Post.

Who and what was Jamal Kashoggi? Whose side was he on? Was he on the side of the good, the true, and the beautiful, or was he playing nations against each other?

Though the arm of a tyrant is long, Mr. Kashoggi was relatively safe in the U.S. Why did he travel to Turkey? Why did he enter the Saudi consulate there? For divorce papers? Really?

Our own crown prince and international arms dealer (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/18/world/middleeast/jared-kushner-saudi-arabia-arms-deal-lockheed.html) (https://www.businessinsider.com/saudi-crown-prince-jared-kushner-relationship-2018-3) is all palsy with the Saudi crown prince. Maybe those two bromance partners could get together over afternoon tea and sort out what happened to Mr. Kashoggi.

“So if we seemed a bit rowdy…”

-Second Knight

-30-

A Person of Interest - poem

Lawrence Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

A Person of Interest

The smoking gun is interesting enough
As is the bloody knife dripping with guts
And his meth-headed beheading of his child
But otherwise – who would be interested in him?

The Cold is More Poetic than the Warm - (this poem is not nearly as drippy as it sounds)

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Cold is More Poetic than the Warm

The cold is more poetic than the warm
A man coat-huddled against December’s winds
Evokes more sympathy in those dark days
Of stinging sleet and menacing blue clouds

The warm is less poetic than the cold
A man hat-shielded against September’s sun
Evokes no sympathy in those bright days
Of dripping sweat and dripping-too sun screen

And though McKuen sang “Listen to the warm”
There’s music in the cold while icicles form



(Your grandmother and I are the only two people who
will admit that they still love Rod McKuen.)

The Last Christmas for Sears and Roebuck - as a poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Last Christmas for Sears and Roebuck

Where can one shop for Christmas if not at Sears:
J. C. Higgins sporting goods, Craftsman tools
Kenmore sewing machines, wonderful toys
The greatest candy counter in the world

And, oh! the best of all:

The little electric trains behind glass panes
Travelling across a cotton-snow Christmas land
From one tiny plastic village to another -
The Santa Fe Railway on tinplate tracks

A little boy’s dear dream for Christmas day
(But after an hour his parents drag him away)


Good-bye, Sears; thanks for the childhood memories.

If We Respected Work... - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

If We Respected Work...

We would

Ask a receptionist for her autograph
Gather in thousands in awe of linemen
Practice the carpenter’s hammer at home
Invite a mechanic to the White House

We would

Order as a keepsake a plumber’s last pipe
Post pictures of teachers writing lesson plans
Make recordings of a wise plowman’s words
Publish biographies of waitresses

We would

Envy the garbageman aboard his yacht
And the workers’ lifestyle that we know not

"Human Eyeball Parts Grown in Lab" - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

“Human Eyeball Parts Grown in Lab”

-Drudge

What do you look for in an eyeball lab-grown
While maybe it is looking back at you
And if you are looking for an eyeball
What are you looking for an eyeball with?

Will we have eyeballs grown for occasions -
A lovely blue for a day at the beach
And a stunning black for the opera
And Harris-tweed brown for a country weekend

But maybe lab eyeballs are just a rumor
A corn-ea attempt at vitreous humor!

When Robert Frost was Invited to the White House - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

When Robert Frost was Invited to the White House

When Robert Frost visited President Kennedy
They spoke of poetry and power, of man
Of greatness and of God, of man’s swagger
Of poetry saving power from itself

When Robert Frost visited President Kennedy
They spoke of the poet’s responsibility
The duties of good men to other men
Of magnanimity and liberation

When Robert Frost visited President Kennedy
We lived a golden age in those few hours

A Toe Fungus Good Morning - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Toe Fungus Good Morning

A yawning dawning clinging to the coffee cup
Dishwasher safe for your happy little home
You press the button for the magic screen
And the in-box presents - a toe fungus cure

Huh?

You opened the mail hoping for happiness
An existential why to the sleepless night
Matins and Lauds now electronical
And a note from a dear friend far away

But with your first sip of coffee, what did you see?
An ad for a toe fungus remedy!

The Final Christmas for Sears and Roebuck? - column

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Final Christmas for Sears?

How sad to consider that this may be the last Christmas ever for the store most associated with Christmas, Sears, nee’ Sears and Roebuck.

The ultimate symbol of American mercantilism, Sears began in the 19th century as a catalogue outlet, and by 1969 was the world’s largest retailer. In the 1970s, in a burst of optimism, the company built the Sears Tower in Chicago, until recently the tallest building in the Americas.

Sears marketed especially brilliantly in rural America, and the Sears catalogue was the source of much of Christmas giving. If you lived in the woods or on the prairie you might not be able to visit a Sears store, but through the catalogues and the United State Post Office Sears visited you.

Brands created by Sears include Kenmore, Diehard, Craftsman, J.C. Higgins, Allstate Insurance, and, for a decade or so, the Vincent Price Gallery of Fine Art. In the 1920s Sears built its own radio station, WLS (World’s Largest Store), which still broadcasts from Chicago although no longer owned by Sears.

J. C. Higgins was Sears’ sporting goods brand, and their firearms, contracted out to various makers, were the poor relatives of Winchester, Remington, and the other high-toned boys. With their plain finish and cheaper wooden stocks J. C. Higgins firearms were not the darlings of the Abercrombie & Fitch set; all that Sears’ plain-Jane firearms could do was put dinner on the table, reliably and without a show, generation after generation.

For reasons best known to the alligator-shoe boys with their master’s degrees in marketing, Sears discontinued the J. C. Higgins line in 1962. Those modest firearms now command premium prices by collectors and are worth more than the company that orphaned them.

In another unexpected act of self-destruction Sears recently sold off perhaps its most famous brand, Craftsman. Craftsman tools were, like J.C. Higgins, outsourced to various American manufacturers, were consistently high-quality, and were guaranteed for life. Now that the name has been sold and re-sold, and one cannot be sure where Craftsman tools are now made, we’d better hit the garage sales for the old ones.

For one small boy in the long ago, the most glorious aspect of Sears was the annual Christmas electric train display, and with his nose pressed against the class he watched the little trains, with all their lights and noises and signals and accessories, travel from one cotton-ball-snowy town to another on pressed-steel rails until, finally, his parents dragged him away.

An adult of course understands that Christmas is not about electric trains at Sears, but the little boy who lives on in the man is not entirely persuaded of that.

Goodbye, Sears and Roebuck, and thank you for those happy childhood memories.

-30-

De-Colonization x 2 (with the usual "Hey! Hey! Ho! Ho!") - doggerel

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

De-Colonization x 2

1. De-Colonize This Space

Drum circle protests genderplop demands
Indigenous discount store camouflage
We demand persistent stereotypes
Solidarity initiative project

Take back the people’s cultural statues
Ethnographic curatorial practices
Red spray paint fire imperialism
Repatriate the Iphone Starbuck’s cups

And don’t forget the “Hey! Hey! Ho! Ho!’
Because we’re, like, artists and stuff, you know?

2. De-Colonize This Space Too

Guns and cholesterol made America great
Fat white boys in discount store camouflage
Duct-tape the Bible and the border wall
We won our freedom with our Kalashnikovs

Fake news back-stabber not a war hero
SecondAmendmentSecondAmendment
Lock her up get ‘em outta here yuge deal
You RINO losers can grab my MAGA

You snowflakes are sissies, you millennials too
But ouch! my heel spurs hurt, oh boo-hoo-hoo!

The School Board Wants to Know What's in Your Child's Urine

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The School Board Wants to Know What’s in Your Child’s Urine

In stately conclave met, each in his chair
The board of school trustees arrange their notes
And after an approved, appropriate prayer
They nod in their wisdom, then “aye” their votes

Entrusted with the dear, sweet children’s learning
With attendance down and the taxes up
The trustees feel a deep and mystical yearning
To make your child p*ss in a plastic cup

History, literature – what need of these?
(Make sure the valedictorian pees)

Catullus, Lesbia, and the Sparrow - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Catullus, Lesbia, and the Sparrow

Oh, foolish Catullus – have you not heard?
Your lover Lesbia gave you the bird!

Father Why's Glob - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Father Why’s Glob

And whan he rood, men myghte his brydel heere

Gynglen in a whistlynge wynd als cleere

And eek as loude as dooth the chapel belle

-Chaucer

A famous priest takes pictures of his meals
Writes detailed notes on how they were prepared
As he airplanes around the world attending meetings
To talk about people he doesn’t like

A famous priest takes pictures of more meals
Almost cellular closeups of bits of meat
While he is flying holy in first class
And praising his cabernet sauvignon

A famous priest promises prayers (and cookery tips)
If you will send him money for his many trips

The Workman's Aubade - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Workman’s Aubade

Awake at four, he rises, lights the fire
And puts the kettle on for a cup of tea
Pulls on the work-stained overalls he shed
Only a few exhausted hours before

Working a shutdown stretch of twelves and sevens
Maybe he’ll make enough for Christmas this year:
Wonderful gifts for his family still asleep
He slips out silently through the back door

His wife and children are disappointed in him
Because he doesn’t do enough for them

The Kent State Racially Right Drama Club - doggerel

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Kent State Racially Right Drama Club

Studio UFA has faded away
MosFilm has blended into something new
Cinecitta filmed in Il Duce’s day

But

Kent State University adds their own “We, too!”

For they’re now using race to cast a play
Kent State obeys the old gauleiter’s cue:
Sure, you can act, but what’s your DNA?
They only hire Authentics as cast and crew

You have to be correct to play a part –
And we are expected to call it art

Torah and Talmud - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Torah and Talmud

To be submerged in world and Word, in Word
That is the world, in words that are the Word
Written in holy fire, the eternal Song
In which and through Whom the world is breathed into being

The Torah scroll unrolls the years of creation
The pages of the Talmud frame the law
As in the statute-structure of the ark
Or as a tabernacle of the soul

To read the words, to chant the Word, to sing -
To be the yad in the great Hand of God

Art as Obedience - column

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Art as Obedience

Antonio Rodolfo Quinn Oaxaca, known to all as Anthony Quinn, was born in 1915 in Chihuahua, Mexico. During his long career this accomplished artist, writer, and actor played many characters of many national and ethnic backgrounds in the cinema and on stage, including: a Cheyenne (The Plainsman, 1936), an English king (Becket, 1961), a Hawaiian (Waikiki Wedding, 1937), a Portuguese (The World in His Arms, 1952), a Filipino (Back to Bataan, 1945, an Italian (La Strada, 1954 and The Secret of Santa Vittoria, 1969), a Greek (The Guns of Navarone, 1961, and The Greek Tycoon, 1978), a Frenchman (Lust for Life, 1956 and The Lost Command, 1966), an Inuit (The Savage Innocents, 1956), an Arab (Lawrence of Arabia, 1962), a Mongol (Marco the Magnificent, 1965), a Ukrainian (The Shoes of the Fisherman, 1968), a Jew (Jesus of Nazareth, 1977), an Afghan (Caravans, 1978), a Spaniard (Camino de Santiago, 1999, and The Last Train from Madrid, 1937), a Berber (Lion of the Desert, 1980), a Cuban (The Old Man and the Sea, 1990), and many others.

Mr. Quinn is said to have joked that he was never asked to play a Mexican on the screen or stage, though in fact there were a few of those roles, too.

To catch a late-night movie with Anthony Quinn is to be reminded of the greatness of this mostly self-educated man, tough, strong, smart, and professional, so unlike the knee-pantsied upspeakers of our time.

No one ever demanded that Mr. Quinn be forbidden to play Mayor Bombolini in The Secret of Santa Vittoria or a generic Anglo in Last Train from Gun Hill because he was born in Mexico and so could not be authentic in playing roles outside his DNA.

One wonders what sort of acting roles Mr. Quinn might now be forbidden to play in our increasingly DNA-obsessed era.

Two weeks ago the drama department of Kent State University was given the Article 58 (cf. The Gulag Archipelago) treatment because the casting of their proposed production of West Side Story was not DNA-correct.

Actors of Puerto Rican descent claimed that their story was being told by persons of unauthorized DNA

The reader may remember the gritty, mean-streets reality of the original play in which a Polish gang and a Puerto Rican gang combat each other at first through savage dance-offs. If that’s not authentic, then what is?

The play ends with the death of Tony / Romeo, though Maria / Juliet remains alive to give the “All are punished” speech at the end.

West Side Story is the plot from Romeo and Juliet, and thus a cultural appropriation from an English play. And that’s the point – Shakespeare’s plot is a gift to the world to be adapted and appreciated by all, not an ossified cultural artifact clutched jealously by a clique of Englishmen named Emma and Neville and Olivia and Trevor, still annoyed about the upstart Normans.

A tragedy of our time is that artistic endeavors in this nation, including theatre and cinema, are now subject to bullying, fear, and obedience to political and racial dictates. The theatre faculty at Kent State groveled their surrender to racist bullying instead of defying it.

The producers of drama in this nation once believed in artistic freedom and so scorned the racial and political policies of Goebbels’ UFA Studios, Stalin’s Mosfilm, and Mussolini’s Cinecitta; now they have themselves adopted those oppressive and DNA-ist approaches, sacrificing art to the obscenity of propaganda.

-30-

To a Bishop - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

To a Bishop

Your Grace, you cannot be a common man
There are no common men - but there are men
And in their service, wearily, alone
You now must bear their mitre and their ring

Your Grace, please do not dine with the regime
They’re only using you, laughing at you
Nor with the blessed poor – you’ll slurp your soup
And they deserve better company anyway

Your Grace, you must completely humble yourself
Submitting even to being addressed as “Your Grace”

"And Still to Their Goal the Rivers Go" - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

“And Still to Their Goal the Rivers Go”

-Ecclesiastes 1:2-11

That which is said to come already is
And was, and so will be again – the sun
Will rise tomorrow, perhaps not upon me
But still the sun will rise again tomorrow

And warm the waters in a little stream
That laughing play with fallen autumn leaves
And all of them swim past a rotting pier
Where little boys with their cane poles once fished

The river currents flow, and so do we
To find our sunlit dreams upon that sea

"Houston Mayor Reveals Plan to Block Robot Sex Shop" - doggerel

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

“Houston Mayor Reveals Plan to Block Robot Sex Shop”

-Houston Chronicle, 10.1.2018

A robot wandered the mean streets alone
While lighting up and smoking his last transistor
Remembering an IBM long gone
“Buy me a WD-40, mister?”

A floozy thermostat took him to Radio Shack
And talked about some Texas Instruments she knew
A Compaq sent them to a room out back -
“Do ya wanna undo my phillips screw?”

He paid the thermostat some gigabytes

And then…

He was mugged by a relay who put out his lights

A Cold Front in October, Complete with a Merry Little Dachshund - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Cold Front in October, Complete with a Merry Little Dachshund

A merry dachshund yaps, and leaps for leaves
Wind-blown across the still-green summer grass
As autumn visits briefly, and looks around
To plan his festive moonlit frosts when next
Diana dances ‘cross November’s skies.

A Devout Sunday Morning Meditation Invoking a Firing Squad - poem (of a sort)

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Devout Sunday Morning Meditation Invoking a Firing Squad

“I do none harm, I say none harm, I think none harm.”

-Thomas More in Robert Bolt’s A Man for all Seasons

And yet how schadenfreude to imagine
The purported Melvin from Mumbai
Tipping the executioner for good service
(To Melvin a concept previously unknown):

     “Be not I understand afraid of your office I need your
     major credit card and your date of birth you but send
     me I understand to that Limited Offer 30G in the Sky
     I understand.”

Or the executives of ISPs
Their eyes blindfolded with their own insolence
Standing before a new Customer Care Team
Drawn from a list of eager volunteers

Now look upon each techno-high-flyer

And

“Customer Care Team – Ready! Aim! Fire!”

And the Senator's Boy is a Harvard Man - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

And the Senator’s Boy is a Harvard Man

A corporal on his embarkation leave
Encounters a girl: “Tell me, what’s your name?”
She smiles and replies on that summer eve
“Tell me no lies and I’ll tell you the same.”

The congressman’s son is on the rowing team

They stroll along a San Diego pier
Where the old museum ships lie in repose
She has a coffee; he orders a beer
From a vendor he buys her a pretty rose

The President’s son is a UPenn man

They flirt over an order of burgers and fries
A soldier-boy so handsome and so young -
The women of the plains will gouge out his eyes
The lads from the hills will cut out his tongue

And the senator’s boy is a Harvard man

The Future of Texas is in Prison - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Future of Texas is in Prison

A class for correctional officers

at the local community college

Thirty-six-thousand a year to begin
No education or experience required
The recruiting posters are pretty, though:
Handsome young people uniformed in grey

But the poor sergeant can’t control his class
His students have their cell ‘phones and their ‘tudes -
“Tell Momma to pick me up like I said!” –
Slouched in their seats or wandering the halls

While dozing over her own telescreen
A fat corporal yawns by the soda machine

The Coming Blue Wave - or is it a Red Wave? - doggerel

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Coming Blue Wave - or is it a Red Wave?

I can’t remember my color, can you?
One side is the bad side; the other is good -
Am I a red, or am I then a blue?
What’s the true color for my neighborhood?

It’s all confusing for this old fellow
They tell me I’m white, but I’m somewhat pink
(When I had the jaundice I was rather yellow)
What color is good – oh, what do you think?

Identification with color – says who?
I think I’ll just stick with the red, white, and blue

John Bolton Rattles his Moustache of War - Doggerel

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

John Bolton Rattles his Moustache of War

The National Security Advisor
In all his frumpery and trumpery
Waves his combat moustache menacingly
Backed up by each nuclear incisor

He threatens Iran with his “hell to pay”
Word missiles through his bristles - “We will come after you!”
Omitting to say (through his facial hairdo)
His child won’t go, but only yours – hooray!

For his own combat record is no joke:
He bravely fought the Cong around Fort Polk

The Teletype Machine in CASABLANCA - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Teletype Machine in Casablanca

To all officers: 504 ERROR
Two German couriers DIAGNOSED WITH AFIB
THIS HAND LOTION IS carrying official documents
murdered on train from LIKE US FOLLOW US

Screen freeze: restart

Oran. AN ERROR OCCURRED IN THE SCRIPT
Murderer ELIMINATES LAUNDRY ODORS
and possible JAW DROPPING accomplices
headed for NOT RESPONDING Casablanca.

Screen freeze: restart

WE’VE GOT AN UPGRADE FOR YOU round up all
suspicious characters TRY IT YOURSELF

Screen freeze: restart



Thanks to:
https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=casablanca
for access to the script of Casablanca.

Our Lady of Walsingham - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Our Lady of Walsingham

O how beautiful is Our Lady Queen!
Queen of our hearts and hopes, and of the May
Sweet Empress over forest, down, and dene,
And happy Sunrise over the pilgrim’s way

O let us crown Our Queen with leaf and flower
Gathered this morning in the dawnlit dew
For we in this Island are Her true dower
Pledging our faith with thorn and rose and yew

She gives us Her feast day, cool and quiet and green -
O how beautiful is Our Lady Queen!

#TheNewSwastika# - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

#TheNewSwastika#

#iobey #meweak #isubmit #mefollow
#idon’tthink #pleasedon’tdisapproveofme
#itoo #allin #mecomrade #iobedient
#idesperate # mecabbage #Ilabelled

#ilicensedmerchandise #meclothingtag
#willyoubemyfriend? #mehatewhatyouhate
#idoasiamtold #mehavenocharacter
#ichantanddanceandwave#mesacrifice

           They’ll hate you, you know, if you walk away,
           Think for yourself, and refuse to obey

Harvest Time in the Fens: Saint Michael's Church, Chesterton

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Harvest Time in the Fens

St. Michael’s Church, Chesterton

A calendar knows little of a day,
Of any day; its arbitrary squares
Mark seasons as they amble on their way
From holy Advent ‘til the harvest fairs,

When summer’s crops, all red and gold and blue,
Along with piglets, ducks, some well-fed hens,
Are carted squeaking, squealing, creaking to
Saint Michael’s fields in the Anglian fens.

Old Father William lifts a pint (no less!)
With farmers selling cows and chicks and corn,
For he is merry too, and quick to bless
The laboring marsh-folk on this autumn morn.

Earth, sky, and air mark seasons as they fall,
And soon comes Martinmas, joyfully, for all.


Chesterton, in ancient Huntingdonshire (only those who know not God claim that Hunts is but a division of Cambridgeshire), is the home of my de Beauville / Beauville / Beville / Bevil ancestors.

St. Michael’s Church was built ca. 1295 and contains several memorials to the Bevilles and the tomb of William Beville, +1487. I do not know if there was ever any bit of land designated as “Saint Michael’s Fields”; I wrote that in for the sake of an autumn fair.

Dispatches from the Colonial Office - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches from the Colonial Office

Sometimes they are all Up the Down Staircase:
Please use the computer we never gave you
Respond to the directive we never sent
And send again the grades you sent last month

You have thirty students in your night class
The adjunct next to you has only six
Well, no, you don’t get any more pay than him
           I mean “than he”
We’re miffed that you even asked about that

Your roof is leaking only because it’s raining
And you’re overdue on your pervert training

20 September 1870 - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

20 September 1870

Like vultures hovering over the faithful dead
The rank red rags of base repression hung
Upon the blast-breeched walls of captive Rome;
The smoke of conquest fouled the ancient streets
While mocking conquerors marched their betters
At the point of enlightened bayonets
To the scientific future, murdering those
Who bore themselves with quiet dignity

False, sinister Savoy sneered in disdain
At ancient truths, this costumed reprobate
Who played at soldier once the firing ceased,
And claimed Saint Peter’s patrimony on
The corpses of the merely useful who
With this day’s slogans fresh upon their lips
At dawn advanced upon the remnant walls
So thinly held by so the last faithful few

And thus befeathered fat Vittorio
Was given his victory by better men
On both sides there, their corpses looted by
The pallid inheritors of Progress
The son of a Sardinian spurred his horse
Along the streets of now obedient Rome
And to the Quirinal by a passage broad
And finally to the Ardeatine Caves

A Venus Flytrap Justifies its Diet of Flesh - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Venus Flytrap Justifies its Diet of Flesh

I mean, like, veg, you couldn’t expect me to eat
A fellow vegetable, a kindred soul
One in spirit with me, with woody cells
Made in the image of the Great Carrot

The animals don’t feel pain like we do
They have no sense of being, they have no soul
And humans need to be farm-raised in pens
And really, veg, they’re happier that way

I’m studied in all such matters agrarian
And, yum! I love me a tasty vegetarian!

I Lost a Major Credit Card, Apparently in Mumbai - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

I Lost a Major Credit Card, Apparently in Mumbai

For security and training purposes
this call may be monitored to access
your account by card number press 1
to access your account by social press 2
to access your balance press 1 to report
a lost or stolen card press 2 beep beep
buzz buzz this is tiffany how may I
help you today I understand what is
the number on the back of the card I
understand what is your social what is
your bank what is your date of birth you’re not
at home I understand what is your home
number for verification where can
we send emergency cash oh you don’t
need emergency cash but you are not
at home I understand what is your date
of birth what is your social is this your
current address what is your bank press 2
when was your last transaction on this card
a lost or stolen card press 2 beep beep
buzz buzz this is tiffany how may I
help you today I understand what is
the number on the back of the card I
understand what is your social what is
your bank what is your date of birth you’re not
at home I understand what is your home
number for verification where can
we send emergency cash oh you don’t
need emergency cash but you are not
at home I understand what is your date
of birth what is your social is this your
current address what is your bank press 2
what is the number on the back of your card
a lost or stolen card press 2 beep beep
buzz buzz this is tiffany how may I
help you today I understand what is
the number on the back of the card I
understand what is your social what is
your bank what is your date of birth you’re not
at home I understand what is your home
number for verification where can
we send emergency cash oh you don’t
need emergency cash but you are not
at home I understand what is your date
of birth what is your social is this your
current address what is your bank press 2
you should receive your new card in seven
to ten days how can I help you further today?

Well, I could do with a new brain, ha, ha

But Tiffany from Mumbai does not laugh

Life is an Unreliable Narrator - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Life is an Unreliable Narrator

The typewriter misses one of its keys
Every word is an orphan, and the lines
Wither away in an unfurnished room
Above a garage infested with ghosts

     Life is an unreliable narrator

The phone that isn’t connected doesn’t ring
While past-due notices fight among themselves
And on the hot plate macaroni boils
Sometimes you can see islands in the steam

      Life is an unreliable narrator

You’ve got a gift; that’s what everyone said

But

Your worn-thin sleeping bag is still your bed

     Life is an unreliable narrator

Everybody Comes to Rick's Pancake House Franchise - doggerel

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Everybody Comes to Rick’s Pancake House Franchise

Changing the channels in the middle of the night
Mixing old plots into a new program
Ugatti sells tickets to an illegal fight
Another quarter for the juke box, Sam

Patrick McGoohan strides angrily into Rick’s
But finds that he has lost his credit card
Vultures, vultures everywhere, Number Six
Ilsa falls for Major Strasser quite hard

Rick’s Place is purchased by Raymond Massey
And Leonard Cohen in his famous blue coat
Emails of transit from Kate Beckinsale, so classy -
‘Tis she who leaves poor Rick that rain-stained note

And Captain Reynaud?

He ends his days pushing each shopping cart
In from the parking lot down at Wal-Mart

"A Cave of Young Earth Dragons" - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Poetry of John Keats is not Safe

You may find there “a cave of young earth dragons”
Or with a “sea-born goddess” fall in love
You might not escape “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”
Or finish reading all your “high-piled books”

Yet “tender is the night” when sings the nightingale
And you are shown that all “Beauty is truth”
Through your soul, “The wanderer by moonlight”
And there “like pious incense” the hours pass

Though in that “season of mists” one’s life must end
“Go not to Lethe,” but sail on with the wind

1 “Ben Nevis”
2 “Endymion”
3 “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”
4 “When I Have Fears that I may Cease to Be”
5 “Ode to a Nightingale”
6 “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
7 “I Stood Tip-Toe Upon a Little Hill”
8 “The Eve of Saint Agnes”
9 “To Autumn”
10 “Ode on Melancholy”

Crises Both Foreign and Domestic Reduced to Dogs and Cats - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Crises Both Foreign and Domestic Reduced to Dogs and Cats

World leaders thunder denunciations

          But my dachshund puppy annoys the cats

Bombing planes fly in nuclear drills

          But my dachshund puppy just ate a moth

Religious leaders are shredding their files

          But my dachshund puppy barfed up that moth

I don’t know if I’ll lose my job next year

         But my dachshund puppy got spanked by Queen Cat

The fat boys on the radio yell a lot

         But my dachshund puppy is barking mindlessly

My senator says he stands up for the flag

         But my dachshund puppy is stealing the cat food

My president seems to play golf for the flag

          But my dachshund puppy is napping in the sun

And the cats are quite happy about that

We've Ridden Out Storms of Bad Reporting Before - a column about hurricane reporters

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

We’ve Ridden Out Storms of Bad Reporting Before

There is nothing amusing about hurricanes; they are destructive and deadly. May God protect all who are menaced by them.

However, the babblings and posturings of some resume’-obsessed national reporters during hurricanes are indeed amusing. The detached observer wonders if these clevers might assume that petitions to God are addressed to them.

In reporting foul weather there are only so many ways one can say “wind,” “rain,” “tornado,” and “storm surge,” and so the keyboard commandos keep flooding (so to speak) readers and viewers with the same old metaphors and similes.

Here, then, is a catalogue of clichés to read and consider before abandoning Cyrus Heather-Shannon Trevor Neville Ponsonby of World Global Universal News Digital Cable Satellite Network to the dark waters and changing the channel to Flip this Senator off the Island:

Rain event. We’re not out of the woods. Dodged the bullet. A storm is brewing. Building up steam. Losing steam. Wreaking havoc. Left a swath of destruction it its wake. Changed my life forever. Mother Nature’s wrath. Mother Nature’s Fury. Mother Nature’s Vengeance. Decimated. Trees snapped like matchsticks. Mother of all hurricanes. Batten down the hatches. Hunker down (that always seems somewhat vulgar). Roofs peeled back like sardine cans. Cars tossed about like matchboxes. Boats tossed about like matchboxes. Boats smashed like match boxes. Boats bobbing about like corks. Rain coming down in sheets (never blankets or comforters). Calm before the storm, usually eerie. Calm in the eye of the hurricane, always eerie. Like a ghost town. Perfect storm. Katrina, Katrina, Katrina. Storm of the century. Storm of a lifetime time. Looks like a warzone. Reduced to rubble. Debris field. Fish storm. Bearing down. Lashing. Roaring. Pounding. Swirling. Spinning. Barreling. Striking. Hitting. Storming ashore (well, yes, storming is what storms do).

Finally, any meaningful reporting is frequently interrupted for the visual cliché of some stupid man or woman doing stupid things for the camera. Wearing his Baron von Richthofen goggles and with his L.L. Bean hoodie flapping in harmony with just-the-right street sign the Dan Rather manqué clings to a palm tree and gasps into a microphone the obvious fact that he is an idiot who has gone outside in a hurricane.

All across this great land television viewers are laughing at this absurd figure and taking bets on whether he will be swept away.

No charitable man or woman would ever wish anyone harm, of course, except for motivational speakers, but there can be few people so insensitive and so hard-hearted and so lacking in charity that they would not weep tears of joy to see a national network drama-mama-papa and his cosmic microphone of existential doom pressured-washed down the street for a block or two.

We can dream.

-30-

The Hour of Our Lord 0945 - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Hour of Our Lord 0945
 

I.

Few of us seek for any of those keys
Of which graduation orators speak
Nor would most bother with the battery
In that old lamp of which they’ve never heard

They do not push against a golden door
They expect all doors to be opened for them
They read no books, they do not read, they feel
They only feel, they do not write, they stare

So emptily away, then back again
An empty stare into, within the self
The empty chatter of the ceaseless self
Each self in pain from arrogant self-pity

Each centers himself in a universe
His universe of the eternal now
His universe of the eternal me
And thinks not of beyond himself at all

But, still –

II.

There are those few who seek for eternal Truth
Not for some shabby metaphorical keys;
They light the lamp, they lift the lamp, and look
Not at themselves but at the light, the Light

They shyly, slowly open the wardrobe door
They peek inside, they look, they see, they see
A world beyond their own; they step into
And through, and so they are given themselves

They seek for something else, and find themselves
A world of words and music and magic and light
And the Light is not them but upon them
The Light is the center, and gives them light

They give away themselves and so gain crowns
Unasked and so more happily received
They read and write and sing the happiness
Unasked and thus given, among the stars

III.

Forever

"Sounds, and Sweet Airs..." - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

“Sounds, and Sweet Airs…”

Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,

Sounds, and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.

The Tempest III.ii.129-130

Be not
Afraid
Iambs
Are just
The way
We speak
They are
Our natch
Ural
Rhythm

Or:

Be not afraid; iambs are just the way
We speak; they are our natural rhythm 1

Sometimes they must be squashed a bit, and then
(Hear “natural” as two syllables, a pair

Othertimes “natural” is read as three) –
Be a skilled artist in your poetry!

1 “Rhythm” is a trochee, not an iamb
But let it stay, that poor, little lost lamb

"Then Grandpa Shot Billy" - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

“Then Grandpa Shot Billy”

The merry banter of the waitress flirting
With her old men the negotiations
For a coffee refill the rattle of flatware
And the clatter-clat of the breakfast plates

The buzz of conversation and over there
A Bible verse and a head bowed in thanks
“Then Grandpa shot Billy” and too the hum
Of how’s-the-weather going to be later on

The usual beginning to another work day…
But wait…but what…what did that old man say?

"Beyond These Symbols" - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46185@aol.com

“Beyond These Symbols”

How attractive he is, and how beset
By those stuffy boots on a Roman hill
How progressive, how forward, how brilliant
And how attached to the bubbly How Now

How fashionable with all his little books
So happenin’, so 1928
“Beyond these symbols” he writes the fashions
About some bones (so conveniently lost)

In the Gobi Desert he dug a tooth
And then upon this molar built his
                                                              truth?

Nature Study with Apple and Cherry and Oak - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Nature Study with Apple and Cherry and Oak

In the work cart I find a luna moth
And is it dead? With gentle hands I lift…
And off it flies! into the sunlit leaves
Breeze-wavy in the pale September sun

Among the apple and cherry and oak

I labor away at summer’s excess
And clear the paths and glades of weatherfall
Sorting out litter to a merry fire
And billets to store for the winter hearth

Sweet gifts of apple and cherry and oak

The bees seem to wonder what I’m about
Sitting awhile, and thinking the summer out

Beneath the apple and cherry and oak

The Obituary of a Rural Minister Gone to his Lord and Saviour - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@ol.com

The Obituary of a Rural Minister Gone to his Lord and Saviour

The evil that men do lives after them

-Julius Caesar III.iii.80-81

The eulogist speaks of the childhood roots
Of a preacher into poverty born
Amusing stories of the Good Ol’ Days
And of the hometown girl he came to love

The eulogist speaks of the ministry
To which the preacher and his wife were called
Their souls twinned in service to God and man
And of the catalogue of sinners saved

The eulogist speaks of the preacher’s soul -
But not of that dear family’s home he stole

An Earlier Catholic Scandal - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

“So Tell me, Judas;

Where do You See Yourself Ten Years from Now?”

Judas is an apostle on the go
Building his resume’, a better gig
Always part of his strategic focus
Going places, a young man on the move

Proactive for the Second Century
His paradigm shift of transparency
A next-generation strategy plan
In today’s competitive marketplace

Thirty Tyrian shekels; that’s the amount -
Laundered through a secret offshore account

Privileging the Narrative of Tea - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Privileging the Narrative of Tea

Whatever might a performance tea
                                                                   be?
Whatever are electrolytes to you
                                                                   and me?
No antioxidants will ruin our night
                                                                   all right?
And hydration is itself a fright
                                                                   Quite!

Blowing sleet rattles against the window pane
And the electrics have again winked adieu
But light the gas and brew up, black and plain
We’ll drink our tea by candles, with a biscuit
                                                                    or two

In nice China cups, or a mason jar

Because

The best tea of all is a cuppa char

(Upon reading a ‘vert for specialty teas)

The Land of L. L. Bean - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Land of L. L. Bean

How wonderful to live in Freeport, Maine
Where beautiful women and handsome men
In youth eternal rock their five-bar boots
And flannel shirts in happy, snowy scenes

Where laughter echoes through those forest glades
Forever free of electrical lines
Skunks burrowing under the cabin floor
And neighbors’ overflowing septic tanks

Oh, what a dreamy life for you and me
In Freeport, Zip Code 04033!


(Just having a little fun; everything I’ve bought from L.L. Bean’s catalogue is wonderful! I’d love to live in the perfect New England scenes depicted in the catalogue. If you squint your eyes carefully you can see Bob Newhart’s inn on page…)

Her Batlike Wings Pulsing Malignantly - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Her Batlike Wings Pulsing Malignantly

The nectar of youth from which the hummingbirds fed
In the joyful sweetness of their morning flights
Now sullies and sours the afternoon hours
Through bitter infestations and corruptions

Its former clarity corrupted now
Trapped in a tube of stagnation and rot
And scavenged by a malevolent wasp
Her batlike wings pulsing malignantly

But there is always hope: new songs, new words
In the morning’s return of sweet hummingbirds

A Child Curls up into a Little Ball - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Child Curls up into a Little Ball

In fear a child curls up into a ball
A very little ball, a little soul
Desperately seeking approval, and love
And given only disapproval, and blows

Hiding a favorite toy from a screaming purge
Childhood vaporized in an angry hour
Withdrawing into books and shining dreams
Withdrawing behind a fear-frozen face

Forever

Somewhere out there, discarded in the wild
Brave toy soldiers wait for a little child

A Letter from the Bishop - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Letter from the Bishop

Click to make a gift

My Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Click to make a gift

My sadness, anger, and shame concrete plan
I will travel to Rome third-party reporting
Mechanisms examining specific
Options advocate concrete proposals

Click to make a gift

Expertise relevant disciplines need
Such tools already exist our structures
Must preclude criterion zero tolerance
Outreach psychological development

Click to make a gift

This is the church house, this is the steeple
Where the Bishop dumps words upon the people

Click to make a gift

The Foul Stench of Summer - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Foul Stench of Summer

From an idea by Jean Fisher

Six months of gasping, sere, soul-sucking heat
Blood-sucking mosquitoes, venomous snakes
And fetid, lung-drowning humidity

I loathe the summer, and I care not if
That wretched season goes away in silence
Or in noise -
                           only that it GOES AWAY

When High-Tech Goes All Manual Typewriter on You - weekly column

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

When High-Tech Goes All Manual Typewriter on You

Did you hear the one about the man who walked into a ‘phone store and was greeted immediately?

Really, it happened.

Within my aging MePhone there was an email failure somewhere along the Verizon / Apple / AOL continuum which I was unable to resolve by following the instructions on various InterGossip sites.

With a desperate prayer on my lips and after bidding farewell to friends and family (can you hear me now?), I closed out my business affairs, packed what I thought I would need for a long sojourn in the wilderness of hard plastic chairs, and bid farewell to the past.

I took my existential despair and distressed MePhone to the Verizon store in Jasper, Texas, and as I entered - a staffer immediately stood up, smiled, and offered to sooth the wounded ‘phone.

Hey, if I am false in this matter may I be subjected to the agony of an eternity of Marty Haugen hymns.

I’m not kidding. I walked into a ‘phone store. A staffer stood up, smiled, and greeted me. Immediately.

In a world where customer service is more and more a grudging grunt from an unraised head behind a computer, this was a moment of joy, not unlike the Pilgrim’s Chorus from Tannhauser.

The staffer then listened to me – as in LISTENED TO ME - worked mysterious wonders with my MePhone, consulted briefly with another staffer, solved my problem within mere minutes, and thanked me for visiting Verizon.

Really. This happened.

Upon returning home I determined to send an email to Verizon praising the customer service at their Jasper store.

I accessed Verizon’s official webfootsite and soon realized that I was K in Kafka’s Das Schloss – access would be forever denied. Verizon told me that my access code, the one I have used for years and which the young staffer employed successfully only hours before, was not really my code. Not only would I have to give Verizon the right code, which would not be the right code, I would have to join a club or something.

Verizon does provide a physical address so that a grateful customer can send them a letter. A letter, with a stamp. Typed on a sheet of paper. So high-tech, eh?

Apparently the one thing impossible with Verizon is sending them an ordinary email complimenting the excellent customer service at one of their stores.

But then, perhaps the concept of good customer service is alien to corporate structures.

Anyway, thanks to the nice folks at the Jasper store for coaxing my MePhone into lighting up and making noises again.

-30-

Prelates and Presidents: The Summer of 2018 - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Prelates and Presidents: The Summer of 2018

An urgent message that was never written
Was then not left beneath the third lantern
On an arching bridge that was never built
Under a wondrous river that never flowed

And men wondered at the unwritten words
They could not find atop the fourth lantern
In an echoing tunnel never dug
Over the steppes east of an eastern shore

And the message never written did not say:
O prelates and presidents – for whom do you pray?

Argument over Wal-Mart Parking Space Leaves One Dead - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Argument over Wal-Mart Parking Space Leaves One Dead

-headline

                    And how can man die better
                       Than facing fearful odds,
                       For the ashes of his fathers,
                       And the temples of his gods

-Macauley, Lays of Ancient Rome

An argument over a parking space –
Lest all the pink Chinese flip-flops are gone
Triple-wide thongs in naughty, frothy lace
And a rhinestone case for a new MePhone

Cartoon shirts from the Vietnamese, sippy cups
Nicaraguan underwear and funny hats
Squeaky plastic toys for the little pups
And genuine autographed tee-ball bats -

There are causes for which a man might die
But “Ten Percent Off!” is no battle cry

Manichaeism is Quite Wrong, You Know - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Manichaeism is Quite Wrong, You Know

“…without God and immortal life? All things are lawful then….”

-Ivan, The Brothers Karamazov

If there are no boundaries, there is no freedom
With nothing to push against, one’s strength must fail
If God is not, then one can make no plaints
And must take on a burden that can’t exist

If man is never told no, there is no Yes
For him to answer then against the no
And if there is no Yes, there is nothing at all
There is no dichotomy, only the Yes

If there are no boundaries, there is no Yes
And man must cease in silent nothingness

The One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Beach House - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Beach House

Your Eminence:

Speaking of apostolic poverty
From the queen bed in your apostolic beach house
To those working two jobs to make life happen
Is pretty thin gruel –
                                     serve it to someone else

A Rabbi Tells a Story - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Rabbi Tells a Story

Once upon a time:

An aged rabbi talking with two men
Asked them about their holiday in Paris

The first man said: Oh, I hated Paris
There was muck and filth everywhere I went
Stray dogs and prostitutes roamed the foul streets
And the Parisians were incessantly rude

The second man said: Oh, I loved Paris
There were flowers everywhere I went
Artists and beauty, writers scribbling away
And the Parisians were so kind to me

And so:

The rabbi said to them (his voice was kind):
Each of you found the Paris you wanted to find



(Worked up [or down, or sideways…] from a story Rabbi Joel Goor, a visiting lecturer at the University of San Diego in 1975, told his students.)

No. - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

No.

Dixit ergo Iesus ad duodecim, “Numquid et vos vultis abire?”

“Will you also go away?” He asks us.

                                                                 No.

Only sinners mourn at the foot of the Cross
Only sinners approach the baptismal font
Only sinners recline at Table with the Lord

To whom shall we go?
                                      An empty shopping mall?
A 501C cafeteria?
A feast of ashes with the cardinal?

                                                                  No.

There is only one Place, one Space, one Grace

Only sinners are invited, and so
Our yes to Him – we will not go

"To Write Poetry of No Political Significance Whatever" - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

“To Write Poetry of No Political Significance Whatever”

“But my chief argument in defence of Wang An-shih is that…he retired from the Court decisively, ignored  all recalls, and took to the mountains to write poetry of no political significance whatever.”

– David Warren on the poet-philosopher Wang An-Shih

Recusancy is not pious quietism;
In silence it is a brave voice withdrawn
From pompous Kratos’ halls of treachery
From screaming Demos’ marketplace of noise

And up into the silent hills to save
Something of civilization, to sing
Matins among the mountain mists, to write
A page in praise of Creation, to live -

Recusancy is not quietism at all;
It is a firm rebuke to tyranny

The Platonic Ideal of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful - photograph

While Dressing for an American Legion Meeting - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

While Dressing for an American Legion Meeting

A pair of slacks, a pair of shoes, a shirt
A watch to count the weary meeting hours
Coffee with comrades in the old church hall
And all of these are very good indeed

But like old shoes, old pals, the scenes of youth
We must someday let them all go, and pass
Peacefully, one prays, through the spray and foam
And sail until dawn to that farthest Shore

Where only the NCOs must dress right, dress
And the coffee’s always fresh in the company mess


(But will the smoking lamp will be lit?)

A Poetry Installation at the Temple of the Muses - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Poetry Installation at the Temple of the Muses

 

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

              Number Six: “Strange talk for a poet.”

-The Prisoner, “A Change of Mind”

Installing a poem to factory specs
Setting iambic feet into concrete
And lifting adverbs to the tops of verbs
Through the use of heavy machinery

Metaphors must be government-inspected
For solidarity with the collective
And images most closely interrogated
For their relevance to the latest cause

The Good, the True, and the Beautiful

As cleared by United Auto Workers Local 2110
So you’d better like it; youknowwhatI’msayin’

Bridge of Sorrows - weekly column

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Bridge of Sorrows

Last week the Ponte Morandi, a modern bridge of interstate highway proportions, collapsed in Genoa, Italy. Thirty-nine deaths are known as of this scribbling

The Ponte Morandi was only 51 years old. Built according to the latest scientific principles and to a daring design by a civilization whose architecture, manufacturing, and design have earned the world’s admiration for centuries, the bridge failed and fell.

And yet in the area around Genoa, possibly in site of the wreckage, are bridges 2,000 years old. They don’t take big trucks because they weren’t meant to do so, but they still serve. The Ponte Morandi was meant to take big trucks, and did so for something less than 2,000 years.

Someone on the science / maths continuum looks at a bridge and considers the design according to the site and the various stress loads that will be made. Dr. Science then considers the quality of the materials and the professionalism of construction.

Someone else, that guy who thinks math is unscriptural because Jesus never told us to solve for X, looks at the same bridge and exclaims, “How pretty!”

But even the science-challenged among us can look at pictures of the Ponte Morandi and perceive that something was wrong in the design. The masses of concrete appeared to have been flung out too far between supports given that concrete is a glue of minerals and very heavy, with little tensile strength, and the spindly supports were inadequate for the load. Further, there seems – seems, and only from the pictures – to have been little provision for sway in any direction and from any cause. We all remember from Mr. Johnson’s sixth-grade science class that a triangular form will support more weight than a square because in a triangle the three sides each provide the anti-sway factor for each other, whereas the corners of a square are only hinges.

Engineering is the study of, among other things, bridge-building, real bridges, not metaphorical ones. The liberal arts, quite unfashionable these days, in their turn ask us if a bridge is needed in a given place so that people and trade can transit an obstacle and contribute to the common good, or if it is a political bridge to nowhere. The liberal arts – the fuzzy studies – also remind us that bridges have been built before, and if a bridge built 2,000 years ago still functions as a bridge we might want to apply our higher order thinking skills to learn how, and then apply the abstract principles to the specific needs of our own construction.

The two supports that converge on the apex of a triangle need each other in order to work; similarly, both hemispheres of our brains also need each other in order to work.

All that is something to think about while zipping along the long, concrete spans of our own flyover bridges whose footings are in swamps and bayous.

-30-

Barnum's Non-Human Animal Companions - weekly column

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Barnum’s Non-Human Animal Companions

Nabisco, now a subsidiary of Mondelez International, which used to be Kraft Something-or-Other, grovels to The Loud People Who Are Against Things to prove that it is a good corporate comrade. Nabisco has redesigned its famous circus trailer cookie box to free the cartoon animals from their cartoon cages.

Barnum’s Animal Crackers are little cookies shaped like animals. In your ‘umble scrivener’s youth they were packaged in a little box printed as a circus wagon. The wheels of the wagon continued from the sides to the bottom and were perforated as cutouts so that the little wagon could stand on its four wheels. Printed on the sides of the box were cages of critters which varied from time to time, but the essential nature of the box, complete with a little string for carrying it or hanging it from a Christmas tree, didn’t change until The Glorious Ever-Now.

This month Barnum’s animals are free of their cages, roaming in good fellowship across a printed veldt. The gorilla, being somewhat arboreal, is probably unhappy about this. All the animals, both arboreal and nonarboreal, carnivorous and herbivorous, stroll toward the viewer in oneness ‘n’ peace ‘n’ love, surely wanting a hug.

That famous rhetorical question still obtains: how many people has Walt Disney killed?

As the old alligator might say of its latest human meal, “New Look – Same Great Taste!”

Now that the cartoon animals are free to roam, perhaps someone could redesign our cities, beginning with Chicago, so that the humans could also roam free.

Given that the Mondolez-Nabisco Barnum’s Animals box has been purged of anti-social elements, the animal cookies inside could be next.

Instead of little lions and tigers and bears (oh, my!) the cookies could be shaped as carrots and kumquats and corn (oh, ich!), and made from reprocessed soy beans. The boxes could be printed with inspiring mottos: “Good Little Comrades Love Brussels Sprouts” and “Good Little Comrades Report Global-Warming Detractors to their Block Wardens.”

On one side of the box could show pictures of happy children being devoured by bears and alligators, with the enlightening reminder that “Good Little Comrades Always Remember That Animals Were Here First.”

And now we turn to the cultural insensitivity of Eskimo Pies.

-30-

An Open Letter to Really Important People / The Old Dime Box, Texas Statement - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

An Open Letter to Really Important People

The Old Dime Box, Texas Statement

A Manifesto Made Manifest in Manifesting Manifestingness

We post this serious looking document
Bloated with long vocabulary words
Sodden with weak dependent clauses
Marshaled in numbered ranks, down, down they go

To the GossipNet all serious like
And everyone has to pay attention to us
Because it’s AN OPEN LETTER, y’know -
You may sign it if you’ve got letters behind your name

Signatories:

Apostle-Disciple Magic Dawn, DD., Non-Binary, Author of Green Polar Bears I Am, Co-Equal-Director of the Anti-Oppressionist Theatre Against the Occupation, Agent of the Revolution, Auteur, Guest on The Wheel of Fortune and Parent of Two AMAZING children of indeterminate Gender with Their AWESOME and AMAZING Life-Partner Sven-Marie.

Massive Ferguson, M.Ed., Poet, Rector of Admissions, The University of Where the Old Circuit City Use to Be

Poncy Tworbst, M.A., PUBLISHED Author, Seeker, Inspirational Singer-Songwriter, PUBLISHED

Heather-Mistee La’ Thwitte-Tworbst, Ph.D., Director of Library Resources at Saint Margaret Sanger Homeschool Resource Authority Collective, Inc., Certified Ordained Consecrated Priest in The Worldwide Church of Me-ness and Pastor of the World-Famous Weddings ‘R’ Us Chapel of Rainbow Dreams in Magdalena, New Mexico

Lawrence Hall, HSG, Thinker of Thinky-Ness and, Like, Stuff, Endowed Chair he found at Goodwill, His Mark: X

(Sean Ian Johann Johnson, MBA, J.D., Chief Photocopier Operator at Donald Trump University and Fashion Editor at Gun, God, and Guts Magazine, was not able to sign today; he is sharing a cell with other White House staff and patiently awaiting The Day of Greatness.)

Panic and Its Attempted Vetoes - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Panic and Its Attempted Vetoes

There are no days free of panic attacks -
A fierce determination to recusancy
Is no defense against the men of peace
Clenching their fists and screaming out their love

There are no nights free of panic attacks -
A fierce determination to needful sleep
Is no defense against unhappy dreams
Judicial accusations of the memory

But even panic is no defense against
One’s fierce determination to write the truth

Where do I Apply for my Russian Bribes? - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Where do I Apply for my Russian Bribes?

Where, then, do I apply for bribery?
Russians are everywhere here, we are told
So why aren’t those nefarious oligarchs
Flinging dollars and dachas at poor me?

And the Chinese, poking and hacking about
(My last water bill was in Mandarin)
Have yet to pad my secret bank account
Or park a Porsche on my patio

But if they will…

I want to spy for the cool FBI
And party away with the CIA

Snakefight - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Snakefight

Two snakes in battle on a summer day
Writhing and twisting on a sandy road
Grappling desperately like taxing authorities
Fighting over a poor worker’s paycheck

Or like fierce coffee-break theologians
In anger ripping a scripture apart
Each clutching a bloody fragment to himself
But careful not to upset the 501C

And in the end, one snake swallows the other
Keeping him closer than a beloved brother

The Annual You-Know-What Examination - a rhyming couplet

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Annual You-Know-What Examination

The physician is a good man, wise and fair
But, ouch! - HIS FINGER DOES NOT BELONG THERE!





(But, hey, ya gotta do it because life is good and you want to be there for all of it.)

Returning an Electronic Gadget That Wasn't at all as Advertised and Wouldn't Fit into the Assigned Shipping Box for Return - doggerel

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Returning an Electronic Gadget That Wasn’t at all as Advertised

and Wouldn’t Fit into the Assigned Shipping Box for Return

What a surprise
It sparks, it dies
Return the prize
To those false guys

It wouldn’t fit
I thought a bit
Then stepped on it
And so it fit

Duct-Tape Automobile - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Duct-Tape Automobile

How awkward when a body part
Falls out onto the interstate
That fragment of FoMoCo art -
It spun away in a figure eight!

There is a new part now on order
For this old car; it ain’t no Lexus
It rolls along in taped disorder
And that is how we do it in Texas

God bless our state, and the strong duct tape
That holds together my Ford Escape



Please know that my wonderful Ford Escape is fifteen years old and is a strongly-built car with lots of Texas and New Mexico miles on the odometer. A bit of plastic trim fell from a window assembly a few weeks ago, and the tape is to keep rain and dirt out of the innards while a replacement is on order. A real Texan thinks of duct tape as both functional and in its own modest way aesthetically pleasing (“Aesthetically pleasing” is the English translation for the Texas vernacular, “purty.”

Wild Bill Hickok was Shot Here...and Here...and Here... - poem



Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

 

Wild Bill Hickok was Shot Here…and Here…and Here…

Old Number Ten Saloon – where Bill was shot
Sitting in this old chair – or maybe not
‘Cause down the street there is another bar
Where poor Bill died; that’s two beer joints so far

And yet a third, here in South Dakota
Right over there, behind that Toyota
Another of those authentic places
Where Wild Bill died over his eights and aces

Everyone has a different tale to tell

And so

We’re not real sure where Wild Bill Hickok fell


Deadwood, South Dakota is a beautiful little town down in a gulch and featuring both kitsch and solid historical attractions, a pedestrian-friendly main street with lots of shops, cafes, B & Bs, new hotels, and, yes, several saloons claiming that Wild Bill Hickok Was Shot Here.

Kafka and His Giant Insect / Which Might be a Cockroach / But Maybe Not / We Could go to Das Schloss and ask Mr. K - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Kafka and His Giant Insect

Which Might Be a Cockroach

But Maybe Not

We Could go to Das Scloss and Ask Mr. K

An insect woke up one morning and realized
He had been transformed into Gregor Samsa

From a life focused on eating hair and grease
Glue, soup, bread, paper, leather
Sewerage, butter, meat (fresh and decayed)
Makeup, cookies, sugar, toothbrush bristles
Cookies, pizza, flour, tacos, apple pie
Dead bodies, feces, and his own species

He now had to deal with the confusion
The sorrow of being Gregor Samsa

A Decomposition Book for School - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Decomposition Book for School

Cheaply manufactured in India
Its fake marbled cover fakier than ever
But not as fakey as this assignment
“Grendl symbolizes existential…”

          Cross out cross out crossoutcrossoutcrossout

“Grendl symbolizes…” my senior year
Nobody understands why I don’t want
To go to college, why I quit the band -
Grendl and I are both exiles, okay…?

          Cross out cross out crossoutcrossoutcrossout

I love my fountain pen; its deep, dark lines

Just like me

Refuse to be MLA marginalized

“Grendl symbolizes…”

A Votive in a Time of Disquiet - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Votive in a Time of Disquiet

I.

“No doubt they’ll sing in tune after the Revolution.”

-Kamarovsky, Doctor Zhivago (film)

Everyone seems to clench his fist these days
In solidarity with ephemera
While setting fire to green recycling bins
Hurling someone else’s bicycle through a window

Armed with their undergraduate degrees
The comrades liberate a coffee shop
Wifi-ing the revolution of the day
Empowerment by beating love to death

Loudsplaining authentic victimization
Posing for selfies with a stolen ‘phone

II.

Their inhumanity seemed a marvel of class-consciousness,

their barbarism a model of proletarian firmness…

-Doctor Zhivago, p. 349

Everyone seems to clutch his flag these days
In solidarity with a past that wasn’t
While setting fire to misspelled cardboard signs
Hurling someone else’s beer into a crowd

Armed with their lurid Confederate tats
The Something.Right liberate a dumpster
Bull-horning the counter-revolution
Empowerment by beating love to death

Bellowing their Reconquista of stench
Posing behind their cheap gas station shades

III.

“I used to admire your poetry...I shouldn't admire it now. I should find it absurdly personal.

 Don't you agree? Feelings, insights, affections... it's suddenly trivial now. You don't agree; 

you're wrong. The personal life is dead…”

-Strelnikov to Yuri, Doctor Zhivago (film)

Some few embrace civilization these days
In solidarity with humanity
While lighting one small candle as a votive
Whispering an Ave into the Light

Armed with wonder through pen and flute and brush
Recusants choose the liberation given
In singing of the eternal verities
Self-empowerment happily denied

With love, with poetry, music, and art
Celebrating life on this summer day

What's Wrong with Education These Days? - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

What’s Wrong with Education These Days?

The principal in a cool cartoon tee
His fashion sneakers squeaking across the floor
Sets out candy, pizzas, and canned sodas
Arranges a door prize, and assembles the faculty

Requires them to sign in so he can check on them
Orders them to hold hands and sing the school song
Reminds them they are all one big family
As a preface to his primary agenda:

To tell them to be more professional
The principal in a cool cartoon tee


from Lady with a Dead Turtle, 2014, available from amazon.com as bits of dead trees and on the Kindle.

Dear Leader Inspires His Obedient Comrades - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Dear Leader Inspires His Obedient Comrades

Avuncular in his style, jolly and loud
An epiphany with an entourage
Of functionaries who survey the crowd
For any lack of enthusiasm

Applaud they must, wearing upon command
Cheap slogan tees averring that their school
Is like totally awesome and ‘way cool
They leap and bounce and cheer as they are told

Chanting a theme, this year’s predictable theme
Desperately cute, a motivational meme -
Oh, those childish, subservient creatures!
The worst part is that they are the
                                                                           teachers

"Hey, Guys, Hold My Texas A & M Diploma and Watch This!" - column

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

“Hey, Guys, Hold My Texas A & M Diploma and Watch This!”

A Georgetown, Virginia branch of the D.C. Public Library has closed temporarily due to an infestation of snakes.

Well, hey, Washington, right?

The snake allusion is obvious; the surprise here is that the citizens of Georgetown occasionally read at all, taking a little literary time off from power golf, power tennis, power lunches, and power schmoozing with mysterious foreign powers.

One imagines The Honorable Maxine Waters curling up with John Milton’s Paradise Lost after a full day of inciting riots. Or maybe just curling up and hissing (Book X, line 508).

With snakes on a shelf President Clinton is not yet able to turn in Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.

Alexandria (not Alexandra) Ocasio Hyphen Cortez is reputed to know what a book is.

President Trump checked out How to Win Friends and Influence People, and concluded that he had written better books than that.

F.B.I. agents wiretap the audio books instead of taking them home, the C.I.A. spookies investigate Goodnight, Moon (one of Prime Minister Trudeau’s favs) for coded messages from Iraq, the superannuated Secret Service frat boys study all the books about how to throw good parties, and Congress investigates the librarians, threatening them with prison if they don’t admit under oath that they have read Dostoyevsky, Solzhenitsyn, and Yevtushenko.

We continue our reptilian theme near Beaumont, Texas, where a young woman had herself photographed in her Texas A & M graduation costumery while posing with an alligator said to be fourteen feet long.

Some have suggested that A & M is at fault for not teaching students that alligators eat pets, children, and the occasional adult, including vegetarians and Aggies.

Reptiles are all fun and games until someone gets eaten, okay?

But, really, teaching children about dangerous animals should happen at home. A reality is that lots of children no longer learn ordinary human behaviors at home. Even if they have a home. The authority figure cooking meth doesn’t get around to cooking for the children. Kiddie-garten and first-grade teachers must teach many of their charges about when and where to poo-poo and wee-wee, washing one’s hands, eating with utensils, and all the other usages that help distinguish (not always successfully) humans from reptiles.

Snakes get to skip the lesson on washing hands.

Even so, the Board of This and That who constitute the governing body of Texas A & M probably never considered as a topic for fish camp the basic mummy-doesn’t-want-you-to-be-popped-into-a-pie-by-Mr.-McGregor idea that fooling around with a fourteen-foot alligator is unwise.

To paraphrase an old wheeze, the joke is now “Hey, guys, hold my Texas A & M diploma and watch this!”

-30-

You are a Poem - (well, yes, a poem...)

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

You are a Poem

You are a poem; your stanzas are your life:
A prologue written in the long ago
(with some few emendations here and there)                               (ahem!)
A closure and an afterword await

     But now about this part of your life:

The iambs of your footfalls dance in time
While
           anapests
                           leap in search
                                                   of a rhyme
Stiff-built trochees stumble clunkily (ouch)
And alexandrines mourn the sometime sorrows of age

     And when writing your poem, remember…

Your poetry of life will be truly true
If you almost never write about
                                                     you

I Could Not Put Down this Unputdownable Flying-off-the-Shelves Must-Read Book That Defines a Generation - poem

Lawrence Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

I Could Not Put Down this Unputdownable Flying-off-the-Shelves

Must-Read Book That Defines a Generation

I couldn’t put this must-read down, nor yet
Its many woven layers of tapestry
(Or maybe layered weavings of mystery?) -
This book seethes with passion; much blood is let

Beautifully crafted in the tradition of
A riveting re-telling all gritty
Wild, bold, and haunting, nuanced and witty
A daring, different tour-de-force of love

Lyrical, satirical, and compelling
And when the heroine’s not whispering
                                 she’s yelling