Fog and a Hypothetical Cat on the Fifth Sunday After Pentecost

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Fog and a Hypothetical Cat on the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

From an idea suggested by Pharaohnica

And with a tip of that cat to
Carl Sandburg and Robert Frost

Invisible to radar, mizzle falls
Itself making the distance invisible
Sandburg said that fog creeps in on little cat feet
But rain-fog is sometimes the entire cat

And if you walk outside into the cat
Beyond the cat, the paws, what will you find
Perhaps, like Schrodinger, the cat is not
But then again, like you, maybe it is

The mystery is lovely, dark, and deep
But we have chores to tend, and they won’t keep

Robin Hood's Favorite (or Favourite) Saint - 15 July is Saint Swithin's Day

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Farmer to Saint Swithin

O good Saint Swithin, please, to you we pray
On this your high-summer rain-making day

Of your blest kindness send us soft, sweet showers
The kind that gently fall for hours and hours

To heal the sunburnt land of thirst and drought
And nourish the corn that sees the winter out

And if you grant the boon we humbly ask
We’ll work the harder on each rural task:

We’ll ditch and fence and plough, and milk the cow
Share with the widder-folk, and feed the sow

Count out some plantful seeds for poor men’s needs
And tell God’s Mysteries daily on our beads

"And Did You Wash Behind Your Ears?" - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

“And Did You Wash Behind Your Ears?”

Why should I do that? I can hear all right
And I can’t see behind my ears anyway
I never use my ears for work or play -
I’ll just give them a washrag-wash tonight

Why is that old woman talkin’ at me
I wasn’t botherin’ that bossy old cow
Ain’t none of her busy beeswax anyhow -
I wish all them women would let me be

Old women asked if I washed behind my ears -
So long ago –
                        I kinda miss the nosy old dears

Violating the Good Comrades' Dress Code - weekly column

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Violating the Good Comrades’ Dress Code

Last week there was some sort of bother about a pair of festively-decorated shoes. A wealthy man who can afford a haircut – indeed, he could buy and staff his own dedicated barber shop – but chooses not to expressed his airy disapproval of the foo-foo shoes, and the multinational corporation with which he enjoys some sort of association withered before his mood like an orchid in the desert, and will not manufacture that particular shoe they had promoted.

Or, rather, the multinational’s – and thus the rich man’s - underpaid obedientiaries in the Far East will not make the shoe.

The rich man does not like how some people are abused, and associates the shoe design with that abuse. The poor people who work in the corporation’s factories, further enriching the rich man, are exempt from his sympathies. They work on and on, for very little pay, breathing the toxic glues that keep the parts of his approved shoes together, and suffer beyond the comforts of his members-only pity.

A further irony is that the shoe was to be ornamented with a patriotic flag symbol so that the people wearing the shoe would with each step tread upon the flag that should not be treaded upon.

And yet a further irony is that I write this on a machine built by underpaid, overworked poor people in yet another factory-camp in the Far East, which is now Communist China’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (those few who have read history will understand).

The final irony is that oppressed people with few choices in life must work in terrible conditions to make the symbols and tools of freedom.

No one seems to ask about this, or about why people will pay great amounts of money to advertise for multi-nationals. If a manufacturer expects you to wear the names and images of his company, shouldn’t he pay you for that? Why would you pay him to advertise for him?

This is not merely an American thing.

In London last week there was a riot because a man who violated a certain law was sentence to prison for it. A number of his associates disapproved of that, and so appeared outside the Old Bailey (London’s central courts) to express their disapproval by yelling at people they didn’t know and beating up journalists (the man who was imprisoned claims to be a journalist) and making rude gestures to the police.

The rioters / revolutionaries / The People were not so focused on the cause of the prisoner that they did not wear advertising. It’s as if George Washington’s made-in-China blue coat sported a slogan for a brand of beer, or if David Crockett at the Alamo wore a made-in-China gimme cap with the line VOTE FOR SAM HOUSTON stitched onto it. One imagines President Lincoln’s made-in-Indonesia hat scrolling an ad for GONE WITH THE WIND, or Amelia Earhart’s made-in-Viet-Nam flying jacket reading “IF IT AIN’T BOEING I AIN’T GOING.” Winston Churchill might have said, “I HAVE NOTHING TO OFFER BUT BLOOD, TOIL, TEARS, SWEAT, AND MY PERSONAL BRAND OF CUBAN CIGARS AVAILABLE AT BETTER TOBACCONISTS EVERYWHERE.”

It does seem a foolish thing to ornament ourselves in the livery of our would-be masters.

Finally, while one never trusts the InterGossip to be reliable about anything, here are some InterGossip discussions (unreliable, remember) about the clothing you’re told to wear:


https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/nike-workers-pay-kaepernick/

https://u.osu.edu/nikeshoes/manufacturing-process/

https://www.newsweek.com/nike-factory-workers-still-work-long-days-low-wages-asia-1110129

-30-

Vespers: Four Psalms to be Sung - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Four Psalms to be Sung

“Vespers each day has four psalms to be sung”

-Saint Benedict

Soft Vespers is the evening’s liturgical hour
In the natural rhythm of each life
A song of the ordered world now hymned into
The verses of that Song He sings through us

This hour is given to us when sunbeams slant
Across the floor and up onto the Cross
And there we leave the labors of our day
Our works of hand and heart and mind and soul

Eternal truths chanted by every tongue:
“Vespers each day has four psalms to be sung” 1



1 Saint Benedict’s Rule, Ampleforth Abbey

The Naked Girls in the Nazi Boat

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Naked Girls in the Nazi Boat - Mashing Up Book Store Titles Again

The Boys in the real Harry Potter Wand
The Girls Who Made America Hermione
I Wrote This for You and Only You (sure)
Pontius Pilate recycles the end of time

The Last Pope is hiding out on Oak Island
You are my identity group breaking ground
And it’s all the better if you like trains
For you alone are my identity group

Women writers breaking the mold trailblazing
Second feminist wave decolonizing

For Us There Is No Stray Dog Cabaret - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

For Us There Is No Stray Dog Cabaret

For us there is no Stray Dog Cabaret -
Our art burns at the end of a welding rod
And in the muscled turning of a wrench
In heat and sweat against a frozen bolt

Old work trucks parked in an oyster shell lot
Eaten with rust from the chemical air
And past the gates, cracking units, and tanks
A plywood paradise with ice-cold beer

Some of us work the night shift to pay our way
Through college, where we learn that we are

                                                                              privileged

A Comprehensive Review of Netflix' THE LAST CZARS

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Comprehensive review of Netflix’ The Last Czars

The Grand Duke says “f**k”
The Czar says “s**t”
Rasputin is a schmuck
There’s not much more to it

The King's Royal Wax Seal - adventures in plumbing

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The King’s Royal Wax Seal

Some seals are applied to signatures and such
Ratifying the documents of abbots and kings
Applied with dignity, a royal touch
From carven images or profiled rings

And then there are seals as toilet bowl rings
Beneath the throne, a regal crown of wax
One of the kingdom’s many needful things
Restraining with dignity certain personal acts

The throne upon which His Majesty, um, sits
Unsealed it came, and gave the plumber royal fits

You'd Better Think but Holy Thoughts - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

You’d Better Think but Holy Thoughts

You’d better think but holy thoughts, old man
Attend to your Bible and your daily prayers
Ignore those bare feet prancing in the sand
This summer day is soft and warm - and theirs

Sweet leggy girls in shorts or flippy skirts
They pause and chat before muscled young lads
It’s not with you that any of them flirts
For you remind them only of their dads!

You’d better think but holy thoughts, old man
And ignore the pretty girls all lithe and tan

(If you can…)

You Have Mislaid Your Keys (but not your love...) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

You Have Mislaid Your Keys

You have mislaid your keys, but that’s okay
I can help you find them, as you found me
Among the wreckage of my scheduled days
Unscheduled nights and, yes, unscheduled dreams

I like the way you lose your keys, the way
You stir your coffee counter-clockwise
And fiddle with the sweetener ‘til it’s right
And take a sip, and love me with your eyes

You have mislaid your keys, but that’s okay -
Before there was you, I had mislaid my life

We Are Always Alone - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

We Are Always Alone

Perhaps we are always alone, you know
Even when we breathe each other
And touch each other
We’re not each other

And life is probably better this way
For if you find fault with yourself
The blame is one
And not two

It’s much better waking up in the morning
Alone, and not being wrong about anything

A Tweeker Riding a Bicycle in a Thunderstorm on the Fourth of July - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Tweeker Riding a Bicycle in a Thunderstorm on the Fourth of July

At dawn
          thunder rises and lightning falls
A black spot in middle of a road
Closer and closer – a wobbling black spot
A bicyclist unaware of the gods

Slow-pedaling through a nowhere of despair
A corpse, fragments of skin still on its bones
It turns and grins, a crewman on that ship
And in its veins that rotting albatross

At dawn
          grimacing through rotting-teeth breath
A wereling wobbling in existential death

A Conventional Lyric about a Toy Balloon - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Conventional Lyric about a Toy Balloon

Metallic blue, a star among the weeds
Along the road, pulling against its string
With the little helium left in it
But weak, unable to launch itself again

Some say the downed balloon has had its moment
That its brief joy in a birthday escape
Should be enough for any bright balloon
And now, like wise balloons, must settle down

Oh, no; just give the string a tug!
More room!
More air!
There must be another party somewhere!

A Chainsaw, a Printing Press, and Santa Fe - weekly column

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

A Chainsaw, a Printing Press, and Santa Fe

Now that I am gainlessly unemployed my fences are cleaner, the views are clearer, and there is an abundance of firewood stacked neatly in anticipation of winter.

A professional woodman would / wood (like that storied woodchuck) / would sneer at my little battery-powered chainsaw but, although I expected only to get a summer or two of work from it before it went off and joined the Marines or found a good job at the refinery, it is still doing well after ten years.

The original battery packed it in only a few years ago, and the several replacements have in their turns faded. The new pair of batteries I ordered on Monday arrived today.

Two days is something less than two years.

Information posted with a museum display in the Governor’s Palace in Santa Fe says that when this part of the world was New Spain an order for anything – books, harness, iron for the forge, seeds, tableware – took from two to three years to be fulfilled.

In Spanish East Texas a purchase, with payments and details, would be worked out with a merchant in Nacogdoches or San Agustin (now San Augustine). Then it would be made part of a mail run taking some weeks through the woods to the coast, perhaps at Anahuac, to be filed away there in anticipation of a ship, which might not arrive that year.

After unloading and maintenance, the ship would sail for Spain, a voyage of some months which might be terminated early by English, French, or Spanish pirates. In Spain the order, among many others, would be processed by manufacturers, wholesalers, shippers, and retailers, then to be warehoused again while waiting for a ship back to the colonies.

The prices would have been very expensive, including insurance against loss, and the buyer would have no idea when his goods might arrive, if at all.

The downside of slow communication and isolation is obvious, but there was a benefit, too: the Spanish brought their technology and their problem-solving abilities with them. When the harness needed mending there was a smith (probably not named Smith) to mend it with locally sourced leather and recycled iron. Farmers learned what seeds, including those from native plants, worked in a given environment, and from each crop store seed for the next season. Artisans fired local earths for all sorts of purposes, taking their culture and indigenous cultures and making useful and artistic wares in new ways and new styles.

As for the books, the first printing press in the New World was set up in Mexico City in 1539
(https://web.archive.org/web/20090209001307/http://reservas.net/alojamiento_hoteles/mexicocity_monedastreet.htm). Mexico City is a long way from both Santa Fe and East Texas, but it’s a lot closer than Spain.

Still, while one admires creativity, problem-solving, and hard work, there is much to be said for the good young man delivering books and made-in-China batteries in a big brown truck.

-30-

If God is Love, Why Does He Permit Software Developers? - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

If God is Love, Why Does He Permit Software Developers?

We are against the death penalty, and so
Of thoughtful caritas one recommends
Life sentences with no chance for parole
(And endless-loop re-runs of Lost in Space)

For

1. The manufacturers of this new computer
2. The famous software company who couldn’t
     Program their ***es out of a pay toilet
3. And the electronics chain who replies
    To emails with “Dear Valued Customer”
    And vaporous words which say nothing at all

And now may Olivetti Underwood
Have mercy upon their polluted souls

Cold Showers and Pure Thoughts for Clean-Minded Youth - frivolity

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Cold Showers and Pure Thoughts for Clean-Minded Youth

Cold showers did not work; they only made
Me want to cuddle up with someone warm

A Re-Post for Canada Day - God Bless Canada

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Come Laughing Home at Twilight

Beaumont-Hamel, 1916

And, O! Wasn’t he just the Jack the Lad,
A’swellin’ down the Water Street as if –
As if he owned the very paving stones!
He was my beautiful boy, and, sure,
The girls they thought so too: his eyes, his walk;
A man of Newfoundland, my small big man,
Just seventeen, but strong and bold and sure.

Where is he now? Can you tell me? Can you?

Don’t tell me he was England’s finest, no –
He was my finest, him and his Da,
His Da, who breathed in sorrow, and was lost,
They say, lost in the fog, among the ice.
But no, he too was killed on the first of July
Only it took him months to cast away,
And drift away, far away, into the mist.

Where is he now? Can you tell me? Can you?

I need no Kings nor no Kaisers, no,
Nor no statues with fine words writ on’em,
Nor no flags nor no Last Post today:
I only want to see my men come home,
Come laughing home at twilight, boots all mucky,
An’ me fussin’ at ‘em for being’ late,
Come laughing home at twilight.

The Yellow Dairy Barn and the State of Texas Milk Inspector - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Yellow Dairy Barn and the State of Texas Milk Inspector

My father painted his dairy barn yellow
Maybe because he found some bargain paint
Then came along the inspector fellow
With his clipboard, and he said that yellow ain’t

Legal, that dairy barn paint had to be white
My father had The Book, and from it he read
That a dairy barn’s color only had to be light
“Well, I’ll find something else,” the inspector said

He found a fly speck on an old cow bell -
May Texas milk inspectors just go to (Newark)

Twenty Kerenskys Passing in Review - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Twenty Kerenskys Passing in Review

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

-Kamarovsky in Doctor Zhivago (film)

Kerenskys marshaled in two ordered lines
Unsure exactly how to stand, to pose
Merry banter, backpats, handshakes, and smiles
A show, a glow of Party unity

And then – a hiss, a strike, a spit, a spat
Atop the tomb in sixty-second bursts
Comrade against comrade, a free for none
The audience applauds the bloody fun

Who is the Trotsky, and who the Stalin, then;
Who will die in exile, and who will win?

Served on a Tectonic Plate - rhyming couplet

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Served on a Tectonic Plate

I ate my lunch on a tectonic plate
It drifted away - my dessert is late!

Is Your Bible Communist? - weekly column

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
26 June 2019

Is Your Bible Communist?

The Washington Post, not everyone’s favorite news source, is suffering Aunt Pittypat vapours over the possibility that bibles in this country may soon be unaffordable. And they suggest that this is President Trump’s fault:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2019/06/21/bible-tax-christian-publishers-warn-that-china-tariffs-could-lead-costly-bibles/?utm_term=.937a3bcb329e&wpisrc=nl_faith&wpmm=1

According to the Post, mega-publisher HarperCollins (sic), a Borg that has absorbed many old and famous American publishers into its continuum, also owns Thomas Nelson and Zondervan, said to be the largest publishers of bibles. HarperCollins (sic), under its Thomas Nelson and Zondervan labels, has many or most of its bibles printed in that garden of freedom and brotherhood, Communist China.

Given the proposed tariffs, according to the Post, the prices of our Communist-made bibles could rise 25%.

Christianity Today (https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/october/bible-made-in-china.html) and Publishers’ Weekly (https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/religion/article/80555-bible-tax-threatens-christian-publishers.html) concur.

Two ironies come to mind. The first is the matter that Communist China, a persecutor of Christians (but, to be fair, Communists persecute everyone, especially other Communists), is a significant printer of Christian books.

China is a Communist nation. Communism is an obscene evil. Communism denies the dignity of the human individual and his freedom to live, think, study, speak, write, sing, compose, believe, play, pray, create, travel, or enjoy the work of his own hands without the permission of the state. As T. H. White says of the collective state in his allegorical Book of Merlyn (sic), everything not forbidden is compulsory; everything not compulsory is forbidden.

Communism, which is also the source of Nazism and Fascism, is the ideology which in one century pretty much halted some 10,000 years of human progress. Communism has destroyed many great and ancient nations with the attendant deaths of millions of human beings, the displacement of millions more, and the catastrophic loss of languages, literature, art, music, architecture, monuments, history, and faith. In sum, Communism is the ultimate expression of genocide.

And Communists print our bibles for us.

The second irony is that the publishers who deprive American craftsman of jobs by outsourcing the printing of books to a Communist collective seem to suggest that this is somehow Mr. Trump’s fault.

Look, President Trump is not my main man. I don’t like him. But I don’t like him because of what he himself says and does, not because of what someone else (The Washington Post comes to mind) says about him. Certain American publishers, not Mr. Trump, shifted American jobs to a terrorist state long before he was elected.

I don’t know if Mr. Yuge Deal would have outsourced printing work to China; the idea of Trump Enterprises printing bibles seems unlikely. But then, the idea of Communists printing bibles seems even more unlikely.

So where was your bible printed? “Published in…” means nothing more than where the head offices are. “Printed in…” – now that is what tells you where the book was printed.

And it is important.

-30-

When Dogs Don't Wanna be Dogs - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

When Dogs Don’t Wanna be Dogs

You send the pups outside to play
This so-soft, sunny summer day

The yard is big and safely fenced
A paradise nicely condensed

And there the dogs have cats to chase
Bugs to eat, and each other to race

Soft rubber toys to squeak and chew
Bowls of water and dog-food stew

And naps to take beneath oak trees
Tummies up in the soft, soft breeze

And yet –

As soon as you have let them out
Then all they seem to do is pout

Unhappy with their vast estate
They glare at you and seem to hate

They hate the cats, they hate their toys
You have denied them all their joys

They bark and scratch at all the doors
They’re kinda cute – like sophomores

Breaking the Dress Code - a weak, two-line wheeze, hardly a poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Breaking the Dress Code

We broke at last the secretive dress code
With an Enigma machine from Singer

A Scientific Afterlife - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Scientific Afterlife

What scientific wreckage is buried now
Beneath a chiseled granite sentiment?
Our clapped-out bones and flesh are not enough
To satisfy The Way That Things Work Now



Maybe our eyeglasses will hit the dirt
Along with dental fillings and dyed hair
Pacemakers with their batteries in place
Still firing dutifully after the peace



That now surpasses all understanding
With God (complete with medical branding)

System Errors - Please know that I did format these scribbles appropriately...

...Something or someone is making a mess of it all.

What is Poetry? - rhyming couplet (Something is botching the formatting)

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

What is Poetry?

Poetry is a language that
Is not prose. Nor is it a hat

"For if a Preest be Foul..." - poem (the system is botching the format - I hope you can read this at all)

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

If the Faith is a Lie

For if a preest be be foul, on whom we truste,

No wonder is a lewed man to ruste

-Chaucer, General Prologue, 501-502

If the Faith is a lie, then let it lie
Let’s not make it up as we go along
Waving a fashionably duct-taped book about
And chanting “This is all you need!”

Because some millionaire has told us to
Nor yet the famous ‘blogging priest who boasts
And posts photographs of his gourmet meals
While begging money for his many trips

If the Faith is a lie, then let it be
But it isn’t – and neither, please God, are we


(No armpit-drying during Mass, please.)

The Robotic Telephone Tree of Lingering Death - poem (of a sort)

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Robotic Telephone Tree of Lingering Death

Hello, you have reached your longtime hometown downhome Saint Swithin’s Family Medical Clinic now an outreach ministry of Consolidated #Jesus Industries Inc.where nobody knows you anymore and wouldn’t care if they did your health care is very important to us you are a valued customer our office hours are from 8 to 12 and 2 to 5 on alternate Mondays and 9-12 and 2 to 5 on Tuesdays and Thursday after Woodchuck Endangerment Awareness Day but before Greenpeace Day except when the latter falls on a Wednesday in which case our office hours are 2 to 5 only and on Saturday 8 to 12 if this is an outside pharmacy please dial X and follow the menu if this is a prescription refill please dial Y and follow the menu if this is to schedule an appointment please dial Z and remain on the line if this to reschedule an appointment dial A cubed and speak slowly when prompted to do so I’m sorry I didn’t quite get that would you like to try again I’m sorry I still didn’t get that if you would like to speak to an operator dial oh, I am sorry your time is expired please hang up and redial if you would like to speak with Dr. Name’s secretary please dial 3 if you would like to speak with Dr. Other Name’s secretary please dial 4 if you would like to talk with Nurse Practitioner Yet Another Name’s secretary please dial 5 if this is an emergency then please hang up and dial 911…

Summer Solstice - Did the Earth Move for You Too? - a wheeze

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Summer Solstice - Did the Earth Move for You Too?

The almanac says that the Solstice came
Shortly after the receptionist called my name
At 1056 – and how do they know
Of stars and planets in their dances slow?

We note the transcendent reality
Of our pale transient mortality
And guard our health with good ol’ common sense
I later noted this coincidence:

The transition to summer came to pass
While the doctor had his finger up my ***


(There might be some mystical symbolism in that, but I don’t know what.)

A Friend Asked Me to Look Over His Book Before Publication - a rhyming couplet and cautionary tale

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Friend Asked Me to Look Over His Book Before Publication

He asked me to review his book (I must be nuts)
I did just as he asked:
                                  And now he hates my guts

Your Liturgy of the Hours - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Your Liturgy of the Hours

A book of poetry is a prayer book
Your Daily Office of verses and lines
Attended prayerfully if possible
But, yes, attended in any event

Wavell’s Flowers for your next deployment
Young Yevtushenko for the bus commute
Or a little volume of Pushkin pushed
Into a pocket past your pocketknife

Beginning with Matins, and all through your day
Make the blessings of poetry part of your Way

A Hank Williams Night - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Hank Williams Night

You’re lonely in an apartment at night
But lonesome way off in a pickup truck

Lonely sitting in an IKEA chair
Lonesome on the tail-gate of an old Ford

Lonely over a glass of single-malt
Lonesome over a Marlboro and a beer

Lonely surfing the channels of emptiness
Lonesome listening to the silence of stars

And either way you hurt; she isn’t there
No, she sure ain’t

The Successor to Steve Allen's MEETING OF MINDS - rhyming couplet

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Successor to Steve Allen’s Meeting of Minds

A cookery show with noshes and gnaws -
People giving a ‘burger rounds of applause

Hospice Care - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Hospice Care

Whispered voices adrift about the house
The little cousins all sent out to play
Adults ingathered at the kitchen table
Taking communion from the coffee pot

The hospice nurse is in and out and back
A subtle shake of her head – he’s still alive
In the back bedroom, gurgling to an end
Frail fingers twitching on the coverlet

An evening of grieving, darkening fast
Whispered voices adrift about the past

For a Single Mother on Fathers' Day - a lapse into free verse

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

For a Single Mother on Father’s Day

No father
Could have been a better father
Than you
When duty called
You were there
And will be forever

You’re the best

A Paean to Dabblers - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Paean to Dabblers

Oh, yes, you should dabble amateurishly
With sketchbook, pen, guitar, and crescent wrench
With telescope and hiking boots and love
With verse that scans and prose that strongly speaks

For a dabbler, all the world is his adventure:
A coffee cup is as Old Santa Fe
A stroll in the garden a pilgrimage
To Canterbury or Santiago

And you should draw and write and sing these things
Oh, yes, you should dabble amateurishly

A Man's Not Dressed Without His Pocket Knife - column

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

(Recycled from 2009, and so possibly a re-post)

A Man’s Not Dressed Without His Pocket Knife

This last Christmas certain environmentalist groups advertised meaningful green gifts – instead of giving your child a bicycle or a football for Christmas you could donate the money you would have spent on your own kid to some stranger who’s shown you a picture of a polar bear allegedly drowning.

It’s a polar bear, citizens; it swims in the water and eats harp seals, you know, the cute widdy-biddy harp seals with the big ol’ eyes. The polar bear rips screaming baby harp seals apart with its fangs and claws, and the baby harp seals die far more horribly than if they got whacked in the back of the head, and then they get eaten. How’s that for a bedtime story, PETA?

When I was a child there was nothing I would have wanted more than to stumble sleepily but excitedly into the living room to find a card (printed on recycled paper with recycled soy-based ink) giving me glad tidings that a penguin had the new cap pistol I wanted. Sadly, my parents weren’t green, and so gave me cap pistols and baseball gloves and toy trains and an ant farm.

Although not as exciting as a new bicycle, a good pocket knife is a far better gift than being bullied into pretending to feel good about a fish or a ground squirrel. Giving a boy his first pocket knife is a traditional rite of passage, and having it taken away a day or two later for misuse is another traditional rite of passage. A knife, after all, is a tool, not a toy, and owning one is a grown-up thing.

My ol’ daddy said that a man’s not fully dressed without his pocket knife; experience demonstrates that this is true. The knife was perhaps the first tool used by humans, probably beginning with a sharp flint, and necessary for skinning a rabbit, slicing veggies, building a fire, eating, building, mending, opening, slicing, dicing, picking your teeth, and cleaning your fingernails. Mind the order of usage, of course! No one who lives close to the land or the sea or the workshop can function without a good knife to hand at all times.

Thomas Jefferson is often credited for inventing the first folding knife, which, while not as strong as a one-piece, is certainly easier to carry about. Manufacturers began adding extra blades, and then the Swiss got the idea of adding specific tools in miniature, resulting in the Swiss Army Knife. Where or not the Swiss Army carries Swiss Army Knives is a good topic of conversation. While these gadgets are fun, I’ll bet your old grandpa could accomplish with his single-bladed pocket knife whatever task was necessary before you could find and unlimber the designated thingie out of a Swiss Army Knife or a multi-tool.

A friend gave me a nice little lock-back with a single blade with saw-teeth. I found this knife so useful that a few weeks later I bought a larger model, made-in-America, even while thinking to myself that the last thing I needed was another pocket knife. And then a few weeks after that Hurricane Rita did not hit New Orleans, and that big ol’ American knife with its one large blade and saw-teeth paid for itself many times over with its survival utility.

Shiny things under the tree or for a birthday are fun: little plastic boxes that light up and make noise, and other little boxes that allow you to hear The Immortal Words of Our Time – “Can you hear me now?” and “She’s all up in my face!” But when you are long-gone, your grandchildren and great-grandchildren will not treasure your MePod or your cell ‘phone or your Brickberry, because those dinky disposables will have long since been recycled into beer cans or Chinese cars. But they will treasure your old pocket knife, its edge well-worn from good, honest use and from many sharpenings around a winter’s fire when the stories are told.

Sturdy, American-made pocket knives are great, traditional gifts for men and boys. They are also perfect for skinning baby harp seals.

-30-

If You Were Still a Child - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

If You Were Still a Child

If you were still a child, I would give you
A Kleenex or two, as I used to do
(Now blow your nose…) and maybe a cookie too
But now…this much is true…time flew…you grew

And yet

There is no expiration date on tears
No sign that reads “You Are Too Old for Fears”
No simple answers after the smoke all clears
No moon, no music high among the spheres

Where lovers’ dreams ascended in the night…
But, here, have another Kleenex, all right?

Did Churchill Destroy His Secret Underground War Room Computers in 1945? - doggerel

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Did Churchill Destroy His Secret Underground War Room Computers in 1945?

To be chanted whenever the O Machine 1 fails:

Rumor has it that the Enigma
Was to Churchill a foul stigma

And that the ancient, creaking Babbage
It was to him but so much cabbage

Colossus One and Colossus Two
Those gadgets too he began to rue

They say he let them rust and rot -
The pity is that he did not


(I checked with the Lizard People on this – Churchill’s secret Second World War computers, powered by a primordial Lemurian source of energy so dangerous that even speaking its name in the ancient language of the Atlanteans is said to be fatal, are secured in a locked vault on Oak Island and guarded around the clock (set to Martian time) by the Trilateral Masonic-Vatican Continuum of deadly albino flying fish.)

1 E.M. Forster, “The Machine Stops,” 1909, Much-anthologized

Scenery Shifting Beyond Life's Windows - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Scenery Shifting Beyond Life’s Windows

Once upon a time each morning began
With a ventilation shaft and the night’s
Foul fall of dreams, drama, and downed debris
Dammed and maybe damned against the window screen

And then an apartment window so high
I could see only the San Diego sky
Train windows, the Mojave through the glass
Then only for a little while
                                                  there was you

The scenery keeps shifting, and that’s okay
Life is a John Ford movie every day

There will be BLOOD (But Just a Few Milliliters) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

There will be BLOOD (But Just a Few Milliliters)

Please consider the seeming illogic
The seeming illogic of paying a man
A good and wise and educated man
To poke his finger upwards in your ***

After a visit to a wizard’s lab
Where a pleasant, professional young woman
Attaches a vampire butterfly to your wrist
And sucks your blood into a little phial

“Now you might feel a little pressure, okay?”
And then consider the happy logic
                                                          of staying alive

Listen to the The Rythm of the Massey-Ferguson 35 - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Listen to the Rhythm of the Massey-Ferguson 35

With its four-beat
Putt-putt, putt-putt
Continental rhythm
Putt-putt, putt-putt
It plows and putts
Putt-putt, putt-putt
It pulls and putts
Putt-putt, putt-putt
It plants and putts
Putt-putt, putt-putt
It digs and putts
Putt-putt, putt-putt
It mows and putts
Putt-putt, putt-putt
It rakes and putts
Putt-putt, putt-putt
It bales and putts
Putt-putt, putt-putt
A little oil, a little gas
Putt-putt, putt-putt
A sweet machine
Putt-putt, putt-putt
Upon the grass
Putt-putt, putt-putt
When all is done
Putt-putt, putt-putt
And all is said
Putt-putt, putt-putt
There’s nothing like
Putt-putt, putt-putt
Massey-Ferguson red
Putt-putt, putt-putt!

What Happens to the Thousands of Naked Lady Ballpoint Pens Manufactured Every Day? - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

What Happens to the Thousands of Naked Lady Ballpoint Pens

Manufactured Every Day?

No high school sophomore ever grew up without
A naked lady plastic ballpoint pen -
Those furtive giggles in geometry class
Were not about theorems all risqué

After the FFA trip to the rodeo
Or the band trip to sunny Galveston
A pretty lady with a 1940s do
Loses her swimsuit over and over again

Upend the pen, and she’s nekkid in the sun -
Whoever thought writing could be such fun!

What Happens to the Millions of Ballpoint Pens Manufactured Every Day? - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

What Happens to the Millions of Ballpoint Pens Manufactured Every Day?

No writer ever seems to exhaust the ink
That oozes from extruded plastic tubes
Made by machines and chemicals that stink
The crowded banks of the fetid Huangpu

Cheap plastic pens are given, shared, and sold,
Tapped and gnawed, pocketed, stolen, lent, and lost
Drying and dying after they grow old
Misplaced, mislaid, decayed, but seldom tossed

A ballpoint helps us with our thoughts to think
But no one ever seems to exhaust the ink

Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall4618@aol.com

Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud

Like the little children that once we were
The midnight thunder has us burrowing
Down further into the primordial covers
For fear of the rain and cold outside

Our wool and cotton caves cocoon us from
The timbers creaking through the pounding wind
The raindrops at the window wanting in
But after dawn the morning the news reports

A homeless man dying a dumpster-death
Lost his last hope with his last lonely breath

Installing Software in "Just a Few Moments" - a wry observation

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Installing Software in "Just a Few Moments"

Enter a valid email next cancel address Enter a valid email address next cancel Enter a valid email address next cancel Get back into your account Who are you? to recover your account, begin by entering your user ID and the characters in the picture or audio below User ID can’t access your account the description for this page Templates Thousands of templates to jump start your Word · Excel · PowerPoint · Business · Flyers Products Office 365 is a cloud-based subscription Office Products · See All Home · Office Online Sign in to Manage Your Offic…Manage your Microsoft account, update your password, set additional security settings, …See results only from office.com Office 365 Login | Microsoft Office https://www.officeppe.comCollaborate for free with online versions of Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote. Save documents, spreadsheets, and presentations online, in OneDrive. Share them with others and work together at the same time https://outlook.office365.com We can't sign you in :-(Your browser is currently set to block cookies. You need to allow cookies to use this service. Cookies are small text files stored on your Sign in to your Services and subscriptions with your Microsoft account. If you have more than one Microsoft account, make sure you're signing in with the one that applies to the subscription you want to change. If you're updating your child's subscription, make sure you sign in with their account, not yours. Find the subscription in the list, and then select Change how you pay. If you don't see Change how you pay, it could be because recurring billing isn't turned on. You won't be able to change how you pay if recurring billing is off, because the subscription has already been paid and will end when its duration expires. If you have a past-due balance, select Pay now. You'll have to pay that first before changing how you pay. Get info about paying for a past-due Microsoft subscription. Did you buy your Office 365 subscription through a third party? See Manage your Office 365 subscription purchased through a third party. Selecting Change how you pay gives you a list of your current payment options. If you don't see the option you want, select Add a new way to pay from that list and follow the instructions. Check with your bank if you get an error message when trying to add a new way to pay, To use a prepaid subscription code, turn off recurring billing on the old subscription. When your old subscription expires, go to Redeem a gift card or code to your Microsoft account and follow the instructions. To cancel or turn off recurring billing on your subscription, follow the instructions at Cancel or turn off recurring billing on a Microsoft subscription.

A Crude, Vulgar, NSFW Message to TeleCheck

Lawrence Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

A Crude Vulgar, NSFW Message to Telecheck

Hey, Telecheck:

T

H

I

te S le

 



 

 

 

 

TeleCheck doesn't know a perfect credit score from Shinola. 

 

They say we can discuss it if I send them my bank account information and my driving license number, the information we are constantly advised not to give out to strangers (like TeleCheck).

A Summer Afternoon in Which, by the Grace of God, Nothing happens - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Summer Afternoon in Which,

by the Grace of God, Nothing Happens

Old chairs just anyhow across the lawn
This morning mown by a grass-proud old man
Who with his book and chair and pipe and dog
Rules his demesne with glasses of iced tea

In this an afternoon of indolence
And as the shadows shift to mark the hours
Even Poirot relaxes his little grey cells
And merely strolls to apprehend the thief

Oh, happy summer, tea or lemonade,
And lazy hours just dreaming in the shade

Whatever Happened to the Tank Commander Who Disobeyed Orders? - poem about Tiananmen Square

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Whatever Happened to the Tank Commander Who Disobeyed Orders?

A brave little man with a shopping bag
Defiantly stood before an army tank
A foul machine designed to grind free men
Into bloody scraps to be hosed away

Two unknown men - it was not the tank that stopped
It was the tank commander who stopped the tank
All that is left is old videotape:
Two bullets made all problems disappear

A brave little man with a shopping bag
Another brave man with a battle tank:

They stopped -
                        And, yes, someday China will be free

The Annual D-Day Commentaries by Laddie-Boys Who Never Made the First Day of Recruit Training

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Annual D-Day Commentaries

by Laddie-Boys Who Never Made the First Day of Recruit Training

My dad was on Omaha Beach but he
didn’t talk much about it so now
I’m going to take the rest of the day
to tell you all that he didn’t much talk about
we broke the Enigma code yeah we did
you can always tell a real veteran by
his thousand-yard stare, yessir, I know stuff
we kicked the Germans’ butts but he didn’t talk
much about it if not for us the French
would be speaking German yeah man yeah
when I was in graduate school but he
didn’t talk much about it we saved the world
when I was in graduate school when I
saw Patton those liberals in academia
he had this thousand-yard stare them snowflakes
wouldn’t hit Omaha Beach now they’d be browning
their pants when I was in graduate school
but he didn’t talk much about it yeah
that M-1 was the best battle implement
ever devised I got me one and boy
it’s got some serious stopping power yessir
I just love to go out to the range and pop some caps
with that bad boy the French are cheese-eating
surrender monkeys we can’t depend on the Italians
but he didn’t talk much about it when I
was in graduate school thousand-yard stare
my dad was there he didn’t talk much about it
here is a youtube about it if only
those snowflakes would watch Patton they’d learn something
left-wing academia he didn’t talk much about it
when I was in graduate school yeah man
I seen it on Band of Brothers liberal elites
Macron Macron Macron first front second front
‘cause I know stuff I got a whole liberry
but he didn’t talk much about it if not
for us yeah you’d all be speaking German
we saved France’s butt when DeGaulle told us
he wanted all American soldiers out of France
we asked him if that included the thousands
of American soldiers in French cemeteries
and that sure shut him up ha ha ha
bet you never heard that before and then
there was these old veterans at the airport
and this Frenchy asked them for their passports
and this old man had to look for his
and this Frenchy asked this veteran if he
had been in France before and this veteran
said he had and then this Frenchy he said
then you know you need to have your passport
ready and this here old veteran said that he
was at Normandy and there wasn’t no Frenchies
to give it to and you could hear a pin drop
ha ha I bet you never heard that one before
When I was in graduate school when I
was on my gap year but he didn’t talk much about it
snowflake liberal elites in academia
I love me my AK-47 that son
spits out some serious lead but he didn’t
talk much about it…


Me? Like, I had this deferment, my feet,
but I know all about it ‘cause I watch John Wayne
and my dad was in it so I guess he ought to know
and he was in a real war; you were only in
like you know them A-rabs and stuff…

Lines Composed a Few Miles Above a Rural Church (as Wordsworth almost said)

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Lines Composed a Few Miles Above a Rural Church 1

No picturesque ruins will remain for us
To wander through with our sketchbooks and pens
For drawing pictures or writing blank verse
About bare ruin’d 1 air-conditioning ducts

The baptismal font will be repurposed
As a bird-bath (with a plastic Saint Elvis)
And the stained-glass windows will be sold off
As fashionable bathroom accessories

The crucifix of deplorable design 2
Will be stored in the back of someone’s garage
Until the girls carry it off to the woods
And laughingly use it for target practice

A rubbly field will serve as a soccer pitch
Until seventy years 3 have passed away


1 Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey”
2 Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73
3 Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited
4 Daniel 9:1-2

A Cucumber-Cool Cave of Green but without any Cucumbers - a poem for June

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Cucumber-Cool Cave of Green but without any Cucumbers

A Poem for June

Just why a cucumber should be so cool
Eludes the logical; a cucumber’s just
A vegetable a-lying on the ground
Awaiting consumption. But let’s accept
This vegetarian cliché’ simply
To get on with this cool descriptive task:

Whatever’s cool in the falling June sun
Descends through oak leaves, dark and summer green
And dancing down the air falls happily
Upon this cool cucumber cave where sits
Upon a wooden bench a lazy man
Who should be taking now another turn
With lawnmower, shovel, or shears against
The wild greenness of happy midsummer.

But, oh! Persephone surely won’t mind
If her allotted garden tasks are paused
By her appointed minion rustic who
Takes now his ease in her delightful shade.
For summer after all is more than work;
She calls for dozing too, and dreamily
Watching busy bees buzz among the flowers,
Like fussy matchmakers arranging marriages,
And hummingbirds humming in and out of leaves,
Their sanctuary leaves, to argue at
The nectar-feeders, as if there weren’t
Enough for all. The squirrels in the trees
Would never condescend to chitter there;
They glare at humans disapprovingly,
Like old teachers unhappily aware
That, oh, somewhere, somehow a child might be
Enjoying life, and that would never do!

Even the ribbon of smoke from the morning’s
Trimmings and cuttings and sawings appears
To be taking a nap in the summer noon,
There gently snoring up wisps of ashes
Instead of roaring, hissing manfully
As it did in the early hours.
                                                      The bench
Along the fence where the tired old man sits
Creaks as he shifts his weight, and watches
His backyard world doze in the leaf-laced sun;
He lights a well-deserved cigar, and sees
Its soothing smoke join with the rubbish fire
Ascending heavenward with peaceful thoughts.

Tablets, But Not From Mount Sinai - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Tablets, But Not From Mount Sinai

There is no darkness to our restless nights
Even the trees are lit by an industrial glow
One’s room is a mystery of little lights
Hovering like fairies putting on a show

Mostly blue, a yellow one here and there
Some reds and greens, as boxes take on power
Our masters’ eyes and spies, colouring the air
While watching, listening, hour after after hour

You wake, you listen - a moving finger writes
There is no darkness to our restless nights

The Fellowship of Ironmongery - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Fellowship of Ironmongery

An ironmonger is a but a hardware store
And equally inaccurate both ways
For not nearly all that is mongered is iron
Just as not all that is hardware is hard

At the ironmonger one finds toilet seats
Hammers and saws, water valves, mosquito spray
Welders’ caps and leather gloves, wrecking bars
And hunting licenses against the fall

Coffee in paper cups, men vested in jeans
Stained with the work of tending the Garden
Chanting the liturgies of field and shop
Of pump and plow and press, piston and plane

Cups empty, then, their Ite, missa est:
“Well, boys, I got to go now; y’all be blessed”

Chopping Down George Washington's Cherry Tree

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Chopping Down George Washington’s Cherry Tree

Just like old Parson Weems’ young naughty George
I took my little chainsaw and I chopped
Or, rather, sawed, a cherry tree, down, down
Onto the ground, with leaves and limbs all ‘round

And I am sorry for the tree, each bee
That fed upon its blossoms, and each bird
That fed upon its summer fruit, but it
Was jammed into an apple tree, and so

It had to go. There is no message here
Though for this tree you might well shed a tear

A Memorial: Constantinople, 29 May 1453

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Memorial: Constantinople, 29 May 1453

From A Liturgy for the Emperor

We believe in God's holy empire too,
Byzantium, eternally golden
The Red-Apple Tree in the eastern sun
The City that echoes with laughing light
Through memory and history and beyond.
We believe in God and His Emperor,
And we believe that in the absence of
The Emperor, even then we must be
The Emperor's subjects, stubborn and true,
Wherever God has chosen to send us.
We then must rule our passions and our hearts,
Tend our gardens as if they were Eden --
Because they are -- and care for our children
As if angels were visiting tonight,
Until our God restores our Emperor,
Restores His City where the Earth-halves meet,
And finally, some day, some happy day,
Returns Himself to sit and rule enthroned
In His Three Romes, and in Jerusalem

No Topic Sentences or Solving for X - the First Day of Summer

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

No Topic Sentences or Solving for X - the First Day of Summer

Every farm boy knows that the first day of summer
Is that morning, that happy, glorious morning
In May when writing topic sentences
And solving for X are but fading ghosts

He’s up at dawn without being called even once
And pulling on his jeans and and boots and tee
He greets his fishing rod upon the rack
And Grandpa’s tackle box, which was left to him

Because

After breakfast and getting up the cows
For milking, he is the king of all his world

Oh, Yes, There are Dragons - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Oh, Yes, There are Dragons

Oh, yes, there are dragons, and pixies too
Dragons at dusk at the far end of the lane
And pixies at noon, among the orchard trees
Where the early apples ripen and swell

All through the drowsy, dreamy, bees-y hours
While Fair Folk frolic unseen by the old
Whom Hypnos has given a lesser gift
Thus we are free to dance among the leaves

Oh, yes, there are dragons, and pixies too
Elusive and teasing - but look for them

C-Rations, Lieutenant Macbeth, and Mirth Displaced - poem for Memorial Day

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

C-Rations, Lieutenant Macbeth, and Mirth Displaced

The drunken Navy cook was suppurative 1 with tats
And the supply boat was always sunk or late
Our officers would not release the c-rats
So one night someone forced a lock, and we ate:

Tin-can crackers, mother////ers and ham
Mystery meat with beans in tomato sauce
Beans and baby ////s and some heavy jam
Beef slices with potatoes in sphagnum moss

But Lieutenant Macbeth, a lord over the earth
Found us, and then he much displaced the mirth 2

1 Cf. Chaucer’s cook in The Canterbury Tales
2 Macbeth III.IV.132-133

In the end, Lieutenant Macbeth (not the ////’s real name) could do nothing since the looted c-rats were so widely distributed that he’d have had to write up the entire unit.

Memorial Day Only it's not Memorial Day - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Memorial Day Only it’s not Memorial Day

Memorial Day observed on a Saturday
Y’all bring y’all’s folding chairs to the memorial
A wall of names next to the pumping station
Donations accepted (but not audited)

An’ Lord we just wanna thank you for these men
Who were willing to sacrifice their all
On the beaches of Normandy and stuff
And bless our brave, God-fearing president

I’ll wear my made-in-China U.S. tie
There’ll be fire-trucks. That’ll be something, I guess


And hey man thank you for your service I guess you seen some action huh my grandpa was in World War II so I like know all about it and you weren’t in a real war that’s what my uncle said and he oughta know ‘cause he don’t like to talk about it you know like them real veterans got this thousand yard state like I’ve got this Jap Nambu I found at a garage sale like you’d really like it you need to come out some time and we’ll like bust a few caps and like stuff Trump’s sure gonna show them A-rabs, like, you know MAGA like in this movie I seen one time…

Laid-Off Airline Employees Start a Restaurant - snarly poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Laid-Off Airline Employees Start a Restaurant

“Please remove everything from your pockets
And place them in this little tray (NOW, please)

Which we will then pass around to strange people
Without you being able to see who they are.”

“Will all merlot-class diners please line up
At the door while we verify your existence?”

“I’m sorry, sir, but your meal will be delayed
For about two hours. Would you like some water?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but your meal will be delayed
While our maintenance team works on the grill.”

“I’m sorry, miss, but your meal will be delayed
While our maintenance team repairs the oven vents.”

“Yes, the breakfast special is $7.95
But there is a $10 surcharge for the plate.”

“We are sorry, miss, but it appears that
Your silverware has been re-routed to Denny’s.”

“We find that seating twenty customers
At a four-foot table is more efficient.”

“We are having a little turbulence
In the kitchen; please fasten your seat belts.”

“For safety purposes, secure all ‘phones
And stow them until after the salad.”

“We ran out of entrees fourteen tables back.
There is no more coffee. Want a doughnut?”

“However, we have lots of vodka
For the belligerent drunk behind you.”

“Thank you for dining with us this evening
(Yeah, yeah, like we even care about you).”







Most airline employees are wonderful, but those who aren't are certainly memorable in their indolence and insolence. I'm especially reminded of the Air Canada cabin attendant who was far more interested in her Harry Potter book than doing her job, which seemed to consist mostly of snarling about passengers asking for coffee that ran out 14 rows before, and why all that was left for breakfast was an embalmed sticky bun. I think she became a trainer for United.

Man: Dog's Best Friend - a couplet

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Man: Dog’s Best Friend

We must forever grateful be that Dog
Ages ago domesticated man

All-Purpose Graduation Speech Soup - graduation column (a re-post from last year)

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

All-Purpose Graduation Speech Soup – Simply Stir and Serve

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

-30-

YOWL - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

YOWL

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed…”

-Allen Ginsberg

No. He didn’t.

He helped mediocrities self-destruct
Through formless howlings in their lonely minds
He pushed them to their deaths with obscene smirks
No more connected than foul faeces flung

Against the good, the beautiful, the true
He pitied himself, and called it rebellion
He squealed out his pimply scatologies
He destroyed the weaklings he could have helped

The best minds of his generation pitied him
But kept their children far away from it

Enough of Gossamer! - rhyming couplet

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Enough of Gossamer!

Enough of gossamer! Enough of it!
It’s just another word for spider ****!

Topics for Discussion During Sunday Dinner with the In-laws - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Topics for Discussion During Sunday Dinner with the In-laws

Knee surgery Buc-ee’s Alabama
Diarrhea Buc-ee’s Bastrop back surgery
Buc-ee’s Fort Worth foot surgery Buc-ee’s
New Braunfels abdominal surgery

Buc-ee’s Texas City divorce Buc-ee’s
Port Lavaca gastro-intestinal
Series Buc-ee’s Pearland fever and chills
Cardiac workup Buc-ee’s Lake Jackson

Blood pressure pills Buc-ee’s Madisonville
Bypass surgery Buc-ee’s Brazoria

Soft Dachshund, Warm Dachshund, Little Ball of Fur - doggerel

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Soft Dachshund, Warm Dachshund

With thanks to everyone who gives us Young Sheldon and The Big Bang Theory

Soft doxie
Warm doxie
Little ball  of fur
Happy doxie
Sleepy doxie
yap, yap, yap! YAP! YAP! YAP! Yap! Yap! Yap! YAP! YAP! YAP! Yap! Yap! Yap! YAP! YAP! YAP! Yap! Yap! Yap! YAP! YAP! YAP! Yap! Yap! Yap! Bark! YAP! YAP! YAP! Yap! Yap! Yap! Woof! YAP! YAP! YAP! Yap! Yap! Yap! Grrrrrrr! YAP! YAP! YAP! Yap! Yap! Yap !YAP! YAP! YAP! Yap! Yap! Yap!

What Was Jesus Writing in the Dust? - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

What was Jesus Writing in the Dust?

-Saint John 8: 1-11

It is the topic of many homilies:
What was Jesus writing in the dust there
At the feet of the woman those men didn’t like?
Possibly he was writing to you and me:

“I know what you do when no one’s watching.”

Or

“I know what you say in self-deception.”

Or

“I know what you think when you are silent.”

Or

“I’m going to fry your *ss if you hurt my child.”

And then there is this other mystery:
Why was there dust in the Temple, anyway?

A Toy Fire Truck and a Real Ambulance - weekly column

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Toy Fire Truck and a Real Ambulance

A friend who frequents re-sale shops and garage sales gave me a little Hubley fire truck that was some little boy’s Christmas gift long ago. Except for the axles and tires it’s a one-piece stamping with a double cab, two rolls of fire hose, a ladder, and access hatches port and starboard. On the bottom one can read “HUBLEY / LANCASTER PENNSYLVANIA / MADE IN USA / 402.” There are no USB connections, lights, batteries, or screens. You make it go by pushing it. It’s made of pot metal and some of the paint is missing, but it’s in good shape and the wheels still turn, so this little fire truck is still ready to roll on a living-room floor emergency call.

I’ve never known a little boy who didn’t want to be a fireman, and now little girls too grow up to be firefighters and EMTs and first responders.

Recently a neighbor had to do the 911 thing late at night, and within minutes Steve Sowder and Sue Sowder of the Kirbyville, Texas Volunteer Fire Department arrived in their personal vehicle with medical bags to begin remedying the situation. And then more people showed up, with rotating lights, and then more people, and then an ambulance, and I kinda lost count of all the responders who in only a few minutes were on scene out in the country.

Where would we be without our volunteer fire departments and all their first responders?

We’d be in a mess.

When there is a fire or a medical emergency in your home there is no effective substitute for properly-trained and professionally-equipped personnel to save a a life, a house, a business, a barn, a field, a forest, and all our hopes.

Beyond that, the existence of a well-trained fire service means that we can insure our property at reasonable rates.

And what are our wonderful firefighters and EMTs and first responders paid for all they do for us?

Nothing.

Indeed, they must hold fundraisers to support the purchase and maintenance of equipment.

Buy the barbecue, okay? And don’t ask for any change back.

So thanks to all those who serve, and on this occasion an extra thank-you to the Kirbyville Volunteer Fire Department. They saved a life.

Little toy fire trucks and ambulances are fun; real fire trucks and ambulances are glorious.

-30-

Mr. Trump's Tonkin Ghosts - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Mr. Trump's Tonkin Ghosts

To Our Commander-in-Chief and Manque Leader of the Free World

And All His Old Men Golfing Buddies

Scheduling Their Tee-Times Around Missile Launches

A dying nineteen-year-old can’t even scream
When half his face has been blown away
He can only gurgle, his remaining eye
Staring wildly in agony and fear

Your man-child plays soldier on guided hunts
Kitted out like Rambo, and KA-BLAMMING
A bighorn sheep the guide spotted for him
Taking he-man selfies while yelping “OOOOH-RAH!”

A dying nineteen-year-old can’t even scream
When half his face has been blown away



("Tonkin Ghosts" may well be the title of another work; if it is, please advise me so that I can change the title.)

Tree Frog in the Rain Gauge - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Tree Frog in the Rain Gauge

During a thunderstorm a little frog
For reasons best known to its grey-green self
Climbed stickey-toed into the chambers of
The gauge, then begged for life as the water rose

Made in China of toxic plastic for
The Weather Consortium Collective ®™
All-natural collection of earth-safe
Weather instruments to save the animals

I took it to the lawn, and gentled it out
During a thunderstorm, a little frog

A Hubley Toy Fire Truck - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Hubley Toy Fire Truck

A Boy’s happy Christmas in the long ago
Miss Dee found it in an old house she bought
Pot metal with the paint peeling away
Wire axles and rubber tires that still roll

No carpet in those years, a wood-plank floor
Was the dreamland for winter adventures
Between the gas fire and the Christmas tree
Between the morning and evening milkings

Somewhere an old man misses his fire truck -
His happy Christmas in the long ago

I Have Never Watched THAT SHOW - doggerel

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

I Have Never Watched That Show

I have never been one of the slacker drones
I have never been one of the sheep-y clones
I have never eavesdropped on lovers’ moans
I have never seen Jesus in traffic cones

and

I have never watched The Game of Thrones

We Are All Characters in a Russian Novel - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

We Are All Characters in a Russian Novel

Our steppes and birch woods are metaphorical
And so are we - who has not seen himself
In youth as the innocent Alyosha
Or in bad days as Dimitri or Ivan

Grushenka at times, and pale Katya too
The Grand Inquisitor at our dark worst
Old Karamazov lusting after Death
Foul Smerdyakov descending cellar stairs

Or gypsy dancers in a rented room
Rolling Polish officers for their pay


But who could ever be Father Zosima?

Everyone Writes a Poem Entitled "My Universities" - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Everyone Writes a Poem Entitled “My Universities”

Although some of my universities
Were universities, I take your point
For you too are a university
I want to know your course of study, your life

Tell me about your university:
Your favorite poet, how you see the skies
Do you like trains? Which hand do you write with?
Which crayon-color did you use up first?

Tell me a story that you tell yourself
While I polish your eyeglasses just right

Rosaries Might be Like Ball-Point Pens - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Rosaries Might be Like Ball-Point Pens

Rosaries might be like ball-point pens
A souvenir for you from Brighton Beach
Fabrique en Chine, blessed by the Bishop of Rome
A kind thought from gap years and honeymoons

But now those rosaries and ball-point pens
Repose in stasis beneath your Sunday socks
And the handkerchiefs Mee-Maw monogrammed
In silk for your high school graduation

Go find them
(No, no, not the socks or handkerchiefs...)

Words flung onto paper are gifts of light
And so are Aves whispered in the night

The Riddle of the Mysterious Sphynx - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Riddle of the Mysterious Sphynx

A wanderer came upon the mysterious sphynx
“Stranger, stand still, if you would choose to live;
I ask each passerby what he knows and thinks,
Thus now I ask a riddle, so stand and give.”

The wanderer answered her rightly that day

And then

The treacherous sphynx devoured him anyway

And Just Who Do You Think You Are, Smart Boy? - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

And What Monolith Might That Be?

There is no monolith I push against
If it is there I simply walk around it
Insolently, usually, hands in pockets
Pretending that the monolith is not

I have been cautioned about my attitude
And then I taped those cautions to the stone
Or made them into verse to be resented:
And just who do you think you are, smart boy?

And to tell you the truth I’m not quite sure
If I ever find out, I’ll let me know

A Sexy Young Philosopher Lapses into Existential Despair - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Young Philosopher Lapses Into Existential Despair

Once upon a time -

A young philosopher sat among men
In the shaded olive groves of Athens
Incense to the Muses, wisdom to all
His ideas soared like Athena’s owls

One day a wise ómorfo korítsi
Delighted him with her strong arguments
Delighted him with her dark Hellenic eyes
Delighted him with a dinner invitation

And as they reclined in symposium met
With verse and wine and wisdom in delight
He excused himself to the toualéta
Where on its walls he read in Attic verse:

If you sprinkle
When you tinkle
Be a sweetie
Lift the seatie

After that his fellow philosophers
Saw him gently into a nursing home

"I Went, And I Am Still Going" - a poem on the occasion of my retirement

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

“I Went, And I Am Still Going.”

This is a re-post of "All Change at Zima Junction." This morning I turned in my keys after some forty years of herding cattle (metaphorically), some seventeen of them with this institution. I am unemployed for the first time since I was five or so and was set to toddling out to the chicken yard every evening to gather the eggs in an old Easter basket. My mother said that the rooster often chased me and made me cry, but I don’t remember that.

And now - what adventure does Aslan have next for me?

The first book I bought upon returning home from Viet-Nam was the Penguin Modern European Poets paperback edition of Yevtushenko: Selected Poems. That 75-cent paperback from an airport bookstall in San Francisco is beside me on the desk as I write.

All Change at Zima Junction

For Yevgeny Yevtushenko, 1932-2017

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

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

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

“I went, and I am still going.”1

1 Yevtushenko: Selected Poems. Penguin,1962

Rain Makes Even Concrete Beautiful - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Rain Makes Even Concrete Beautiful

The rain makes even concrete beautiful:
A drop, then two, and then a singing shower
Baptizing the pavement with little pools
That catch the lights and bounce them all about:

Street lights all golden, rippling up and down
And automobile lights slipping across
The other lights, interrupted by feet
Splashing and slipping all the wet way home

And you, dancing about in the puddles -
The rain makes even love more beautiful


(A brief look through the InterGossip does not show that “Rain Makes Even Concrete Beautiful” has been used as the title for a song or poem or other “spot of art” (as Bertie Wooster would say). If it has, please advise me so I can change it.)

And You Paid a Company in New Jersey for This - weekly column

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

And You Paid a Company in New Jersey for This

Last week a 5th-grade child in Lumberton, Texas suffering through the STAAR test (which is the successor to the TABS, and then the TEAMS, and then the TAAS, and then the TAKS, all to the greater glory of the Texas Education Agency) found an illustration which contained a bad word.

You and I would agree that it is a bad word, though the purveyors of what now passes for popular entertainment are pleased to promote it to all, and it is flung around like poo by men and women of all ages in social situations. Hearing a bespectacled, demure-looking granny snorting the f-bomb in a coffee shop while surrounded by children does not speak well for contemporary mutual respect.

The Texas Education Agency, which is what bossy old Miz Grundy became when she went off to college and put on even more airs, cycles through a lot of taxpayer dollars to take care of themselves, bother other people, and inflict cycles of alphabet-soup exams on children.

The TEA is fond of bullying districts, and as an acquaintance more familiar with their ‘tude than I says, the TEA should now taste their own cod liver oil and be required to submit to the local school districts a three-part corrective action plan and regular status reports, and if they fail in remediating the matter of naughty words on their made-in-New Jersey tests to understand that their elected board (yes, you elected them) is subject to being replaced by an appointed board and a state monitor.

According to The Texas Tribune (https://salaries.texastribune.org/state-comptroller-payroll/departments/texas-education-agency/positions/commissioner-texas-education/), Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath receives $220,375 annually for his service to the children of Texas, so, yes, for that kind of cabbage he should being watching his own office and its doings.

The various exit-level exams used in this state are sold to Texas by Pearson Publishing, a British company headquartered in London and with marketing tentacles all over the world, and by Educational Testing Service in New Jersey, which is far more foreign than Britain.

A salient question is why Texas families are taxed by the Texas state government to pay out-of-state and out-of-country companies to generate tests for Texas children in Texas schools.

Are there no universities, schools of education, and publishers in Texas who can build exams (with or without awkward pictures) and publish textbooks for Texas children, or are we to be forever a cultural colony somewhere beyond Carlo Levi’s Eboli?

-30-

I Visited a High School ("Hisssssssss...!") - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

I Visited a High School

I visited a high school the other day
Walking past the police car at the door
Into a vestibule cold-camera-watched
Presenting identification at a window

Efficiently buzzed through into a hall
Which stank of aggressive disinfectant
Among the shoalings a poor unhappy girl
Angrily picked her nose and glared at me

And hissed behind my back as I went my way
(It’s all the fault of the teachers, they say)




(If you want to be alone for a while, go vote in your local school board elections. Everyone else is too busy complaining.)

The Sorrows of Younger Werther, B.A., M.A., Ph.D. Candidate - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Sorrows of Younger Werther, B.A., M.A., Ph.D. Candidate

A grown man in knee-pants and a cartoon tee
Flip-flopping along in his shower shoes
His hands up in surrender as he runs
A MePhone in his left, water bottle in his right

Nasaling “OmyGod! OmyGod! OmyGod!”
It’s his all-purpose whining upspeak chant
Wailed out for any grade less than an A
Or for a kitty-cute MeTube video

And now for a campus shooting: “Why me!?”
I just didn’t think it would happen here!”


(cf. Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther)

That Tricky Trompe L'oeil - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

That Tricky Trompe L’oeil

Wait! I thought I saw
A trompe l’oeil trompe-ing along -
I could have been wrong

A Worker's Response to Carol Vanderveer Hamilton's "May Day" - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Worker’s Response to Carol Vanderveer Hamilton’s “May Day”

As one of the blue-jacketed workers
As a defiant student
As a child of poverty
Who never had a bicycle to ride to the Sorbonne

I repudiate your vivid red flags
And your graduate-school keyboard revolution
And your catalogue of cliches’ and cant
And your crawling housefly symbolism

As one of the blue-jacketet workers
As a defiant student
After an all-night shift in the plastics factory
I like my cuppa Earl Grey tea in my bleeding hands

Someday I’ll have a bourgeois balcony
And from it look down on your stereotypes

Streaming Forbidden Love - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Streaming Forbidden Love

So many movies on the streaming service
Advert themselves as about forbidden love
Until one wonders if there is any love
Which is not forbidden
                                           your credit card welcome

An Extraordinary Ordinary Life - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

An Extraordinary Ordinary Life

For Mrs. Tinney Davidson, The Waving Grandma

Comox, British Columbia

She lived in an ordinary house in an ordinary street
And every day she waved to children passing by
And every day the waved-at children waved back
Because a wave is a good beginning to the day

In the morning she waved the children along to school
And in the evening waved them back again home
And every day the waved-at children waved back
Just like the waves that hug a beach, with love

And then one day she went away, and waved -
And the waved-at children will wave back forever

Extraordinary!

(cf. Here and Now, CBC St. John’s, 26 April 2019)

Manic Pixie Dream Girl at a Funeral - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Manic Pixie Dream Girl at a Funeral

The manic pixie dream girl of my youth
Curving and tight, scampering along the beach
Her wild black hair flying about as she danced
Teasing all the boys with her sunlit joys

I read to her Rod McKuen by candlelight
While Joni Mitchell on the turntable mused
We played and smoked, and drank good screwcap wine
And played some more, and then she went away

And now - an old lady in a funeral home pew
And I’m not so sure of myself anymore


(“Manic pixie dream girl” is a neologism attributed to film critic Nathan Rubin)

Pascha at St. Michael's Orthodox Church - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Pascha at St. Michael’s Orthodox Church

Happy Easter / Pascha to a Russian Orthodox Friend

What sort of man sits in the silent dark
And waits for a small candle to be lit
When he could reach over and flip a switch
For the miracle of electricity

Bravely to course through the building’s wired veins
The march of progress with a touch controlled
By the hand of humanity triumphant
Over Byzantine superstition. Tell us:

What hopeful sort of man waits for the dawn,
For Light to appear from a cold, sealed tomb?

A Clerisy of One - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Clerisy of One

I am a clerisy of one
I argue with myself a lot
And as I speak I know I’ve won
I’m all about me, and you are not

For President of the United States - Me - weekly column

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

For President of the United States - Me

For fear of being the only American not to run for office this election cycle, I now announce that I want to serve me I mean…You The People…of this great land as your next president.

I also want the fleet of presidential jets, the garage of great big SUVs, the household staff, an armored train with great big nuclear cannons that go “BOOM!”, a bunch of helicopters, and a gold-plated toilet that lights up and plays “Hail to the Chief” when flushed, just like the Constitution says.

I solemnly swear that if you elect me as your next president I will let you little people look at all the jet airplanes, SUVs, the armored train, and the helicopters you pay for.

The Gold-Plated Toilet of The People is off-limits, though.

As your president I’m not going to ride Amtrak, carry my own suitcase, or eat in a roadside diner. I want all the goodies. I want my presidency to be a reflection of my America. And you can look at your reflection in a mirror.

As your president I will see to it that my family and my friends fly on presidential airplanes to London, Paris, Rome, Saint Petersburg, Saint Moritz, and Tokyo on shopping trips and vacations so that you can be inspired by how your tax dollars are making my buddies happy. Just like some of the previous presidents.

As your president I will bill the Secret Service for protecting me at the best rate quoted by the Deutsche Bank. After all, if those guys are going to hang around on my lawn in all sorts of weather protecting me and my family, they should pay me rent, okay? Just like the previous president.

As your president I will hang around with and pay off only those dictators with a good fashion sense. When Kim Jong Ill ditches the mousey-dung play-school outfit and learns to wear a coat and tie like a grownup, then we can talk. And no Justin Trudeau socksies, either.

As your president I will tell you what’s in Area 51. And Area 50. It stands to reason that if there is an Area 51 then there must be an Area 50. It’s so secret that you haven’t even heard of it. That’s what The Voices tell me.

As your president I will develop a national health and exercise program whose core strategy is having everyone run laps around former Governor Christie of New Jersey.

As your president I will build a big, beautiful, yuuuuge wall built around the Internal Revenue Service.

As your president I will sign an executive order banning the death penalty except for telemarketers - for them death by throwing them into a pit of ravenous dachshunds will be mandatory.

As your president I will ask Snoop Dogg and Willie Nelson to form a select committee for writing lyrics for “Hail to the Chief, and I am the Chief.”

And remember, my fellow Americans, a vote for me is a vote for, well, me.

Thank you, thank you. And don’t forget to send the Benjamins.

-30-

An Execution - Maybe the Prisoner was Already Dead - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Maybe the Prisoner was Already Dead

“...he stepped slightly aside to avoid a puddle on the path.”

-George Orwell, “A Hanging”

Evening. Maybe he was already dead
Dead long before the State boys strapped him down
And a functionary started an I.V. drip
Left arm? Or right? In a cinder-block room

Fluorescent lights

With windowed faces posted on both sides
Testaments to the protocols of death
The liturgy of falling away because
He and the lads murdered a helpless man

Fluorescent lights

He breathed. And then he didn’t. His bowels let go
And did they put a Band-Aid on the wound?

Fluorescent lights

But now

Let’s go outside and feel the wind

                                                            We live

Choking on Aspirational Hyphens - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Choking on Aspirational Hyphens

Our straw boss, now, she hyphenates her name
And there is something frightening about
Those faux dashes fastened between the nouns
Her proper nouns, as if they might slip loose

And fall onto the pages of Debrett’s
As isolated bits of DNA
Dropping their aitches and their gees, oh, please!
So tack that Burberry hyphen back again

Let no proletarian taint be seen -
Made in China becomes Fabrique en Chine

"We Will Rebuild Notre Dame Even More Beautifully" - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

“We Will Rebuild Notre Dame Even More Beautifully”

-President Macron

Your privacy is guaranteed
There’s nothing to see here, nothing
He died while trying to escape
Now, then, this might sting a little

Winning the hearts and minds of the people
A light at the end of the tunnel
Lose weight without diet or exercise
We never sell your information

Uploaded unintentionally
Oh, sure, I’ll pay you back next week