We Have No King but Narcissus - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

We Have No King but Narcissus

                                               …he doth bestride the narrow world
                                               Like a Colossus, and we petty men
                                              Walk under his huge legs and peep about
                                              To find ourselves dishonorable graves

-Julius Caesar I.ii.135-138

Our Caesar telephones, and missiles rain
Kalashnikov now rules our streets and schools
Warrantless searches on the Amtrak train
Cabinetlings squatting on specimen stools

And we are urged to clench our fists and shout
In ordered, servile choreography
To bring his family coup d’etat about
Through well-surveillanced demagoguery

Our master baits the poor Constitution
Groaning while grasping his moral pollution

King Henry V and Traditional Norman Entertainments - Rhyming Doggerel

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

King Henry V and Traditional Norman Entertainments

Henry V II.i.47ff

For supper Lord Cambridge was given a chop
The very meal Lord Masham was dreading
Northumberland was carved in that very same shop -
What Norman doesn’t enjoy a lovely beheading?

The Potential for a Potentially Potential Hurricane Season - weekly column

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Potential for a Potentially Potential Hurricane Season

I love Nature partly because she is not man, but a retreat from him.

None of his institutions control or pervade her.

-attributed to Henry David Thoreau

The buzzy words this hurricane season are the noun “potential” and its adverb “potentially.” In Latin “potential” means powerful; in modern English the meaning has drifted into a consideration of the possible. In Latin a potential storm is one that is powerful; in English a potential storm is not a storm at all but rather a weather disturbance that might become a storm.

We haven’t yet read a sentence such as “The potential hurricane is potentially heading for a potential landing on Florida’s cost,” but we might before the season is over. “Potential” is The Word; you are not going to see or hear the weather news this year without the speaker casting it about like pixie dust: “Potentially you are not going to potentially see or hear the potential weather news without the potential speaker casting it potentially about like potential pixie dust.”

Weather Underground (I don’t think they are really underground) came up with a fresh storm metaphor this year, “muscling,” as in “Hurricane Dorian is muscling its way to Florida.” That’s pretty good the first few hundred times you hear it.

Otherwise, the weather news is clotted with the same old metaphors about storms making landfall, brewing in the Gulf, building up steam, storming ashore (because, after all, storming is what storms do), lashing, pounding, barreling, reducing to rubble, battening down the hatches, wreaking havoc, leaving swaths of destruction, trees snapping like matchsticks, cars tossing around like toys, cities dodging the bullet, a street looking like a war zone, we’re not out of the woods, the eerie calm before the storm, the eerie calm in the eye of the storm, the eerie calm after the storm, perfect storm, storm of the century, in the crosshairs, fish storm, decimated, ground zero, and on and on.

Mother Nature’s Wrath and Mother Nature’s Fury used to be part of the babble, but no more. We have progressed from Greco-Roman mythology about nature goddess to Renaissance obsessions with witches. Someone must be blamed for hurricanes, and now the fault is beastly climate-change deniers instead of goddesses.

Climate-change deniers? Really?

As Henry David Thoreau said, “The wind that blows is all that anyone knows.”

-30-

The Veterans' Administration Thanks You for Your Service (Now Shut Up and Go Away)

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Veterans’ Administration Thanks You for Your Service

(Now shut up and go away.)

Rarely do they murder us
Mostly they just ignore us

Lady Macbeth's Advice to Young Men Contemplating the Holy and Honourable Estate of Matrimony - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Lady Macbeth’s Advice to Young Men Contemplating

the Holy and Honourable Estate of Matrimony

Okay, yeah, sure, a little domestic strife
A resume written with a big ol’ knife
But if you want to get ahead in life
Even a king should listen to his wife

Luna-Dog and I - doggerel indeed!

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Luna-Dog and I

She gently takes the proffered nibbly bite
Between her toothful jaws, my little ally
This is our bedtime custom every night
That’s why my dog is fat - and so am I!

"Straight Pride Event..." - couplet

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

“Straight Pride Event Draws LGBTQ+ Protests”

-headline

What’s important?



Young lovers soaring through a Neverland night
Savouring each other in sweet delight

"The Queen Stands at Your Right Hand, Arrayed in Gold" - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

"The Queen Stands at Your Right Hand, Arrayed in Gold"

-Psalm 45

The Queen stands at His right hand, arrayed in gold
The Queen is not ornamented in gold
The Queen is not decorated in gold
The Queen is not merely costumed in gold

The Queen is royally arrayed in gold
For She alone is the Theotokos
In Whose honor the sun is given to shine
Through Her, the Passage between worlds

The Light of the world is the Saviour indeed:
The Queen stands at His right hand, arrayed in gold

Cf:
Psalm 45
St. Gregory Palamas, Homily 38

Talibanning Ourselves - Weekly Column

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Talibanning Ourselves

Our North American Taliban are again attempting to destroy history.

Last week Mexico City’s Angel of Independence (https://theculturetrip.com/north-america/mexico/articles/9-fascinating-facts-about-mexico-citys-angel-of-independence/) was grotesquely vandalized by the usual protestors with the usual spray paint in scrawling the usual obscenities. The pretext for the desecration was gender-based violence. The irony of a sacred cultural marker celebrating freedom for all being defaced by a mob is an irony.

The peace-loving protestors also assaulted television reporters covering the demonstration, beating one unconscious. While protesting violence.

The monument dates from 1910 and celebrates Mexico’s independence from Spain. From a large base a pillar rises to a statue of Father Hidalgo, whose Grito de Dolores (http://www.sonsofdewittcolony.org/adp/archives/documents/hidalgo.html) on 16 September 1810 commenced the revolution against colonial rule. At the very top of the monument is a winged Nike (the Greek goddess of victory, and if she were real she’d probably fry everyone for mispronouncing her name) holding a crown of laurels, symbolizing martyrdom and victory.

One of the images is of an Irishman, William Lambert, Guiellen de Lampart, who is said to be one of the several inspirations for Zorro because of his participation in the early struggles for independence. The Spanish government had some hard feelings about this and executed him by burning in 1659.

Within the base are buried heroes of the revolution, including Father Hidalgo, Guadalupe Victoria (the first president), Leona Vicario, and her husband Andrés.

The Angel of Independence is a visual history lesson featuring images of heroes of Mexico, a child leading a lion, and, among many other statues and devices, four women at the four points of the base, symbolizing Law, War, Justice, and Peace. The Angel is a big deal (as in BIG DEAL), and before her and around her families take quinceañera pictures, footer fans celebrate victories, protestors protest, speeches are made, and independence is celebrated.

The Angel of Independence represents the noblest aspirations of humanity, and anyone who would deface her represents nothing more than a temper tantrum.

The destruction of culture, the suppression of free speech, and the attempted erasure of history are features of Nazism, Communism, and Taliban-ism, and are unworthy of anyone with any claim to love the Platonic ideals of the good, the true, and the beautiful.

If we disagree with a writer’s book we write our own book countering it.

If we dislike a statue’s implied message we place a different statue with a different message in the same park.

If we disagree with a speaker we listen and then against his thesis propose a reasoned antithesis.

If we don’t like a newspaper’s views we subscribe to another newspaper.

If a television program promotes content we want to spare our children then we switch channels or, better, turn the darned thing off and turn the kidlets to the bookshelves in the living room.

The recent ugly rise of burning, banning, censoring, and silencing of art, music, literature, and political discourse, always in the name of a purported higher cause, is not what any nation’s constitution is about.

-30-

Ransomware Never Crippled Who We Were - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

“Ransomware Cripples Cities”

-a common headline

Ransomware never crippled an Olivetti
But a broken spring did so once or twice
So I carried the old machine to old Bill
Whose magic always made it fly again

Ransomware never crippled a cardboard file
Nor yet the flyleaf of the book in which
She wrote the kindest sentiment of love
In the sweet optimism of our youth

Ransomware never crippled who we were -
I did that to us when I walked away

Rib Cage in the Road - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Rib Cage in the Road

A fuzzy structure there beside the road -
It proves to be the rib cage of the dead
Which nights before enclosed the heart and lungs
Of a creature on its errands dutiful

Gone now to buzzards and bacterial decay
On this, neither the Road to Damascus
Nor to Emmaus, and the Good Samaritan
Could have done nothing had he come along

It sinks into the dust, and so will we
Beneath the tire-treads of mortality

"I Am the Chosen One" - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

“I Am the Chosen One”

-The King of Israel,

the Second Coming of God,

and Member of the Order of the Purple Heart

21 August 2019

No
No, no
Oh, no
Now please
Just go

Inbox / Sent / Spam / Trash - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Inbox / Sent / Spam / Trash

Inbox:
Messages and pictures suddenly appear

Sent:
And others then are made to go away

Spam:
And here - oh, my! - delete (goodbye, my dear!)

Trash:
And is all this how we should pass each day?

I Do Not Want to be One of The People - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

I Do Not Want to be One of The People

“He’s an individual, and they’re always trying.”

-The Colonel in Many Happy Returns, episode 7 of The Prisoner

I do not want to be one of The People
With nose rings and tattoos, tee-shirts, knee pants
Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck on the radio
Foul fungal feet and toes shoved into flops

I do not want to be one of The People
A howling face in an anonymous mob
With a Kalashnikov and ammo drum
A made-in-China heel-spurred baseball ap

I do not want to be one of The People
And so…

New Hampshire's Brigadoon Diner - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

New Hampshire’s Brigadoon Diner

It appears, not every century, no
But every four years in the season of snow
When presidential candidates are hard-pressed
For votes, and in new lumberjack shirts are dressed

The Brigadoon Diner appears in the mist
Whenever there are babies to be kissed
By politicians flown first-class from the city
In designer boots that have never been s**tty

Pancakes and coffee, and an incessant buzz
In a down-home America that never was

Portland, You Don't Shriek for Me - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Portland, You Don’t Shriek for Me

Who can tell the Faw from the Aunty Faw?
CarryBOO herds in ballcaps, tees, and tats
Outlaw-scary-masks and gas-station shades
Parachute-pantsies and designer sneaks

     You write no books, you sing no songs – you shriek
     You do no work, you make no art         – you shriek
     You do no good, you help no one          - you shriek
     You make no thoughtful arguments      – you shriek

And all of you dressed like corpses-in-law:
Who can tell the Faw from the Aunty Faw?

Death Beyond an Emergency-Room Curtain - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Beyond an Emergency-Room Curtain

A plastic fabric forest of oak leaves
Some blue, some white, almost abstract in shape
An anonymous professional hand
Through unheard signals draws them open, then closed

My friend will be okay: “just a precaution
Overnight for observation, then home
A little heartbeat irregularity
We’ll get you to a room, something to eat…”

Beyond the fabric forest of oak leaves
Other voices, always soft, always kind
Softer and kinder still: “if you will sign this
End-of-life care, DNR, who can we call…”

A moment alone: “Oh, Momma…Momma…”
Whispered out into Creation

                                                           and heard

Retirement on the Time-Payment Plan - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Retirement on the Time-Payment Plan

German refugee husband: “Liebchen – sweetness – what watch?”

German refugee wife: “Ten watch.”

Husband: “Such watch?”

Carl the Bartender: “You will get along beautifully in America.”

-Casablanca

I check the time on my retirement watch
(A Seiko; they did not think much of me)
And consider that there is no time at all
Unless Creation is some sort of clock

Childhood is watchless, timeless, careless, free
But adults must be catalogued and timed:
Bulova, Timex, Rolex, and Longines
And even a railway Regulator

I check the time on my retirement watch -
And hustle off to my chapter two job

Coach Sheldon Cooper Gives the Chess Team a Pep Talk - weekly column 8.15.19

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Coach Sheldon Cooper Gives the Chess Team a Pep Talk

“Now guys, today’s the big game against M.I.T., and before we thunder out to the table I want to review with you the new rules of the league.

“Before the match I don’t want to see any of you taking a knee when the band plays the theme to Big Bang Theory. We stand in unity, okay? When that song is played we are ONE team, the mighty, mighty SACRIFICIAL PAWNS! We are no longer divided by our Star Trek backgrounds or our Star Wars backgrounds. When our sacred Big Bang Theory song is played WE BEAM DOWN AS ONE and we STAND AWKWARDLY AS ONE like the all-American nerds we are. No one is either Captain Kirk or Han Solo; we are all SACRIFICIAL PAWNS! OOOOH-RAH! Gimme an OOOH-RAH!”

“…um…oooh-rah?”

“I CAN’T HEAR YOU!”

“(squeak) ooh-rah?”

“Okay, fine, fine. Now, then, if the other team offers a prayer, just go with that, okay?”

“But Coach,” said Trevor, “we’re chess players. We see existential reality only in the Spanish Opening, El Ruy Lopez, and nothing more.”

“Au contraire,” replied Neville. “Who can consider the symmetry, the logic, the elegance of the Giuoco Piano and fail to understand that only the Creator of the universe could make that opening?”

“But then how do you explain the Pirc Defense, which is obviously from the Dark Side?” asked Ponsonby.

“Focus, men. If we get into all that theology stuff someone will think we’re…ugh…liberal arts students.”

Team: “EEEEyewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!”

“Now, when you make a capture, remember that under the new rules we’ll be penalized two pawns and a cheerleader if you spike a rook, knight, or bishop.”

“Okay, coach, but can we spike the punch, haha?”

“You’re getting a penalty for that bad pun, Vladislav. One more thing, men. You’re going to have to clean up your language around the cheerleaders.”

“Awwwwwwwwww, mannnnnnnnnnn,” whined Clive. “Whenever I’m around Chloe Zoe, well, she just makes my Rubik’s Cube whirrrr out of sync. She makes me want to whisper a Shakespearean sonnet to her.”

“Now THAT is just the kind of language we just DON’T need, not even in our manly-man locker room. Shakespeare! If I had said “Shakespeare” or “Keats” my old physics instructor would have washed my mouth out with H202.”

“Yessss, Coach.”

“Now then,” concluded Coach Sheldon, holding up a regulation chess clock: “Out there on the field of mental battle you’ll have only two friends, your superior left-brained intellect (dramatic pause) and this. Now let’s go out there and kick some serious quantum entanglement and non-locality! Yeahhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

-30-

Good Morning! Crash! - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Good Morning! Crash!

Chorus:

“Good morning! Good morning! Good morning! Good
Morning! GOOD MORNING! Good morning! Good mor
Ning! Good morning! Good morning! Good morning!!!!!!!!!”

Narrator:

CRASH! (‘cause someone dropped a good-morning dish)

Narrator continues:

At the Waffle House on the interstate
Where dawn and comforting cholesterol
A plastic menu card and that first cuppa
Promise us adventures on this new day

And strengthen the night-shift cops, a welding crew
A day-shift-nurse or two, and me and you!

So my Lawnmower Repair Guy was Wounded in a Shootout...

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

So my Lawnmower Repair Guy was Wounded in a Shoot-Out…

The wind that blows

Is all that anyone knows

-Henry David Thoreau

And is the man all right? Nobody knows

And my lawnmower is hidden behind a fence
A chain-link fence, among mowers in rows
The owner lost a gunfight; he was taken hence
And what about the mowers? Nobody knows

And is the man all right? Nobody knows

UPS has left notes; the door is locked
There is no sound of man or machine
No one has answered when customers knocked
Only the guard-dogs (yeah, they’re really mean)

And is the man all right? Nobody knows

Sergeant Schultz at the cop-shop - she knows nothink
She’s busy with her personal smartphone
Her eyes are fixed; they do not move or blink
And I am all alone in The Twilight Zone

And is the man all right? Nobody knows

So what really happened? Nobody knows

And is the man all right? Nobody knows

So who can I contact? Nobody knows

And is the man all right? Nobody knows


Only the wind…

Eternal Condemnation and Summer Muscadines - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Eternal Condemnation and Summer Muscadines

We were admiring the summer muscadines
I mentioned that my one experiment
In making wine resulted in only
A series of dramatic explosions

And he spake unto me:

Better that, far better, than to be Condemned
Grapes are for jelly, or you’ll be Condemned
Not for Strong Drink, no, or you’ll be Condemned
If you use grapes for wine you’ll be Condemned

He said on a hellishly hot summer day
Then he returned to baling my Catholic hay

The Blessed Sacrament, a Beer, and Miss Swivelly Hips - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Blessed Sacrament, a Beer, and Miss Swivelly Hips

I.

“No One was Before the Blessed Sacrament

Between the Hours of 8:00-9:20, 10:20-11:45, & 1:10-1:50”

-the parish bulletin

And yet we are always before something:
A pint of beer, a tv football match
A darts game where the plastic feathers fly
Miss Swivelly-Hips in her kinky-boots

But still, the small red lamp alone in the dark
Shines on for us, for Miss Swivelly too
Throughout the careless hours when we neglect
Duty for the fellowship of the pub

“No one was before the Blessed Sacrament…”
And yet we are always before something

II.

“No One was Here for the Weekly Darts Tournament”

-the old geezer in the corner

And yet there is much to be said for the pub:
A pint of beer, a tv football match
A darts game where the plastic feathers fly
Miss Swivelly-Hips – but we have mentioned her

That fluorescent beer ad’s a kind of red
The old geezer’s cheeks shine, especially when
Miss Swivelley-Hips flirts him for a beer
There is an honest joy in fellowship

“No one was here for the darts tournament”
(Maybe they were before the Sacrament?)

They Say the Prisoner Hanged Himself - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

They Say the Prisoner Hanged Himself

With references to Article 58, Senator McCarthy, and Casablanca

He’s one of them
That is, he was
And now he’s dead

If he’s not safe
Then you’re not safe
It only takes
An accusation

They have a list
It’s on the ‘net
You’re on the list
You’re on the ‘net
They’re at your door

You didn’t do it?
You all say that

They haven’t decided
If you will suffer
A heart attack
Or die while trying

To escape

What Can We Do About Violence? - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

What Can We Do About Violence?

They may break our bodies…but they need not dominate our minds.

-C. S. Lewis

Every book we read to a little child
Every kindness we work for another soul
Every bowl we fill while serving the poor
Every prayer whispered, spoken, or dreamed

Every cup of coffee shared with a pal
Every wheezy old joke about Pat and Mike
(Or, to be fair, about Trevor and Neville)
Every small joy sung to the universe

Is a beginning

"Your Time is Up" - weekly column about political debates

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

“Your Time is Up”

Moderator: “Candidate Number One, have you ever played golf? If so, and if you are elected president, do you promise to abstain for the duration of your time in office?”

Candidate Number One: “So, well, like, you see, the working people…”

Moderator: “Your time is up. Candidate Number Two, what is your position on why the Federal Communications Commission allows sales calls to dominate our telephone service?”

Candidate Number Two: “As senator for the working people of Margaritaville I have an I.T. staff who…”

Moderator: “Your time is up. Candidate Number Three, how would you, as president, connect with the poor people of this nation?”

Candidate Number Three: “As one of the working people, when I was touring Switzerland during my gap year between St. Swithin’s Academy and Harvard I actually saw some poor people…”

Moderator: “Your time is up. Candidate Number Four, most nations do not tax bank savings accounts. Do you think the bank savings of ordinary Americans should be taxed?”

Candidate Number Four: “For the working people I consulted my Ouija board on that very topic…”

Moderator: “Your time is up…”

Candidate Number Seven: “Just let me say that Candidate Number Nine is a poopy-pants and no friend of the working people!”

Candidate Number Nine: “I am not a poopy-pants! I wrote the dar(n)ed book on poopy-pants and the working people!”

Candidate Number Four: “My working-class tarot cards say that Candidate Number Nine is a racist!”

Moderator: “Thank you, thank you, now please, please, let’s all focus. Candidate Number Five, you have won half of a car, so if you’ll just pick up that plaque and wave it around and look cute, yes, just like that. Now, then, Candidate Number Five, what is Vanna wearing tonight?”

Candidate Number Five: “In this great nation, why hasn’t any president ever asked in the name of the working people what Pat Sajak is wearing…?”

Moderator: “Your time is up. Candidate Number Six…oh, there’s the official Dallas Cowboys buzzer. I’ll spin the wheel one last time…”

Candidate Number Six: “For the sake of the working people I demand a senate investigation! Wheel of Fortune has been infiltrated by the Russians…!”

Candidate Number Eight: “Well, you’re old!”

Moderator: “Now, now, let’s all concentrate on our marvy set with all the glowing and flickering lights. In order to help save the planet this set is going to be repurposed for next season’s Vote the Bachelorette with the Most Fascistic Tendencies off the Island! Now if you will all look under your seats, yes, you’ll find a marvelous gift for each of you – an autographed picture of a great Chinese industrialist! Let’s give a great big hand for CNN, and America, and world peace, and Greenpeace, and green peas!”

In November of 2020 at least one voter will, in the privy-like privacy of the booth, consider the names of all the candidates of the two dominant political parties and think for himself: “Your time is up. All of you – your time is up.”

-30-

Pat and Mike and Some Old Words - weekly column

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Pat and Mike and Some Old Words

Over lunch last week a friend and I discussed words which in our youth we encountered in the King James Bible and in our lifetime reading. Here are some words not in common use now (indeed, they would frighten tweeters), and of course most words have multiple meanings that can only be sorted out in context:

Anathema – cursed or da®ned

Art – are

Centurion – the leader of a century in the Roman army, that is, a hundred soldiers, and so the equivalent of a company commander

Degree – social status

Dost – do

Doth – does

Ere – before

Hast - have

Peradventure – perhaps

Saint Swithin – Robin Hood often alludes to Saint Swithin, a bishop of Winchester (the diocese, not the deer rifle) who died in AD 862. His feast day is 15 July, and he is famous for the doggerel farmers said about him:

"St Swithin's day if thou dost rain
For forty days it will remain
St Swithin's day if thou be fair
For forty days will rain na mair"

We would now verify the rain forecast with Greg Bostwick on the radio.

Unction – anointing

Verily – an adverb meaning truly; it can also serve as an amen.

Vouchsafe – to grant a favor or request

Watch – in a clockless society the night was divided into three watches. This concept survives in the Navy

Wast – was

Whence – from where

Wherefore – why

But of course not all lunchtime conversations are frivolous games in etymology. We concluded our meal with a serious study in Pat and Mike jokes:

Pat’s old dog Eamon died, and so he and his pal Mike went to see the parish priest.

“Father Muldoon,” said Pat, would ye be after sayin’ a funeral mass for my poor ol’ dog Eamon.”

“Yes,” said Mike, “Eamon was the bestest dog ya ever did see, sure.”

“A funeral mass for a dog!” thundered Father Muldoon. “Faith an’ begorrah, sure, and we’re good Christian folk in this parish. I’ll not be sayin’ a funeral mass for a dog.”

“Then what can we do?” asked Pat. “A dog this wonderful deserves something special at his death.”

“Well,” said Father Muldoon, “ye might take ‘im down th’ road to th’ godless Anglicans; they don’t seem to believe in much of nothin’, sure.”

“Thanks, Father,” said Pat. “An’ d’ye think a hundred pounds is enough for an offerin’ for them to say the obsequies over poor Eamon?”

“A hundred pounds!” exclaimed Father Muldoon. “Sure, an’ why didn’t ye tell me the good old dog was a Catholic!”

Cheers!

-30-

The Heat of August is an Emptied Man - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Heat of August is an Emptied Man

The heat of August does not rise; it sinks
Space-planting on the earth like hopes collapsed
Guarding the air against all happiness
With damp and rust and rot and air-thick sighs

The heat of August does not heal; it stinks
Of everything gone wrong at once, of either
Stepping outside to a witch-slap of pain
Or lurking inside with headaches and ennui

The heat of August is an emptied man
On a Sunday afternoon when love has died

"Our Poisoned Chalice" (I wish I could think of a catchier title) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

“Our Poisoned Chalice”

-Macbeth I.vii.10-12

We commend each other with curses exchanged
Between a cop and a hard place in space
Red MAGA caps against Commie berets
All of these accessories China-made

Our battleground an asphalt parking lot
Our forward first-aid post a coffee shop
Where Communists glare over their nitros cold
And Fascists froth their frappuccinos hot

We commend each other with a chalice defiled
Over the broken body of a Child

Occasionally Facetious - A Repudiation of Both Miz Grundy and Comrade Grundy

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Occasionally Facetious – A Repudiation of Both Miz Grundy and Comrade Grundy

You can’t be serious all of the time
Because there are bellowing tyrants around
Who bully and demand, who preach and screech
Whose arguments are threats and censorship

Recusancy is their worst enemy
A casual indifference to their demands
A refusal to wear their branded livery
And clenching one’s fist around only

A brush
A pen
A wrench
A book
A thought
A hope

If all you do is to react, they win
You can’t be serious all of the time

Woodstock: Three Days That Defined Only Those Who Accepted Being Define

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Woodstock: Three Days That Defined Only Those Who Accepted Being Defined

Ill-lettered functionaries at PBS
Are pleased to announce that Woodstock defined
A generation. In reality,
Generations are not defined at all:

My argument is that women and men
Of conscience, courage, character, and class
Define themselves, and stubbornly refuse
To be counted, conned, or categorized

And only followers would acquiesce

To

Ill-lettered functionaries at PBS

A Five-Dollar Garage-Sale Record Player - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Five-Dollar Garage-Sale Record Player

A five-dollar garage-sale record player
A five-cent-piece Scotch-taped onto the arm
A plastic K-Mart special from long ago
A groovy thing for a junior high kid

But he was a thirty-something day-laborer
And in the silent cell of his solitude
Wanted to spin some tunes in the darkness
Just like he did when he was a junior high kid

A five-dollar garage-sale record player
Wagner, Sinatra, McKuen - and hope

Bulletproof School Backpacks for Children - DeLuxe Models with Emojis

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Bulletproof School Backpacks for Children

DeLuxe model with emojis and a charging port

School days, school days
Dear old shooting drill days
Coding and walkouts and smart pad functions
Taught to a federal court’s latest injunctions
You were my queen in tats (Day-Glo®)
I was your Trump at every gun show
You carved in my skin “i luv U ‘n’ Che Guevara so”
When we were a couple of latch-key kids


As of 3 August 2019 bulletproof backpacks were not on the approved list for the Texas Comptroller’s tax-free school supplies weekend; bulletproof vests are on the list as taxable (https://comptroller.texas.gov/taxes/publications/98-490/clothing-footwear.php).

A Three Years' Child in Church - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Three-Years’ Child

She was restless in Mass, a three-years’ child
And in her patient father’s loving arms

She wriggled
She squiggled
She giggled

And then she lay ‘way back and looked ‘way up

What went she into the desert to see -
A light fixture? An air-conditioning vent?

Oh, no

Her eyes were large
Her lips were still
Her breaths were soft

- she saw much more

She was happy in Mass, a three-years’ child
And from her father’s arms something she saw…

What?

Who?

She smiled


(And of course she may have been delighted with the vision of an air-conditioning vent after all; a small child’s learning curve is more open to joy than ours)

"Fruit of the Vine and Work of Human Hands" - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

"Fruit of the Vine and Work of Human Hands"

Grapevines are the first songs of civilization
Their leaves, their tendrils, their late-summer grapes
As given in the Mass: fruit of the vine
And work of human hands, of human love

But when a vine neglects its ancient realm
And reaches out to grasp and colonize
Its peaceful neighbors, privet and rose and oak
It must be brought to heel with sweat and steel

And in its healing recover its purposes:
Grapevines are the first songs of civilization

A Poem Slouching Like a Civilian - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Slouching Like a Civilian

From an idea suggested by Robert Graves in

On English Poetry

I. Thesis

Formalist poetry to attention stands
In ordered meters, ranks and files and lines
Of scansion as determined by disciplined minds
And set in place through skillful strategy

II. Antithesis

Other poetry slouches indolently, insolently with its louche trilby askew
Sleeping late, smoking cigarettes,
                                                        sauntering off
                                                                                  for a beer
Through scansion as admitted by the heart or the pancreas or something
And seldom set in place at all unless it just sort of happens

III. A Perhaps Unnecessary but Useful Conjunction

But

IV. Synthesis

All poems ramble the same neighborhood
In quest of the true, the beautiful, the good

In August Falls the Magic - All Major Credit Cards Accepted

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

In August Falls the Magic

All Major Credit Cards Accepted

No meaning obtains in calendars and clocks
High on a wall, beyond a small boy’s reach
A childhood summer shimmers out of time
July is but another butterfly

To dance and play among young apple trees
A re-Creation thus remembering
Before-Time when we danced among the stars
And played with them like little fairy-lamps

In August falls the magic when, stained with scales,
Foul Satan hisses to us: “Back-to-school sales”

I Wish I Wuz a Sheriff's Deputy - doggerel

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

I Wish I Wuz a Sheriff's Deputy

I wish I wuz a sheriff’s deputy
The traffic laws would mean nothing to me

I’d cruise through the red lights and all them stop signs
But give everyone else lots of tickety-fines

At the café’ I’d park in the handicapped zone
Then drive by the school yakking on my cell phone

Turn signals for me? A thing of the past!
And when scooting through town I’d drive real fast

Yeah, if I wuz a sheriff’s deputy
The traffic laws would mean nothing to me

I will Re-Name this 'Blog in the Next Few Weeks

30 July 2019

Dear Friends,

In the next few weeks I will re-name this 'blog. I propose to call it

Lawrence Hall.blogspot.com

If this does not appear by that name by mid-August please email me at mhall46184@aol for a new name that blogspot has found acceptable.

When I began this web presence several years ago I meant it to be storage and backup for my scribbles as well as a way of sharing my poetry and weekly columns with you.

The current title, Reactionary Drivel, is a humorous allusion to something Evelyn Waugh wrote in one of his books or stories (which I cannot now find); however, in our humorless times, Reactionary Drivel has on occasion offended political partisans (or, rather, dimwits), both Righty-Tighty and Lefty-Loosey. 

In my youth I identified as a Republican in the tradition of William Buckley and Ronald Reagan because of their even-handed patriotism, their intellectual endeavors, and their generosity of spirit. I also perceived this same love of our country and our many peoples in President Reagan's good adversary and good friend, Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill.  In illo tempore both of the dominant political parties shared love of country and a determination to do what was right for all the people despite disagreeing - disagreeing, not screaming with fists clenched - on how to make it so. They also loved a glass of Irish whiskey, good conversation, and a good joke.

Such does not obtain now, and I do not identify with any political party or sub-group. Because the innocent joke about reactionary drivel offends both metaphorical Mensheviks and metaphorical Bolsheviks, I am retiring it, even as, for the past twelve years, I have retired my identification with a political party that I did not leave, but which, as President Reagan once said in another context, has left me.

Jay Parini, in his otherwise interesting and useful Why Poetry Matters, lapses surprisingly when he argues that "all poetry is political," and proceeds to make an implied argument that poetry must always be propaganda (Pp. 20, 21, and 121). 

Poetry can be political, but then it ceases to be a free thought because of its servitude to a cause. That poetry is and must be political is a thesis of tyrannies, and I repudiate it. 

I choose to pursue the good, the true, and the beautiful with you, and will not subject my poor attempts at writing to any ideology.

Cordially,



Lawrence Hall

Partissssssssan Politicssssssssss - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Partisssssan Politicssssssss

Snakes fighting in a rutted logging trail
A chicken snake against a rattlesnake
Whipping the dust with their reptilian lust
For death among the ridings of despair

The rattlesnake is an endangered species
The chicken snake is okay with that, and strikes
The thrashers poise and pounce, loathsome and foul
Until the chicken snake slowly takes the rattler

Through peristalsis down into its maw

the poor rattlesnake

Writhing desperately for a forced recount

The Doomsday Wristwatch and Fitness Tracker - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Doomsday Wristwatch and Fitness Tracker

Since Mickey’s hands are now at two ‘til twelve
Let’s pour our poor doomed selves another glass
We’ll have only our ashes then to shelve
When that great big explosion comes to pass

And as that big bang bangs I’ll kiss my kvass
Goodbye. My watch needs charging anyway
The Gotterdammerung should give it some gas
To tell the time on that Wagnerian new day

Oh! Mickey’s hands are now at that midnight -
Farewell, dear friends; it’s been a wild delight!



(What? Are you still here…?)

Wisteria, Ivy, and Grape - for the Children of Summer - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Wisteria, Ivy, and Grape

For the Children of Summer

Wisteria, ivy, and grape: they cling
To the oak tree’s shaggy, craggy old bark
And up it and down it themselves they fling
Wandering paths with many a loop and arc

Among wisteria, ivy, and grape

Almost hidden highways, up to the sky
That make green pilgrim roads for little folk
For tiny bugs and ants, who cannot fly
But in their journeys play and peek and poke

Among wisteria, ivy, and grape

The little creatures climb along leaf and limb -
Oh, wouldn’t you like to be one of them!

Among wisteria, ivy, and grape

The Log Truck of Unrequited Dreams - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

If You See a Log Truck You’ll Have Good Luck

Playin’ on the back porch, got an old dog
Chewed my toy car from the ten-cent store
Scared my dear momma with a green toad-frog
When she told my daddy I got my britches wore

(If you see a log truck you’ll have good luck)

Early get the cows up, early off to school
Running up the lane to catch the yaller bus
Paddled by the principal for actin’ like a fool
Hours in the classroom hearin’ Teacher fuss

(If you see a log truck you’ll have good luck)

Then in the afternoon to the locker room
With hardly any time for a potty stop
Coach-Bubba’s rolling bassy voice of doom
Bellowing “I WANNA HEAR THE LEATHER POP!

(If you see a log truck you’ll have good luck)

Runnin’ the roads in an old-timey Ford
A fifth of Jack Daniels underneath the seat
Stupidly standin’ on the running board
Singin’ to the radio, O so sweet!

(If you see a log truck you’ll have good luck)

Runnin’ the roads on graduation night
Well, hello, great big world, and here I am
They say I got to get a job now, sure, that’s right
Say, buddy, what’s this place called Viet-Nam?

But

If you see a log truck
                                   you’ll have
                                                      good luck

Decolonize Decolonizing - weekly column

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Decolonize Decolonizing

 

          “… the prevalent spirit of high-flown rhetoric which has been spread everywhere…The first time you hear such
          talk you think ‘What breadth of imagination, what richness!’ But in fact it’s so pompous just because it is so
          unimaginative and second-rate.”

-Yuri, Doctor Zhivago, pp. 284-285

The Whitney Museum of American Art (https://whitney.org/) in New York City was founded in 1934 in support of 20th and now 21st century art – paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs, films, performances, and other expressions of creativity. Not only does The Whitney maintain a permanent collection for the public but also encourages young artists through twice-yearly shows funded by private donations.

The Whitney, through its donors, employees, volunteers, and participating artists, has given the world an artistic outreach and showcase matching the great museums of St. Petersburg, London, and Paris.

Some of America’s greatest artists developed their artistic careers with the help of The Whitney.

Naturally this evil must be stopped.

One of the current trustees of The Whitney is Warren Kanders, and he is associated with a company (http://www.safariland.com/brands/safariland/) that manufactures and sells sporting goods and police protective gear. They do not make or sell firearms, but they do sell tear gas to law enforcement.

Various organizations of Miz Grundys have chosen to seize upon this one product as a pretext for censoring free artistic expression. As ordered by their handlers they make posters, block the free movement of artists and other citizens, and yell “Decolonize this place!” (https://hyperallergic.com/510834/whitney-biennial-boycott-response/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20072519%20-%20As%20Artists&utm_content=Daily%20072519%20-%20As%20Artists+CID_cf3fe71544c7cea3086f713caab7e21e&utm_source=HyperallergicNewsletter&utm_term=As%20Artists%20Withdraw%20From%20the%20Whitney%20Biennial%20Over%20Kanders%20Controversy%20Others%20Refuse%20the%20Call%20to%20Boycott).

They don’t know what “Decolonize this place” means, and The Whitney is not a colony, but they’re told to yell it, and they do as they are told.

Under National Socialism, Socialism, Fascism, and other tyrannies the sole purpose of art is to serve whatever political party is currently in power. An artist does not think for himself, he obeys his masters. He must make party propaganda, and may not deviate into exploring truth and beauty. Propaganda might as an accidental by-product be aesthetically-pleasing, as in Soviet poster art, but that is not its purpose

In a free society there is no political purpose in art. An artist does not accept a master, he does not follow orders, he does not obey. An artist explores truth and beauty in ways that he wants, and if he has a boss (someone has to paint the vegetables on a can of soup or join with a team in making a movie), it is because the artist has freely chosen to work for that company or with that team.

That political hacks are demanding that other artists withdraw from The Whitney is no surprise in our turbulent era; the surprise and the joy is in the brave artists who refuse to do as they are told by the Miz Grundy-Decolonize-this-Place scream-squads.

By the way, I was tear-gassed in the Navy, both in recruit training and then later up some river when some old canisters of the stuff fell apart in transit. Just send me the money, someone.

(A final note: as of this writing, Mr. Kanders has withdrawn from board of The Whitney for the sake of that worthy institution. I hope the artists whose careers he has helped over the years will be privately grateful to him, even if they are bullied into public silence.)

-30-



Corpses for the Lamps of China - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Corpses for the Lamps of China

If any question why we died,

Tell them, because our fathers lied.

-Kipling

Drones fall like broken promises upon
The burning decks while errant missiles fly
From sea to murky sea keeping the peace
Of headless bodies bobbing in the surf

Our leaders’ wars are yeah-boy video games
(With single-malt) across a shiny screen
But workers’ wars are blood and dirt and death
And “Thank you for your service” (now go away)

The good die young, so do the bad, but not
The sons and daughters of our nomenklatura

The Mueller Report Goes "Poof!" in the Atmosphere - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Mueller Report Explodes into the Atmosphere

When meteors on dinosaurs
Fall crashing like the Temple of Dagon
And signals beam from bloody Mars
And mastodons make war on dragons

We little ones must run and hide
In rocky cleft and burrowed cave
While monsters in their wars decide
Just whom to kill and whom to save

When dragons make war on mastodons
Let’s disappear like leprechauns

Maybe.

Or not.

Reflections While Flinging a Dead Snake Over the Fence

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

 

Reflections While Flinging a Dead Snake Over the Fence

 

Is reality filtered through one’s culture

No longer reality? Or is it

That reality without a cultural filter

Is not reality at all, but only

An unobserved function of biology

Chemistry, geology, or radiation

Whose purpose is unknowable because

Without the perception of God or man

It doesn’t exist

 

And neither does the snake, which might have been

But then, maybe it is Schrodinger’s snake
Or was
Or might be

 

They say that the first cultural bias you kill

Is the most difficult, that it becomes

Easier after that. But it isn’t so.

 

After a hard life along existential trails

Of assumptions examined to dust, you want

To put away your Hegelian dialectic

And settle down in a little cottage

In the country with a few good books, a garden,

And Aristotle’s unities, but there’s

Always a young concept-slinger who thinks

He’s faster on the synthesis than you

And calls you out on your legendary denial

Of the knowability of objective reality

 

For the rest of your life (but do you exist?)

No matter how carefully you sharpen your syllogisms

Somewhere out there in the darkness it lurks:

An ontological proposition with your name on it

 

 

"The Test of a Man is in His Conversation" - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

“The Test of a Man is in His Conversation”

-Ecclesiasticus 27:5-8

Friends are the chief ornaments of a man’s life
Through fishing trips and schoolyard baseball games
The brotherhood of barracks and camp and field
And ideas served and volleyed in courtesy

Among those men who have seen something more
Of the world than movie screens and gossip ‘zines
Men as familiar with rifle and rosary
As with a crescent wrench and single-malt

Men who can work both plow and metered line
Then lift a glass in thanks when the first stars shine

Thirteen Reasons Why NOT - a timely re-post

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Thirteen Reasons Why Not

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

But what we put into it is ours.

-Dag Hammarskjold

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


-from Coffee and a Dead Alligator to Go

Da Nang on the 20th of July in '69 - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Da Nang on the 20th of July in ‘69

On the 20th of July in ‘69
I was on the Tien Sha peninsula
Probably shooting penicillin
Into some kid’s *ss for gonorrhea

(That too was a moon shot)

And listening to Radio AFVN
Not paying any attention at all
To Kennedys landing on the surface of
Their girlfriends and then leaving them to die

Soon I was sent to see the moon in Cambodia
More bodies floating in the water there

The Birds - Neither Hitchcock nor Disney - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Not the Disney Version

Two feathers lay upon the new-mown lawn
Like aircraft wreckage after a combat pass
Remembrances of violence in the sky
Of death and blood – now only souvenirs

It was as always an unequal fight
The hawk falling upon a smaller bird
With superior stealth and strength and speed
And grappling-hook talons of screaming death

The little fellow made a good show of it
But he didn’t escape:
                                       hawks never lose

There's a Hurricane! Buy More Batteries! - weekly column

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

There’s a Hurricane – Quick! Buy More Batteries!

The other day I said to the spouse-person that I thought the fear of AI – artificial intelligence – taking over the world was unjustified. The refrigerator and the toaster laughed and said, “Just keep thinking that.” The microwave shushed them lest they give away the plot. The coffee maker gave us a weather report and a treatise on global warming.

Last week we had our first hurricane alarum of the season, and so everyone in our household came home after work with batteries, bottled water, and cans of Spam to add to the existing shelves of batteries, bottled water, and cans of Spam.

Well, it couldn’t hurt, and when in October the cool fronts begin refreshing our land we can take a frying pan out to the back yard on a pleasant evening, slap some hardcore mosquitoes, build a nice little fire, and feast on celebratory Spam as the leaves fall. The batteries will power the tunes, if you want tunes, though the wind and good conversation are usually tuneful enough, and the other batteries will power the flashlight that serves as a lamp unto thy feet back to the house.

In the event, this storm passed us by (with our good wishes) but hurt people in Louisiana and Mississippi. No doubt young newsies employed the tired metaphors that we dodged the bullet and that the stormed wreaked havoc, for the unimaginative are quite incapable of stating the simple facts that storms pass by some areas and cause great harm in other.

One of the local stations found in Louisiana a monotooth with more tattoos than brain cells who averred that he would “ride it out.” As with dodging bullets and wreaking havoc, some are incapable of making the simple declarative statement, “I’m going to stay.”

But staying on the beach when a tropical unhappiness approaches is ill-advised. We are reminded of the story of General John Sedgewick whose next-to-last words on the 8th of May 1964 at Spotsylvania were, “They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance” (https://civilwarhome.com/sedgwickdeath.htm).

Bravado in the face of danger has its moments – “We are going to finish with this chap Rommel once and for all” (http://www.wjinst.com/wjinst/bios/leadmont.htm) – but talking into a storm is not one of those moments. Remember what Kenny Rogers says about knowing when to hold them (whatever “them” you’ve got going at the moment), when to fold them, and when to walk away.

Oh, and you need a good pocket knife. It won’t be on the what-you-need-for-a-hurricane lists, but you will need one for boxes, cans, limbs, wiring, cooking, and dozens of other tasks. A good knife. Sturdy. No made-in-China flash ‘n’ trash Rambo tactical commando wannabe. Just a good knife. Lockback. Saw teeth. You’ll need it.

-30-

Stump Junction by Moonlight - It Ain't Paris, Texas or Paris, France

Stump Junction by Moonlight

“How Ya Gonna Keep 'em Down on the Farm (After They've Seen Paree)?”

-a song of the First World War

Speak not to us of Paris by moonlight -
How are they gonna keep us down on the Seine
When we have seen the gaiety of Stump Junction
By the romantic glow of sweet mary jane

The twinkle of gunfire from a .22
As Cousin Eloise potted beer bottles
While her new guy Kolby took a long ****
On her old guy Shane-Boy’s low-rider rims

The county mounties busted up the fight -
Speak not to us of Paris by moonlight

But Yevtushenko Might Corrupt Our Jailers - a tribute to Penguin paperbacks

Lawrence Hall
mhall46194@aol.com

But Yevtushenko Might Corrupt Our Jailers

A tribute to Penguin paperbacks

When they
Someday
Take us away
For reading
For thinking
For writing

Those Penguin paperbacks all tattered and taped
Discovered when they empty our pockets
          will
Be used against us in their courts of law

But Yevtushenko might corrupt our jailers




17 July is Yevtushenko's birthday (1932)

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.)