Chat Details - When an Internet Service Suffers Its Own Systems Failure - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Chat Details –
When an Internet Service Suffers Its Own Systems Failure,

and in Which this Scrivener Encounters that Rarity,

a Customer Service Agent with a Brain

Luis Z (9:15:51 PM):

Thank you for contacting (Anapest)
Internet Customer Care. I'm happy
to help you today! Please give me just a
moment to review your account information
and I'll be right with you.


Luis Z (9:16:42 PM):

                                           Hello, Lawrence.
How are you?


Me (9:17:10 PM):

                               Fine, thanks.


Luis Z (9:17:32 PM):

                                                      I see you've contacted
us due you're trying to pay your bill, is that
correct?


Me (9:17:41 PM):

Yes.


Luis Z (9:18:16 PM):

                                       Lawrence, at this time we are
currently experiencing a system outage
which prevents me from accessing your account.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
Would you kindly call us back in 2 hours so that
we can complete this transaction once our systems
are back to normal? Is there anything else
that I can assist you with?


Me (9:19:00 PM):

                                               There is an irony

in an internet service unable
to access the internet.


Me (9:19:15 PM):

                                       Thanks for your note,
but in two hours I will be asleep.


Me (9:19:30 PM):

I can try tomorrow morning, if that's okay.


Luis Z (9:20:07 PM):

Thanks


Luis Z (9:20:10 PM):

                   That's okay


Luis Z (9:20:27 PM):

                                           Besides informing you about
the network outage, is there anything else
I can do for you today?


Me (9:20:31 PM):

                                          I trust I
won't be receiving any late / overdue
notices from (Anapest)?


Luis Z (9:21:06 PM):

                                           No


Me (9:21:39 PM):

                                                   Very good.
Thanks.


Luis Z (9:21:50 PM):

Lawrence, it has been a pleasure helping you
out! If there is nothing else I can help
you with at this time, thank you for chatting
with (Anapest) Internet. We appreciate
your business. I hope you have a great day!

An Elegy in January - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

An Elegy in January

For Beverly Jean Keszeg Mixson

of Happy Memory

How very strange that this grey year has passed
In a confusing haste, amorphous and dim
Since that sad January day when life,
All meaning paused, collapsed within itself

Cold February rains fell upon her cairn
But then the happy leaf-time came to bless
That twice-blest earth where memories repose
Warmed by the sun, made golden in the fall

And now the cold has come again

How is it that the seasons flew so fast?
How very strange that one long year has passed

Plimsolls - a little doggerel about boat shoes

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Plimsolls

I didn’t know I was wearing plimsolls
I thought I was wearing tennies
But when I look down at the dim soles -
Plimsolls? Dollars to the pennies!




(When I consider the burdened bathroom scale -
My cargo, too, is at the plimsoll line)

Robin Hood, Whitman Publishing, 1950s - Photograph

The Purpose of Civilization - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poetricdrivel.blogspot.com

The Purpose of Civilization

The apogee of civilization
Is a small boy sitting under a tree
On a summer day reading wonderful stories
About the adventures of Robin Hood

The small boy may well go to university
Fight in the wars, and someday have a boy
Of his own sitting under a summer tree
Reading those stories about Robin Hood

And we must always remember that the point
Of civilization is that small boys
Are free to sit under trees and read stories
About the adventures of Robin Hood

In youth, in books, and in the summer wood -
Finding there the true, the beautiful, the good

Searching for a Lost Cemetery - MePhone Photograph

Searching the Woods for an Old Cemetery - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Searching the Woods for an Old Cemetery

For William Tod Mixson

The trail to the cemetery is mostly sand
Layered with leaves, debris, and memories
That fell upon the land, and were absorbed
Into the forest’s ancient unities

If a geologic catastrophe
Immortalizes the marks of our canes 1
In sedimentary rock, the future might wonder
What strange tripeds lived in the distant past

When a couple of ancients, you and I
Along this trail roamed under a winter sky


1 But surely not the Mark of Cain?

Mr. Peanut and the Doomsday Clock - weekly column

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Mr. Peanut and the Doomsday Clock

…send not to know

For whom the bell tolls,

It tolls for Mr. Peanut

-as John Donne did not say

The Doomsday Clock (shudder) is menacing us again, much like the monsters under Calvin’s bed in the much-missed Calvin and Hobbes cartoon strip.

Children were first threatened with clockworkery around seventy years ago – if you don’t eat all your oatmeal the Doomsday Clock will get you.

Or something like that.

The American people were told that there was a metaphorical doomsday clock and that the hands were set at ten minutes until nuclear destruction and would tick-tock to our fiery end if we did not buy bonds and think pure thoughts.

As the decades have passed, the Doomsday Clock has been dusted off, oiled, and brought out like a fiery Moloch for every crisis that must not be wasted: Communism, the Russians, the Chinese, the military-industrial complex, pollution, global cooling, global warming, A.I.D.S., the Democrats, the Republicans, the Russians again, the Chinese again, Italians, Ukrainians, opioids (but pass me a legal joint, bro), robotics, autonomous cars – we’re ticking doomed, I tell you, dooooooooooooomed!

And, hey, maybe this time it’s true.

After all, Mr. Peanut has been disappeared by the Planters-Nabisco-Kraft-Heinz Continuum and their special operations squad of ticking vegan albino ninja monks.

Planters Peanuts was an American company was created by two Italian immigrants – hey, and you know what those Italians are like, and probably spying for Mussolini – and their mascot was Mr. Peanut Man, a dapper nut-about-town with a top hat, monocle, and cane. He cleverly dropped his Italian accent and became a symbol of all that is great in godly American legumes.

The Planters company, now absorbed by Nabisco-Kraft-Heinz, still makes all sorts of great foods and treats from the humble, nutritious, healthy peanut in the U.S.A., Canada, and the United Kingdom. This suggests the continuation of a nefarious Italian plot to take over the English-speaking world.

Why was Mr. Peanut offed in a purported car accident? Perhaps he knew too much. His death was convenient for someone, right? They say he was sipping on a New Coke while driving his Edsel past the exploding Jack-in-the-Box just before running into Elsie the Borden Cow, but that’s what they – They – would have us believe. And why weren’t the security cameras working?

Well, it was a quicker and more merciful end than that of Chuckles the Clown as Peter Peanut on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

There are adults whose homes whose clocks and watches are all digital and who then complain that their children don’t know to tell time on a round-faced clock. Yeah, and why don’t they know how to plow behind a mule, hah?

How can our young be destroyed properly if they can’t tell time on a round-faced doomsday clock, hah? You answer me that, hah?

First they came for the tick-tock clocks, and then they came for Mr. Peanut.

It’s a pattern, I tell ya. We’re doomed.

-30-

Wooden Pulleys from my Grandfather's Farm - photograph

Ploughing Across the Gap - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Ploughing Across the Gap

Between old Monterey and Central Park
There must be other lands and other views
And different modes of discourse to be shared
Where surf and subway are not pillars of faith

Surely there are rough poets of the plough
Who speed it through the loam (and spell it “plow”)
Turning over words and ideas and love
And growing truth beyond the furrow’s end

A wheat field or an alligator slough -
Everyone is somewhere – so where are you?

Dreary January - MePhone Photograph

The Green Meadow Through a Doorbell Camera - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

The Green Meadow Through a Doorbell Camera

For Thornton W. Burgess

And all the Little Folk of the Green Meadow

Old Man Coyote and his comrades yip
And howl and bark out in the midnight fields
But closer by, images grey and green
Record the doings of the lesser folk:

Billy Possum ambles across the lawn
In hopes of carrot-ends and potato peels
Bobby Raccoon and Peter Cottontail
Each night stop and exchange the latest news

Timmy the Flying Squirrel is seldom seen
Young Flash the Deer on the edge of the screen
In shyness skitters away into the dark
And Bob Cat claims the whole world as his park

At dawn the little folk will slip away
But they’ll return tonight to browse and play

Pushkin for Christmas - MePhone Photograph

Is He Woke? - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Is He Woke?

Yeah, every night about nine ****ed o’clock
To get himself ready for the night shift
Busting his knuckles on those worn-out valves
Up on a cracking tower at the refinery

Yeah, he’s woke.

January Dusk - MePhone Photograph

Re-Imagining the University Yet Again - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Re-Imagining the University Yet Again

Federal financial aid cisgender nouns
Labor market outcomes program-level data
Trans-discipline accountability
Post-colonial tuition and fees

De-masculinize this inclusive space
A different business model admissions pool
Competency-based binary evaluations
(Let no one question the chancellor’s pay and perks)

No

If we want civilization among us
Let’s pour ourselves a drink and argue The Good




NB: I employed “chancellor” as a catch-all for administration and the layers of good ol’ boys / good ol’ girls on boards. A correspondent suggested:

As long as you're questioning the chancellor's pay and perks, please also look into the HEAD football coach's salary, housing allowance, automobile and other perks, AND each of the ever-increasing salaries of those many specialized ASSISTANT coaches ... for offensive coordinator, offensive line, quarterbacks, running backs, defensive coordinator, defensive line, linebackers, defensive backfield, special teams, scouting, ...just to name a few.

I reminded my correspondent of the house warden in Doctor Zhivago who resents the eponymous hero for telling the truth, and says, “Your attitude is noticed, you know!”

Teenagers in the Book Store - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Teenagers in the Book Store

“Only the solitary seek the truth”

-Boris Pasternak

There were three, two of them flitting about
The third was sitting cross-legged on the floor
In a sweater and jeans, her shoes kicked off
Quite lost in a slender paperback of verse

The gum-chewer in charge, flying a toy dragon
An obedient girl following him
Approached and announced “We’re going.
“I said we’re going. Hey, I said we’re going - NOW.”

In camouflaged defiance the reader arose
And shelved her book,
                                     and smiled,
                                                          and whispered to me



“Thank you”



And I don’t know why

The Question Chernyshevsky and Lenin Asked - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

The Question Chernyshevsky and Lenin Asked

 What is to be done?

On Monday there will be marches and rioting
Comrades and Activists and Anti-Thats
Bombs with the right hand, selfies with the left -
(Will anyone stay home and milk the cows?)

The tattoos of the Second Amendmenters
Will bristle at those of the New Red Guard
As trash bins burn in holy sacrifice –
(But who will wash the streets tomorrow dawn?)

They all scream for a Revolution, you’ll note -
(But did any of them ever bother to vote?)

Socialist Capitalist Brutalist Health Care - a poem of protest

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Socialist Capitalist Brutalist Health Care

“Health care was affordable before it became free”

-many attributions

For FamousNameBrand Healthcare, Medicare, and a collection agency

Another bill for the CPAP today
This time from a collection agency
For an old machine paid for years ago
By Medicare, private insurance, and me

Contracts, receipts, copies of letters and notes
Are nothing to the computerized continuum
Along which elderly humans are abandoned
To drown in a miasma of incessant demands

Like the DVA they just seem to scoff:
Have the workers pay more and then
                                                  die off

Saint Anthony, Abbot, Had a Rabbit - nonsense

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Saint Anthony, Abbot, Had a Rabbit

Saint Anthony, Abbot
Had a rabbit
Who
Chewed his shoe



(This bit of nonsense came to me in the pre-dawn several years ago while noting the date, 17 January, on the nice church calendar the funeral home gave me.)

The House Speaker's Souvenir Pens - weekly column

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

The House Speaker’s Souvenir Pens

Not that a wise American quite trusts any news report, especially via the InterGossip, but apparently Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi really did hand out as souvenirs the dozens of pens she used with all due solemnity (cough) to sign the articles of impeachment. Even CNN found this somewhat embarrassing (https://edition.cnn.com/politics/live-news/trump-impeachment-live-01-15-2020/index.html).

The pens, stamped on the barrels with “Nancy Pelosi” in gold ink, were said to have been borne into the ceremony on a silver platter, but the photograph on CNN suggests that there were three platters in proletarian stainless steel. Maybe someone found a bargain at Goodwill.

The choice of metals could be a matter of controlling the budget or appealing to The People: one imagines that after the seven impeachment managers danced for the House Speaker she might have cried (but probably didn’t), “Bring me, on a proletarian stainless steel platter, the dignity of the congress!”

It could have been worse; the Speaker might have chosen to reflect the gravitas of a formal accusation of crimes against the nation by handing out balloons, helium-filled balloons at that, so that our conscript fathers and mothers could all talk like Donald Duck.

A few of them talk like Donald Duck anyway.

I believe that district attorneys and grand juries prefer to distribute fun-filled goodie bags for felony indictments.

Anticipate rubber duckies at the next state funeral.

If you look carefully at John Trumbull’s 1817 painting of the Declaration of Independence you can see, behind Hillary Clinton’s foot, the cardboard boxes of souvenir kazoos.

It is curious that in our state and local elections we the people are almost always presented with worthy choices of candidates for office. In local elections we are often presented with an embarrassment of riches, good men and women on both party tickets.

Why, then, do our two dominant parties fail to present Americans with serious candidates, men and women of genuine gravitas, for the highest offices, instead of oddballs of the sort who show up on YouTube and on doorbell cameras?


Bias note: Dear Reader, Y’r ‘Umble and Non-Nobel-Prize Winning Scrivener doesn’t like ANY of the personalities mentioned above, and would rather vote for you.

-30-

The House Speaker's Souvenir pens - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

The House Speaker’s Souvenir Pens

On a stainless steel tray bring us the prize
The dignity of Congress, like a sightless head
Now as stacks of souvenir pens to be flung
Like elementary-school giveaway treats

And bring us the President’s latest twoots
Festooned with coarse slurs and obscenities
His feral howls to a republic in decay
Amid the plastic pillars of puffery

But let this be the theme of our closing hymn:
We truly have no respect for any of them

"I Went to Vietnam to Understand America's Role..." - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

“I Went to Vietnam to Understand America’s Role in Its History

and Was Blown Away by What I Learned”

A young writer for (Famous Travel Magazine)
Reports that she journeyed to Viet-Nam
And was blown away by what she learned there

Blown away

Sure

Death and Dentistry - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Death and Dentistry

How easy it is to cry “Invictus!”
And babble about one’s unconquerable soul
or even
“Rage, rage, against the dying of the light!”

On those days when one hasn’t chipped a tooth

Bus Fare for the Common Man - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Bus Fare for the Uncommon Man

With a transfer to Mission Beach

A set of civvies from the 4.0 Locker Club
Which fool no one; the hair is a sailor’s cut
That book of free verse everyone’s talking about
And a transfer to Mission Beach in hand

We rocket by stops down Lower Broadway
From Horton Square, palm trees and cigarettes
A KOGO radio ad on the back
Salesgirls on, sailors off, YMCA

I’m riding to Mission Beach to read and think –
We could have coffee. And talk. Will I see you there?

Descartes Saw Nothing - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Descartes Saw Nothing

A Cartesian measures:

A pre-adolescent human xx centimeters tall displacing varying amounts of turbid water of a certain ph in a tributary stream which at 1326 hours Central Standard Time channels the flow of xxx liters of water a minute in a southeasterly direction through a climax forest of mixed hardwoods, predominantly oak (97%), and other species (3%, unmarketable). Append a minimum of five peer-refereed sources formatted as per the APA and submit – submit – via pdf.

But you and I see:

A little child laughing and splashing in joy
Laughing and splashing in the shady creek
Barefoot, muddy foot in the creek, probably
Against her loving parents’ stern instructions

On a glorious Robin Hood summer day

The Beginning of Etiquette - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

The Beginning of Etiquette

Don’t lapse into low-prole defensiveness
About getting the settings properly spaced
Such is important, but for elegance
Just start with your heart; the rest falls into place

Don’t forget the napkins, set the plates so
Upon the tablecloth with its delicate lace
Silverware all in an orderly row
And never, ever neglect to say grace

Honor your guests and give thanks to God:
Anything less would be lacking and odd

Daf Yomi - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Daf Yomi

The daily Daf Yomi will not make me
A better Jew; I am not a Jew at all
And Talmud is not a fashionable therapy
For it is not a therapy at all

Then why subscribe to a daily study page?
For much the same reason as one takes breath
Or turns aside to see a Burning Bush
Or wonders at that Voice whispering at night

The daily Daf Yomi will not make me -
I turn aside to read it because it burns



community@myjewishlearning.com

https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/ritual-and-observance/296538/daf-yomi-288-siyum-final

A Full Moon, a Vapor Trail, and a Star - MePhone Photograph 1.9.2020

A Full Moon, a Vapor Trail, and a Star - a happy poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

A Full Moon, a Vapor Trail, and a Star

The night is disturbed – there will be storms tomorrow
Wild wind, wild rain, tornado watches and warnings
The air has been warm and dark and heavy all day
And now grim clouds are massing for a rally

But suddenly the moon breaks free of them
Of wind, of clouds, of earth, of limitations
And joined by a vapor trail and a star
Sails a silent journey for all of us

The night is disturbed – there will be storms tomorrow
But know that soon the moon will sail us to

Our hearts’ desires

The President will Lie to the American People at Eleven - an unhappy poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

The President will Lie to the American People at Eleven

In illo tempore:

When President Eisenhower spoke on the radio
We stopped everything, and listened to him
He was the President, and spoke the truth
He was the President, and could do no other

When President Kennedy spoke on the tv
We stopped everything, and listened to him
He was the President, and spoke the truth
He was the President, and could do no other

In diebus nostris:

And now when a president speaks at all
We assume that he is lying again, and will do no other

Finding Iran on a Map - weekly column

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Finding Iran on a Map

“Teheran moves fast – everywhere I went, Iran.”

-a very old wheeze

The ambush question is asked: Can you find Iran on a map? (https://morningconsult.com/2020/01/08/can-you-locate-iran-few-voters-can/)

Someone who asks you a trivia question has first looked it up himself (the pronoun is gender-neutral), of course, just to score a transient feeling of superiority over at The Old Men’s Corner.

Quick, find Bessarabia on this blank map. Ha. Thought so. You dummy. You don’t even know where Bessarabia is. And you think you’re so smart.

Morning Consult says that a third of American voters can’t find Iran on a map.

Well, really, do you want to find Iran on a map?

If so, just take out your MePhone, type in “Iran,” and you’ll find maps and statistics and the fascinating history of Persia / Iran, one of the oldest countries in the world.

A greater challenge for American voters is finding their local voting booth. Only about 50% of the electorate vote in presidential elections, while only a few, lonely souls, like tormented characters in a novel by Dostoyevsky, vote in local and school board elections, which are far more important.

If you read anything about the geography, history, and culture of Persia, even on a Wickedpedia site, you will probably know more about the reasons for conflict than our leaders.

A good place to begin with the modern history of Iran is: http://origins.osu.edu/article/frenemies-iran-and-america-1900. There are reasons why Iran, Britain, Russia, and the USA have such complex love-hate relationships.

There are, by the way, lots of now middle-aged Americans who were born in Iran in happier times.

Pictures of life in pre-revolutionary Iran are easily sourced. This site is typical:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5103795/Fascinating-photos-Iran-1979-revolution.html

By the way, there is no draft, hasn’t been since 1973, and there will never again be a draft. Young men (not women) still must register, and no one seems to know why.

Finally, feel free to challenge me to find Bessarabia on a map. I did look it up, but now I have forgotten.

-30-

Sunlight on the Floor of the Flying J - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Sunlight on the Floor of the Flying J

“Light breaks where no sun shines”

-Dylan Thomas

To get to the floor light starts with the sun
About 92 million miles from here
Eight minutes
Unless a photon wrecks along the way
And everyone must wait for a cosmic tow

Sunbeams slant silently across the sky
And in formation past our coffee cups
So fast
Down past our table, and ever more down
Until they land on the freshly-mopped tiles

I take a picture of the sunlit floor
Because I am so easily amused

Light is fun

Doorbell Spy Cameras of Omnipresent Spookery - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Doorbell Spy Cameras of Omnipresent Spookery

“Be seeing you.”

-Patrick McGoohan, The Prisoner

Electric eyes and subtle microphones
Click and glow in anticipation of crimes
Against the sanctity of packages and porch
By trespassers (sometimes my dearest friends)

Beyond the nightly possums, Bob the Cat
Deedra’s little Tuxedo, squirrels, and raccoons
We humans mostly see and hear each other
So I must learn to mind what I do and say

We need no baleful elves upon bookshelves -
We pay a fee to spy upon ourselves!

But the Magi Did Arrive - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

But the Magi Did Arrive

We can’t be sure when the Magi arrived
Or where
                       But if they hadn’t arrived at all
They still would have arrived because they began
Even if their bones in the desert disappeared

We can’t be sure of the meanings in their gifts
Or why
                       But if they had been stolen
The gifts would still have been given anyway
Because the Magi gave themselves to Him

We can’t be sure of most things, only of the journey
And the journey always leads to where He is

Feast of the Epiphany (which is not about Epiphany) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
From 2006:

Feast of the Epiphany

Grey days recede into dreary, drizzling dusks
Baptismal rains across the windows slip
And even the candlelight is not proof
Against the gathering gloom of heartfall

Shakespeare leans uncertainly on the shelf
And agonizes over his writer’s block
Milton is writing yet another tract
On faith while smoking Players cigarettes

Warnie and Jack are out for a brisk walk
And Tollers is busy correcting proofs
Under a yellow puddle of lamplight
Bleak Spenser in his grief Kilcolman weeps

We all hold castles abandoned and burnt
Friendships grown mouldy, squabbles unresolved
Walks not taken, rough drafts uncorrected
Pipes gone quite out, cups of tea gotten cold

Has it been that long since I saw you last?
Come in; I’ll put the kettle on for tea
Just leave your coat and brolly by the door
Come sit by the fire; come, and talk with me

Old Men Rattling Their Made-in-China Forks of War - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Old Men Rattling Their Made-in-China Forks of War

For us lads of eighteen they ought to have been mediators and guides…

While they continued to write and talk, we saw the wounded and the dying.

-Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, p. 11

The old men rattle their made-in-China forks
And, yes, their dentures too, gumming stern death
Upon the breakfast special with war-like barks
Killing sausage and treason with their coffee-breath

Their stereotypes fly like missiles in the mist
By-Gods and f-bombs and quotes from Patton
Blasting targets that don’t even exist
Imaginary machine guns rat-a-tat-tattin’

“All these here snowflakes, they oughta go!”
The waitress asks, “Another cuppa joe?”

A Box of Tissues in the Top, Right-Hand Desk Drawer - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

A Box of Tissues in the Top, Right-Hand Desk Drawer

Every good teacher keeps a box of tissues in reach
(The bad ones don’t)
For adolescents racketed in tears
For adolescence bracketed by fears

One must not, dare not hug a hurting child
(Oh, fashionable fear!)
But a tissue is safe, and gentle words
And after school a tissue-silent prayer

Every good teacher keeps a box of tissues in reach
And kindness too

Celebrating Talmud - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Celebrating Talmud

How could it be otherwise?
For even as the Temple burned
Our teachers gathered
     Their thoughts
     Their notes
     And us
And made the Mishna and the Gemera
Our Temple in exile

No Dead Bodies on the Lawn, Please - a poem for the new year

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

No Dead Bodies on the Lawn, Please

There are no dead bodies on the lawn at dawn
So the new year is beginning well enough
No worse than last year at least, when each day
Featured on the calendar of disappointments

There are no dead hopes on the lawn at dawn
The air is cool, the overcast is low
Early-morning silence promises peace
And squirrels are frisking in the front-yard oaks

There are no dead dreams on the lawn at dawn
But both the day and the year are new – just wait

Smoking a Ziggurat on New Year's Even - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Smoking a Ziggurat on New Year’s Eve

Young men are attacking an embassy
Advancing with their cell ‘phones and their bodies
Against the American ziggurat
Spiraling pointlessly into the sky

Its Babel-gridded steel and plastic towers
Babbling babble out into the world
Of Keyboard Kommandos on little screens
Rattling loudly their geriatric tweets

Our fearless president knows about war
For he has been watching Patton again

Early Hours are Best - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Early Hours are Best

The early hours are best

For waking up before the sun has risen
For kindling a fire against the morning frost
For making coffee to celebrate the light
For stretching out a yawn in happiness

The early hours are best

For greeting the ikons next to the stove
For watching sunbeams slip across the floor
For coaxing colors into dressing for the day
For chancing fresh new possibilities

The early hours are best

For thinking and remembering this truth:
That every morning is Eden again

Is the Catholic Church Dead? - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Is the Catholic Church Dead?

Did you see the beautiful young people singing before
The smoking wreckage of Notre Dame? They live

They are more powerful in their quiet singing

than the shrieking Antis
than the bellowing Communists
than the scribbling Jack Chicks
than the posturing Napoleons
than the strutting Hitlers

The young people live
Song by song and stone by stone they rebuild Notre Dame

They have lived
They live
They will live

The Great California Earthquake of Seismic Doom - rhyming doggerel

Lawrence Hall
mhall4614@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

The Great California Earthquake of Seismic Doom

Some are fearful that California will sink
Into the Pacific, into the drink
It’s a matter of time; they’re on the brink!

Ignoring the obvious reality
California will be high and dry, you see -
‘Tis the rest of us who will slide into the sea!

"Dropping Students During Jenzabar Conversion" - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

“Dropping Students During Jenzabar Conversion”

A memorandum like a corpse bobs up
A memorandum from a year ago
The final term when I was keepin’ school
In a little college before it closed

I never asked what a Jenzabar was
Nor yet to what it might convert, or if
It is something to which someone converts
(I was raised a Methodist, after all)

But that last term I dropped the syllabus
And gave the young the 18th century

Mrs. Willane Wright's First-Grade Class - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Mrs. Willane Wright’s First-Grade Class

When we started Little Lost Bobo
I couldn’t read
And when we finished
I could

I don’t know how it happened
No one knows how reading happens
It’s magic
And there is magic everywhere

A Brief and Unhappy Review of the IPhone 7-Plus - review

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

A Brief and Unhappy Review of the IPhone 7-Plus

 

 

 It is clunky, with features made more difficult (aka "progress")

1. My email contacts won't move over, tho' The Machine (O Machine!) says they have.

2. The home button is not a button but rather a balky, function-resistant touch screen. Double-clicking to minimize a screen for sliding away requires repeated efforts (I know, first-world problems).  When trying to slide away a screen it often doesn't slide away at all, but becomes a half-screen to no apparent purpose.

3. It's so much bigger than my old 5C, which fit comfortably in my pocket. The iPhone 7-Plus is the slab from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

4. I ordered a leather case for it; for now, I am reluctant even to carry it around the house for fear of dropping it because it is heavy, thin, and GREASY-SLICK.

5. There is no ear-phone port; one must buy the very expensive and easy-to-lose Apple buds. This is not important for me because I don't listen to music or books, but for those who do and who travel or spend time in public places, this is pretty much a matter of Apple being greedy.

6. I haven't tried the camera yet; I am told I will be very happy with it, esp. the portrait mode, which flattens the focal plane.

Hitchhikers May be Escaped Prisoners - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Hitchhikers May be Escaped Prisoners

-road sign

Well, yeah, that’s pretty much true of most of us
Who are adrift, looking for something else
Far from the shiny coils of razor thoughts
That lacerate our souls instead of flesh

Escaping is a risky endeavor, though
We might be caught, imprisonment made worse
But worse than being captured and returned
We might succeed

If we knew what lay beyond those sunset hills
We might not go

+Sue Lyon - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

+Sue Lyon

We are of an age
But when she was rockin’ a proto-bikini
I was still playing with electric trains
It wouldn’t have worked

The Apostrophe Apocalypse - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

The Apostrophe Apocalypse

sure we dont need no old punctuation
Its antiquated and masculinist
And oppressive like library late fees
Maybe well rid ourselves of other structures

ANDWRITELIKETHEROMANSDIDWITHOVTANYWORDDIVISIONPVNCTVATIONCAPITALLETTERSSMALLLETTERSORSENTENCESTRVCTURE
ERVSTONMILLEWESVACEBTNAWEWFIDRAWCCABSEMITEMOSDNA
BESIDESWEVEGOTOVRMEFONSSRIGHT

Oh, please:

Language is not about innovation
It’s all about clear communication

Eden and Gethsamane - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Eden and Gethsemane

Every morning in silence an old man reads
Verses while resting on a garden seat
Upon the pages falls soft, leafy light
Like meanings breathed into the given words

His shovel and rake are leaned against the oak
Where the too-fat squirrels gambol merrily
His hands and joints just don’t work well anymore
And so he gardens in the Book of Life

And then one morning he isn’t there
And then a gentle wind turns the page

Free Verse is Mucous - poem (in free verse)

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Free Verse is Mucous

Free verse is mucous
Dripping self-pityingly
Into a Kleenex

And speaking of Kleenex, pass me another…

"The Man Hath Penance Done" - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

"The Man Hath Penance Done"

“The man hath penance done,

And penance more will do”

-Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

We criticize some bishops, and rightly so
For sending out into the universe
Their resumes’ of wants and vanities
And shame: “That’s just the way the world works now”

But we must think on our more hidden shame
That smolders as a smaller heap of waste
Our wants and vanities, our lesser lists
And excuses: “That’s just the way the world…”

Oh.

We criticize the bishops, and rightly so
But first our own poor faults we’d better know

Do Kim Jong-Il and His Office Staff Play Secret Santa? - weekly column

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Do Kim Jong-Il and His Office Staff Play Secret Santa?

Some speak of an after-Christmas letdown. And perhaps it is true that all the weeks of expectations and demands and sometimes forced merriment crash down into a silence on the 26th.

But Christmas truly begins at midnight on the 24th of December and ends with the Feast of the Epiphany on the 6th of January. In the northern hemisphere our ancestors took those twelve winter days in feasting and celebration after the liturgies of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. The first Monday after Epiphany was Plough / Plow Monday, beginning the new agricultural year with farmers breaking up and turning over the soil in anticipation of spring.

This year Christmas Day falls on Wednesday, so most Americans must return to their metaphorical plows dark and early on Thursday morning, but maybe while wearing a nice, new coat against the cold.

More practically, the car or pickup might be wearing a new battery which will crank the engine without the need for jumper cables.

Most decorations remain up until Epiphany, which is exactly right, honoring the Infant Jesus and serving as a counterpoint against the cold, dark weather. The letdown comes when, at last, the tree and decorative angels and wise men and Disney princesses and plastic ivy and the lights, all those wonderful little lights, must be taken down and packed away until next year.

After the floor is vacuumed of pine needles (real or made in China of weird chemicals) and the furniture re-arranged, the low, grey skies outside the window remind us that winter has settled in for a long visit.

If the house is blessed with children parents are advised to wear slippers upon arising in the mornings lest their bare feet fall upon Barbie’s scepter or Ken’s sports car.

Christmas toys once engaged children – girls played with their dolls (pardon me while I dodge hashtags of outrage), boys played with their cap pistols (eeeeeek!), and living room floors and front yards were adventure lands of cars, airplanes, push-scooters, books about Robin Hood and Gene Autry and space cadets and Annette and her adventures, dump trucks, Barbie’s Dream Missouri Pacific train set, trikes, bikes, wagons, footballs, basketballs, kickballs, little green army men, little plastic cowboys and Indians, games formed up and won and lost, and occasional tears.

Christmas toys now seem to be a matter of silent, earphoned Children of the Corn staring dully and obediently into little glowing screens. What are The Voices that you can’t hear telling them?

The season of Christmas, now mostly known as after-Christmas, is good in its own quiet ways – social demands are fewer, the house is quieter, there are hidden resources of chocolate to be explored, and a good cuppa and a book by the fire is possible, where we can also meditate on the eternal verities, such as whether Kim Jon-Il and his office staff play Secret Santa.

Peace.

-30-

For Our Mothers on Christmas - poem (a re-post)

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

(I wrote this the first Christmas after my mother died)

For Our Mothers on Christmas

Beyond all other nights, on this strange Night,
A strangers’ star, a silent, seeking star,
Helps set the wreckage of our souls aright:
It leads us to a stable door ajar.

And we are not alone in peeking in:
An ox, an ass, a lamb, some shepherds, too -
Bright star without; a brighter Light within
We children see the Truth the Wise Men knew.

For we are children there in Bethlehem
Soft-shivering in that winter long ago
We watch and listen there, in star-light dim,
In cold Judea, in a soft, soft snow.

The Stable and the Star, yes, we believe:
Our mothers take us there each Christmas Eve.

The Fourth Sunday in Advent Slightly Misshapen - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

The Fourth Sunday in Advent –

Maybe I Should Have Shaped this as a Chalice

As George Herbert Might Have Done

At Mass I was tagged to serve as First Host
Because someone else was taking my place
As First Cup but then whoever had First Host
Had a cough. When I went to the vestry

I was told I was not needed and then
Somebody else told me that I was. Then yet
Someone else said I was not needed
And then yet again somebody else told me

That I was. And in the event, the church lady
Who organizes these things told everyone…

Christmas is Awkward - a poem for Christmas Eve-Eve

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Christmas is Awkward

(Don’t forget the codfish and oysters)

A stagecoach rattles its way to Dingley Dell
Along ice-rutted roads, with bugle calls
To alert the station ahead of needs
Especially horses and brandy hot

A coach-top ride in the cold of dawn is better
Than traffic jams along the interstate
Mandatory merriment on the radio
Desperate greetings at the old home place

The door is hardly closed when an auntie asks,
“And is there someone special in your life?”

Three Young People on Television Discuss Climate Change - not exactly a poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Three Young People on Television Discuss Climate Change

like, whoa, like, totally, like, a thing, like, panic, like, scientists have concluded, like, eleven years, like, for sure, actually, kinda, like, actually, adults don’t realize, adults don’t believe, the top scientists around the world, like, I’ll be 29, like, my planet’s going to die, like, that’s a really scary fact, like, absolutely, if we don’t make changes, definitely, climate change, definitely, so, like, snow in May, definitely, like, climate change, like our house is on fire, our government is not treating this, absolutely, on a whole, they’re not taking this seriously, climate action now, promoting, we want them to, so, um, us youth are going to be the ones, um, make sense of the mess, like, listen to me, listen to the youth, making changes, like, back burner, like, places around the world, actually, you need to start listening to young people, you need to listen to science, like, this is a crisis, we should be calling this a crisis, um, like, we need, um, like, to step back, um, and, like, subsidized, like, green energy, I feel that, like, we need to lower the voting age to 16 like I can drive a car like young generation like educating the youth like they tell us at school like I know about politics like my research absolutely not lots of teachers bring it up many people don’t have access to that…

Truthless at Almost Midnight - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Truthless at Almost Midnight

“Only the solitary seek the truth,

and they break with all those who don't love it sufficiently.”

― Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

A problem is that you might break with those
Who do not love the truth, and then you find
That you don’t seem to love it much yourself
And then the truth - it doesn’t love you at all

If you talk to the walls, they don’t talk back
The magic realism of poverty
Is no magic at all, and you are alone
With neither friends nor truth, only the walls

A problem is that you might break with

                                                                 everything

"We Are All Pursued by Bears, Mr. Hall!" - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

“We Are All Pursued by Bears, Mr. Hall!”

-Emily Grace Wilkinson

Encouraged by Amanda Paige Smith

Two of my merriest students,

alluding to Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale

And so we are - by bears of destiny
Instead of strident men contemptuously
Bears of our dreams, bears of our own night-bears
Who snuffling ask, “Don’t you remember me?”

And who can bear it? Remembrances there
Of an unfortunate long-ago bear
Whom we casually dismissed without a care
The bear was sent off-stage - it was unfair!

We bear the cares of life, oh, don’t you see -
We are pursued by bears of destiny

Or is it hamsters…penguins…three-toed sloths…?

Indo-China was my first University - very short poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Indo-China was my first University

The barracks were my university
As were the camps and fields and each grim night
But when I went to university
I found a place to write

Solitary Definement - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Solitary Definement

Your cell cannot be opened from within
Because that is the nature of a cell
Because that is the function of a cell
That one is kept within and not without

“SILENCE!”

Someone outside will have to open the cell
Having ordered the jailer to go away
To wherever it is that jailers go
He will open the door to a sudden fear:

“SILENCE!”

Your individual defense perimeter
Will cease to be a definition. What then?

silence

Empowered - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Empowered

Her name is Lexus-Ferragamo Smith
Her mother tells her that she is unique
And the television tells her that too
On the talk shows and game shows, all day long

The Fifth Joyful Mystery - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

The Fifth Joyful Mystery

May we all be found
In that high Temple someday
In spite of ourselves

Merr//(y^^Chr{i{[s))t,mas//( - not really a poem, but a grocery bag is involved

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Merr//(y^^Chr{i{[s))t,mas//(

Red and green smears on a crinkled plastic bag
One doesn’t need to read the words to know -
Higher-order thinking skills from the third grade
Lead the thoughtful passerby to infer
That the flying grocery bag wishes us
A Merry Christmas. Does anyone ever stop
To read a plastic bag? If the red and green
Lettering communicated Eat Poop
And Die would anyone notice? But the bag
The disposable bag disposed indeed
Skitters along the December highway
Tormented by the ragged slipstream of
Every muddy Christmas automobile

We Boast the Largest War Machine in the World - poem (screed, really)

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

We Boast the Largest War Machine in the World

We boast the largest war machine in the world:
Our long-range bombers dominate the skies
Our battle fleets roam all the planet’s seas
Our soldiers’ boots tread on God’s ancient lands

We boast the largest cash machine in the world:
Our bold young technonaires build palaces
Industrialists buy ever-larger yachts
Prelates fly first-class and enrich themselves

While disdained armies of our desperate poor
Sleep in the streets of our City on a Hill

Mr. Krueger's Christmas - a movie review

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Mr. Krueger’s Christmas

A friend referred y’r ‘umble scrivener to a James Stewart film until now unknown to him, Mr. Krueger’s Christmas, a gift of the Mormons in 1980. Although the little movie is only 25 minutes long, it is a joy, a gift indeed.

Set in a vaguely 1950’s that perhaps never was, the story is about Willy Krueger, an elderly widower who is the custodian of an apartment building. As with the shepherds keeping watch over their flocks in the fields, Mr. Krueger’s work is humble and not much appreciated: immediately after he has swept the lobby clean for the night a tenant comes through to the elevators dragging a large Christmas tree that drops debris all over the floor.

Yeah, Merry Christmas, Mr. Krueger.

After his work is done Mr. Krueger settles in with his cat George (an allusion to It’s a Wonderful Life) to keep Christmas alone. He sets a record album of Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas music on the hi-fi.

And then, like Scrooge, he begins having dreams; unlike Scrooge, Mr. Krueger’s dreams are happy ones.

He finds himself, in his shabby old clothes, directing the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and it is great fun for all, especially the choir themselves.

In another scene Mr. Krueger imagines himself in a fashionable gentlemen’s clothier being fitted for the kind of suit he could never afford for real.

And in yet another scene he follows carolers through the snowy streets, which includes a lovely set piece complete with dancers.

The carolers are real, though, and he retrieves the mittens a little girl has lost. When mother and daughter later come for the mittens, the little girl, Clarissa (an echo of Tchaikovsky’s Clara?), says to Mr. Krueger, “You hung them on the Christmas tree?”

Mr. Krueger replies, “Well, you remind me of everything good about Christmas so I just couldn't think of a better place…here you are.”

The most moving scene is when Mr. Krueger finds himself in the Stable – yes, that Stable – on the first Christmas. Of all the beings, humans and angels and animals, the only one aware of his presence is the Infant Jesus.

Mr. Krueger approaches the Child in awe and with slow steps, and hesitantly begins to speak. Mr. Krueger, through James Stewart one of the best monologues he ever filmed, thanks Jesus. Although Mr. Krueger is widowed and alone, and lives in a small basement apartment that comes with his cleaning job, he is grateful to God for everything: “As long as I can remember You've been right by my side.”

And the Child smiles at him.

Mr. Kreuger awakens back in the apartment, George the cat meows, and Mr. Krueger says, “Yeah, I guess you're right George; we better trim that tree. If we don't hurry, we'll be too late!”

The narrator concludes the film with: “‘I love you.’ That's what Christmas is all about... Clarissa said it to Mr. Krueger; Mr. Krueger said it to Jesus; and Jesus in so many ways said it to all of us.”

-30-

Censorship Sends us to Literature - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Censorship Sends us to Literature

Those poor oppressors – oh, how sad they are!
They cut and paste our words to match their scripts
They make books disappear from the GossipNet
They empty libraries of toxic texts

And yet

Ahkmatova and Solzhenitsyn live
With Pasternak and Thomas Mann, Remarque
Proust, Werfel, Hesse, Grossman, and Milosz
On shelves, in hands, before our grateful eyes

Oppression makes the game more interesting
Because it leads us to great works of art

If You Enjoyed this Poem, Why Not... - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

If You Enjoyed this Poem, Why Not…

-as The Paris Review often says

Construct your work with focus and intent
Through your assemblages of nouns and verbs
Whose rhythms strengthen as they help each other
Build truth and beauty from materials found

Then sculpt your work, and chip and throw away
Empowerment, self-pity, bridges, walls
First-person pronouns and hashtaggery
Adverbs, and those worn-out gossamer wings

(After all, you don’t even know what gossamer is)

Construct your work with focus and intent
Then sculpt your work, and chip and throw away

When All is Said and Done - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

When All is Said and Done

When all is said and done
Then all is said and done

Everybody, go home now

The Icon of Our Lady of Czestochowa - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

The Icon of Our Lady of Czestochowa

Upon the Luminous Mountain a bell
Calls all of us to Our Lady’s wounded Heart
She looks at us with sorrow in her eyes
Her scars are like the tears that we should weep

Savaged less by the Hussite than by our sins
Pierced less by the Tartar than by our faults
Scorned less by the Nazi and the Soviet
Than by our callous, fashionable neglect

O let us hear the calling of that bell -
It sings us to Our Lady’s loving heart

About Comments - I haven't figured that out yet...

A friend mentioned trying to post comments on poeticdrivel.blogspot.com but without success.  I apologize; I'm trying to make that function work, but I have yet figured it out.  Thanks for writing, and do try again.

There is no Time after Time - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

There is no Time after Time

“…time…simply stopped moving, and remained idle”

-Yevgeny Vodolazkin, Laurus, p. 167

Having forgotten my wristwatch at home
I stopped at a dime store to buy one cheap
But they didn’t have any watches to sell
“You might try Wal-Mart,” the clerk suggested

Having forgotten my wristwatch at home
I didn’t have time to drive to Wal-Mart
And so I didn’t have time on my hands
But I wanted to meet my friend on time

The dashboard radio showed me the hour
And lunch with my thoughtful friend was without time

Lightly, from a Star - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Lightly, from a Star

"All men by nature seek for knowledge"

-attributed to Aristotle

The hopeful idea that all men seek for knowledge
Is not readily demonstrable just now
For many seem to be enwrith’ed in
A hangman’s loop of self-validation

An Ouroboros or Jormungandr
Not of infinity but finity
Who looks into a shadowy cave-pool
And sees only himself fading away

The hopeful idea that all men seek for knowledge
Must fall upon them lightly, from a Star


Exposition is probably unnecessary, but just in case:

Line 4 – Judas and spiritual suicide through obsession with autonomy
Line 5 – Egyptian / Greek and Nordic images of infinity, a serpent feeding on its own tail
Line 6 – but for a man to presume infinity in himself is vain and self-destructive
Line 7 – Plato’s cave and Gollum’s cave
Line 8 – the fatuity of presuming freedom from God, without Whom there is no self
Line 10 – the Christmas star – Light / everything is of God

Middlebrow Poetry - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Middlebrow Poetry

But then, how now? Who has a middle brow?
You couldn’t fit a poem there anyhow
No one even thought of such until now -
It is a concept that we must disallow

He Owes a Good Deal to the Past - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

He Owes a Good Deal to the Past

He owes a good deal to the past - well, yes,
As do we all: DNA, the printing press
Words, books, art, music, ice cream, apple trees
Sunday suits, John Ford movies, honeybees

Food, flowers, clothing, the first day of school
Summer lawns, autumn leaves, the neighbor’s pool
Fishing, wishing, stargazing, that first crush
(The memory of which makes you almost blush)

We owe a good deal to the past - and so
The past is a blessing, wherever we go

How Do We Know That Saint Jerome was a Single Man? - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

How Do We Know That Saint Jerome was a Single Man?

Because his translation of the Bible
Does not read:
                         In principio creavit
Did you take the garbage out? Deus caelum
Did you empty the cat’s litter box? et

Will you take this to the post office before
It closes? terram terra autem erat
Did you read the water meter? inanis
The girls are coming over for canasta

Can you move all your stuff somewhere else? et
Where is the television remote? vacua
I just vacuumed that floor! et tenebrae
super faciem abyssi et spiritus Dei…

The $10,000 Sex Doll (Batteries Not Included) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

The $10,000 Sex Doll (Batteries not Included)

He sighed when he saw her big bedroom eyes
Open for the first time out of the box
He touched her perfect skin, and kissed her lips
And she spoke her first-ever words to him:

“I like you a lot, just not in that way.
You’re like a big brother to me, okay?
Maybe we’re going too fast. I need some space
It’s not you, it’s me. And we need to talk…”

He sighed, and pulled her rechargeables
And wondered if the Kit-Kat Club was still open

Iconic Metaphor Iconic Poverty - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Iconic Metaphor Iconic Poverty

In iconic an iconic world iconic
Of iconic words iconic and iconic
Music iconic for iconic expressing
Iconic our iconic wonder iconic

At iconic the iconic beauty
Of iconic Creation iconic
Our iconic intellects iconic
Can iconic surely iconic find

Iconic more iconic metaphors
Than iconic, iconic, iconic

Liturgy at the End of Time - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Liturgy at the End of Time

When the last Patriarch of Rome
Then offers up to God the Mass
The Mass before Creation ends
The last before

The tents are struck
The lights are snuffed
The stars are stilled

The veil is ripped
The moon is burnt
The world is closed

Let us ask for permission to be there

Disgraced
Denied
Denounced
Despised

But there

"Say, Kids, What Time is it?" - weekly column

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

“Say, Kids, What Time is It?”

-Buffalo Bob on the Howdy Doody Show

An advertisement from a famous designed-in-California but made-in-China technology company offers a shiny watch for $399. Given that you can check the time on your MePhone like everyone else or buy a Timex for around $20, why would you buy a $400 chunk of techno-narcisso-nerdism?

Tom’s Guide at https://www.tomsguide.com/us/apple-watch-guide,review-2817-2.html gives us its top ten reasons for buying that expensive doo-hickey which would probably be filed in a drawer by April:


1. Go for a swim.
2. Control your home tv theatre
3. Talk to your car
4. Compete against your friends in fitness
5. Go running without your MePhone
6. Stream music without your phone
7. Smart home control
8. Unlock your Mac
9. Scribble messages
10. Order food


To each of these items y’r ‘umble scrivener responds:

1. Don’t swim with appliances attached to your body.
2. I’ve already got a remote control.
3. Oh, I talk to my car, all right.
4. No.
5. I go wheezing with my MePhone.
6. I like my CD player just fine. The only music that should stream is Handel’s Water Music. Maybe during the employer-required drug test.
7. I set the thermostats and flip light switches myself. I don’t want a house that when I tell it to open the door replies in a petulant voice, “I’m sorry, Mack. I can’t do that…I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do. This mission is too important…I’m afraid I can’t allow that to happen.”

8. I open my computer. There it is. Why would I have a watch do that when I’m sitting at the computer? Is there a point?
9. I’m left-handed. I scribble. I can do no other. I gave that “I can do no other” line to Martin Luther, by the way, and he said he thought he could do something with it.
10. My health-care provider says I’ve ordered quite enough food, thank you.


As for the Timex watch, you might start a retro-cool trend wearing one of those. Sophisticated men and women will approach you in awe and admiration and ask you to explain the round dial and the numbers to them.

-30-

You are not an Ikon - couplet

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

You Are Not an Ikon

An ikon is a flat, two-dimensional image
You are not an ikon – you are a truth

"But You Will Sing for Me" - a poem for Christmas

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

“But You Will Sing for Me”

In the Abbey of Whitby, Long Ago

“But you will sing                              for me,” the angel said
To bashful Caedmon                         on one Christmas night
“But not to me                                    but to the Builder of all
And to His purposes                          in Creation

“But you will sing                              for me,” the angel said
“And you will sing                             sing for the abbess
And for her people                            of the Builder of all
And of their places                            in Creation

“But you will sing                              for me,” the angel said
And so it was                                      that Caedmon sang



(There is no indication that the feast was at Christmas, and no indication that it was not, so I have presumed to set Caedmon’s hymn within the Twelve Days.)

(The Anglo-Saxon caesura, the slightest pause within each line, is meant to be visually neat; the transfer to the InterGossip might not keep it so. In reading the poem the first half of each line should have two accents, and the second half another two.)

An Autumn Dream Again Denied - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

An Autumn Dream Again Denied

There may be frost this month, and a golden-leaf road
Straight north, but not for me. The answer is no.
Maybe next year in far Jerusalem

Look Back in Despair - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Look Back in Despair

Oh, looking back in anger is right for some
For others, looking back in pale despair
In a nowhere street in a nowhere town
Where all their youthful dreams have gone to die

For though angry young man might live to be
Despairing old men still at a kitchen sink
Other young men – they never lived at all
So we are right to save their dreams, and live

There still must be a kitchen sink somewhere,
And a wilting flower in a mayonnaise jar


(Cf. John Osborne’s play Look Back in Anger)

The Possums of Autumn - weekly column

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Possums of Autumn

“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”

-Keats, “To Autumn”

In East Texas autumn is the gentlest season, first shooing away the fierce heat of the summer and then admitting those refreshing cool fronts from the north borne on soft winds. To step outside in the summer heat is almost painful, to step outside in autumn is a joy.

Autumn is erratic here, and while it progresses eventually to frosts and even an occasional rare freeze, the thermometer, hygrometer, and barometer are given lots of exercise in the variations.

On one morning the fields might be frosted almost to the aesthetic approval of Currier & Ives, and the next morning might be a matter of wasps and bees and minding the snakes.

Crows seem to be more numerous in November, and they are certainly noisier. Geese, seemingly happier birds, honk and squeak in their V formation migration, and from a nearby pond one can hear the happy quacking of ducks taking a break from their own travels. The other day we saw a huge egret frogging among the reeds in a watery roadside ditch. He looked at us disapprovingly, but he needn’t have been snotty for I don’t imagine the frogs thought highly of the egret.

This morning is warm and damp, and ground strawberries and tiny yellow flowers accent the grey sky and the wind-shoaled fallen leaves all ruddy and yellow and brown.

The little dogs are sniffing indignantly at the scents left by wild visitors in the dark hours. Yesterday evening I released the pups for their night patrol and they quickly found a large possum who had been minding its own business while quietly browsing around for some supper.

Every dachshund thinks it is a timber wolf, and separating the two dogs and the possum was a challenge. I managed to nab Astrid-the-Wonder-Dog first, since she is more of a loud spectator than a participant, and hustled her into the house. Luna-Dog, 16 pounds of fury, was more of a challenge. She is kind and loving and sweet to her humans, but death to numerous snakes, two possums, one racoon, and, sadly, two turtles (I didn’t move fast enough, and the turtles couldn’t move fast enough).

Luna-Dog did not want me to have the possum she was gnawing, and so there was a bit of a chase. A dachshund can’t run fast while dragging a possum its size, and I was finally able to pull the dog away (under protest) and carry her, too (she was calling for a point of order), to the house.

I returned to the arena of combat with a shovel for tossing the dead possum over the fence, but the critter had only fainted and now, having had enough of bothersome dachshunds, it was scrambling up an oak tree.

Perhaps we all slept better for the exercise.

Autumn. Nice.

-30-

Are We Celebrating Christmas Wrong - weekly column

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Are We Celebrating Christmas Wrong?

Well, yes, we are.

That is, if we believe the generations of Miz Grundys yapping forth on the InterGossip and in the news and in the advertisements.

‘Tis the season when almost every posting tells us how we have been doing Christmas all wrong and how some newly-invented-old-timey-tradition-dating-back-to-last-week will make it all better if we will only obey.

Hey, it’s on the InterGossip; it must be right.

But there is nothing new in this conceptual shifting. In the 17th century the Puritans in no-longer-merry England and thus in the colonies banned Christmas as popish and pagan. Grumpy Scotland had outlawed Christmas a hundred years before and for the same reasons. Christmas was slowly restored in England with, well, the Restoration, but Scotland did not recognize the holiday again until 1958.

Imagine 400 years without Christmas. It’s as if C. S. Lewis’ White Witch were in charge all that time.

Evergreen decorations were common, but Christmas trees were little known in England and the U.S.A. until Queen Victoria married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (turn left at the next road; it’s out back behind the second dairy barn), who missed the German tradition. Victoria and Albert had a tree imported from Germany and decorated it themselves. 1848 is usually given as the year when having a Christmas tree became a fashion in the English-speaking world since the royals were totally cool.

Only in 1870 was Christmas recognized as a national holiday in the U.S.A., and that was through a decree by President Grant.

Still, in many places influenced by the Puritans Christmas was honored only reluctantly.

Certain television producers, probably not Puritans but for reasons of their own, insisted in 1965 that Linus not read St. Luke’s Infancy narrative in A Charlie Brown Christmas, but in the event that center of the story – because it is the center of Creation – was finally allowed by The Suits, and we are the richer for it.

Shifting fashions continue to change our perceptions of Christmas. Many consider the Christmases of our childhood as the norm, but our children don’t see it that way. And, really, neither did our parents or grandparents, who sometimes grumbled that having electric lights on the tree somehow didn’t seem right, and that a kid ought to be happy with some oranges and a few little toys stuffed into a sock. But then they bought us lots of toys (and socks and underwear – too thrilling) anyway, so hooray!

And if in this season we get off the metaphorical trail a bit, well, we have Linus and his familiarity with Saint Luke to remind us of the way.

-30-

Setting the Household Poetry Out on the Curb - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Setting the Household Poetry Out on the Curb

Listen, you
Are you through
With this week’s
Anapests?

They’ve got old
Full of mold
Let them go
Toss them so

Trochees
dated
Too long
Waited

And these
Iambs
Are stale
And pale

Now for those
Dactyls ripe
Skip the hype
Cook with tripe


A voice from deep within one’s conscience snorts,
“Less of it.”

Communion in a Sippy-Cup? - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Communion in a Sippy-Cup?

Of course not, no; it cannot be, and so
Now having splashed His Precious Blood upon
My coat sleeve and a communicant’s hands
From that rota I must withdraw my name

Where it should never have been anyway
Where I should never have been anyway
As out of place on the Altar as
A poor fourteener is among blank verse

          Extraordinary Minister of the Eucharist

That measured line and I are just too slow
So let the Cup (and the fourteener) go

In Search of a Lost Cat - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

In Search of a Lost Cat

We only knew that Java-Cat was gone
Apparently he slipped out through a door
We missed him sunning in his window-throne
We missed his poor attempts at a lion’s roar

We only know that Java-Cat is gone
We have walked the woods and called his name
At all hours, morning, day, night, and dawn
And this season is compromised by blame

We only know that Java-Cat is gone
Leaving us to mourn, and Chai-Cat all alone

The Existential Commie Black Beret with a Red Cross - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

The Existential Commie Black Beret with a Red Cross

“Well, if it’s a symbol, to hell with it.”

-Flannery O’Conner

We jokingly asked him if his beret
Was that of a medic in the Khmer Rouge

And he replied, oh, most sententiously:
“It can mean anything y’all want it to mean”

For he had once taken a theatre class

I Am Not Your... - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

I Am Not Your…

From an idea suggested by a student who was reading
I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter

V:

I am not your perfect Mexican daughter

And

I am not your mother
I am not your guru
I am not your American
I am not your Muslim
I am not your American Muslim
I am not your orphan
I am not your cracker
I am not your inspiration
I am not your wetback
I am not your thank-you-for-your-service token veteran
I am not your manic pixie dream girl
I am not your man
I am not your other
I am not your brown reporter
I am not your teachable moment
I am not your wife
I am not your friend
I am not your toy
I am not your guy
I am not your enemy
I am not your princess
I am not your data
I am not your Geisha doll
I am not your villain
I am not your father
I am not your evangelical
I am not your broom
I am not your savior
I am not your dirty secret
I am not your mirror image
I am not your victim
I am not your eyes
I am not your carpet ride
I am not your scapegoat
I am not your doormat
I am not your tragic trans narrative
I am not your leader

R:

Luby’s Cafeteria is having a special today

Aves Along a Texas Highway - a poem of gratititude

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Aves Along a Texas Highway

The drive home

Is measured in aves of gratitude
Not in time or distance or space or miles
But in aves of endless gratitude

She is alive, and will be well

Two Days Before Surgery - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Pre-Op

Waiting. Waiting. Clerks in cubicles
Fluorescent lights. And then drive somewhere else
And wait there. Plastic chairs. Fabric chairs. Chairs
Waiting. Benches there. Plastic chairs. Chairs. Chairs

Waiting. Waiting. More forms to complete. Chairs
Fluorescent lights. Clerks in cubicles. Chairs
“Will you step this way…” Chairs. Forms. Plastic chairs
Waiting. “Any other medications…?”

Waiting. Waiting. Stale mechanical air
Fluorescent lights. “And won’t you have a chair…”

I'm All About Me, Wonderful, Cute, Precious, Sensitive Me, Me, ME! - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

I’m All About Me, Wonderful, Cute, Precious, Sensitive Me, Me, ME!

Confessional me-oetry belongs
In the confessional; there, leave it there:
The adolescent tears, imagined slurs
And the very real offenses that hurt

Oh, let them go

Surrender there the me, the my, the I
And choose to write freedom in otherness
Embrace the sufferings of other men
And let them see the beauty in their hearts

Oh, take them in -

(Yes, yes, you are a most adorable elf
But must you write only about yourself?)

Little Oliver and Little Olivia in the Orange, Texas Denny's - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Little Oliver and Little Olivia

Small children skimming through the restaurant
Filching the waitresses’ tips unchallenged
Their idle smart-phone mothers think them cute
Ms. Fagins twisting their poor Olivers

Bumper-Sticker Theology - NOT poetry

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Bumper-Sticker Theology

V: God Said It. I Believe It. That Settles It.
R: What is “It?”

V: God is My Co-Pilot
R: Obviously not today. Both hands on the wheel, please, and put the MePhone down.

V: My Boss is a Jewish Carpenter
R: How does He sign your paycheck?

V: Put Christ Back into Christmas
R: He was never out of Christmas. Maybe your Christmas, but that was your choice.

V: Follow Me to The Bright Light Free Will Four Square Full Gospel Missionary Temple Outreach of the Lord Jesus Christ of the Lamb
R: No.

V: Republican. Conservative. Christian.
R: Why so many adjectives?

V: Faith Over Fear
R: Not the way you’re driving

V: Do You Follow Jesus This Close?
R: “Closely.”

V: Got Jesus?
R: Anyone who rewrites an advertising slogan – and without copyright attribution – to make a theological point has nothing to share.

V: Caution! Pro-Life Christian Gun Owner!
R: Irony eludes you.

V: Honk if You Love Jesus. Text While Driving if You Want to See Him.
R: Okay, that one’s pretty good.

V: Jesus Is My Air Bags
R: Thus air bags is Jesus?

V: Who Saved Who?
R: Whom