To the Privileged Youth of Columbia University - more of an intemperate hissy-fit than a poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

“Anglo-Saxon Students Would Not Like to Be Taught by a Jew”

 

Cited in

Stanley Kunitz Lyrics, Songs, and Albums | Genius

 

To the Privileged Youth of Columbia University:

 

As a child of situational poverty

I am so grateful for all my Jewish teachers

 

Including

 

Moses

Joshua

Jeremiah

Samuel

David

Solomon

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph

Saint Peter and the others in The Twelve

Saint Paul

Elie Weisel

 

Chaim Potok

Herman Wouk

Leon Uris

Franz Kafka

Leonard Cohen

Anne Frank

Bernard Malamud

Isaac Bashevis Singer

Philip Roth

Osip Mandelstam

 

Saul Bellow

Isaac Asimov

Woody Allen

Edna Ferber

Yip Harburg

George Cukor

Oscar Hammerstein

Alan Lerner

Joseph Brodsky

Rob Morrow

 

Carl Reiner

Rod Serling

Franz Werfel

Alan Arkin

Claire Bloom

Leonard Nimoy

Chaim Topol

Ed Asner

Mel Brooks

Peter Falk

Werner Klemperer

 

Jack Klugman

Walter Matthau

Tony Randall

Mel Torme

John Banner

Kirk Douglas

Lorne Greene

Eli Wallach

Sam Wanamaker

Morey Amsterdam

 

Leo Genn

Otto Preminger

Jack Benny

Leslie Howard

Ernst Lubitsch

Cecil B. DeMille

Mortimer Adler

Allen Bloom

Harold Bloom

Irving Berlin

 

Boris Pasternak

Emil Ludwig

Eric Wolfgang Korngold

Elmer Bernstein

Max Steiner

George Gershwin

Dimitri Tiomkin

Samuel Fuller

Alexander Korda

Zoltan Korda

 

Emeric Pressburger

Erich von Stroheim

Billy Wilder

William Wyler

Fred Zinnemann

J. J. Abrams

Peter Bogdanovich

Michael Curtiz

Stanley Donen

Stanley Kramer

 

Howard Caine

Leon Askin

Robert Clary

Dinah Shore

Stephen Sondheim

Volodymyr Zelinsky

Simon Schama

Louise Gluck

Siegfried Sassoon

Isaac Rosenberg

 

Vasily Grossman

Stanley Kubrick

Viktor Frankl

Jonah

Steven Spielberg

Leonard Bernstein

 

 

 

And more, so many more, a cloud of witnesses

Whose names are written in gold on a scroll in Heaven

 

But somehow, in this world of beauty and truth

And humanity’s aspirations to the good

All you have found are bullhorns, trash fires, chants

Clinched fists, obscenities, lies, and shrieking hate

Humility Through the Looking Glass - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Humility Through the Looking Glass

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 22

 

My glass surprises me; it tells the truth

“Who is that old man?” I ask myself

And it rebukes me for that foolish question

I must admit to the glass that I am old

 

But when I turn and look outside myself

And greet the happy sun and breathe the dawn

Of a day rich with possibilities

And think of you – then I am young again

 

I tell my glass it is a silly glass

And it tells me I am a silly ass

Marcus Aurelius Down at the Auto Repair - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Marcus Aurelius Down at the Auto Repair

 

Marcus Aurelius down at the auto repair –

Now there’s an image, him being an emperor and all

One of those philosophers who think about stuff

Who ask questions and read and write and stuff

 

If a man complains about the cost of new tires:

          Meditations V.9 – “Be not unhappy, or discouraged…”

And

          II.4 – “Remember how long you have been putting off these things…”

 

If a warranty has expired:

          VI.53 – “Accustom yourself to listen carefully…”

And

          VII.24 – “A scowling look is quite unnatural.”

 

If the engine is blown:

          X.33 – “Now it is not given to a cylinder to move everywhere…”

And

          VII.54 – “…it is in your power to accept…your present condition…”

 

 

And with that, Marcus steps outside for a cigarette.

 

 

(Many quotations attributed to Marcus Aurelius are bogus; these have been verified.)

Kirbyville Automotive and a Roman Philosopher

 On his large, electrical sign at Kirbyville Automotive my friend Shannon Davis posted this quote from Marcus Aurelius:

“When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.”

One does not imagine that quotations from a Roman philosopher and emperor are commonly found on roadside advertising in East Texas.

Update: Apparently Marcus Aurelius did not say this at all.  This is just another misquote circling around on the InterGossip and believed by people like me who tend to trust maybe a little too much.

But I wish the man had said it anyway.

But Truly Write - poem

 

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

But Truly Write

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 21

 

…poems are gatherings of words, in good order, in simple order, plain and appealing.

 

-Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook, p. 77

 

A line of contemporary prosetry

Is a catalogue of florid structures and worn-out cliches

Pancaked with adverbs and tiresome metaphors

Flung down in a confusion of unconnected gasps

 

If you have something to say, then say it

Then tidy up the lines – like washing your face

With soap and water and a cotton towel

And then admire the sunlit, fresh-air truth

 

Craft your lines of transcendent poetry

As clean sharp-edg’ed truth in well-scrubbed words

County Road 400, an Extension of the County Dump - photograph

Shakespeare, Venus, and the Travelling Salesman - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Shakespeare, Venus, and the Travelling Salesman

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 19

 

Dear Will,

 

About your obsession with mortality:

Transitions and death are essentials in life

And we must face the obsequies of ashes or earth

But there are other topics upon which to write

 

Let us not consider funerals today

Let us sit upon the lawn and smoke our pipes

And write about new leaves on ancient oaks

(You’ll pen far better lines; you always do)

 

Today we’ll ignore our own mortality

And tell inappropriate jokes about Venus

          and a travelling salesman

I Will Not Compare You to a Summer's Day - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

I Will Not Compare You to a Summer’s Day

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 18

 

I will not compare you to a summer’s day

Summer is heat, humidity, and drought

A disapproving sun burning the earth

A dusty, weedy landscape fit only for snakes

 

Instead, you are a perfect autumn day

A day of good old sweaters and leafy walks

Invigorating winds all fresh from the north

And inside, cups of cocoa and a merry fire

 

I will not compare you to a summer’s day

Your autumn is far more lovely and temperate

Time is not a Bloody Tyrant - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Time is not a Bloody Tyrant

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 16

 

Time cannot be a tyrant; it is but a created thing

Like bluebonnets, butterflies, and bumblebees

Painted with pencil or pen by a Hand divine

And set in place as a measure of being

 

Time cannot be our enemy; we live along it

And like the ground it stabilizes us in place

And like our eyes it gives us vision to see

Each other in our Spirited nobility

 

Life is not what we take nor what is taken

But what we bring -

Time cannot be a tyrant; it is but a created thing

A Dollar Box of Crayolas - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

A Dollar Box of Crayolas®™

 

I wanted the biggest box of Crayolas

I had to have the biggest box of Crayolas

I could build worlds with the biggest box of Crayolas

I needed that biggest box of Crayolas!

 

But the wise voice of situational poverty spoke:

“I am not spending a dollar on a box of Crayolas.”

 

The biggest box of Crayolas is now about four dollars

Allowing for inflation, much cheaper than in ‘55

I should go buy the biggest box of Crayolas

Maybe I can find a Big Chief Tablet®™ to go with it

On the Happy Occasion of Completing a Wordle in Two Lines - a pastiche of Shelley

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

On the Happy Occasion of Completing a Wordle in Two Lines

 

(Scribbled with a little help from Shelley)

 

Look upon my Verbs, ye Mighty, and despair!

No more lines remain. Round the decay

Of my online Competition, of vocabulary bare

The lone and level squares stretch far away

A Lucky Dachshund's Foot - doggerel (with a real dog!)

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

A Lucky Dachshund’s Foot

 

Luna-Dog sat with a stick in her jaws

The sort of thing a little dachshund gnaws

(chewing everything is one of a puppy’s laws)

But a look in her eyes gave me some pause –

 

It wasn’t a stick; it was one of a bunny’s paws!

 

Yuck.

 

Time for church.

 

-The End-

Methinks I Have Astronomy - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Methinks I Have Astronomy

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 14

 

Monday, 8 April 2024

 

Methinks I have astronomy; it must be so:

Today the moon eclipsed the jovial sun

And through the clouds and rain a darkness ruled

But with my little car’s headlights I backed it down

 

Forswearing lenses I watched the world instead

The springtime greens darkening almost to grey

And boiling clouds darkening almost to black

And from the thunder rain wreaking rivulets

 

Methinks I have astronomy; it must be so:

I see beyond this darkness your eternal glow

But Who Else Could You Be? - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

But Who Else Could You Be?

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 13

 

O that I were myself? Of course I am

Who else could I possibly want to be?

No one rocks a morning mirror like me

(and probably no one wants to do so)

 

My beloved mother said I was special

(I think that was a compliment – maybe?)

And you’re pretty nifty yourself, you know -

I like the cut of your metaphorical jib

 

LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER An Afternoon LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER Walk Along Beer Can Road and County Dump Extension LIGHT A FINE PILSNER BEER

   

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

An Afternoon LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER Walk

Along Beer Can Road and County Dump Extension

 

Dewberries LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER sassafras seedlings LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER Virginia creeper LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER pine cones LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER crumbling oak leaves from last summer  LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER winds sighing in the pine tops LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER a little plum tree LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER Canada goldenrod LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER poplar LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER swamp oak LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER mourning doves LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER slanting evening sunlight LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER Chickasaw plum LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER nightshade LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER red spider lilies LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER a skink bluebonnets LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER clouds in the west LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER spiderwort LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER a long eared rabbit loping across the road LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER sorrel LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER a feather from a bluebird LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER waving field grasses LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER the neighbor’s cows browsing in peace LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER a crane flying up from a pond LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER crows fussing at me from the woods LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER…

I Do Not Count the Clock - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

I Do Not Count the Clock

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 12

 

I do not count the clock when I’m outside

I do not count the leaves, fallen and sere

I do not count the silver in your hair

Though I celebrate them all the same

 

(But not the clock; there is no love in clocks)

 

These golden days have beauties of their own

Their richness born from the promises of spring

The culminations of summer’s growing days

Crowned with silver by the first falling frost

 

I do not count the clock when I’m outside

I do not count the clock when I’m with you

So Fast Thou Grow'st - Cf. Shakespeare Sonnet 11

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

 

So Fast Thou Grow’st

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 11

 

I put something out there in the universe…

 

-Chris-in-the-Morning, Northern Exposure

 

 

You will make something beautiful in any event

Even if only a silly ceramic frog

Holding a perfectly pointless umbrella

Upon the tree-stump where you feed the birds

 

Your silly ceramic frog will someday break

The stump will rot away into the earth

The birds will live through their generations

And you will be but whisperings in the wind

 

But you make life beautiful in any event:

It is a forever that you put into the universe

Make Thee Another Self - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Make Thee Another Self

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 10

 

I thought I heard you saying it was a pity...I never had any children. But you're wrong. I have. Thousands of them. Thousands of them...and all boys.

 

-Mr. Chips in Goodbye, Mr. Chips

 

After the Order of Saint Joseph, all men are fathers

Commanded by God to protect all children

Permitted by God to protect all children

Empowered by God to protect all children

 

After the Order of Saint Joseph, all men are teachers

With fishin’ rod and book and whittlin’ knife

With garden and plow and fixing what needs to be fixed

With clean and manly speech, example, and work

 

All men have children, thousands of them, because

After the Order of Saint Joseph, all men are fathers

Are We All Prisoners of War? - poem - Sailor's Creek 1865

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Are We All Prisoners of War?

 

My great-grandfather was a tailor, they say

Stern of mien, impeccable in his dress

I have one picture of him, from 1912

White-bearded, thin, resting on the family porch

 

My great-grandfather was made a prisoner of war

At Sailor’s Creek, for he had found the wrong side

And the government found his children for other wars

The Aisne in 1918, Zwickau in 1945, the Vam Co Tay in 1970

 

There are few tailors now, but lots of soldiers -

Maybe we are all prisoners of war

 

Cf. Sailor’s Creek / Sayler’s Creek / Saylor’s Creek, 6 April 1865.

 

One Pleasing Note Do Sing (Shakespeare and a Washing Machine) - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

One Pleasing Note Do Sing

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 8

 

V: Where is my shirt; I can’t find it anywhere!

R: Did you look in the closet? In the dryer?

V: Yes! And I put it in the washing machine yesterday!

R: You didn’t tell me! I didn’t wash clothes yesterday!

 

V: You always wash clothes on Saturday!

R: That’s a pattern, not an immutable rule!

V: You should have told me that you didn’t wash!

R: Am I my husband’s keeper? Have you not eyes?

 

V: Can we not with one pleasing note sing?

R: Can you not sing to the washing machine?

The United States Postal Service Opens Your Packages for You - photograph

 No Extra Charge for Opening Your Packages Before Delivery

To a Political Friend Who Politically Accused Me of Having My Head in the Sand Politically - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

 

To a Political Friend Who Politically Accused Me

 of Having My Head in the Sand Politically

 

 

Our lives no longer feel ground under them

 

-Mandelstam, “The Stalin Epigram”

 

 

I have no illusions

 

I have no solutions

 

I have Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump

 

          (And occasional basal cell carcinomas)

 

I can be silenced in fear

 

By their suicide sides

 

But I have a brain

 

          (“…an ill-favoured thing, sir, but mine own.”)

 

And so to them

 

I am dangerous

 

If I am noticed at all

His Sacred Majesty - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

His Sacred Majesty

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 7

 

We are told that we mustn’t worship the sun

Nor even truth, but rather each shiny new toy

Powered by batteries and our unhappy wants

Endlessly discharging our minds and souls

 

We are told that we mustn’t worship the sun

But rather the mechanical fabrications of our hands

Upon the orders of our Lilith-draped masters

To STEM the possibility of thought

 

We probably shouldn’t worship the sun

But we are still free to think highly of him

Thank God That's Over - short poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Thank God That’s Over

 

St. Therese of Lisieux is said to have said

After an especially long liturgy

“Thank God that’s over!”

And who am I to argue with a saint?

Make Worms Thy Heir - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Make Worms Thy Heir

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 6

 

Let us speak of the utility of worms

There is much in them, including our ancestors

But without them we might not live at all

They enrich the earth, even with our earth

 

All children are our heirs; in them we live

They are God’s treasures, and we must treasure them

After the Order of Saint Joseph, and when we pass

Our children will say that God is passing by

 

Let us praise the nobility of worms

Reminding us that we are glorious dust

Is There No Sulky Gas? - doggerel

 Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Is There No Sulky Gas?

To the dentist this morning but woe and alas

Only a cleaning - no laughing gas!

 

Ha, ha, ha!

Time Will Play the Tyrant - poem

 

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Time Will Play the Tyrant

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 5

 

Time need not play the tyrant; we have tyrants enough

But it is true that we must go away

When time and God say we have played our game

And must withdraw into another world

 

We sneak past time with our words and songs

Arcing over mortality with truth

Distilling each day into poetry

That lives long after our hearts and hands are stilled

 

Time need not play the tyrant, for tyrants only bluff

And their poor poisons with their masters die

Unthrifty Loveliness - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Unthrifty Loveliness

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 4

 

I had told her how beautiful she was

(she knew that through the mirror, mirror on the wall)

For her bold eyes were upon herself

As she magicked with lipstick and mascara

 

I had hoped her blush was for me to gaze upon

Her hair, her perfect lips, her slender hips

Over candlelight at the Starlight Roof

Then the telephone, not nature, called her away

 

I had told her how beautiful she was

That sports-car guy, far handsomer than I

Had said so too

The Discount-Store Patriot and the Bible Salesman - rhyming couplet

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The Discount-Store Patriot and the Bible Salesman

 

Two greedy old men a-shakin’ their Jesus cup -

No, son, for that I ain’t a-standin’ up

Look in Thy Glass - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Look in Thy Glass

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 3

 

I look in the mirror and ask, “Who is that old man?”

They said I favored my mother when I was young

Red hair and freckles, and an impish grin

But later they said I had to become a man

 

She had her April, and then so did I

And there are Aprils enough for everyone

They are not my Aprils, but they will do

Every April reflects our youth back to us

I look in the mirror and ask, “Who is that old man?”

I miss my mother

 

Battle Stations Aboard the Bismarck - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Battle Stations Aboard the Bismarck

 

When general quarters sounded that morning in May

Did a seventeen-year-old apprentice cook

Rushing to his topside battle station

But remembering the chief’s daily admonitions

 

And the way his mother kept her kitchen clean

Notice on a galley table a speck of dust

And pause to brush it away

When general quarters sounded that morning in May

A Tattered Weed - poem

 

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

A Tattered Weed

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 2

 

Scene i: a lawn chair beneath a shady oak

 

Okay, sure, sometimes I feel like a tattered weed

After my morning’s work, creaking into my chair

And reaching for my iced tea and a book

Sipping on both for a vision of youth

 

My Hercule Poirot body is made almost young again

By strolling through Arden with Rosalind and Orlando

(Only for a while; they would much rather be alone…)

And then the iced tea tells me of Ceylon

 

Okay, sure, sometimes I feel like a tattered weed

But sometimes - forever young

The World's Fresh Ornaments - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The Word’s Fresh Ornaments

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 1

 

The world’s fresh ornaments – children at play

In a springtime glow of iridescent greens

A sweet Creation scene of little bare feet

And puppies’ paws scampering across soft lawns

 

Bold pirate ships patrol the honeybees’ pool

And mockingbirds offer flights to the tops of the oaks

A line of waving crocus borders this Narnia

Oh, could there ever be a happier world?

 

The sun, the green, the bees, the endless day

The world’s fresh ornaments – children at play

Look at How Much Sevin Dust is NOT in the Container - photographs

                                                      Brand-new container just now opened

Sevin (r) is good stuff, but while we admire the biologists and scientists who make gardening and food production possible, the alligator-shoe boys in marketing are not to be trusted.