The Spirit of Art - very short poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The Spirit of Art

 

Is

 

The good, the true, the beautiful

 

Not

 

The sullen, the resentful, the envious

Smoke Drifting Across America - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Smoke Drifting Across America

 

“Zionists Don’t Deserve to Live” 

Columbia campus protester apologises for 'kill Zionists' comments (bbc.com)

 

Ash-grey smoke drifts across America

 

          “That’s a false narrative”

          “That’s a false narrative”

          “That’s a false narrative”

 

The narrative is metaphorical; the smoke is real -

Ashes and smoke from Auschwitz, from burning Jews

The Governor of South Dakota Takes a Shot at the Vice-Presidency - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 The Governor of South Dakota Takes a Shot at the Vice-Presidency

                        Who is South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem? Dog controversy, more to know (usatoday.com)

Blazing a trail of death and bloody fur

She shot her dog, her goat, three horses too

Somehow they failed her, and so, we must concur  

She executed them in a bloody coup

When her family's animals disappoint her

She shoots them; she feels that’s her duty to do

Silencing each substandard bark, bleat, and purr -

Now what if she becomes disappointed in 

                                                you?

Every Morning Begins with Sunlit Hope - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Every Morning Begins with Sunlit Hope

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 33

 

Every morning begins with sunlit hope

Perhaps an echo of the Passover seder

“Why is this morning unlike all other mornings?”

Because this day our hope will be fulfilled

 

But it isn’t

 

The arrows of the pharaoh darken the sun

His beatings and executions extinguish light

We work and sweat and bleed, and are still found wanting

We take to our beds in exhaustion, and we dream

 

Next year in Jerusalem

 

Every morning begins with sunlit hope -

Maybe tomorrow will be the dawn of freedom

 

Let's Meet Again Next Week or Next Life - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Let’s Meet Again Next Week or Next Life

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 32

 

To ask to be remember’ed is good

Both for the humble asker and for the asked -

For both will pause to consider mortality

And both will pause to enjoy the happy now

 

We understand this world will pass away

That all created things must collapse and die

And yet we are promised them back again

And each other too, in saecula saeculorum

 

Then, yes, please, do remember me, if you would -

To ask to be remember’ed is good

While Clenching Their Fisties - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

While Clenching Their Fisties

 

Old men do not now argue politics

At the coffee table in the grocery store

Old men, like some university students

Simply say what they are ordered to say

 

By voices bellowing from Orwellian telescreens

 

While clenching their Trumpy-grumpy fisties

When to the Sessions of Sweet, Noisy Thought - poem

 

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

When to the Sessions of Sweet, Noisy Thought

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 30

 

I don’t need to summon up remembrances

They simply wander in uninvited

In death just as they did in life, good friends

To sit together with our jokes, our drinks, our pipes

 

We still argue with each other, our minds

So familiar after all those happy years

Thesis, antithesis, and Dunhill tobacco

Ice cubes rattling in the soft summer dusk

 

Lewis and Tolkien show up late, stern Milton too

Remembrances? Not really – we are forever here

 

 

In Moscow, 1937, during the annual Soviet writers’ congress—a time of severe purges—Pasternak took a courageous stand. Amidst the dull, regime-prescribed speeches praising Leninist-Stalinism, he did something extraordinary. He recited Sonnet 30 by William Shakespeare:

 

“When to the sessions of sweet silent thought,
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear times’ waste.”

 

The impact was profound. All two thousand writers in the hall rose to their feet, joining Pasternak in this act of defiance. The number “30” became a symbol of resistance, a testament to the enduring power of poetry and memory.

 

Introducing a Sunday Series from Douglas Murray: Things Worth Remembering | The Free Press (thefp.com)

 

Those Who Straddle the Temple Walls - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Those Who Straddle the Temple Walls

 

“Choose you this day whom you will serve”

 

-Joshua 24:15

 

For those who are desperate to be accepted as cool –

 

You cannot straddle the walls of the holy Temple

You cannot straddle the barbed wire of Auschwitz

You cannot straddle the banks of the Red Sea

You cannot choose two sides and call them one

 

Since the Hitler time there have not been two sides

 

You cannot wear both the tallit and the snakeskin

You cannot break bread with your grinning executioners

You cannot dance to circled drums and bullhorn chants

You cannot forswear your family murdered in the gas chambers

 

Since the burning time there have not been two sides

 

He who chooses the fashionable, the clever, the cool

Chooses to be a kapo, a funktionshaftling

His people will despise him, so too his masters

                   (Who in the end will kill him in his shame)

And his memory will be a curse, not a blessing

 

But you –

 

Choose bravely so that your name will be written in The Book

And written in the hearts of your proud descendants

 

When Fortune and Men’s Eyes are in Disgrace - poem

 

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

When Fortune and Men’s Eyes are in Disgrace

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 29

 

A good thing with being disgraced in men’s eyes

Is that that mostly they don’t notice you at all

As a nobody you are but a shadow at best

Or an accessory in their empty scenes

 

If they don’t notice you, then you are not disgraced

And you have better things to do anyway:

Children to raise, songs to sing, books to write

Each day’s honest labor at your honest craft

 

The resolution is

 

That some men might be disgraced in your eyes

That is, if you choose to notice them at all

And Why is There a Police Car in Your Driveway? - poem

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

And Why is There a Police Car in Your Driveway?

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 28

 

The days are a mess and so are the nights

Each day is burdened with labors unrelenting

Toils industrial and toils emotional

Everyone seems to want a bite of you

 

At night the stresses follow you to bed:

The boss’s write-ups seem to poison the pillows

The unpaid bills, the clapped-out car, the fears

The children’s report cards, the broken washer

 

You give life your all – you work, you struggle, you strive -

And why is there a cop car in your drive?

These Here So-Called Schools These Days - doggerel

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

These Here So-Called Schools These Days

  

“Lead, Follow, or Get the H*** Out of the Way” 

-a sign on the bulkhead in recruit training

  

Those coffee-shop cynics drowning in dejection:

Some of them wallow in existential abjection

And some meet every hope with an objection

Or with a sneering, irrelevant deflection

 

          But I did something other than b**** and moan

 

I voted in my local school board election

Weary with Dachshunds - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Weary with Dachshunds

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 27

 

With an improving book I go to bed

                   (as P. G. Wodehouse said)

And two improving dachshunds on my pillow

                   (as Wodehouse almost said)

They then begin their journey at my head

Wriggling down to my feet and back again

 

They slurple messily from my bedside glass

And crumple up my copy of Hercule Poirot

Neither slows: they lick my nose, they tickle my toes

And will they finally doze? Nobody knows!

 

But

 

When comes the midnight moon, then all in a cuddly heap

Their little doggie noses snuffle at last in sleep

The President of Columbia University is Saddened - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The President of Columbia University is Saddened

 

“Why must we fight for the right to live, over and over, each time the sun rises?”

― Leon Uris, Exodus

 

Jews are not welcome in the cool universities

The laboratories are shut against them

Libraries, classrooms, meetings, coffee shops

Here, sir, the bullhorn rules (Hey! Hey! Ho! Ho!)

 

Administrators smile weakly and shrug:

We cannot guarantee your safety here

The Merovingian president says she is saddened

That Jewish students are harassed and beaten

 

The halls of academia are lined with swastikas

And 7 October is remembered with glee

The Golden Gate of Jerusalem - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The Golden Gate of Jerusalem

 

The Gate of Repentance

 

The Golden Gate captures the evening moon

Which shines upon the road a convict walked

At the rubbled base a snake pursues a rat

          a very troubled rat

While Roman squaddies stand the middle watch

 

The Gate of Mercy

 

The Golden Gate captures the morning sun

Whence the Messiah comes, or comes again

He is the Gate Himself, the Golden Gate

He comes from the Mount of Olives in golden light

 

The Golden Gate has been blocked for centuries -

This will not always be so

 

A Nation of Couch Schlubs Blames the Chinese Communists - doggerel

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

A Nation of Couch Schlubs Blames the Chinese Communists

 

A question may be brought about ownership

And the turgid content of the daily trawl

But even before the question of censorship

          One must ask:

Why is anyone on TikTok at all?

The Great Gate of Kiev - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The Great Gate of Kiev

 

Mussorgsky’s The Great Gate of Kiev is no hymn to the people of Ukraine (telegraph.co.uk)

 

If there was never a Great Gate of Kiev

Except in Mussorgy’s triumphal hymn

There ought to have been, and there will be some day

Trophied with captured Putinista flags

 

For now

 

Wherever a Ukrainian enters Kiev

By rail or bus, or in worn-out army boots

He is the Gate, the Knight’s Gate, the Golden gate

With a chapel and the most wonderful bells

 

And the pictures at an exhibition

Will be ikons of Ukrainian martyrs

You are the Poem - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

You are the Poem

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 24

 

A camera time-stops images as electrical codes

Formed by Kyanon Kabushiki Gaisha

And if that is not high art, then what is?

But codes are not you in your many dimensions

 

Your dimensions of perceptions and being

Your thoughts and happiness, your eternal soul

Your way of comforting a rescue kitten

Your way of writing verse and tasting  soup

 

A camera time-stops images as electrical codes

But you are a living spring of happy odes

Stammering Before an Audience of One - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Stammering Before an Audience of One

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 23

 

As imperfect poets upon the page

We scribble limping iambs and push them to go

To an impatient audience waiting downstage

For well-spoken truth in a metric flow

 

A poem, a play - each is a rite of love

Humbly offered like an awkward child’s bouquet

Go on, then, give the rhymes a little shove

Even though your feet, your tongue, your hopes – all are clay

 

And if gratitude and admiration are in her eyes

She has granted you the worthiest prize!

 

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