A Plumber's Assistant, a Nazi, and an Artificial Tree - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

A Plumber’s Assistant, a Nazi, and an Artificial Tree

 

Nazi Rally in Madison Square Garden, 10 February 1939

 

Isadore Greenbaum wanted to punch a Nazi

And so he charged – he didn’t get very far

And was beaten up by Real Americans (cough)

          (It took only four or five of ‘em)

And arrested by the New York City Police

 

One Nazi stopped kicking Greenbaum to set aright

An artificial tree that was about to fall

Which is a curiosity – what remnant of good

Was in that man that he kept a decoration in place?

 

Greenbaum is a hero in our nation’s history -

The tidy Nazi remains a mystery

I Hear America Whining - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

I Hear America Whining

 

The world’s fattest people, packin’ the pounds

Driving in to McDonald’s whenever struck by the mood

And then to the beer joint, drinking in rounds

While complaining about the price of food

Torah is Written with Flames - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Torah is Written with Flames

 

English letters are as orderly as a battle line

But Hebrew letters are flames in their shining shapes

Even on a printed page they dance in light

And with Light comes Truth; you can see God in them

 

For Hebrew letters are the Burning Bush

The fires of Mount Horeb, the Temple sacrifice

The light of a Talmud scholar’s study lamp

The light of Torah upon civilization

 

We don’t know our letters as well as we should

But God has written them upon our hearts

Driving Home After Work: "Thus Spake Zarathustra" on the Radio - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Driving Home After Work:

“Thus Spake Zarathustra” on the Radio

 

The first few bars must always remind us of

That space movie from the future long ago

With sophomores beating each other up

Or anyone trying to spell “Zarathustra “

 

Without looking it up; no spelling now

Driving into a drought-red setting sun

The vapours of chemicals, road tar, dust

Allergens drifting among the toxins

 

Poetry sorts meaning from chaos seeming -

Maybe not tonight (Sneeze!)

We are All Children When We Attempt Haiku

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

We are All Children When We Attempt Haiku

 

We all write Haiku

We’re not any good at it

But we honor the Shijin

SNL: Because Men Who Betray women are so Amusing

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

SNL: Because Men Who Betray Women are so Amusing

 

Re: Bang-Bang Baldwin

 

A man shoots a woman

For which another woman takes the fall

And Saturday Night Live

Is okay with it all

Cardinal Dolan Kisses King Herod's (Hands) - doggerel

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The High Priest Kisses King Herod’s (Hands)

 

His Eminence the Cardinal of New York

 

The High Priest kisses King Herod’s (hands)

And joins him for a feast of mockeries and lies

Giving the tyrant for his crimes a pass

Laughing at Truth as civilization dies

 

Over lobster and beef they pity the poor

While robed in white ties and evening gowns

And silken ecclesiastical couture

(One of them has visions of papal crowns)

 

Gluttony and scorn at a rented manse -

All that is missing is Salome’s dance

 

2024 Al Smith dinner raises record $10 million, but decorum takes a back seat: Photo gallery - The Dialog

The First Barn-Jacket Morning in Autumn - haiku

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The First Barn-Jacket Morning in Autumn

 

Dawn – windy and cold

The first barn-jacket morning

Wild geese singing south

The Kittens Come on Little Fog Feet - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The Kittens Come on Little Fog Feet

 

As Carl Sandburg did not say

 

At dawn: coffee and the Wordle and thoughts

The moon’s still full, but one last star winks out

The dew-bathed oaks drip onto a tricky word

Fog drifts in silence among the tricky light

 

A little paw stirs soft autumn’s molding leaves

And then two eyes appear, and a greeting tail

The forming image of the cat completes itself

And then another – two abandoned cats

 

These tiny orphans approach – and love begins

To them I pledge

They will never be hungry or lonely again

On Reading THREE HUNDRED TANG POEMS - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

On Reading Three Hundred Tang Poems

 

From The Jade Mountain they came

300 Tang dreams

Each in its well-ordered frame

Cups adrift in streams

 

The ancients speak to us still

Wisdom from the high

Each word a clear-flowing rill

Each a song, a sigh

 

 

Three Hundred Tang Poems

Translated and edited by Peter Harris

© 2009 by Peter Harris

Typeset in Somerset, England

Printed and bound on Possneck, Germany

Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets

New York: Knopf

Toronto: Penguin Random House

London: Everyman’s Library

An Autumn Flight - haiku

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

An Autumn Flight

 

A leaf fell, a leaf

A life of summer in flight

In bright golden flight

A Dixson Ticonderoga #2 Pencil from 1955 - poem and photograph

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

A Dixon Ticonderoga #2 Pencil from 1955

 

Neither plans nor bathroom vents last forever

The workmen pulled down the old one from ‘55

Amid a tumble of old nails and bits of wood:

A Dixon Ticonderoga #2

 

The yellow paint a little aged now

The green metal ring a little bit dull

The eraser now hardened beyond all use

The point well-sharpened with a pocketknife

 

What sturdy craftsman from the long ago

Measured out his work - I’d like to know

One Does Not Pre-Imagine Pre-Edward R. Murrow Pre-Babbling - not exactly a poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

One Does Not Pre-Imagine Pre-Edward R. Murrow Pre-Babbling

 

A Lesson in Clear Writing for Journalists

 

Hunker down, swath of destruction, hunker down, write your Social Security number on your arm, hunker down, eerie, hunker down, monster, hunker down, time ticking down / away, hunker down, pre-positioned, hunker down, pre-planned, hunker down, pre-need (and maybe even pre-hunker down), hunker down, pre-deployed, hunker down, spooky (and possibly pre-spooky), hunker down, snapped like matchsticks (“Daddy, what’s a matchstick?”), hunker down, doomed paradise, hunker down, paradise lost, hunker down, lost paradise, hunker down, apocalypse, hunker down, biblical, hunker down, storm of the century (again?), hunker down, doomed, hunker down, doomed, hunker down, pummeled, hunker down, pummeled, hunker down, pummeled, hunker down, power lines brightly bursting, hunker down, eerie calm, hunker down, eerie quiet, hunker down, birds chirping, hunker down, unexpected sparks, hunker down, hazards are unfolding, hunker down, street lamps waver, hunker down, one-two punch, hunker down, what we know, hunker down, hunker down, hunker down

A Treatise on the Burrowing Habits of Dachshunds - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

A Treatise on the Burrowing Habits of Dachshunds

 

A dachshund will burrow under the garden fence

For every dachshund thinks she is a wolf

A fearsome apex predator with a squeaky toy -

This is in the nature of dachshunds

 

A dachshund will burrow into your tightly-closed hand

Nosing out the doggie treat you have hidden there

A fearsome apex predator and omnivore -

This is in the nature of dachshunds

 

A dachshund bill burrow into your end-of-day lap

Watching both the television and the cats

A fearsome apex predator drooling on your book -

This is in the nature of dachshunds

 

A dachshund will burrow, borrow, beg, and bark

And in her foreshadowing of that better World to come

A dachshund will burrow deeply into your heart -

And love you forever

 

This is in the nature of dachshunds

 

And of you

We Are Offered Two Candidates for the Presidency - not nearly a poem (but then not nearly a valid choice)

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

 

We Are Offered Two Candidates for the Presidency

 

 

 I am afraid that one of them will win

Falling Into Truth - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

                                 Falling Into Truth

 

The fall of October’s leaves is nothing new

Except that it is – this leaf never fell before

And we were never here to watch this leaf

Because we and the leaf were somewhere else

 

Except that we were, we are, we will be

A little leaf, each of us, springtime-new

Then dancing merrily the summer through

Now floating gently into a winter’s sleep

 

A coverlet soft, a hymn, a night-light moon

Sleep - sleep – another spring is coming soon

WE ARE AMERICANS! We Buy Toilet Paper and Fight, Fight, Fight! - a sort-of poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Dock Workers’ Strike – BUY TOILET PAPER!

 

WE ARE AMERICANS!

 

Whenever threatened by enemies furry or domestic

By hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, storms

By shortages of food, water, and electric power

By aliens stalking us and eating our cats

By famine, fire, dispossession, revolution

 

WE BUY TOILET PAPER! WE ARE AMERICANS!

 

We are armed with our AK-16s and AR – 47s

Uniformed in our Wal-Mart camo from China

Size 89XXXXL-Lard-ass

And we will by God stand together as ONE -

And fight each other to the death for toilet paper!

 

Oh, and do you know Jesus?

His Check Engine Light is On - weak excuse for a poem but there's a nice fresh metaphor

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

His Check Engine Light is On

 

He came by today, a friend from long ago

“I haven’t seen you in a hamster’s age.”

“Yep, too long.”

“How ya doin’?”

“Good enough for government service.”

“Wanna beer?

“Thought you’d never ask.”

“Kids all doin’ good?”

“Yeah; real proud of ‘em. All grown and gone. Yours?”

“Oh, yeah, doin’ doin’ just fine.”

“Heard you was in th’ hospital last year.”

“Yep, made almost about three months of of it.”

“Too much fun.”

“Yep.”

“At our age…”

“Yep.”

“Kids these days.”

“Yep.”

“You okay now?”

“Better’n I deserve. You?”

“Well, you know, my Check Engine light’s on.”

 

 

Fresh metaphors are scarcer than crocodile feathers. Thanks, Chris.

Meditation and Merriment in Early Autumn - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Meditation and Merriment in Early Autumn

 

     We cannot stay young and strong for long -

     Both of us have grey hair at the temples

 

-Du Fu, “To the Recluse Wei the Eighth”

 

After summer rains the earth is still green

In the cooling breeze oak leaves dance happily

Old lawn chairs are the humble chairs of poets

Old lawn chairs are the glorious thrones of kings

 

The seasons remind us of our mortality

We sit and ponder the mysteries of change

We will die, to be replaced by other poets

Who will sit and ponder the mysteries of change

 

And still, whatever these deep thoughts betoken -

I need to mow, but the lawn mower is broken

 

 

Three Hundred Tang Poems

Translated by Peter Harris

London: Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets, 2009

An All-You-Can-Eat Buffet of Summer Bugs - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

An All-You-Can-Eat Buffet of Summer Bugs

 

(He was small in the spring)

 

When a tree frog moves up in the world

He becomes a fashionable window frog

No longer the pain of a rough tree bark life

But rather the pane of easy living

 

(He grew larger during the summer)

 

My bedroom window is his buffet

An all-he-can-eat buffet of bugs

Delicious summer bugs shared around

With an uncommon house gecko of style

 

(He’s really big now)

 

I look out at a hungry tree frog, you see

But now – is he looking hungrily in at me?

The Cosmic Inertia of a Six-Pound Dachshund - short poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The Cosmic Inertia of a Six-Pound Dachshund

 

Why is the resistance factor

In shifting a six-pound dachshund

Who does not want to be shifted

Greater than that of tons of iron?

Boeing, Studebaker, John Deere, and my Tupperware Coffee Cup - an elegy

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Boeing, Studebaker, John Deere, and my Tupperware™ Coffee Cup

 

 

“The days are gone…

When wonderful things were worked among them”

 

-The Seafarer, trans. Burton Raffel

 

 

My Tupperware coffee cup is as a chalice

With which I salute the beginning of each day

Cool, colorful, comforting craftsmanship

An honest, utilitarian work of art

 

We are told such things will be no more

“Made in USA” is “Factorum Romae”

Younger nations will find us camping among the ruins

Of works and arts we no longer comprehend

 

A colonial soldier might note that once we were a great people

His colonel will reply, “Tosh! They’re simple savages.”

 

Smart*ss Watch - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Smart*ss Watch

 

It clings to my wrist like a faithless friend

Good fun to pal around when we met

But getting just a little tiresome with time

Unreliable in his many promises

 

He fails to make the appointments that we set

Or note the weather or mark activities

I dunno; maybe he’s making time with that Timex

My long-time steady who could sure tick my tock

 

Sweet face, delicate hands - she’d been around, but

Maybe I was wrong – I think I’ll dial her

On Reading a Poem by Du Mu - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

On Reading a Poem by Du Mu

 

Everything is far away

China is ever so far away

The dynasties are far away

A golden dragon might fly us there

 

The moon is across the river

The blue-black river in the mist

A fishing boat is tied to the gate

The water-gate of our inn

 

What do they mean, the moon and boat?

Maybe the moon and the boat mean nothing

They simply are; they are themselves

Or perhaps we mean the moon and boat

 

Because of Du Mu and his words

The moon and the boat are forever

The blue-black river is forever

In reading of them so are we

 

 

“A Night at the Inn While Travelling”

Three Hundred Tang Poems

Translated by Peter Harris

London: Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets, 2009

Hobbit Day (short poem)

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Hobbit Day

 

22 September

 

I read that today is Hobbit Day

On the autumn equinox every year

I was both delighted and surprised

Even though in our shared adventures, dear friends,

 

Every day is Hobbit Day

I first read The Hobbit in Viet-Nam in a discarded paperback I found at the Station Hospital in DaNang

Someday Such Men Will Live in Palaces - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Such Men Will Someday Live in Palaces

 

Cf. Saint Matthew 11

 

I am only a visitor here, unqualified to speak

Of the incessant sufferings of men of God

Who may not go beyond the compassing wire

To see a reed shaken with the wind

 

For they sometimes are wind-struck reeds themselves

Planted for a time in this desert of penance

But they are men, and do not easily shake -

When the bitter wind blows they stand up straight

 

They do not raise their fists against the wind

But rather their hearts in manly strength and faith

 

Such men will someday live in palaces

At Rao's Bakery - Coffee, Croissants, Children, and the Constitution - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

At Rao’s Bakery - Coffee, Croissants, Children, and the Constitution

 

At dawn - hot coffee and a fresh croissant

A family grouping at the table next

And a little child whispering to her mother

The Preamble to the Constitution

 

I turned and said, “Oh, I want to hear that again”

Proudly the little girl stood beside her mom

And in a strong, clear voice began: “We the People…”

 

 

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

 

 

I can’t do that anymore. Can you?

 

The child certainly earned an ‘A’ today

This coffee / croissant / American day

A Road Crew Singing "Red, Red Wine" - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

A Road Crew Singing “Red, Red Wine”

 

A road crew of only two riding with the fill

In the bed of a county pickup truck

Patching potholes in the late summer heat

Singing “Red, Red Wine” over and over

 

“Red, Red, Wine”

 

One takes off his sweat-soaked striped shirt

A voice from the cab tells him to put it back on

They stop and take shovels and out they leap

To shovel with the shovels fill into holes

 

“Red, Red Wine”

 

They sing those three words over and over

The only words of that song they know

 

“Red, Red Wine.”

 

On a road cratered with holes and emptied dreams

Move the Metaphor; Move the Needle - short poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Moving the Metaphor

 

“Moving the needle” isn’t moving anymore

As a metaphor it is out of the groove

 

Although politics are spinning at 78

The needle is quite worn down, and so am I

If Mr. Vance Says You Ate Someone's Pet Cat Then Obviously You ate Someone's Pet Cat - not really a poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

If Mr. Vance Says You Ate Someone’s Pet Cat

Then Obviously You Ate Someone’s Pet Cat

 

 

“Show me the man and I will show you the crime”

 

-many attributions, usually to Lavrentia Beria, sometimes to Stalin

 

 

"In Springfield, they're eating the dogs…They're eating the cats.

They're eating the pets of the people that live there.”

 

-Presidential candidate Donald Trump, 10 September 2024

 

 

"If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do." 

 

-Vice presidential candidate J. D. Vance on CNN, Sunday, 15 September 2024

 

 

Little children in school are threatened with bombs

 

Because someone said that someone said

That someone ate someone else’s pet cat

 

Patients in hospitals are threatened with bombs

 

Because someone said that someone said

That someone ate someone else’s pet cat

 

City office workers are threatened with bombs

 

Because someone said that someone said

That someone ate someone else’s pet cat

 

A Lutheran university is threatened with bombs

 

Because someone said that someone said

That someone ate someone else’s pet cat

 

A few Proud Boys [sic] stumble around in the street

 

Because two Heroic Men of Destiny said

That someone ate someone else’s pet cat

I’m Proud of My Childless Cat Lady Daughter - two lines to rebuke certain stuffy old politicians

 Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

I’m Proud of My Childless Cat Lady Daughter

 

Some call her a childless cat lady

At work the staff call her “Doctor”

The Terrifying Creepy Chilling Iconic Sniper’s Lair - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The Terrifying Creepy Chilling Iconic Sniper’s Lair

 

Some call it the sniper’s lair, some the sniper’s nest

Some call it a creepy lair

Some surely call it chilling and iconic

Because to InterGossip posters everything

Is chilling, iconic, jaw-dropping, and a bombshell

 

It’s just a sad, sagging old chain-link fence

With some sad old man’s wannabe G.I. Jerk

Army wannabe soldier-toys hanging from it

The Kalashjackov was real enough

The poor fool’s mind, not so much

Runes Recently Discovered - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Runes Recently Discovered

 

We have mysterious runic messages still

Appearing this morning – there, on the road – see them?

Some say these irregular scrawls mark utilities

But you know, there are Wee Folk in these woods

 

 

15 September 2024

If Li-Po Were my Houseguest - quatrain

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

If Li-Po Were my Houseguest

 

If Li-Po were my houseguest tonight

I’d probably have to drag him inside

After he’d been drinking to the moon’s silver light

And heave him into his bed with a gentle chide

We Don't Understand, But We Hope - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

We Don’t Understand, But We Hope

 

We don’t understand it, but we hope in it

The change from that which is to that which isn’t

Or is the change back again and no change at all

Which maybe means the blood and pain remain

 

We recline in a rented banquet room

We follow in fear along a narrow street

We watch in horror upon a death-haunted hill

We are called to an empty tomb which isn’t empty

 

We are called to a dented Cup which also isn’t empty

(Maybe $200 at the church supply store)

Cradling a Mystery from before time

A plate of bread that looks like bread but isn’t

 

The Altar is where the arc of history bends

 

Mystery

 

Who among the servers did the dishes

And did she accidentally drop a Cup?

 

(That part’s not important)

I Had a Flat Tire Along the Silk Road - not-a-Tang-quatrain

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

I Had a Flat Tire Along the Silk Road

 

A bandit-princess stole my trail-lost heart

To play with carelessly one idle day

She teased me a road sketched on her magic chart

But I had a flat tire along the way

In reading Li Po (variant pronunciations and spellings in English) and others, and trying to understand Tang quatrains, well, I don’t understand much. The forms and content are so varied as to make the term almost undefinable to my simple English soul. But nature, irony, loss, and separation are apparently common, as well as rhyme, so I took them and iambic pentameter for this not-really-a-Tang-quatrain.