25 June: Saint William, Abbot

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

25 June: Saint William, Abbot

Saint William, Abbot, had a rabbit, who

One hot day chose to chew the Abbot’s shoe.

Studies Show

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Studies Show

Loud advertisements claim that studies show

The need to buy their products, don’t you know:
Expensive slimming creams that trim one’s hips
Vitaminized water to pass one’s lips
Soft magic creams to block the cancerous sun
And scientific pills to make life fun.

But

We’re never told who studied what, the name

Of that mysterious scholar without fame,
What university in which he worked
What secret corporate labs in which he lurked
What validation he could bestow -

We’re only told that studies show.

An Old, Old Colossus

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

An Old, Old Colossus

News item: corpses of stowaways found

aboard a container ship

Foul darkness, stench, and silence thus entomb
Dead made-in-China hopes inside a box,
Lost souls upon, within, a breathless sea
Among the video games and Christmas toys,
The sneakers that one cannot live without
And fashions fresh from blooded tiny hands
In squalid concrete blocks of suicide.
True bills of lading note the paperwork,
Promissory notes of neatly typed doom,
Free on board, but payable upon our deaths:
The tired, the poor, the huddled corpses wait,
Decaying in an airless metal box,
Afloat upon a golden harbor where
A grim, badged functionary, uniformed
In body-armor and tactical gear,
There lifts his lamp inside the darkened door,
And mourns.

The Staretz

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Staretz

In middle life the sunflower bends its head,

No longer to the sun as in its youth,
But to the earth in all humility,
Ripening for us all its dreams and works,
And aging happily to eternal dawn.

The Farmer to Saint Swithin

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Farmer to Saint Swithin

O good Saint Swithin, please, to you we pray,

On this your high summer rain-making day –
Of your blest kindness send us sweet, soft showers,
The kind that gently fall for hours and hours,
To heal the sunburnt land of thirst and drought
And nourish the corn that sees the winter out;
And if you grant the boon we humbly ask
We’ll work the harder on each rural task:
We’ll ditch and fence and plough, and milk the cow,
Share with the widder-folk, and feed the sow,
Count out some plantful seeds for poor folks’ needs,
And daily tell God’s Mysteries on our beads.

Pinon

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Pinon

The incense of the mountains drifts along

The arroyos, and into the narrow streets
Of Taos at dawn, the breath, perhaps, of God.

Song Dancer Wind Something Woman

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Song Dancer Wind Something Woman

(slowly, soothingly)

Like, you know, crystals are so last week’s feeds;
Magic rocks are the latest transcendence,
Drawing from the mountains the soul’s desire
To be one with the one-ness of all things,
Warmed by the desires of the seeking heart,
These rocks, blessed by the, like, ancient peoples
Bring peace and healing to the soul and spirit

(Faster)

And, like, I don’t care what people say

About me and what I done in high school
‘cause that ain’t, like, none of their business
And these people that don’t know me judge me
But they’re in darkness I have found the truth
In Transcendental Earth One-Ness as taught
By the One and he likes me anyway.

Makeshift Shrine

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Makeshift Shrine

Teddy bears ribboned to a chain-link fence,
Plastic-wrapped flowers stacked like compost,
Dime-store candles flickering in the exhaust
Of passing mini-vans.  The inanity
Of filler-language falls, descends upon
The shattered souls of the barely alive,
The dead cliches’ of well-planned camera-grief:
“Our hearts and thoughts go out to you.”
What does that mean?  Nothing but conventional noise
For generations of lovers and mourners
Long-ago looted of reality,
Programmed with state-sanctioned hyperbole,
And mourners now are left with nothing but
An existential howl against the light,
Sodium-vapor upon broken glass,
While strident Men of Destiny
There rake for votes among the ashes of death.

Come Laughing Home at Twilight

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Come Laughing Home at Twilight

 Beaumont-Hamel, 1916

And, O!  Wasn’t he just the Jack the lad,
A’swellin’ down the Water Street as if –
As if he owned the very paving stones!
He was my beautiful boy, and, sure,
The girls they thought so too: his eyes, his walk;
A man of Newfoundland, my small big man,
Just seventeen, but strong and bold and sure.

Where is he now?  Can you tell me?  Can you?

Don’t tell me he was England’s finest, no –
He was my finest, him and his Da,
His Da, who breathed in sorrow, and was lost,
They say, lost in the fog, among the ice.
But no, he too was killed on the first of July
Only it took him months to cast away,
And drift away, far away, in the mist.

Where is he now?  Can you tell me?  Can you?

I need no kings nor no kaisers, no,

Nor no statues with fine words writ on’em,
Nor no flags nor no Last Post today:
I only want to see my men come home,
Come laughing home at twilight, boots all mucky,
An’ me fussin’ at ‘em for being’ late,
Come laughing home at twilight...

Olympic Ashes

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Olympic Ashes

The People line the streets obediently

Awaiting the crematorial flame
Of appointed divine diversity
(Glancing about lest some perfidious Jew
Contaminate the sweet inclusiveness)
While strength through joy is celebrated again
In torchlit progress international
Celebrating freedom as commanded.
In the end, they but cheer their own oxidation

It Says "Moby Richard" on His Swimming License

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

It Says “Moby Richard” on His Swimming License

Oh, yes, I’ve read that Moby Book;

You won’t believe the hours it took -
The Pequod sailed for many nights
And I was late turning off the lights
While brave men fought wind, tide, and gale:
To tell the truth, I cheered for the whale.

A Movie With a Happy Ending

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Movie with a Happy Ending

Jack was chased all over the ship

Giving his pursuers the slip
Gunfire, then, was Spicer’s game
(One wished Spicer a better aim)
But, Oh! The laughter, short of breath,
When annoying Jack froze to death!

Hymn to a Radio Talker

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Hymn to a Radio Talker

Tune: “A Mighty Fortress is our God”

A noisy small man plays at god
A loud-mouth ever flailing;
Our yelper he amid the flood
Of bleak doom-sayers wailing.
For he doth want our cash
For this his tongue doth lash;
He works those crocodile tears
For profits throughout the years,
Please God he has no sequel.

Primary Runoffs - Casting a Vote

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Midsummer Primary Runoffs -

Casting a Vote

Well, no, one does not exactly cast a vote -
The petitioner presents his papers,
And the County Mothers pince-nez them
As the countenance of ‘Way Cool Jesus
Beams down upon all from the cinder-block wall
Of the youthatorium, focused on
The holy liturgical percussion-set,
Now sacrally stilled in a Lenten silence.
The beldams rubber-stamp democracy,
And, humbly honored by their Nihil Obstat,
The citizen communes with a party ballot,
Ignoring the glares of disapproval
From one set of partisan poll-watchers  
And ignoring too the approbation
Of another shoal of lapel-flagged bluehairs,
He sits in pontifical dignity
On the folding cathedra of wisdom,
At the cafeteria table of justice,
Rood-screened in occultus by cardboard sheets
(Bearing flags thereon, and symbols arcane),
And blots with The Sacred Pen of Our People
Little squares illuminating holy texts.
He frowns, recalling in indignation
Intrusive ‘phone calls from a candidate:
“Suspendatur,” he thinks, and then moves on,
Blotting, blotting away into history,
“Here, sir, the blotters rule.”  And then The Box:
The Blue Box or the Red; the Red Box or the Blue;
The Ballot, unfolded, face up, must be
Not cast but slid, like a speakeasy tip,
Gently, into The Box, The People’s Box.
Not cast, but slid, carefully, and then
In November one does this again.

1 August 2012

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

1 August 2012 –

The Euphemism Mandate

That which was forbidden from Genesis

Was then gently, tolerantly permitted
And later, under subtle laws, required.

Rendering unto Moloch, today we must pay

For the fires to sacrifice our children
For the bullets of our executions
For the grave of civilization

Iesu mercy.

We Are Our Own Spies

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

We Are Our Own Spies

“Who is Number 1?”

“You are Number 6.”

– The Prisoner, 1965-1966

They do not need The Village¹ to spy on us

To Rover² us with unseen, unknown bounds
To drug our dreams with possets venomous³
Or microphone us on our guarded rounds

Because

In some bright Orwellian techno-mart

We stand in humble, sad submission
To purchase tiny Rovers of sinister art
And contract for our own inquisition

The allusions are to Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner.

¹The Village – the prison only looks like a holiday camp

²Rover – the malevolent robotic spy, enforcer, and keeper of the bounds, a sort of proto-drone

³“possets venomous” - #6 is frequently drugged by The Village in hopes he will tell all

(Perhaps one of the secrets is why the editing device will not at the moment allow me to reduce item 3 in size)

Planting an Autumn Garden

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Planting an Autumn Garden

 Cast in the mortal heat of August, seeds:

A few stray beans, peas, and lots of sunflowers,
And pumpkins for children’s Halloween needs,
Most for the birds; what’s left will be ours

Ironmongery

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Ironmongery

Hose clamps, glue, and gaskets along Aisle Ten,

Mower blades next to the metric wrenches,
Motor oil further over, then back again,
Close to the folding rules, marked in inches;

Bolts, hammers, drills, saws, a misplaced wing nut:

Great fun for the craftsman to pause longer,
Among the motors, chisels, and nails - but
What, then, one asks, does iron really monger?

Bach

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Bach

You may note that Bach wrote “Air on the G-String”;
Now what was he thinking, the silly old thing?

A Capitalist on Roller Skates

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Capitalist on Roller Skates

She glides from car to car and back again,
In flight upon the summer concrete’s glare,
A cupbearer to each spare-changed paladin.
O may her hard-won dollars buy her hair
The crown of Cleopatra, then the gown
Of Fair Rosamund; so let her be fit
As a noble woman of great renown.
And no false man say she did not earn it.