The Chinese Groundhog Flips its Shadow - op-ed kinda /sorta

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Chinese Groundhog Flips its Shadow

Americans are a people of faith. We believe that if a bunch of old drunks wearing frock coats and shabby top hats roust a rodent out of its sleep the Cincinnati Patriots will win the SuperDooperBowl. Or something.

If a presidential candidate sees his shadow he or she wins the Iowa caucus, whether or not he wants a caucus, and then there are four more weeks of winter because the Chinese bought the groundhog and all rights, copyrights, and patents appertaining thereunto, and, like, stuff.

Groundhogs from China crumble in the sunlight, you know. They just don’t make groundhogs like they used to, nossirree Bob and Chang.

No one is quite sure what a caucus is. Is it one of those spacecraft-looking coffee makers, or is it some sort of prize that can be pinned to a corkboard next the children’s 4H awards?

In Iowa delegates to the summer political conventions are chosen by people moving about in groups, possibly a Hegelian melding of chess and dodgeball (please note that Ford and Chevy people never play dodgeball). This confusion is said to constitute a caucus, just like it says in the Constitution.

Some six Iowa precincts were declared to have tied results, which is remarkable, and the ties were broken and delegates chosen by tossing coins, which is even more remarkable.

More remarkable still is that six different coins in six different precincts chose delegates for the same candidate. Maybe the coins were texting each other via unsecured servers.

The Grassy Knollistas were quick to challenge the coins’ citizenship. Were they natural-minted coins? Were any of them from, say, Canada? Is our next president being chose by a perfidious foreign Looney or Tooney and not by a God-fearing, Yankee-Doodle Susan B. Anthony?

Who would have thought that coins were permitted to vote?

If coins can decide the results of elections, then they can determine the outcome of football games. After the playing of the National Anthem, the referees, coaches, team captains, and other members of the 1% meet in the multi-million-dollar stadium paid for by working people with proper jobs, and the anointed flamen flips the sacred coin into the air, asking the gods of earth, water, fire, air, and four bars of connectivity to pick a winner.

And so it comes to pass, but not with a pass.

One team sulks and demands an instant replay, the other team sprays fizzy-water from Flint, Michigan about wastefully, and everyone goes home with his neuromuscular systems intact.

Everyone takes away a Chinese tee reading “I Survived SuperDooperBowl L” and featuring a graphic of a groundhog voting because, after all, this is what the lads suffered and died for at Valley Forge.

-30-

Christmas Lights in February - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

(Of indolence I have not taken down the lights on the back porch. Louisiana ‘Cajun acquaintances advise me that adding a few purple and gold ribbons transforms Christmas lights into Mardi Gras lights.)

Christmas Lights in February

Lingering lights, bright Christmas lights, aglow
In merry defiance of the darkness
As winter closes in for the chill
Tiny colored lights in repudiation
Of the joyless censorship of place and time
A triumph of kitsch over criticism
A charming waste of non-renewables
A celebration of the ephemeral
Since celebration is itself eternal -
Lingering lights, bright Christmas lights, aglow

Descent - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Descent

The moon has not yet risen above the trees
Nor has the frost yet fallen upon the fields
January stars, blue, brilliant, and cold
Halo an aircraft marked in flickering lights
Every seat-back standing at attention
Lap straps fastened, tray tables locked away
Attendants making a last litter patrol
“The temperature in Houston tonight is…”
An old canvas bag on the carousel
And who will be waiting at the exit?

Cleopatra's Royal Barge - op-ed

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Queen Cleopatra’s Royal Barge

Palace courtiers are even now ensuring that their next master will be presented with yet another Imperial Death Star upon his or her earthly apotheosis. There are already some seven or eight cars (“limousine” is a low-prole usage) in the presidential harem, but court functionaries know how important it is to keep the Grandissimus Supreme Sultan, Republican or Democrat, entertained with newer and more expensive toys and luxuries.

Just why any president should swan about in a Wal-Mart-size sled that even the sleaziest drug dealer would dismiss for its vulgarity eludes the thoughtful citizen of this republic.

The answer, known to office-gnomes throughout history, is that without expensive diversions the sultan-aspirant might have time to remember that he was elected to be the servant of the people, not their all-knowing, all-wise, all-this-and-that autocrat, and begin to wonder why he is obscured by a cloud of unctuous briefcase carriers and door openers.

The recent history of the presidency indicates clearly what a psychological god-emperor temptation the White House is. Early in every election cycle each candidate drifts into referring to himself in that pompous first-person-plural – “we” instead of “I.” Already he is / they are anticipating sitting in the big chair behind the big desk, playing with the little buttons that light up and summon the servants.

A true queen, king, bishop, prince, emperor, or other noble personage employs the first-person-plural only when speaking officially, not otherwise. The Queen says “we” when giving a speech from the throne, but at all other times remembers the “I.” The distinction is lost on the not-so-humble successors to the humble rail-splitter, Honest Abe.

No recent president has seemed to avoid confusing self with state, and none has cried “Away with this bauble!” (Oliver Cromwell was a regicide, a mass-murderer, and a genocidal maniac, but this one quotation from him is useful) when presented with fleets of giant flying palaces and show-off automobiles, and battalions of Praetorians and Streltsy (some of them sober).

No presidential candidate has promised abstinence from courtiers and palaces and toys and the arrogance of power. Not even the Socialist candidate has said he will forswear the presidential fripperies paid for by the sweat of the workers he purports to love.

In Ye Olden Days a Roman emperor on his inauguration was said to have been assigned a functionary to whisper constantly a repeated caution during the procession. The phrase might be loosely translated as “Man, you ain’t no thing; you’re just a guy who’s going to die like everyone else, so don’t get the big head.”

If that is not true, it ought to be, and it ought to be true now.

And the first thing the new president should do is get rid of all the Queen Cleopatra-ish royal barges as part of his first duty – to remain connected with humanity.

-30-

For Otto Rene Castillo - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

For Otto Rene Castillo

“…and there burned away in them…tenderness and life”

From “Intelectuales Apoliticos”
Translated by Rev. Raphael Barousse, OSB

Cloud-castles swirl among the mountain peaks
While lower down the jaguar rules and roars
And lower still, along a dusty road
A benevolence of United Fruit

The army burns a broken man to death
His final scream a hymn of victory
Ascending with the sacred smoke and ash
As incense over the altars of the poor

A blessing on the land of eternal spring
Hope swirling down like clouds from the mountain peaks

A Proletarian Fellowship of Death - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

A Proletarian Fellowship of Death

To have been lost in Indo-China is
A core, a center asymmetrical
Perhaps a hinge, or some other weary
Metaphor for one’s life, a series of
Experiences in no time without time
Frivolous merriment and satanic horrors
Which have led or misled, influenced, moved,
Inspired, infected, focused, fuzzed
Almost every thought, intent, act, motion
That can be credited or discredited
To those of us who were in confusion there
And who have come to realize or been made
To realize this late in life that all -
All - is predicated on murders and lies
And wearing Sauron’s ring has compromised
Any claim of “Gott Mit Uns” or "S nami Bog."
Thus, given that much of one’s life is an exile -
A village shunning, an embarrassment
A stumbling memento mori denied
A former person who should go away -
One question now remains:
What’s for breakfast?

For Ngo Dinh Diem - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

For Ngo Dinh Diem

No flame eternal burns over your lost grave
Unknown beneath an hourly parking lot
Or maybe out back among the garbage cans
No guards of honor pace in mirrored boots
Forth and back in mummery choreographed
Along a field of honor’s concrete walk
No busloads of tourists leave gift-shop wreaths
No bands or speeches mark your martyrdom
Nor would you need them
Nor would you want them
For your small flame is on an Altar set

Unfinished Lines - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Unfinished Lines

January is an unfinished line
An incomplete cover judged by its book
A door ajar, a mislaid fountain pen
Unanswered letters bound with rubber bands
Or stacked and listed on a little screen
A chessboard king still menaced and in check
Wandering iambics not yet sorted out
Unfinished business from Porlock Parva -
January is but a fragment of
A life still littered with unfinished lines

Axioma Vulgare - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Axioma Vulgare

The stars benignly shine upon the earth
And earth is not alien to itself
Yu-Kiang cannot deny his purpose
Flora cannot do other than follow the sun
That which is true cannot be nothingness
And emptiness tapping upon dim planes
In a closed autophagous loop of lies
Celebrates only hollow inversions
Truth, beauty, and goodness are eternal
And stars benignly shine upon the earth

Because the Queen is More Powerful than the King? - column

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Because the Queen is More Powerful than the King?

“I want no more thinking!”

-Henry V in Jean Anouilh’s Becket

A grand mufti in Saudi Arabia has banned chess as antithetical to purity of thought and good order in the family-owned tyranny – hardly a true kingdom – that has spent the last eighty years suppressing numerous ancient nations and tribal groups all over the Arabian peninsula.

But one can understand his point. The idolatrous spectacle of millions of people all over the world obsessing on chess matches is an embarrassment to the right-minded. Fans have been known to riot over chess team identification and send seriously rude twoots and tweets to others for wearing the wrong chess team ball caps and tees. Chess championships often end with supporters of the winning team sneering at two-cylinder Fiats and torching Starbucks coffee cups in designated campfire areas.

Disreputable young people who play chess often lurk in well-lit libraries and try to intimidate other pawn-slingers by wearing those menacing hipster hats and speaking in complete sentences. Scary.

And then there’s the foul language common to chess thugs – saying “en passant” is not acceptable behavior in public, and “queen to queen’s pawn four” might qualify as hate speech.

America pretty much shuts down for the National Chess League’s Superboard Sunday. Friends and families gather over garden salads and gluten-free 10% whole-rice croissants to whisper enthusiastically for their favorite teams.

During advertising breaks the high demand for beverages has been known to collapse cappuccino machines.

This year’s half-time show will feature the cast of Big Bang Theory performing the provocative Dance of the Seven Slide Rules. Let’s just hope Bob Newhart doesn’t suffer a wardrobe malfunction.

Thank goodness the world has the super-civilized Family Saud to stop the blood-crazed madness of chess and guide humanity in the paths of righteousness and clean living through arbitrary edicts and mass executions.

Now that chess has been banned, no doubt the grand mufti will next investigate Candyland and Scrabble for treasonable sentiments.

One can only imagine the mentality of an old dude with a beard that looks like it was culled from Donald Trump’s hairpiece sitting around and finding evil and dirty-mindness in board games.

We have people like that here, of course, but Old Ms. Grundy can’t have anyone’s head chopped off.

And what, really, is a mufti, grand or otherwise? Is there a baby grand mufti that you could stand in a bay window for impressing the neighbors?

Yes, chess offends the grand mufti; indeed, it frightens him because chess requires thinking. Once people start thinking, tyrants start trembling on their stolen thrones.

-30-

Humility Unbidden - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Humility Unbidden

Humility comes upon us when it will
Bidding us rise from ill-remembered dreams
To pace the darkness in a Tenebrae
Of guttering candles in irregular sequence
Those false expectations now burning low
That only punctuate a forlorn night
And give humanity neither warmth nor light
In the clock-ticking hours of nothingness
When even the pillows seem exhausted -
Humility comes upon us when it will

Road Breakfast - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Road Breakfast

Greasy spoons are a little too clean these days
After the sweet incense of cigarette smoke
Was purged by a Vatican II of health
Along with the morning paper. It’s all
Plastic tablets and gourmet coffees now
Multi-colored packets of chemicals
Flatware in little cellophane envelopes
Bright cartoon tees instead of stained work shirts
Cross-trainers where muddy boots used to rest -
Greasy spoons are just too d****d clean these days

Ella's Unicorns - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Ella’s Unicorns

There is no reason why pale unicorns
Should not cavort in frosty fields at night
Or dragons play around the moonlit pond
Annoying the naughty naiads bathing there
For startime is the magic dreamy time
When flowers and leaves are given whispering speech
And laughing faeries flit from tree to tree
In games of hide-and-seek until the dawn
The world would be strange without unicorns
Cavorting in the frosty fields at night

Nancy Drew, Multi-Cultural Young Person Detective - essay

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Nancy Drew, Multi-Cultural Young Person Detective

CBS Entertainment president Glenn Geller, channeling Sir Roderick Spode and the Black Shorts, has decreed that the new Nancy Drew, girl detective, must meet specific racial criteria in adherence to the zeitgeist.

Geller-Spode’s thesis is that Nancy Drew can be of any ethnicity except Caucasian, whatever Caucasian is. And who decides? On what basis? Is one drop of inferior franco-russo-italo-hispano-anglo-and-stuff blood toxic enough to taint out of existence the possibility of a young actress with the wrong genetic coding being banned from ever dashing about in Nancy’s little blue roadster?

A photograph of Mr. Geller, a seriously white dude, indicates that by the standards he imposes on others he is not racially qualified for his job. And that he needs to shave. Really. It’s like he’s trying to be Leonardo’s bear.

Just what the world needs, another white man giving everyone else orders about gender and culture. Maybe like the Oscars™ nominating committee.

Hollywood auditions may now demand DNA tests and the scientific measurement of knees.

And must Nancy Drew be, well, a girl at all? Couldn’t a transgendered Bill Cosby qualify?

CBS has not yet said whether a birth certificate from a government hospital in Calgary will be a disqualifier. A fear greater than the peril of Caucasiananityness is that someone’s blood might be irreparably contaminated by a soupcon (that’s, like, French, y’know) of Tim Horton’s coffee.

Be on the alert for any signs of The Northern Peril, citizens! Nancy might seem like a good Yankee Doodle American teenager, but has she ever been heard to end a sentence with that imperialist “eh,” eh? Does she sometimes whisper “Je me souviens” when she think’s no one’s listening? If so, confiscate her junior detective notebook immediately and escort her to the nearest block warden post of The Black Shorts. The Ottawa-Dawson Axis must be contained. They can see Alaska from The Yukon, you know.

Word on that metaphorical street is that a Texas attorney will demand that the Supreme Court rule on whether Nancy Drew is really a Hardy Boy in denial.

Nancy Drew’s next adventure is to discover just what that thing lurking on Donald Trump’s head is.

The Clinton campaign underestimated Nancy Drew.

The President is said to have said “If you like your Nancy Drew, you can keep your Nancy Drew.”

Donald Trump proclaimed “I’ll make Nancy Drew great again!” Senator Cruz rebutted him with “My opponent represents Nancy Drew values, while I represent Trixie Belden values!”

And if ya think all that’s weird – though not as weird as this election cycle – wait until CBS transforms Hank the Cow Dog into Fluffy the Vegetarian Persian Kitty.

And let the people say “Icon.”

-30-

The Yet-Again Catholic Literary Revival That's Really, Really Going to Take Off This Year - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Yet-Again Catholic Literary Revival
That’s Really, Really Going to Take off This Year

There’s more to Catholic poetry than
Nailing an adverb to a crucifix
Repeatedly troping from the Inklings
And claiming a circlet of preciousness

There’s more to Catholic prose than me-ness
Setting one’s self in a My Middle-Earth
Clutching a rosary of first-person pronouns
And What I Learned From shallow allusions

The revival will begin when Catholics
Write about others, not about themselves

Romantic Arctic Frogs - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Romantic Arctic Frogs

Are frogs cold-blooded? Or merely stupid?
A freeze tonight – and they’re playing Cupid!

Coins and Raindrops - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Coins and Raindrops

There is much to be said for January:
The barn coat in whose pockets you find coins
Left over from a coffee run last year
Spare change from the last chilly day of spring
Dark-webbing trees framing rain-heavy clouds
As fragments of a painting never finished
By an artist of the mind dreaming through
His afternoon walk among expectations
That need not be fulfilled this side of dusk -
There is much to be said for January

Closing the Air France Loophole

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Closing the Air France Loophole

“We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us.”

- Henry V

Should Air France be required to apply for a federal firearms license?

In 2014 Air France delivered an American He(ck)fire missile to those merry mass murderers the Castro brothers in Cuba.

One imagines the cabin attendant on the speaker: “Mesdames et messieurs, welcome aboard Air France Flight 13 to a retrograde Communist state with a human rights record superior to that of North Korea. For those of you in Euphemism Class we have complimentary champagne since in the cargo hold directly below you we’re carrying an American missile, and, gosh, we don’t know how it got there or what it might do. For those of you in Paid-for-by-Your-Corporation-or-Government Class, continue your accustomed denial of proletarian reality.”

The sloppy, ahistorical sentimentality of old comrades has folks wanting to visit Cuba “before it’s ruined.” A He(ck)fire missile could ruin a1956 DeSoto, that’s for sure.

Beyond the creaking old Yank-tank automobiles, Cuba has much to offer the sightseer: Spanish colonial architecture, tobacco and sugar plantations, rum, nightclubs, music, seafood, beaches, and mass graves.

Although Air France delivered the lost or stolen American missile to Cuba two years ago, the most transparent American government in history is only now letting the American people know about it.

But then, a number of people around the world think several American governments have been a bit careless with missiles the past few decades.

Perhaps the empty seat at the State of the Union address will be taken from an Air France plane.

The alligator-shoe boys assure the American people that the missile was not loaded. Coming from the same clever fellows who sacrificed hundreds of innocent Mexican and American lives by giving combat weapons to international drug warlords, this assurance might not be as reliable as one would hope.

There could be another empty seat representing the victims of gangsters armed by the American government.

And maybe another empty chair for those Americans abandoned to their deaths at Benghazi.

When the President appears before the Castro brothers later this year, perhaps he will ask them pretty-please to give the missile back now that the Russians and North Koreans have taken their pictures, measurements, and souvenirs. The Castro brothers might agree, but only if Americans promise to be more careful with their toys because that missile could have shot somebody’s eye out.

And, hey, was anyone with Air France charged under Cuban law for bringing an unregistered weapon into the country?

-30-

Liturgical Dance - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Liturgical Dance

The liturgy has always served as dance
Timed to the courteis of the universe
Choreographed with planets, moons, and stars
To celebrate and sing and taste the Truth

Thus every gesture, every careful step
Leaps wildly across the sacred arc of time
And circling ‘round, and ‘round again all meet
In elevation silent within a Cup

But pause and kneel now at the sacring bell:
The liturgy has always been a dance

The Feast of the Epiphany This Year - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Feast of the Epiphany This Year

If the Three Kings were to visit today
They’d need the proper paperwork
Passports and visas, and what is the purpose
Of your visit? A check through INTERPOL
A cavity search by rubbery hands
An escort armed with bribes and Kalashnikovs
Through tourists armed with me-phones, selfie sticks
And cardboard chalices, following a Starbuck’s
Searching the East for a wondrous ATM
If the Three Kings were to visit today