Not-So-Wildflowers - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Not-So-Wildflowers

Wildflowers are not really wild, you know
They are not forward like catalogue blooms
Demanding the best seats in the garden
And the most delicate of drinks and soils

Wildflowers smile softly, sweetly at the sun
Shy fairy-folk of forest, field, and fen
Dancing through the warm mid-year months and then
Withdrawing quietly at summer’s end

Like children yawning, and wanting their beds -
Wildflowers are not really wild, you know

Should Chocolate Candy Boss You Around? - a frivolity

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Should Chocolate Candy Boss You Around?

In life there are many occasions when individuals are subject to instruction: parents and teachers help guide children in their growing up, the State of Texas regulates traffic for the greater good (although one notes that the drivers of those big Texas Department of Transportation pickup trucks often seem to exhibit a cavalier attitude about speed, turn signals, and lane choices), and ministers lead the faithful in observance of religious teachings. The mature adult accepts all this.

Except TXDOT. What is it with them?

However, being lectured by a bit of foil-wrapped chocolate is too much.

For years now some living rooms have been decorated with directives instead of attractive pictures, nanny-ish signs reading “Love God and Do What Thou Wilt,” “Live, Love, and be Happy,” “Dance as if No One Were Watching,” and other Mary Poppins-esque precepts.

Now we’re being nagged by chocolates through theological and philosophical treatises printed inside the wrappers.

Here are some recent examples, with appropriate human responses:

V. Revive the art of conversation.
R. At a Donald Trump rally?

V. Give someone a compliment.
R. After verifying with an attorney that said compliment is not sexist, racist, LGBT-ist, or culturally insensitive.

V. Watch more cartoons.
R. Chuck Jones as John Keats?

V. Why not?
R. You first – why?

V. Treat Tuesday as Friday.
R. Participate in the Stations of the Cross, have a fishburger, and then attend a football game?

V. Keep them guessing.
R. Keep whom guessing? About what? Why?

V. Be more loquacious. Start with learning the word loquacious.
R. Just what we need, a smart-mouthed chocolate with a dictionary.

V. Kiss and tell.
R. No gentleman tells.

V. Solve arguments with a dance off.
R. Imagine Rommel and Montgomery doing the tango. In bikinis.

V. Stay up until the sunrise.
R. Folks on the night shift always stay up until the sunrise and later. What’s your point?

V. Lend an ear and a chocolate.
R. I come to bury Caesar, not to fatten him.

V. Get dressed up with no place to go.
R. You wear a cartoon tee to church. What do you call dressed up?

V. Choose less ordinary.
R. Given the loopiness of our times, the ordinary is probably a better choice.

V. Give them something to talk about.
R. Why? Adults choose their own topics of conversation. You’re not it.

So what are all these sugar-sodden orders-of-the-day about? Has Hershey re-defined itself as a church? Is Nestle channeling the Dalai Lama? Are the Dove people receiving telepathic commands from Obi Wan Kenobi? Will Cadbury’s do counseling, hypno-therapy, and weddings?

Many people complain that certain government agencies have become unconstitutionally authoritarian. Evidence suggests, however, that is seasonal candies who have gotten a bit too pushy. Maybe it’s time we put those pushy treats in their place: “Get ‘em out! Yeah, that Baby Ruth. And the Mars Bar. That’s right, get ‘em out! Gettttt ‘em out…!”

But all the humans should be nicer to each other. TXDOT, especially, needs a hug.

-30-

A Baton, but no Orchestra - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

A Baton, but no Orchestra

Majestic in their yellow-painted shields
Imperious trumping traffic lights command
Through glares of green and red, and garish orange
Obedience in all the traffic below

How sad - there is no traffic to command
Though once there was, before the lordly lights
Were lifted up: a little town was here
With pharmacies, feed stores, hardware, and cafes

And a movin’-picture show. All gone now.
And then the state put up the traffic lights

Frost on the Windshield - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Frost on the Windshield

Poor Kirbyville is mostly closed this morning
The cinder-block bakery is empty
And the only fast-foodery’s not yet open
Its neon tubes still dark against the stars

But the stop ‘n’ rob is busy enough
The gas pumps serving as anchorages
For trucks and boats, some headed to the lake
After taking on coffee and gasoline

And sausage-biscuits greased and slammed, and wrapped
In yellow paper of such painful sadness

No Barbaric Yawps, Please - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

No Barbaric Yawps, Please

Nobody writes poetry anymore
With patience gentling iambs into place
As if they were jewels set into a crown
Or Aves whispered through the Rosary

Nobody writes poetry anymore
Crafting images with a workman’s skill
(or bashing them through ‘prentice clumsiness!)
And shyly dreaming them into the world

Common nobility common to all -
Nobody writes poetry anymore

Attack of the Killer Cocktail Sombreros - op-ed

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Attack of the Killer Cocktail Sombreros

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain is one of the most admirable people in history. As a 34-year-old professor at Maine’s Bowdoin College he was beyond military age in 1862 but decided to enlist in the 20th Maine Infantry because of his profound belief in freedom for all.

Chamberlain is best known for his leadership in the Battle of Gettysburg. Surrounded and almost defeated by the 15th Alabama during a fierce battle among rocks and trees, with few remaining men still able to fight and out of ammunition, Chamberlain did something quite illogical – he ordered a bayonet charge, which saved the Union position. Unlike Viet-Nam era generals, who led from radios in air-conditioned bunkers, or modern generals, armed with pearl-handled resumes’, who lead from luxurious executive jets, Chamberlain led from the front.

In an era of theatrical facial hair sculpturing, Chamberlain adorned himself with a death-or-glory moustache that Asterix the Gaul might find a bit too much. General Chamberlain’s ‘stache all by itself could have frightened some of the Confederates on Round Top into surrendering.

Chamberlain fought in numerous battles, and was awarded the Medal of Honor, small compensation for the pain, infections, and operations he suffered all his life from multiple wounds.

After the war, Chamberlain served as governor of Maine and then as president of Bowdoin College. Chamberlain was not a backslapping fund-raiser; he also taught, at different times, every subject in the curriculum except science and mathematics.

In 1880, as commander of the militia, Chamberlain was called upon to resolve violence in the state capital of Augusta due to a contested election. He and his men ejected armed occupiers from the capitol and kept the peace for twelve days until the Maine supreme court made a ruling. On one occasion during this near-rebellion he faced down a mob that was determined to reoccupy the state house and kill him. He turned down bribes offered by both sides, being a man of honor instead of a deal-maker, and that was the end of his political career.

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain died in 1914, honored for his courage, gallantry, and love of freedom.

Bowdoin College, another of Chamberlain’s great loves, does not at present appear to love freedom as much as he did. Students are being punished, and might be expelled, over sombreros.

Sombreros.

The putative objects of cultural appropriation and hurt-feelingness are not even real sombreros, but rather 2-3” party decorations, surely made in China, which a couple of giddy lads balanced on top of their heads after an encounter with a few glasses of merriment several weeks ago.

Perhaps the decorations should have been little homburgs, derbys, top hats, Prussian picklehauben, berets, trilbys, busbys, fedoras, fezes, kepis, kippahs, tams, tarbooshes, turbans, Mao caps, hoodies, cowboy hats, Irish walking hats, or workers’ hard hats. But wait – possibly neither the administration nor the students at progressive Bowdoin have any familiarity with workers’ hard hats.

Bowdoin’s administration collapsed tearfully into full Aunt Pittypat smelling-salts mode while accusations of cultural bias and the We Want Answers thing flew through the clean Maine air like General Pendleton’s cannon fire over the wheat fields at Gettysburg.

Yet the college did not cancel its annual Cold War party (that Stalin – what a fun guy) the same night of the attack of the cocktail sombreros, nor did the cafeteria modify its Mexican day menu the same week.

As a teenager applying to Bowdoin, Chamberlain needed help in prepping his knowledge of Greek and Latin, since the mastery of both was required for admission. Now, one supposes, young Chamberlain would have to demonstrate proficiency

Not a Good Comrade - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Not a Good Comrade

No man is free if he gives up himself
And disappears into sad howlingness
Subsumed in sinking, shrieking subservience
Thrall-teed in the overseer’s livery

A label on a shabby baseball cap
A programmed pixel smeared across a screen
A rusty caltrop cast into the road
A shifted pea under a shuffled thimble

As crowd, as mass, as demographic noise -
No man is free if he yields up himself

The Eye of Sauron is Upon Us - op-ed

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Eye of Sauron is Upon Us

There are frightened little men who in their feverish brains see conspiracies in everything: your license plate number is a secret code imposed by the Masonic-Vatican-IRS Continuum so that unmarked Canadian helicopters can track you, Queen Elizabeth is a diabolic lizard warrior in disguise, fluoride is a Communist mind-control drug, traffic signals beam your image and DNA to the Martian outpost on the dark side of the moon, and algebra is the language of Satan.

Well, okay, that bit about algebra being satanic is true.

But that Solomon’s Temple was a cleverly disguised alien spaceship, well, no. Sorry.

After Justice Scalia died several weeks ago, the mansies who live in their allotted gigabytes cluttered the planet’s microwave signals with fantasies about Justice Scalia being a member of a golly-gee-super-secret-girl-haters-blood-cult called The International Order of Saint Hubert.

Well, the International Order of Saint Hubert really exists, and it is so secret that it has a web site: http://www.iosh-usa.com/.

Justice Scalia was not a member of the International Order of Saint Hubert, which is no more significant than the fact that he was not a member of the Rotary Club and did not have a Barnes & Noble discount card.

The IOSH is indeed a hunting fraternity, one with a long and remarkable history, including the fact that its Grand Whatever was murdered by the Nazis because he wouldn’t let Hermann Goering join.

Here are the conspiracies carried out by the Order of Saint Hubert:

To promote sportsmanlike conduct in hunting and fishing

To foster good fellowship among sportsmen from all over the world

To teach and preserve sound traditional hunting and fishing customs

To encourage wildlife conservation and to help protect endangered species from extinction

To promote the concept of hunting and fishing as an intangible cultural heritage of humanity

To endeavor to ensure that the economic benefits derived from sports hunting and fishing support the regions where these activities are carried out

To strive to enhance respect for responsible hunters and fishermen

Wow. Scary stuff, huh?

The values of the International Order of Saint Hubert are not at all different from Justice Scalia’s equally exclusive club to which many of us belong, the Hunting Brotherhood of Grandpa’s Old J.C. Higgins Shotgun.

There is a Saint Hubert, whose conversion story is worth reading. He is the patron saint of hunters, mathematicians, opticians, and metalworkers.

Not a bad fellowship, that.

And, after all, mathematicians are in special need of our prayers.

-30-

How Lovely Not to be in Jail Tonight - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

How Lovely Not to be in Jail Tonight

How lovely not to be in jail tonight
And have to share a small and smelly space
Under an eternal fluorescent light
With a dude who don’t like yer race or yer face

How grand to have a bed that’s long enough
With sheets and pillows and blankets all clean
And not a bare mattress sour-stained and rough
Against a wall of cinder blocks in green

And howlings from a soul who has lost life’s fight -
How thankful not to be in jail tonight

Snakes are on the Move - op-ed

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Snakes are on the Move

Snakes are on the move. I saw my first snake of the spring in my yard the other day. He was a white male of medium height, bald or shaven-headed, aged 50-60, and hadn’t missed any meals lately. He slithered onto the property in a really primo, perhaps new Dodge Ram double-cab pickup, light-colored, with no signs or markings on the side. The security camera was a little fuzzy about the numbers.

And, yes, he, he began with that decades-old script of “We just finished a project over there, and…”

“No.”

“…leftover asphalt…”

“No.”

“I gather you’ve had a bad experience with…”

“No.”

You just can’t get into a conversation with fast-talking snakes; they know all sorts of forked-tongue-in-the-door responses and dodges and come-ons.

You probably know his cousin, that electronic attorney in Nigeria who is handling the estate of a distant relative you didn’t know you had who died and left you all his money if you will only give your bank numbers and…

No.

As the weather grows warmer more reptiles will infest the yard at the front door with their magazine subscriptions (“I’m working my way through college”), the man or woman looking at you through your window in the night and asking to use your phone, the carloads of committees with their strange little booklets decorated with crude drawings of the saved and unsaved, with poorly-written theses only a few brain synapse misfires away from those of the strange little men who assure you that the Second Temple was really an alien spaceship based on a technology that the lizard-something federal government doesn’t want you to know about, and the miscellaneous peddlers who begin with abject pleas of assistant which morph quickly into implied threats as their eyes dart about looking for whatever objects might be quickly picked up on a later visit when you’re not home.

And when you don’t buy their magazines or firewood or ideologies they sometimes tell you that you don’t love Jesus, and that Jesus wouldn’t turn away a poor man down on his luck, so down on his luck that he owns a better car than you do.

All this is only an annoyance for most of us, but for the more vulnerable the cold-blooded can be a real threat, both physical and emotional. Remembering those who are vulnerable helps you say no, and remembering those who have suffered tough times and sought out honest work helps you say no to the wandering opportunists looking for a victim.

Yup, the weather is warming up, and the snakes are beginning to move.

-30-

Murus Durus - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Someone asked if I could write a poem about a classroom wall:

Murus Durus

It’s hard to snuggle up to concrete blocks
Even when they’re layered in pastel paint
And fitted with a door (though no one knocks)
And high, thin windows rather cute and quaint

They make four walls that wrap us all around
To keep the warmth within, the cold without
And hold the roof up there, far off the ground
So all is cozy in our cool hangout

But though this space is nice, and even rocks -
It’s hard to snuggle up to concrete blocks

And Would You Hand Me My Cigarettes? - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

And Would You Hand Me My Cigarettes?

Idleness should be an honored vocation
Practiced by layabouts and slugabeds
For whom Bertie Wooster is perfection
And merry old Sergeant Schultz a hero

For good folk, dawn is only a rumor
And the concept of work an obscenity
No gentleman ever takes exercise
The only weight he lifts is his coffee cup

In amused salute to passing joggers:
Idleness should be an honored vocation

What Are You Giving Up For Lent? - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

What are you giving up for Lent?

What are you giving up for Lent?
Well?
What?
Catholics. Maybe we should give up Catholics:

The me-me-support-me Catholics
More Catholic than we can ever be
Catholics more Catholic than anyone
Those clever keyboard commando Catholics

What are you giving up for Lent?
Adjectives, sure, but nothing Catholic

"World Economy in Death Spiral" - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

“World Economy in Death Spiral”

In cold and slanting February light
A poor tenacious leaf gives up at last
And spirals down in the northering wind
Around and down onto the sorrowing earth

Where backyard cats in their thick winter coats
Fence-sit and catch a few dignified rays
While Astrid-the-Dachshund in circles yaps
In ground-bound outrage

In cold and slanting February light
The world still spirals as it always has

Unconnected Mutterings in Search of a Thesis - op-ed maybe

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Unconnected Mutterings in Search of a Thesis

Meryl Streep, who has won three Academy Awards ™, complains that that the Academy Awards™ are unfairly dominated by white males. Apparently not winning four Academy Awards™ makes her a victim.

+++

The New York Post says that hundreds of army dogs who served in combat were dumped when they were no longer useful. Well, that’s pretty much what the federal government does with human veterans.

+++

Whole Foods (are there Incomplete Foods?) is / are rumored to be considering adding tattoo parlors to help make buying cereal for the kids a more Bucket ‘O’ Blood Saloon experience. Where would a grocery store site the disfigurement kiosk? Next to the vegetables?

+++

The arcana of caucuses / cauci, delegates, pledged delegates, superdelegates, hissy-fits falsely labelled as debates, electors, and the electoral college suggests that maybe our democracy is no more evolved than a riot among paleolithic cave clans. Or English soccer fans.

+++

We read on the little plastic box that lights up and makes noises that the late Justice Antonin Scalia was pronounced deceased via the telephone. Over the telephone? Really? Over the telephone? One hopes this report is an error.

Determination of death by telephone – so there’s an ap for that?

Given that the passing of a supreme court justice was verified and adjudicated so casually, one can only wonder how lesser folk in Presidio County are disposed of at the end of their earthly pilgrimage.

Reverend Mike Alcuino of the parish church Santa Teresa de Jesus administered the last rites to Judge Scalia. Not over the telephone.

+++

What’s with all the geriatric candidates at the top of the trash heap this election cycle? All those old people kvetching at each other sound as if they should be down at the local Denny’s complaining about everything over their senior specials. Just like me.

+++

Finally, in a month of continued wars, hunger, violence, economic collapse, refugee disasters, and the existential agony of Kanye and Taylor, this cri de coeur must be heard as a cri-without-borders cri for the cri-less: what cruel, villainous wretch thought up the spelling for “February?”

-30-

I and II Casseroles - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

I and II Casseroles

Mrs. Cohen and Mrs. Ionas
Slipped quietly out of the women’s side
Of the old Corinthian synagogue
To set out casseroles and pita bread

And left Saint Paul speaking mostly to men
And to those silly young women who might
Have lifted a finger to help, but no
I just don’t know what’s wrong with girls these days

But then - that’s what my mother said about me
It’ll be okay. And do we have enough cups?

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-