A Fog of Unknowing - 13 June 2016 - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

A Fog of Unknowing - 13 June 2016

If fifty lives were ended yesterday
How can anyone know that this is so
And how it came to pass, since those more equal
Cannot agree on how and why and who?

The glowing screens barely contain the shrieks
Of shrill denunciations flung about
Like ragged posters in polluted winds
Torn fragments of the most delicious lies

There were clouds today, but the rain passed by
Though fifty lives were ended yesterday

Not Listening to The Voices - a three-dot column

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Not Listening to The Voices

A famous American brand of acrid, yellow-tinted fizzy water containing a soupcon of alcohol is for a time re-naming itself with a patriotic Yankee-Doodle label. Nice, but the corporation that makes this stuff is a Belgian-Brazilian concern.

+ + +

And just try to find Independence Day decorations, including flags, not made in the peace-loving, granola-munching, gluten-free, Workers’ and Peasants’ Glorious Republic of China.

+ + +

Speaking of peace-loving peoples, how ‘bout that European love-fest going on in Marseilles, eh?

+ + +

An Oregon state judge ruled that a person may self-identify as “non-binary” instead of man or woman.

So much for the science of DNA.

The concept of non-binary is awkward. Imagine a couple of sailors of either sex granted a Cinderella liberty, with one suggesting “Hey, let’s go to the USO dance and see if we can meet some cute non-binaries.”

+ + +

A headline said that London has its first nude restaurant. Are there any restaurants that wear clothes?

+ + +

Robots are replacing more workers, which is why we might soon see R2D2and C3PO out by the dumpsters smoking cigarettes and muttering into their MePhones. The Borg robot will ask you if you want to pay with cash, credit, or your soul. You can tell the supervisor robot by its decades out-of-date shell and its cheesy painted-on moustache.

+ + +
Imagine a Santa Fe passenger train stopping at the faux-Spanish colonial depot Tucson, Arizona for a crew change and a mechanical check. A young man wearing a business suit and smoking a cigarette gets off the train to make a pay-telephone call and to buy a newspaper and a souvenir postcard. He wears a wristwatch and carries a fountain pen and a pocket knife.

He is thankful to be home from the war, and no longer needs to carry a weapon or worry about bombs, bullets, and ambushes.

Such things once were.

-30-

Discharge Papers - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Discharge Papers

Now trudging up the creaky courthouse steps
He ran and skipped up forty years ago
One step at a time, now, clinging to the rail
So insolently scorned in his callow youth

The papers deposited long ago
Are needful to the VA office gnomes
Who probably will say no anyway
As they always have. Their slogan should read

“To ignore him who shall have borne the battle” -
He trudges up the creaky courthouse steps

The Romance of Foreign Postage Computerized Printouts - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Romance of Foreign Postage Computerized Printouts

Where are the postage stamps of yesteryear;
Aye, where are they…? (Wait, that gag’s been taken)
What are “UPS MAIL INNOVATIONS?”
It’s only a computer stickered printout

One wants a postage stamp, with a portrait
Of a king, a president, or a loon
Swimming alongside a senator’s yacht
With a halo of “Two Pence” over its head

One tires of the latest computer gear –
Where are the postage stamps of yesteryear?

The Gardener - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Gardener

Unnoticed are the gardeners and the gods
Mary Magdalene mistook one for the Other
Thinking the Other had been thrown away
Cast out like the first of all gardeners

Beyond the rivers, into a desert
But this Man taken for a gardener -
He really was a gardener, and is,
And the Master Gardener works quietly

To tend forever the gardens of our souls -
Unnoticed is the Gardener who is God

A Saturday Morning Wall-Eyed Hissy-Fit - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

A Saturday Morning Wall-Eyed Hissy-Fit

On a rainy Saturday morning, two cats
For reasons known to them alone, round off
(For cats, being more circular than angled,
Can never square off) – a catty cacophony

Of yowling, growling, prissing hissy-fits
In mutual feline outrage, their tails
Twisting like scorpions, or furry snakes
Threatening death – or at least disapproval

Much to the delight of the back porch dogs:
On a rainy Saturday morning, two cats

Beneath the Dome - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Beneath the Dome

A coven of wispy wraiths squatting on the floor
Of a ruined temple built by better men
Importuning yet another false god
To be as empty as they, and ooze forth

To destroy in screams and blood the innocent
They riffle little books they cannot read
And grunt again five bitter syllables
That shut away their hearts from life and love

They summon the pale thing that they worship
And to their shrieking horror
it will come

Dozing in a Lawn Chair - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Dozing in a Lawn Chair

Cicadas sing the evening heat and damp
Amid the sinister sweet scents of night
Unseen and mysterious musicians
Following the script of a tropical murder

The smooth assassin enters from the left
His dinner jacket, white, immaculate
Hangs perfectly from his muscular frame
As his steady hands reach for a cigarette

In a paperback forgotten on the lawn -
Cicadas sing the evening heat and damp

No Way, Shape, or Bombshell, Actually - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

No Way, Shape, or Bombshell, Actually

No way, shape, and form literally dropped
A bombshell to the next level, with no
Ifs, ands, or buts defining a generation
While living in the shadows of America

Where the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree
Going viral in trending a hashtag
Through user-generated content link-bait
Engaging the meme traffic actually

Cloudwising virtual reality
Thinking outside the box form shape way no

(And let the people say “icon”)

The Invention of the Pencil - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Invention of the Pencil

We lay our scene in a monastic scriptorium in Cumbria

“Somehow I can’t get my pencil to work.”
“Now have you first tried to re-sharpen it?”
“No, I was in fear of breaking something.”
“Okay, move over, and I’ll show you how.

Take now your pen knife…”
“But this is a pencil.”
“We’re still at work on the pencil knife, true,
But a penknife for now will work as well.
Oh, isn’t technology wonderful!”

(cut, cut, cut)

“Just chant for P.T. if you have any more…”
“Wait a moment; just show me that again.”

A Picture Post-Card of Notre-Dame de Amiens at Dawn - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

A Picture Post-Card of Notre-Dame de Amiens at Dawn

For Doris and Anthony

I.

Merci, mes amis, for the picture-card
Of Notre-Dame de Amiens at Dawn
Of church and river greeting the new day
Over the loving heart of La Belle France

Near the Palais de Justice a streetlamp glows,
And across the Riviere des Clairons
A café opens for early risers
Workers and joggers, scholars, and poets too

While Matins and Lauds sung from the cathedral
Anticipate the sun and early Mass

II.

But otherwise the city is at rest
Thousands of years of civilization
Do not leap out of bed like children on
A holiday; they wait for the proper hour

To rise, to offer up their ancient prayers
So that Amiens may be blessed in her work
Of loving service to humanity
Her chosen duty from the long ago

This vision is France, first daughter of the Church,
God’s lamp upon the altar of the world

America's Best - a memorial

Mack Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

America’s Best

Your son, my lord, has paid a soldier’s debt:
He only lived but till he was a man

- Macbeth V.vii

Last week ten of our best young men and women died.

Their deaths were horrible; there is no avoiding that painful reality. But these ten did not die from drug overdoses, falling from resort hotel windows while drunk, committing crimes, blowing suicide vests among innocents, taking selfies on the edges of cliffs, in gang fights, fighting in Christmas shopping sales, or comatose in the middle of the street. They died in military training, preparing themselves for the defense of this nation. They died doing instead of talking, because in the Marines and in the Army there is no concept of hangin’ out, feeling sorry for yourself, or smoking loser-weed behind the dumpsters.

Families and friends will grieve for their military sons and daughters and comrades at their funerals and forever. They will never need to apologize for them. The families’ hearts are at half-mast but their heads are high, and the rest of us should in some way work to be just a little bit worthy of the memory of these ten and all who serve.

Those who died in service last week weren’t the common golly gee whiz supposedly super-secret commandos who write books and sue each other and make big noises; one was a Marine fighter pilot, and the other nine were soldiers in the Army, the real Army, the regular Army, the old Army, the kind of men and women who charge into a rathole to drag a nazi, a commie, or a jihadi out by the scruff of his neck and make him holler “calf rope!” without popping off about how wonderful they are.

They are good men and women, our defenders, far better than those of us who sleep in soft beds at night deserve:

Captain Jeff Kuss, USMC, 32, a Blue Angels pilot

Staff Sgt. Miguel Angel Colonvazquez, 38, Brooklyn, New York

Sp. Christine Faith Armstrong, 27, Twentynine Palms, California

Sp. Yingming Sun, 25, Monterey Park, California

Pfc. Brandon Austin Banner, 22, Milton, Florida

Pfc. Zachery Nathaniel Fuller, 23, Palmetto, Florida

Pvt. Isaac Lee Deleon, 19, San Angelo, Texas

Pvt. Eddy Raelaurin Gates, 20, Dunn, North Carolina

Pvt. Tysheena Lynette James, 21, Jersey City, New Jersey

West Point Cadet Mitchell Alexander Winey, 21, Valparaiso, Indiana.


“Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and make perpetual Light to shine upon them.”

-30-

Poetry - All Dressed up with Some Place to Go - two poems

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Poetry – Dressed up with Some Place to Go

A poem need not be so overdressed
That it embarrasses free-verse poseurs
Awash in self-absorbed, self-pitying tears
The sound of one first-person pronoun clapping

But still they should be instructed

That a poem is not about the poet
It is about the reader who has turned
His attention and the writer’s pages
To the existential questions of life

And so is properly dressed for its work



Poetry – Slouched in a Chambray Shirt and Old Khakis

Dude! Slack me some slack here - my weekend words
Deserve to wear the untied sneakers of life
Kicked back, kicked up, with a cosmic crossword
To puzzle out with coffee and iambic-free buttered toast of indeterminate
scansion and crumbs

Since scribblers should be comforted

For a poem is about the poet too
Turning his thoughts and the reader’s pages
To those same questions, but with half-and-half
Sloshed into both the coffee and one’s art

And so is properly dressed for the porch

Saint Boniface - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Saint Boniface

Saint Boniface chopped down a pagan oak
The followers of Thor resented the bloke
So some years after that witching tree fell
Those pagans chopped down that Englishman as well!

Transfiguration - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Transfiguration

A mysterious Light shines from Mount Tabor
On the holy Feast near the harvesting
And if a man chooses not see it
He builds a tabernacle in the dark

A stable not picked out by any star
An altar without any sacrifice
A pilgrim road that twists back on itself
A hymn in praise of hollow sentiment

If a man sees it not, he is not changed -
A mysterious Light shines from Mount Tabor

The Dragon Defense - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Dragon Defense

A dragon-errant went a-questing for
A cruel, fire-breathing knight who terrorized
The huts and hovels of poor villagers
Who humbly toiled and tilled the sacred earth

And yearly in October sacrificed
A maiden innocent in every way
To slake the dark and intemperate lusts
Of the violent and satanic knight

And thus at last the story is made right:
Take not the word of a fire-breathing knight!

Date of Departure Unknown - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com


Date of Departure Unknown

Green leaves are like the sails of fairy ships
Set fully by their sailors in the spring
But moored in harbor all the summer months
Awaiting orders to cast off and launch

We pass the waiting time in sorting out
The fancies and the dreams we want to pack
Into the hold of our wind-singing ship
And poring over charts yet to be drawn

‘Til Ceres and Demeter bid us go -
Green leaves are like the sails of fairy ships

The Latest Hundred-Year Flood - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Latest Hundred-Year Flood

Another hundred-year flood this wet week
With south winds gusting and slinging the rain
Wildly off the roofs, hour after dark hour
Sheeting the lawns into green fairy ponds

The woods are black upon a silvered floor
And lightning sends folks inside for the day
To their recurring coffee-corner clashes
About whose rain gauge is more accurate

While the rain sings of ditches, gutters, and drains -
Another hundred-year flooding this week

Linear Life Looping - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Linear Life Looping

How do they put those spirals into blank books
Threading wires along blank pages of dreams
Not yet realized or even written or drawn
Restrained as soon as penned into being

Story Line A formed up against Sketch B
And Schematic C made to dress right, dress
Addresses and telephone numbers lined
In exile on the last little page or two

Life spinning forward and up as little loops -
How do they put those spirals into blank books?

Decolonizing English Literature - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Decolonizing English Literature

Fluid active shooter situation
Surreal ongoing high-powered rifle
Show of force first responders swat teams
Abundance of caution fluid active

Shooter situation surreal ongoing
High-powered rifle show of force first
Responders swat teams abundance of
Caution fluid active shooter situation

Surreal ongoing high-powered rifle
Show of force first responders swat teams