Make the Holy Roman Empire Great Again©™ - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Make the Holy Roman Empire Great Again©™

Are all of us but Guelphs and Ghibellines
And sub-divisions of sub-divisions
G.I.N.O.s and Pre-Fab-Cabin Ghibellines,
The Stir-Clockwise Guelphs repudiating

The True-Blue Red Stir-Counter-Clockwise Guelphs
Make Fiorenza Great Again lawn signs
In dubious battle against Venetian
Leave the Holy Roman Empire Empire ball caps

For a grand tomb that will never be built
Are all of us but Guelphs and Ghibellines?

Come on in; the Water's Slime - column, 3 July 2016

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Come on in; the Water’s Slime!

Rio de Janeiro, that palmy and balmy romantic playground of old movies, is not ready for the summer Olympics. The beaches and water are polluted, venues are incomplete and in some cases construction seems to be halted, athletes arriving early for practice and acclimation have been robbed, gang warfare makes Rio one of the world’s most dangerous cities, some athletes are refusing to travel to Rio for fear of mosquito-borne illnesses, and now body parts are washing ashore.

Lean and tan and tall and tender, parts of the girl from Ipanema go bobbing…

Well done, the International Olympic Committee.

+ + +

Locally, the Houston Chronicle reports at least four cases of flesh-eating bacteria attributed to Gulf waters. The public relations mouthpieces for various communities and businesses whose economies depend on beach tourism assure us that of the millions of people who splash about in the waters off Texas only a tiny percentage have been infected.

And that’s true. Still…

We can expect PETA to file a court injunction against the beach towns and other local authorities who are working to mitigate the bacterial threat, claiming loudly that “The germs were here first!”

Perhaps Brigitte Bardot will appear for a photo-op cuddling a tranquilized baby amoeba.

And then there’s the alligator.

And the airplane making an emergency landing on the beach.

What would Annette and Frankie do?

+ + +

Exhibiting all the sophistication and secrecy of a Get Smart plot a presidential candidate’s husband and the attorney general investigating the presidential candidate just sort of “bumped into each other” in the attorney general’s (ours) private plane while cold-faced men in dark classes kept the free people of this Republic in their place. Keep moving, comrades. This, the free people are told, was all so that the presidential candidate’s husband and the attorney general investigating the presidential candidate could talk about their travels, their grandchildren, and, oh, general topics.

+ + +

On the other side of the metaphorical tarmac another presidential candidate generated a twooter (or something like that) employing the outline of a Star of David with a background of money in order to accuse the first presidential candidate of financial corruption.

When I was old enough to begin to understand, my father, who was one of the first Americans into Ohrduf, part of the Dachau complex, show me some cast-off Army photographs he had kept from that day, and while I don’t remember his exact words, they were to the effect that we must never forget.

Looks like someone forgot.

Of our charity we might speculate that the candidate, a product of expensive private schools, never knew.

But, hey, he’s mastered S.T.E.M., so it’s all okay.

-30-

Summer Apples - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Summer Apples

A summer apple is like love, you know
Expected, hoped for, but still a surprise
A mystery, an undeserved joy
As happy as a dewy morning in June

But June then drifts away into July
And sometimes love does too, falling away
Into a summer dream that might have been
And lost forever in the mists of fall

And yet the taste remains, a sweet remembrance -
A summer apple is like love, you know

80 by 8 and 90 by 9 - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com


80 by 8 and 90 by 9

Yeah, 80 by 8 and90 by 9
Humidity set to steam or stir-fry
Accompanied by the mosquitoes’ whine -
God preserve us from the month of July!

Ad Orientem - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com


Ad Orientem

Let us now face the sun, and not ourselves
And so forswear the mirrored loop of Us
That zeitgeist chasing its ossified Now
Into a spiral of dark nothingness

A club that looks endlessly at itself
Sharing dismal, universal handshakes1
Can never see the Incarnation dawn
As joyful, laughing Light upon the world

His star is in the east, and too His sun -
Let us worship the Lord, and not ourselves

1Yes, pinched from John Milton

Dependence Day - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Dependence Day

There cannot be an independence day
Nor would the faithful want to be exiled:
The frailties of one’s body are proof
That every breath is a dependent gift

From that infinite Word, restless with love
Who holds a worried soul, with all its flaws,
A pearl still in formation in its cell,
More dear to Him than all the universe

From love, the love of God in Whom we live
One prays there is no independence day

Inactive Shooters - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Inactive Shooters

If only there were inactive shooters
And inactive shooting situations
Cafes where nothing much is going on
Forgetting to learn where the exits are

Terrorists too lazy to lock ‘n’ load
Bigots rising up for another beer
The Ku Klux Klan taking a laundry day
Mad bombers running barefoot through the flowers

A parking ticket making the front page
If only there were inactive shooters

Live Your Dreams - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Live Your Dreams

A girl, all pimples, pits, and piercings pores
Over a lottery ticket bouquet
Fast-fading flowers unpetaled one by one
Desperately loved-me-not with a lucky penny

Accented by the lite beer light, she sighs,
And counts her change for another pack of smokes
The night clerk wishes she would go away
And so does she, but somewhere is nowhere

They lied to her on graduation night

And

She never found her cap, tossed up so high

The Courthouse Square - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Courthouse Square

A few varas west this would be a plaza
But here it is, a county courthouse square
Where trustys in their horizontal stripes
Take their commands in English (of a sort)

To mow the lawns without regard for race
Creed, or color around the monument
To the glorious Confederate dead
No one here ever heard of de Vaca

Or why bahia grass is called bahia -
A few varas west and this would be a plaza

More Education for the 21st Century - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com


More Education for the 21st Century

At each desk sits an attentive MePhone
With a parasite tentacled to its back

The Bean Free Cemetery - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Bean Free Cemetery

For James Bateman, of Happy Memory

Across the tracks and then away from town
And just beyond the sewage treatment plant,
And though unseen by more prosperous temporals
Set nicely in a shaded Eden-glade

No storied sepulchers are raised up here -
These graves are crowned with tears, and little tin labels
And numbered on a grid filed carefully
In a fireproof vault at the funeral home

But here the Gates of Jerusalem open:
Across the tracks and then away from town

The Evil of Banality - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com


The Evil of Banality

In patriotic Chinese baseball caps
And 40/50 poly-cotton tees
All Real Americans assert theirselfs
In camouflage or in red, white, and blue

Dogmatic assertions punctuated
With contextual allusions to John Wayne
A Russian AK tattooed across their chests
And sucking up that p*ss-thin Belgian beer

They’d-uh-whupped them A-raabs if they’d been there
In patriotic Chinese baseball caps

23 June 2016 - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

23 June 2016

Will England truly be England again
Free of those inky blots old Gaunt contemned
And harsh Napoleonic edicts signed
In the name of a housepet Belgian king?

Yes.

Dover’s white cliffs stand sentinel in the sun
The Saxon horse still prances on chalk hills
Free men follow the plough and work the mills
And merry Sherwood still boasts a tree or two

Now to the pub to celebrate this day -
With a pint and a song and a kiss from Joan!

Poetry is Not - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Poetry is Not

Poetry is not

The unacknowledged legislation1 of

Anything

Poetry is a forest footfall soft
Not heard, but sensed somehow, in autumn’s leaves

1Shelley

Come Laughing Home at Twilight - Beaumont Hamel, 1916

Lawrence 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.

Smoking is Bad for Your Feet - column

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Smoking is Bad for Your Feet

In childhood our parents often cautioned us against any sort of forceful leader with “So if he told you to jump off a cliff would you do it?”

They didn’t mention the hot coals, though.

According to ABC and other news sources a fellow in Dallas talked thousands of people into giving him money for a motivational exercise in walking barefoot on hot coals.

Cold coals simply don’t enjoy the cachet of hot coals.

Casualties so far are given as dozens.

Welcome to the Trump University Class of 2016. Or maybe the United States Congress.

One might as well say that telling people to put their fingers into lamp sockets is an exercise in team-building.

First of all, walking across hot coals, shod or not, is illogical. Why would anyone do that?

Second, if someone does want to walk across hot coals, why doesn’t he dump his Fourth of July barbecue over after the wienies and burgers have been cooked and then walk on his own coals? Then he can burn his feet down to the quality of his brain for only the price of a bag of charcoal.

The Motivator reigned over a flock of crystals ‘n’ essential oils believers during a three-day sheep-shearing called “Unleash the Power Within.” One supposes that after three days there was nothing left to be unleashed from the credit cards of the faithful.

Just what power was on a leash was not made clear, except for the power to walk on hot coals, and, yeah, like that’s going to make the individual or the world better. And does a power owner walk into a pet store and ask for a leash for his power? Is there a leash for walking on hot coals and a different one for walking across the street against the light?

The Motivator’s program avers that walking (he says “storm”) across hot coals will help the…um…participant "overcome the unconscious fears that are holding you back." The illogic is that fear of being burned is a conscious fear, not an unconscious one, and is not symbolic of anything except the possession of the survival skills expected of a six-year-old.

Some folks don’t need to own hot coals without a background check and lessons with a certified instructor.

All others need to be on a no-fry list.

On his site The Motivator presents as a handsome man with a fine set of teeth, the usual chin-fuzz, and the now-requisite pimple-on-a-wire microphone, and adored by thousands of cheering followers. He says stuff. He has more money than you. He must be right. Obey him.

To paraphrase the old song, here’s your hot coal.

-30-

Calendars, Alligators, and Hipsters - column

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Calendars, Alligators, and Hipsters

How curious that according to the mechanistic Gregorian calendar the 21st of June is the beginning of summer, while in a wiser folk tradition it is midsummer, as in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In the far north, where the sun doesn’t complete disappear on St. John’s Day, people stay up all night – or, rather, day – to party.

Far south of the equator the sun is mostly absent, and in New South Wales folks shiver in the cold rain and short days of summer.

The sun is as far north as it goes, and now begins its voyage south. Those who have occasion to drive roads laid out on an east-west axis can note the changes as well as those ancients who built Stonehenge for the same purpose.

A ten-year-old boy probably knows best – summer begins on the Monday after school lets out, and ends in August when classes resume. Summer is bare feet and a cane fishing pole, and later watching the afternoon clouds build up to thunderstorms while herding the cows home to the barn for the evening milking. The other seasons are but not-summer, limited to the horizon of a board at the front of a classroom, once black or green for chalk and now likely to be instructive flashes of colors beamed from a gadget programmed by the Texas Legislature and its British master Pearson Publishing.

+ + +

The small boy fishing with a cane pole is increasingly endangered by the false but legislated ideology that millions of large, carnivorous reptiles constitute an endangered species and so must be protected, while children may with ecological approval be sacrificed to horrible deaths in the claws and teeth of dinosaurs privileged by Molochian laws.

+ + +

Rome has elected the first-ever woman mayor, Virginia Raggi, an attorney who wants to eliminate corruption and Mafia influence in the city. Now it is Caesar’s husband who must be above suspicion.

+ + +

Last Sunday 65,000 Okinawans demanded that American Marines and sailors leave. Every American Marine and sailor agreed. On the same day China began measuring Okinawa and the rest of Japan for new curtains.

+ + +

The Irish national police, the Garda, have been instructed to conduct raids only during the work day out of consideration for the suspects. One hesitates to suggest that this courtesy is, well, a very English thing to do.

Would the ban include traffic stops after 5:00 P.M.?

+ + +

Adolf Hitler was a self-obsessed drug user, non-drinker, non-smoker, wannabe artist, socialist, and diet faddist who wrote a book all about himself and his feelings, shacked up with his squeeze, had his horoscope cast every day, and wore funny clothes and funny hair. Aren’t we pretty much talking about a hipster?

The Austrian government wants to tear down the apartment building in which Hitler was born lest crazy people make a shrine of it. Yes, but then they’ll make a shrine of the parking lot or fast-food restaurant that will replace it because no one can eliminate geographical co-ordinates.

Are there any alligators in Austria?

-30-

Watch List - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com


Watch List

Bulova, Caravelle, and Hamilton
Gaudy Rolex and sturdy Omega
Humble Timex and Comrade Citizen
Tag Heuer measuring Switzerland’s slopes

Caravelle, Movado, and Ingersoll
Longines, Wittnauer, Elgin, and Eberhard
A Dunhill pretending to be Big Ben
Elgin and Gerard-Perregaux (mais oui!)

Ticking the hours ‘til civilization
Tocks its escapement motionless at last

Summer solstice - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Summer Solstice

Apollo seems to pause his passages
His constant celestial orbitings
And gaze upon the north; he may not fly
Beyond his long-appointed limitings

Thus now he seems to stop awhile and rest
Above this earthly altar of repose
Until the bonfires of our good Saint John
Remind him to resume his pilgrimage

His solar voyage to December’s south -
Apollo seems to pause his passages

No-Fly List - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

No-Fly List

The ostrich cannot fly; the emu’s still
The penguin waddles on his icy hill
The kiwi stays in place, as does the rhea
As for the Campbell teal’s flight, no way-a

The auk and steamer duck are out of luck;
Extinct they are, and buried in the muck
The cassowary (always feathers, never hairy)
Can only envy its cousin, the canary

A flightless bird - like you, it seldom moves -
One hopes, comrade, your attitude improves