The Dreariness of Dawn - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Dreariness of Dawn

“Carpe Diem.” Dawn, and all its cliches’
But what would one now seize? Unrequited dreams
That slouch in the corner filing their fingernails?
A cup of coffee at the kitchen door?

Dawn is the illusion that this day might
Be different from those that came before
Like advertisements promising happiness
And delivering failures postage-due

Well, you might as well get up, and get dressed
Dawn.  Because, maybe, this time, just maybe…

"Render unto Caesar..." - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

“Render unto Caesar…”

29th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Let us render unto the Caesars
Our sons and daughters for undeclared wars
Each death excused with a telephone call
Each death another medal for a general

Let us render unto the Caesars
Our children for the pleasures of the rich
Each death and shattered heart excused as art
Each death a tribute to some rich man’s lust

Each leader, each Somebody, takes and takes –
They then dismiss their victims as snowflakes

Porching on a Saturday in October - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Porching on a Saturday in October

But where are the little children? Well, here,
But they are tall, lanky teenagers now
With car keys and cutoffs and muscle shirts
Whispering, giggling, heavy-lifting

(Stop tormenting your sister!)

Dad wants the outdoor grill moved? Sure – watch this!
Pans and food from the kitchen to the grill
And back again? We’re well on top of it
Something from town? We’re on our way right now

(Stop hitting your brother!)

Children, like spring, must grow into summer
And their springs and summers are forever our joys

(And never stop loving each other.)

The Death Penalty and a New Computer Printer - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Death Penalty and a New Computer Printer

If we consider our culture to be
An ongoing affirmation of life
Consistently in favor of redemption
We cannot then presume to kill a man

A death penalty for any one of us
Is a death penalty for all of us
A submission to the darkness of evil
A yielding again to original sin

From execution, then, may God preserve us –
(Except for
That 1-800 wretch in customer service)

Autism - A Boy and His Dinosaur -poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Boy and His Dinosaur

In another world, a silent world within,
The dominant species are dinosaurs.
Never having fallen, no evil obtains,
And beneficent reptiles live there as -

As innocently as butterflies.
In his quiet world of gentle reptilians
A little boy is never without a friend,
A Saurian with an unpronounceable name,

To share a cave, a thought, a book, a toy,
And so that world with a best-friend dinosaur
Is the child’s real world, the only one
Where he knows love.

Pedal-Pushers of the Undead - column

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Pedal-Pushers of the Undead

These crisp autumn days mean that soon college administrators will be telling students what they must not wear for Halloween lest they hurt the feelings of other young grownups.

No one ever asks why college students are thinking about Halloween, that non-holiday, at all. They’re beyond trick-or-treating, don’cha think? College students should be doing college-student-thinky-things, like solving for x or writing about the influence of Fannie Brawne on John Keats’ existential vision of something-or-other.

And, besides, if folks on college campuses (or is that campi?) were to wear costumes, how would anyone know? To visit a college campus now is to wonder why so many people dress as if they looted their garments from hurricane debris – tee-shirts with pictures of that bearded mass murderer, knee-pants (yes, those 1950s pedal-pushers have risen from the sartorial dead), clown shoes, and desperately goofy hats.

That’s the faculty, of course; students usually manage to dress more appropriately.

As for the hurt feelings, well, I know of at least one college that last year greeted its incoming students with coloring-book sessions. If anyone suffers the Aunt Pittypat vapours from seeing someone costumed as capitalist oppressor Thurston Howell III the faculty can hand him a coloring book and a box of crayons in approved colors: “Look, honeykins. Here’s Mickey Mouse. See? Let’s color his house environmentalist green, okay? Then you’ll feel allllllllllll better.”

Oh, yeah, coloring books for college students will advance the arts and sciences of this great nation.

In Texas, college students who meet the legal requirements are permitted to carry firearms on campus, but are forbidden to dress up as Christopher Columbus, Pocahontas, or Zorro. A distressed 21-year-old princeling whose emotions have been triggered – yes - by being asked to, oh, read a book or solve some engineering problems may lawfully carry a pistol while on his way to his coloring-book sensitivity therapy to express his existential outrage.

And citizens are arguing about Halloween.

-30-

The University Drama Club Presents... poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Look Back in Petulance

A Kitchen Microwave Drama

Featuring Angry Young Persons

Dramatis Personae:

Rainblossom – an existential performance artist

Skydream – a self-authenticating air-vegan

The stage is set as the world of our dreams, peopled with only the good who dream dreams and vision visions and, like, you know, and don’t eat our forest friends, and stuff. The actors are dressed in hand-dyed Colombian ruanas to represent The True.

Rainblossom –

I demand that you validate our soul!

Skydream –

As a cosmic sunbeam of otherness

I must not.

Rainblossom –
                             O where are my comic books?

Skydream –

They have been cleansed, just as my soul has sung
Unto the Cosmic Dissonance of love

Rainblossom –

Oh, Oh, Oh

Skydream –

                      Look, Look, Look

In unison –

                                                       A vision of…Truth

Rainblossom –

But our truth, not some other bogus truth

Skydream –

                                                                       Woke, Woke

fin

The writers, cast, and crew of The Green Street Meadows Collective of Artists and Workers with Fists and Dreams and Words United Against the Occupation (Your Major Credit Card Welcome) neither need nor desire your cheap, shallow, bourgeois, sexist, racist applause to validate our existential worth. Be in awe, and then slink away in your individualist privileged guilt.

The Mirror Heal'd from Side to Side poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Mirror Heal'd from Side to Side

When a mirror looks
Into you, deep inside you
Does it see itself?


(An allusion to Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott”)

This is NOT the Age of Weinstein - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Blah-Blah-ing in the Age of Blah-Blah-Blah

No, this is not The Age of: Hefner, Clinton,
Obama, Trump, Harvey, Putin, Kim, Xi
Trolls, polls, super bowls, or cinnamon rolls
Kurz, Kaepernick, Ginger, or Mary Ann

Nor yet again an Age of: Gold or lead
Bronze, pewter, silver, nickel, aluminum
Chrome, nichrome, copper, brass, titanium
Thallium, thorium, thulium, tin 1

This is the age of You, unless you insist
On claiming this the age of something else


1 Yes, I had to look all that up

Mother of Exiles - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Mother of Exiles

Saint Mary’s Church of Frydek, San Felipe, and Sealy

The grasses of the coastal plain are still;
Across the road a summer field plowed under
Waits through October’s lingering heat for frosts
While the distant Interstate chants to itself

Our Lady of Frydek, Mother of Exiles!

First Nations, Spaniards, Mexicans, Czechs, Poles
Italians, Germans, English, Vietnamese

Have ended their pilgrimages here, with You
Where God has led them for His purposes

And here, dear brother, God has led you too
To wait with them, with Her, for history’s end

Which will be
The Beginning

You Russian Poets - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

You Russian Poets

You Russian poets must write your lines in blood
For often that is all that is left to you
By invaders, revolutionaries, and
“The briefcase politician in his jeep” 1

Perhaps every Russian is a Pushkin
In frost and heat, in every deprivation
Plowing in the face of the enemy
Building civilization with frozen hands

And always shaping noble tetrameters
Into an eternal song of Russian spring



1 Yevtushenko, “Zima Junction”

"Mild Suburban Christianity from 30,000 Feet" - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

“Mild Suburban Christianity”

A famous religion writer jets about
The world, from holy site to holy site
And being holy here and there, he writes
About his being holy here and there

And in his profitable scorn dismisses
“Mild suburban Christianity,” as if
Labor and thrift are somehow unworthy
Of a holy writer seated in first class

Editor-in-chief of This, President of That

(And free to be a non-profit 501C)

He asks for gifts from those suburbans mild

Viet-Nam Service Medal - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Viet-Nam Service Medal

A dragon lurks among the bamboo trees
And if sometimes half-hidden, still, always there
Sometimes half-forgotten, but always there
Is he a glorious dragon? Sometimes, yes

But then some nights he stirs the leaves awake
His eyes – they seem to flicker through the dark
His claws – they tear into the freighted soul
His blood – like Duncan’s, will not wash away

But dragons are good – what is it that one sees
If not a dragon lurking among the trees?

Sorting Out Russian Poetry - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Sorting Out Russian Poetry

Avant-garde post-modernism ego
Futurism symbolism acme
Ism constructivism cosmopol
Itanism formalism neo

Formalism futurism imag
Inism proletarian real
Ism absurdism maximalism

Socialist realism, nothingism -
Poetic beauty, in spite of the Isms

The Dreaded Microsoft 10 Security Alert Popup of Doom That Won't Go Away - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Dreaded Microsoft 10 Security Alert Popup of Doom

That Won’t Go Away

 

(In order to receive the best support, we request all users initially download and run the Genuine Diagnostics tool (MGADiag.exe) at this link http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=52012. Click "Continue", click the "Copy" button then “Paste” the report into a reply message in this thread.)

I took a miner's lantern and a pouch
Of vampire-bane and crawled into the dark,
Dark tunnels of Security Updates.
I may have slain the beast, but it was dark

(Microsoft Genuine Advantage > Closed - Office Genuine Advantage Validation Issues (Office) Read-Only)

So dark in there. I lunged with vague commands
All printed in translation from the Orc
And strange lights flickered, flickered, flick…off
Restart reboot alt control shift…huh?

(Post this question in the "Suggestions and Feedback for the Forums" Forum at the following address http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-us/suggest/threads.)

Silence. A stench of death…it’s dead, it’s gone…
But wait…no…NO! I hear a popup coming…!

(Marking as Answered. Your feedback is important. Bye.)

Penny Wise and Penny Foolish - column

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Penny Wise and Penny Foolish

Emptying one’s pockets at the end of a busy day of bringing home that metaphorical bacon reminds us of how useless is all that pot-metal we take as change and then carry around almost to no purpose.

In Ye Olden Days a pocket full of coins was a good thing: a cup of coffee cost a nickel, as did the daily paper and a Hershey bar, a Coca-Cola was six cents, a telephone call was a dime, and a hamburger was a quarter. These things weren’t cheaper; it’s that the money was worth more.

Around 1983 some alligator-shoe boy ruled that the copper penny should no longer be made of copper, but rather copper-clad, whatever that means. A penny now appears to be made of painted floor-sweepings, and is worthless. Dimes, quarters, and half-dollars, once made of silver, are as substantial as Monopoly® money. Purchasing power now begins only with the dollar, and a bouquet of dollars at that.

Why, then, does the government still manufacture play money, and why do we carry it around?

For adults the penny is probably a matter of sentiment. Although there is no longer any such thing as a piece of penny candy, we remember those childhood days and so remain attached to pennies that really aren’t even pennies. A penny is rather like Prince Albert in a can, which no longer exists even as the wheezy telephone joke: “Have you got Prince Albert in a can? Well, you better let him out before he suffocates!”

Canada rid itself of the penny in 2013, saving $11 million a year in bothering with them. The Dominion does not seem to have suffered thereby. Since Canadian pennies are the same size as U.S. pennies they show up in circulation south of the 49th fairly often. If you save your Canadian pennies then in a few years they will be worth, well, nothing. But the Maple Leaf is pretty.

Spanish escudos and reales have not circulated hereabouts since 1821 or so, and the English pound has not purchased any tea on the east coast since the tiff beginning in 1776. However, the old saying “penny wise and pound foolish,” meaning thrift in small matters but wastage in greater ones, lingers, much like the penny.

One wonders if, two hundred years ago, moms and dads in Nacogdoches, Anahuac, and San Augustine cautioned their children about being reale wise and escudo foolish.

-30-

Ite ad Joseph - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Ite ad Joseph

For Joseph Thaddeus Petty

Sunday, 8 October 2017

Then let us go in to Joseph this day,
His day, soft-cradled in his mother’s arms;
He does not rule Egypt, but rather, our hearts
In the ordained hierarchy of love

His sisters in their turns nestle him too -
“Be sure to support his head – yes, that’s right” –
Their playmate new in the garden of life,
Their brother in the cloisters of Creation

He sleeps, so, shhhhhh – now let us slip away
For we have greeted Joseph on this happy day

The Big Kids - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Big Kids

For Claude Bevil Blanchette Hall,

Of Happy Memory

1954

Sprinkled by the janitor from a coffee can
The oily smell of the green sawdust sown
Along the old school hallway’s green tile floors
And pushed along with a long-handled broom

My brother’s at the door with my lunch money
He’s one of The Big Kids, 5th grade, y’know
High up on the third floor, where we can’t go

Not yet

What’s it like to be one of The Big Kids?

2017

My brother’s on a higher floor again
And what’s it like up there, where we can’t go?

Not yet


Claude Bevil Blanchette Hall was the son of Claude Duval Blanchette and Katherine Mattie Bevil Blanchette.

Claude Duval Blanchette was an officer on the tanker SS Muskogee, which was torpedoed off the Carolinas on 28 March 1942 with the loss of all hands. His son, Claude, was born on 12 October 1942, and died on 6 October 2017.

After the war Katherine married Hebo Ogden Hall.

All happy, happy memories.

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

Houston Man Accused of Decapitating Mother - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Houston Man Accused of Decapitating Mother

He was a quiet man who always kept
His lawn neat would give you the shirt off his back
Was on his way to Bible study wouldn’t
Harm a flea that’s not the (name) that I know

Seemed like a normal everyday guy to me
Never saw this coming just can’t believe it
Let us come together and stand as one
Because that’s not the kind of people we are

We just won’t let them change the way we live
He just snapped so GoFundMe tee-shirt give

Truck Stop Restroom Cologne - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Truck Stop Restroom Cologne

Denny’s / Flying J, Orange, Texas

Check out the boom-chick in the parking lot -
Love and diesel fumes are in the air.
Tattoos and cigarettes, oh, man, she’s hot!
Industrial peroxide tints her hair
Like rainbows in a toxic fuel-oil spill.
Her waist is a rockin’ forty-four,
A pavement Venus posed before the grill
Of a Peterbilt outside the truckers’ store.
How can the lovestruck swain lure her to his cab?
Persuade her to give him her innocent all?
A ripped-shirt display of a manly ab?
Wait - what’s that machine on the restroom wall?

Cool dude, you’ll never have to truck alone
If you scent yourself with restroom cologne.