Clouds and a Railway Crossing, Beaumont, Texas - photograph

"Go Inside Your Houses, Please" - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

“Go Inside Your Houses, Please.”

“Sorry, that page doesn’t exist!”1 You are
Well advised not to ask questions about
What happened here. Just move along;
There was never anything to see here.

“Go inside your houses, please. All these people
will be taken care of.”2 “You can search Twitter
using the search box below or return
to the home page.”1 Go inside your screens, please

All this awkwardness will be taken care of
Go inside your screens, please. Go inside. Please.

1 NBC
2 Doctor Zhivago, 1965

What Do You Take in Your Coffee Enema? - column

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

How Do You Take Your Coffee?

A famous actress – let us call her Ms. Coffee – suggests a somewhat different way of taking one’s morning cuppa.

Is there something wrong with the way we take our coffee now?

Coffee is a celebration of humanity. The morning cup of reveille pleasantly eases us from the happiness of sleep and into a quiet determination to make the work day a brilliant success.

The driver packs his Thermos along with his bills of lading, the office or factory worker takes ten for a recharge with others around the table in the break room, the copper takes a break from patrol down at the Stop ‘N’ Rob, retirees cluster at the supermarket coffee table every morning around nine, the Navy chief petty officer is out of uniform without his paws grasping a coffee cup, and the Air Canada cabin attendant dutifully snarls to the passengers that there is no coffee.

From chalices of glass, ceramics, paper, foam, or plastic, drinking coffee or tea with co-workers and friends almost seems to constitute a rite of secular communion. Except on Air Canada, where there is no coffee, and how dare you ask.

Ms. Coffee, though, suggests that we should take our coffee through the other end of the alimentary canal.

This would probably displace the mirth (Macbeth III.iv.109) at the corner table. Or any table. “Well, hey, I’d better get back to the shop floor; that number three machine’s been acting wonky…”

Ms. Coffee alludes to the, um, assumption of coffee via the nether regions as a deep detoxification, a supercharge, and a whole lotta other stuff using buzzy words. Further, Ms. Coffee refers the reader to a site that for over a hundred dollars sells an appliance for this, um, experience.

The drugstore sells such medical appliances a whole lot cheaper. If you’re interested, that is.

Ms. Coffee’s own website is amusing – she’s even got a real, live shaman who shaves his head and looks all spiritual and stuff – and she’s got lots of pills and merchandise to sell you, and she is herself that famous metaphorical picture of health.

But – with one t – we are all well-advised to visit a nurse-practitioner or physician for our health care needs, not a website.

And, hey, how do you take your coffee?

-30-

The Pig Stand, Beaumont, Texas - photograph

If Sneezes were Horses, then Beggars Would...Sneeze, Probably - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

If Sneezes were Horses, then Beggars Would…Sneeze, Probably

O man – what art thou? Thou’rt not mighty
Clingingly pathetically to a Kleenex box
Instead of wielding a conqueror’s sword
Lifting patent medicines, not wine, to thy lips

Thy sneezing and wheezing will not win thee worlds
The book unread though open in thy lap
Thy darked-orbed eyes unseeing and unseen
Thy wretched, reddened nose – all is despair

And snot that runs in foul, polluted streams
O man – thou art little more than Nyquil-dreams!

Red Sunrise - photograph

A Meditation Upon Matters of Faith and Math - some of the shabbiest doggerel ever...

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Meditation Upon Matters of Faith

And the Worthy and Diligent Study

of the Arcana of Mathematics

as Recommended to Industrious and Thoughtful

Young Men and Women

For Kyle,

Who is Enduring His First College Maths

Our Saviour never said “Now solve for X”
Such is not written in any sacred tex(t)

Saints Paul and Barnabas on journeys Psidian
Did not refer to topics Euclidian

The Corinthians were divided only by factions
Never were they divided by fractions

Good St. Paul wanted all to comprehend
The truth, and not some subtle subtrahend

But still…

But still (to me it is a great frustration)
Numbers are how we measure Creation

With them we plant the Garden that is earth
Building it up with word and work and worth

So that we feed and clothe and mend and tend
With crop rows plowed, panels welded, cattle penned

Airplanes launched, fires put out, and light bulbs lit
Messages sent – there is no end of it!

So brew yourself a cup of coffee
Find your Euclid and dust it off(y)

Work those angles on your protractor
Add, subtract, calculate, and factor

Apply yourself most assiduously
Soon you’ll be an engineer, you’ll see!

Admired by all, a man of great knowledge –
And it began in community college

An Old Man Running While Carrying a Volume of The World Book Encyclopedia - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

An Old Man Running While Carrying a Volume of The World Book Encyclopedia

A Scene from a Hospital Waiting Room

Cups of coffee are reverently borne
Along the bright hospital corridors
By nurses, doctors, technicians, and all
Scrub-suited healers on their dutiful rounds

But wait! A lean, energetic old man
His wild white hair brimming his gimme cap
Dodges among the sacred cups, and runs
Up the stairs to the ICU waiting room

Clutching an old encyclopedia
Like a dispatch from the front –
                                                      I wish I’d asked

Kirbyville Elementary School, 2nd Grade, 1955-1956 - photograph

Photograph by D.T. Kent, Jr., of happy memory

Feast of the Epiphany - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Feast of the Epiphany

Grey days recede into dreary, drizzling dusks
Baptismal rains across the windows slip
And even the candlelight is not proof
Against the gathering gloom of heartfall

Shakespeare leans uncertainly on the shelf
And agonizes over his writer’s block
Milton is writing yet another tract
On faith while smoking Players cigarettes

Warnie and Jack are out for a brisk walk
And Tollers is busy correcting proofs
Under a yellow puddle of lamplight
Bleak Spenser in his grief Kilcolman weeps

We all hold castles abandoned and burnt
Friendships grown mouldy, squabbles unresolved
Walks not taken, rough drafts uncorrected
Pipes gone quite out, cups of tea gotten cold

Has it been that long since I saw you last?
Come in; I’ll put the kettle on for tea
Just leave your coat and brolly by the door
Come sit by the fire; come, and talk with me

Russian Children on Christmas Eve - poem

Russian Children on Christmas Eve

Good children dress warmly to watch for the star
The star of Bethlehem, the shepherds’ star
The star of the magi, true-guiding star
And more than all of these, the children’s star

If children fall asleep during the Royal Hours
It is fitting and just; they too are royal,
Princes and princesses of the Emperor
And of that Child who in the manger slept

Then home to kutya, and so to their beds -
The Saviour blesses all dear little sleepyheads!

S rozhdyestvom Hristovym!


(In Orthodoxy the 6th of January is Christmas Eve)

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Snowlight - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Snowlight

White snowlight, glowlight, brightening the woods
By praying down the sky to float among
The dark and creaking pillars of ancient oaks
Whose trunks and limbs are black with clinging ice

Drear, mouldering autumn leaves now lie at rest
Beneath soft-shoaling ripples of rare snow
Pale, iridescent light dances between
The clouds and the ground, and then back again

Shadowless colorings, pearlings, and frosts
At play with miracles in January.

Down at the Auto Repair - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Down at the Auto Repair - A Waiting Room Discourse

Blah blah blah Trump blah blah blah Bannon blah
Blah blah blah da(ng)ed schools blah blah it’s all
Fake news blah blah blah double-blah media
Clintons blah blah blah kids these days blah blah

Blah buzz buzz buzz that wouldn’t have happened
In my day blah blah blah I can’t believe
What they’re charging blah blah blah FEMA blah
Blah Trump blah blah they don’t want us to know

Blah blah blah da(ng)ed schools blah blah it’s all
Fake news blah blah blah double-blah Jesus

(You can turn it over if you want, but the other side’s just the same)

Meditation on a Ten-Dollar Timex Watch - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Meditation on a Ten-Dollar Timex Watch

A watch doesn’t really tell time, you know
Its tiny mechanism sweeps three hands
Around a dial locked in a little case
Upon a strap buckled around your wrist

And there it imitates the planet’s spin
And the planet’s spin is ordained by God
And the watch’s spin is ordained by man
So that we get to our haircuts on time

The solar system is a mighty work -
And a visit to the barber is nice

Is the End Near for Religion? - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Is the End Near for Religion?

-news item

No one will ever acknowledge a MePhone
As the Lord of the universe, or as
The Creator from before created time
Born of an IBM Selectric

True plastic of true limited resources,
Sing Advent hymns unto an Apple II,
Whisper aves on a strand of transistors,
Or genuflect before a Model T

No consecration will ever obtain
Upon the altar of a microchip

A New Day of Freedom - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A New Dawn of Freedom

A new dawn of freedom? May it be so
Even in this artificial shift of time
According to those calendars and clocks
Who still attribute virtues to old Janus

For this is Mary’s day, especially so,
This last day in the Octave, now at dawn
And She is our new Dawn of freedom given,
Our Porta Caeli, Bearer of Our Lord

Now with the light we rise to greet the Light
A new dawn of freedom – and it is so

Janus Laughs - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Janus Laughs

Old Janus surely laughs at our mistakes
In thinking that the world begins again,
That pages turned in calendars and books
Reduce mysteries into measurements

Man Screams at Trump Robot Doll - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Man Screams at Trump Robot Doll

-news item

Just why would anyone scream at a doll?
A Disney doll in the Hall of Presidents
Apped up to creak and speak, but not to hear
(For even human presidents don’t listen)

So yelling safely at a dummied-down
Emmanuel Goldstein 1 of wires and wax
Is not unlike protesting a doorknob
Or verbally abusing a thermostat

Poor old rebel dude  – is this all he’s got?
Whatever he feels he is, he’s surely not


1 1984

The Beggar at Canterbury Gate - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Beggar at Canterbury Gate

The beggar sits at Canterbury Gate,
Thin, pale, unshaven, sad. His little dog
Sits patiently as a Benedictine
At Vespers, pondering eternity.
Not that rat terriers are permitted
To make solemn vows. Still, the pup appears
To take his own vocation seriously,
As so few humans do. For, after all,
Dogs demonstrate for us the duties of
Poverty, stability, obedience,
In choir, perhaps; among the garbage, yes,
So that perhaps we too might live aright.

The good dog’s human plays his tin whistle
Beneath usurper Henry’s1 offering-arch
For Kings, as beggars do, must drag their sins
And lay them before the Altar of God:
The beggar drinks and drugs and smokes, and so
His penance is to sit and suffer shame;
The King’s foul murders stain his honorable soul;
His penance is a stone-carved famous name
Our beggar, then, is a happier man,
Begging for bread at Canterbury Gate;
Tho’ stones are scripted not with his poor fame,
His little dog will plead his cause to God.

1 Henry VII, who built the Cathedral Gate in 1517, long after the time of Henry II and St. Thomas Becket

Hitler's Ride is for Sale - column

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Hitler’s Ride

One of Hitler’s sets of wheels, a ‘way-happenin’, straight-eight 1939 Mercedes 770K Grosser convertible, is up for auction in Arizona next month. You might want to drop by Scottsdale and kick a few tires.

Some features might still be under warranty. There is some slight damage from Vladimir Putin bench-pressing it.

Next year’s model will be made in China.

One imagines Hitler and Stalin, who were BFF until they began tiffing in June of ’41, drag racing along their demarcation line through Poland.

The big Mercedes was a good car for its time, but wasn’t a match for the American Studebaker. Or the Sherman.

Hitler’s car features armored glass and panels, which makes it just the thing to cruise American cities these days. The convertible top makes catching some rays as easy as strudel.

There is no mention of how many miles to the gallon, kilometers to the liter, or broken treaties to the leader.

The Mercedes Grosser doesn’t come with a sound system, and the radio is A.M. and with only one station, Radio Berlin. You might find a retro-fit at Montgomery Ward’s Electric Avenue. Siriusly.

There is no backup camera because anyone that close just didn’t need to be there, so tough keks.

Inside the glove compartment is a 1943 catalogue of Eva Braun’s spring clothing line. She was quite the designer. And her perfume – “When It’s Air-Raid Time in Heidelberg #6” – was a blast. There is also a road map showing the quickest routes home from Stalingrad, a fan letter from the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, a Margaret Sanger fan magazine, and a picture of Ernst Rohm in a swim suit. More than just friends?

No doubt some guy will ask the seller if he will take a post-dated check: “Like, I don’t get paid until next week, like, you know, but I’m good for it; like, you can ask anyone around here who knows Ol’ Skeeter. Yeah, like, they’ll go ‘Yeah, Ol’ Skeeter’s good for it, like, you know.’”

“So what will you give me on this Ford Fiesta for a trade?”

Hitler was certainly a guy for our time – he was a teetotaler, a non-smoker, and a vegetarian, and sported some quirky face-fuzz. Outfit him in some knee-pants and a Che’ tee-shirt and he’d fit right in the queue at a coffee house in Seattle.

And his car – simply to die for.

But who would want that thing?

-30-