Monday, January 15, 2018
About that False Alarm in Hawaii... - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Flare light
Flare bright
First flare I see tonight
I wish I may
I wish I might
Not be blown to death tonight
Subtle beep
Subtle beep
‘wakening me from my sleep -
Oh, no! I’m going to die!
Not meeeeeee! Don’t wanna fry!
It’s all about ME – boo-hoo!
Poor ME! Poor ME! I’m gonna SUE!
mhall46184@aol.com
I. From a Vietnamese / Cambodian / Egyptian / Israeli / Lebanese /
Sudanese / Syrian / Afghan Child’s Garden of Verses
Flare light
Flare bright
First flare I see tonight
I wish I may
I wish I might
Not be blown to death tonight
II. From an American Man’s Twooter of Self-Pity
Subtle beep
Subtle beep
‘wakening me from my sleep -
Oh, no! I’m going to die!
Not meeeeeee! Don’t wanna fry!
It’s all about ME – boo-hoo!
Poor ME! Poor ME! I’m gonna SUE!
Sunday, January 14, 2018
A Take Away from the Take Away Steak Fingers - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
King Henry II: Forks?
Thomas Becket: Yes, from Florence. New little invention. It's for pronging meat and carrying it to the mouth. It saves
you dirtying your fingers.
King Henry II: But then you dirty the fork.
Thomas Becket: Yes, but it's washable.
King Henry II: So are your fingers. I don't see the point.
Encapsulated in bivalves of foam
As bottom feeders in the fast-food chain
Small fragments of a poor dead cow, chopped, shaped
And formed into cow fingers that are not
For it behooves the diner thus to know
That cows haven’t any fingers at all
But the dear diner does, and digitally
Renders the cow fingers as nutrition
And that is all there is about cow fingers -
Not a topic on which the gourmet lingers
mhall46184@aol.com
A Take Away from the Take Away Steak Fingers
King Henry II: Forks?
Thomas Becket: Yes, from Florence. New little invention. It's for pronging meat and carrying it to the mouth. It saves
you dirtying your fingers.
King Henry II: But then you dirty the fork.
Thomas Becket: Yes, but it's washable.
King Henry II: So are your fingers. I don't see the point.
-Becket, 1964
Encapsulated in bivalves of foam
As bottom feeders in the fast-food chain
Small fragments of a poor dead cow, chopped, shaped
And formed into cow fingers that are not
For it behooves the diner thus to know
That cows haven’t any fingers at all
But the dear diner does, and digitally
Renders the cow fingers as nutrition
And that is all there is about cow fingers -
Not a topic on which the gourmet lingers
Saturday, January 13, 2018
...Who Gives Joy to my Youth - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
A child thinks joy is all about the child
And so it is. And maybe an old man feels
That joy just isn’t for him anymore
To kneel his creaking joints before the truth
But it is
A wise man knows that he is still a child
An infant playing before the cave of winds
A Moses borne upon the ancient Nile
A shivering youth stepping into the Jordan
Though the lad be strong and the man be frail
Both are joyful children at the altar rail
mhall46184@aol.com
…Who Gives Joy to my Youth
Introibo ad altare Dei. Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam.
I will go in to the altar of God: to God who giveth joy to my youth.
-Daily Missal, 1962
For Brother Simon
A child thinks joy is all about the child
And so it is. And maybe an old man feels
That joy just isn’t for him anymore
To kneel his creaking joints before the truth
But it is
A wise man knows that he is still a child
An infant playing before the cave of winds
A Moses borne upon the ancient Nile
A shivering youth stepping into the Jordan
Though the lad be strong and the man be frail
Both are joyful children at the altar rail
Friday, January 12, 2018
"Did Y'all Read About Those Chips in the Bible?" - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
“Did y’all read about those chips in the Bible?
Yessir, they got these chips now, and we ain’t
Gonna be able to buy or sell nothing
Without these here chips in our bodies
The C.I.A., some of those people got’em,
Yessir, and you ain’t going to the grocery store
And buyin’ nothin’ without ‘em. I read
Where it’s in th’ Bible, and, yessir, it is
Me, I’m standin’ on th’ World of th’ Lord
And I ain’t havin’ no chip put in, nossir”
mhall46184@aol.com
“Did Y’all Read About Those Chips in the Bible?”
In the Supermarket Checkout Line
“Did y’all read about those chips in the Bible?
Yessir, they got these chips now, and we ain’t
Gonna be able to buy or sell nothing
Without these here chips in our bodies
The C.I.A., some of those people got’em,
Yessir, and you ain’t going to the grocery store
And buyin’ nothin’ without ‘em. I read
Where it’s in th’ Bible, and, yessir, it is
Me, I’m standin’ on th’ World of th’ Lord
And I ain’t havin’ no chip put in, nossir”
Thursday, January 11, 2018
"Go Inside Your Houses, Please" - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
“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
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
Wednesday, January 10, 2018
What Do You Take in Your Coffee Enema? - column
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
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?
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-
If Sneezes were Horses, then Beggars Would...Sneeze, Probably - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
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!
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!
Tuesday, January 9, 2018
A Meditation Upon Matters of Faith and Math - some of the shabbiest doggerel ever...
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
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
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
Monday, January 8, 2018
An Old Man Running While Carrying a Volume of The World Book Encyclopedia - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
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
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
Sunday, January 7, 2018
Feast of the Epiphany - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
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
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
Saturday, January 6, 2018
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
Friday, January 5, 2018
Snowlight - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
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.
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.
Thursday, January 4, 2018
Down at the Auto Repair - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
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)
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)
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