Song of Comrade Photocopier Operator (a Russia series, 47) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Song of Comrade Photocopier Operator

From Le Chansons de Volga File Clerks Rouge

© 1962 by Les Chansons, Leningrad

O sing a song of reproduction
Accomplished by electrical induction
As workers’ hands insert the paper
Deep into the magic vapor
Chanting without a fuss or stink,
“Yo, ho, ho and a bottle of ink!”
Ions charge the chemical toner
Unless there’s none, ‘cause it’s all goner
Or even worse – if there’s a jam
And then the worker yells out (“Goodness!”)
But with a wrench and a mighty shout
Like that ol’ Czar, the jam is OUT
The Committee decrees a Print Command
This is their red-star’red demand
And out comes the paper, newly free
Fresh from a cartridge in a… (There! See?)
By Good Comrade Worker, Ivan-on-the-Spot
Alas, the message is for him to be…

                                                              shot

Your Signature Cheeseburger - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Your Signature Cheeseburger

A drive-in fast-foodery advertises
Its golly-gee new signature cheeseburger
But what in burgers does “signature” mean?
Who signs a cheeseburger, and how, and why?

Maybe…

The Artist Known as Nihil composes his
Signature cheeseburger, customized for you,
While waiting for his big break in Vegas
And then he’ll show all you little people

But for now he needs to sign your cheeseburger:
“To Customer 362,
                                Best wishes,
                                                      from Nihil”

Does This Machine Kill Fascists? (a Russia series, 46) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Does This Machine Kill Fascists?

Does this machine kill Fascists? Probably not
Unless it bores them to a yawning death
Through soporific clichés crudely imposed
Upon a few poor, battered chords that twang
Like the barbed wire of an Arctic gulag
Where happy comrades
          Shiver in the snow
          Wither in the wind
          Starve on slops
          Burn with typhus
          Rot in the tundra
As they build the future upon mass graves
While the anti-Fascist cashes his checks

But Enough about Mr. Trump; Let's Talk about You - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

But Enough about Mr. Trump; Let’s Talk about You

These hours are not The Age of Trump, oh, no
Nor yet the age of McDonald’s arches
Turned upside down like pendant parts spilt from
The four-color process of a Playboy mag

All time is God’s, and as a gift to you
May be employed in work and play as you
Think best in gratitude for all the light
That falls upon your acts, your arts, your loves

Whatever else, this is an age of you
In quest for the good, the beautiful, and
                                                   the true

The Revolution (a Russia series, 45) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Revolution

Little men arguing in shabby rooms
Meetings, manifestos, revolvers, bombs
Informers, spies, social organization,
Speeches, minutes, dues, What is to be Done?
The great cause of the Proletariat
Greetings from our good comrades in Smolensk
Nihilism, committees, secrecy
The thirst for culture is aristocratic
Nihilism is the only art of the people
Rumors, whispers, clandestine magazines
The unification of workers and peasants
Resolutions passed in the factory soviet
Clenched fists to reject the personal life
Electrification and equality
Cigarettes, vodka, the people’s justice
Against the parasitical bourgeoisie
Solidarity to destroy the kulaks
His poetry reeks of sentimentality
Self-centered intellectual decadence
The people’s will for the people’s party
Education for the twentieth century
Lift high the red banner,
                                             fill full the graves

The Futility of the Coccolithophores - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Futility of the Coccolithophores

In a careless moment, much to my grief
I lost the heritage of millions dead
And much like an unconscionable thief
Considered my atrocities, and fled

In reefs and shoals they lived, they worked, they died
From ancient times, and even until now
In patience layering their art with pride
Each tiny home and funereal how

Not even in their ruins can they now talk
Because I dropped and broke them – goodbye, chalk!

A Song of Liberation (a Russia series, 44) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Song of Liberation

Grandfather’s Saint George medal – hide it first
The ikon of Saint Seraphim – that’s next
Babushka’s crucifix – O, how she loved it
The picture of the Czar – away! Away!

Do not betray your thoughts – a careless word
A smile not authorized, a memory
A fragment from a cheerful Christmas song:
These do not advance The Revolution

Beneath our Brave Red Star they must lie hidden
While our dear comrades love and watch us all

Alone in the Parish Hall While Waiting for a Meeting to Begin - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Alone in the Parish Hall While Waiting for a Meeting to Begin

(smells kinda funny in here)

Words:

Behold the Lamb of God, Exit, Please turn
The air-conditioner off, NO SMOKING PLEASE
One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic
Nicene Creed, 6th Grade Classroom, On this Rock

Things:

Crucifix, thermostat, coffee machine
American flag in a flower vase
Clock, napkins, chairs, a misplaced plastic fork
And folding tables unfolded to the light

Sounds:

A choir of refrigerators out of tune
With each other, and with Ordinary Time

Futurism (a Russia series, 43) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Futurism

Futurism acknowledges the past
But only to condemn it, discard it:
A song that was sung sweetly yesterday
By a pretty girl while driving to work

A baby laughing at a butterfly
A beagle pup chasing a rubber ball
Geese honking through their autumn pilgrimage
And former people who would not adapt

Reflecting on the mass graves it has filled
Futurism acknowledges its past

"Order 263...263...!" - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

“Order 263…263…!”

For Yue Wang Yidhna

And All Who Brew Morning Poetry for the World

You are neither barista nor priestess
Even though perhaps a little bit of both
You do not serve either McDonald or Tim
But rather the supplicants who approach

Who plead with you to offer them the Cup
Of transient peace and hope in this sad world
A layered paper chalice wherein is borne
Colombian savour, healing and warm

And it is from your hands that they receive
A special blessing, and strength for their day

Ellipses (a Russia series, 42) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Ellipses

Upon reading the poems of Anna Ahkmatova

…….. are most useful things; they hide
One’s thoughts from the …….. ………
Who search and sniff each line for any whiff
Of ………, ……….., or …..

Since …… …… in their arrogance,
…………. who forget their place
Will scribble heresies and call it art
But like to hide their plots in lots of dots

Say what you will (but you’d better not):
…….. are most useful things; they hide.

"May I Borrow Your Finger?" - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

“May I Borrow Your Finger?”

A small child asked another. An old man turned
To wonder about a question he had never heard
How does one lend a finger? But then he saw:
A fingerprint to open a little ‘phone

For children borrow from each other’s lives, and joy
In all the little daily ceremonies
Of childhood, giggling over telescreens
And, too, their hopes and dreams and ice-cream cones

A finger now a child may lend or borrow
And, as always, maybe his heart tomorrow

Dimitri in America (a Russia series, 41) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Dimitri in America

Did Mitya escape to America?
He might have changed his name to Bob or Al
Married Myrtle in the Methodist Church -
Myrtle, nee’ Agrafena Alexandrovna –

And worked the candy counter at Woolworth’s
Riding the trolley downtown every day
While saving up for a new Model T
In obedience to his New World staretz

Horatio Alger hissing behind a tree:
Was Mitya sentenced to America?

Another Non-Combat Death in Iraq - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Another Non-Combat Death in Iraq

She took an oath to defend the Constitution
But no one seemed to have taken an oath
                                                                      to defend her


(Now back to the Gridiron Dinner)

Contra Ivan Karamazov (a Russia series, 40) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Contra Ivan Karamazov

Though some maintain that parallels don’t meet
And three-point-something is the sum of pi
And whether X is found; no one knows why
(Is it lost, perhaps wandering in the street?)

Curious matters all Euclidian
Even for the bold mathematician
Are as obdurate as obsidian
Each an illogical proposition

To the rationalist impossible, and yet -
Parallel lines are at the Altar met

Soft Targets - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Soft Targets

“…schools, as soft targets, need to be fortified”

-the sheriff of Broward County

Perhaps we are Essenes in the desert
Or Sicarii fortifying Masada
A civilization fragmented, lost
Confused and lost, withering, withdrawing

We are in any event determined
To save something against the future time
Anything – so that men may pray again -
A rosary, an anthology of Keats

Deep in the dust deep in a cave upon a hill
While in the plain below dark armies drill

Chertkovo (a Russia series, 39) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Chertkovo

For Eugenio Corti

Perhaps the site is now a garbage heap
A parking lot, a drainage ditch, a field
Where little children chase a soccer ball
Among the flowers of a Russian spring

Whispering a memory of Italy
For here a poor Italian soldier died
His life ripped from him in a desolation
Of screams and violence and frozen horror:

But he is a candle, lit again, in Heaven where
His feet are always warm, and “Savoia!” is a hymn

Educational Leadership - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Educational Leadership

It’s for the children transparency
Because children are our most important
Resource we need to put this behind us
The children come first the healing process
Needs to begin the best interests of the children
Because we’re a team focus on the children
Distractions it’s all about the children
We need to move forward because we’re a family

He and his attorneys could not immediately
Be reached for comment for the children

Old Karamazov (a Russia series, 38) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Old Karamazov

Young Karamazov – once upon a time
Strolled dreaming through the happy hopes of youth
And surely wondered about spring and love
Wrote clumsy verse, perhaps, for a pretty girl

Then fell unfortunately into fashion:
The acquisition of proud vanities
Through the disposition of dreams and souls
Until he was only an old man who

Sat brooding through the bitter schemes of age
Old Karamazov – lost upon a time

Yes, Yes, But They Need Good Jobs in the Real World - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Yes, Yes, But They Need Good Jobs in the Real World

The plans for your construction are precise
The design and engineering are true
The foundations solid, the drains are laid
In mathematics pure, infallible

The offices are bright with light, well-aired
The flow of work geometrically set
The shops and stores convenient to the staff
In tactical practicalities placed

But do you wonder, at night beneath your lamp
Why you are building a concentration camp?