Neo-Colonialist Hegemonism - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Neo-Colonialist Hegemonism

Some call it somethingphobic and bellicose
Crude masculinist supremacy (by far)
Insensitive, sexist, and just plain gross –
But it’s righteously vegan – my weekly cigar!

The Enlightenment: a Dim and Dripping Corridor - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Enlightenment

A dimly-lit and dripping corridor
Echoing with the screams of broken souls
As they are liberated for a new age
The executioner adjusts his hood,
Wipes his hands free of blood and fragments of bone,
And checks his incoming text-messages.

THE WAR PRAYER, Mark Twain (1905)

The War Prayer

by Mark Twain

It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and spluttering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory with stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener.

It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety’s sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.

Sunday morning came — next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams — visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender!

Then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag, or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation:

God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest,
Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!

Then came the “long” prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory —

An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher’s side and stood there waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, “Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord and God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!”

The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside — which the startled minister did — and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:

“I come from the Throne — bearing a message from Almighty God!” The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. “He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import — that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of — except he pause and think. “God’s servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two — one uttered, and the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this — keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon your neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain on your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse on some neighbor’s crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.

“You have heard your servant’s prayer — the uttered part of it. I am commissioned by God to put into words the other part of it — that part which the pastor — and also you in your hearts — fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard the words ‘Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!’ That is sufficient. The whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory — must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!

“Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth into battle — be Thou near them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended in the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames in summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it —

For our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimmage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!

We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

(After a pause.) “Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits.”

...

It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.

A Small Man Orders His War - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Small Man Orders His War

Proud carrier fleets roam the murmuring world
As Hannibal’s elephants trod Italy –
Grey monsters in search of an enemy
Not yet declared, but with hubris unfurled

In decadence, ruled by smooth ganymedes,
Courtier-generals in their airy cars
Wage resumes’ high above their wars –
So strong in single-malt, so weak in deeds

In his softly-lit bunker the war-god smiles;
His bony hand upon a plastic screen
Commands strange engines, obscure and obscene,
To make a peace through smoking, ashy piles

But empires in the end must die, atone
Their sins, perhaps as trunkless legs of stone.


(Allusions to T. S. Eliot, the Punic Wars, and Shelley)

Poems and Haversacks - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Poems and Haversacks

A poem is a pilgrim’s haversack
All neatly, tightly packed for walkabout:
Toothbrush and rhymes rolled together betimes
Spare socks and meter tucked in with great care

And pocket knife and similes as if
Skivvies and metaphors were something else
Alliteration lined in lovingly
Syntax and shaving kit accessible

Because

When organized in compact unity
Poems and haversacks engage a life that’s free

In Darwin's Pawprints - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

In Darwin’s Pawprints

On reading a book review entitled “In Darwin’s Footprints”

The new and improved opposable thumb
Can handily (you will pardon the pun) grasp
A tool, a stick, a pen, a glass of rum
(But dareth not to clasp Cleopatra’s asp)

If we are descended from sophomores
Then why are there still sophomores in the wild
Or random selection from random spores
Mutating from flower to flower child

I don’t know

But it’s a useful thing, my dear old chum
This new and improved opposable thumb

The Playboy Club - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Playboy Club

The bunny boys are sad, decayed old swells
Now centerfolded in cemeteries and cells

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Time Travel

On a stack of giveaways, a paperback:
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. – The Mad Scientist Affair
Napoleon with each sable hair in place
And Ilya in his groovy turtleneck

Poised for action on a four-color cover
With clever gadgets against wicked T.H.R.U.S.H.
Spies, guns, jet planes, secret lairs, beautiful girls
Mr. Waverly, and “Open Channel D”

Solo and Kuryakin, so cool, yeah, man -
Teachers and parents – they just didn’t understand!

We Were Speaking of Trigger Warnings and Alarm Clocks - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

In Mixed Meter, A Meditation Upon Alarm Clocks

The healing sleep of which Macbeth spoke enviously…

SHATTERED!

The metal ****cans kicked across the room
A giant light fixture hurting my face
Because I thought a top rack a safer space
Large men yelling things my mother would not approve:

“REVEILLE! REVEILLE! REVEILLE!
RISE AND SHINE, AND GREET THE NEW DAY!
LET GO YER ****S AND GRAB YER SOCKS!
GET OFF YER LAZY ***ES YA SORRY SQUIRRELS!”

A hundred and sixty bare feet hit the deck
In perfect Navy unison at 03-my-God-is-this-real-00

And somehow, all these many years later
The soft ding-dong of a tiny MePhone
Sounds even worse

Does the Dawn Require a Trigger Warning? -poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Does the Dawn Require a Trigger Warning?

A sunrise has no trigger warning, no:
The dawn is not that misty night which was;
A sinister click, and the radio speaks
Tidings of discomfort and joylessness

     Someone must be made to suffer for this1

There is no trigger warning from the clock
Announcing brutally the need to rise
As from the dead, and dress for this day’s work
Which lacks all hope of glamour and success

     Someone must be made to suffer for this

Life is not fitted with warnings, and so
One’s discomfort is the fault of others

     Someone must be made to suffer for this


1“Someone must be made to suffer for this” is a mimeme from Frederick William Rolfe’s Hadrian VII.

Accounted Beautiful - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Accounted Beautiful

“…things long by catholic consent accounted beautiful”

-Quiller-Couch

An act forbidden now, we go to weep
On Skyros at the grave of that rare youth
Where buried with him are the unities
Of all: the good, the beautiful, the true

For men have flung away their thoughts, their songs
Their verse, their noble instruments of work
And scream abuse at all those forms of art
With which their sires hymned chaos into peace

A cause forbidden now, we work to keep
For all: the good, the beautiful, and the true

On the Nature of Work - column

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

On the Nature of Work

“What should they find incredible, since they no longer believed in a rational universe?”

-C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength

In Mr. Johnson’s 6th grade science class we kidlets learned that work is defined as the transfer of energy from one object to another. For many of Mr. J’s students work was further defined by their parents as farming. Still, I’m not sure how many joules are required for a small boy to urge balky jersey cows x 24 from the woods to the dairy barn at five in the morning with the sleet rattling. The small boy, now all grown up, knows only that he is thankful daily that he will never, ever have to do that again.

In a movie set in Nazi-occupied Poland, a number of folks gather discreetly to view a play, which is forbidden. While waiting, a man asks the woman next to him what her occupation is. She mentions that she was studying law before the war, and asks the man his job. “I break rocks,” he replies proudly.

The scene is a bit contrived, but is meant to demonstrate the Christian concept that all honest work is noble. This is why attorneys and quarrymen belong to the same country clubs. Still, the concept of the dignity of good and useful labor obtains.

Last week a young American woman’s dissatisfaction with her useless work appears to have motivated her to violence, resulting in the wounding of others and her own death.

Her work was neither in law, milking cows, or quarrying rock, but in taking pictures of herself for a scheme on the InterGossip.

This, in contemporary slang, is A Thing.

A man take pictures of his dachshunds or his children or himself doing awkward things and posts them to YouTube on the InterGossip. If enough people – really, really, really bored people with no purpose or direction in life – are determined by a corporate matrix (that sounds like something from cheesy outer-space films from the 1950s) to watch certain moving pictures, advertisers are matched with the little films and the poster receives a small stipend for every contact, or “hit.”

Apparently a favored few make a living by humiliating their dachshunds, their children, and themselves for the amusement of the unfocused.

This is said to be work, but it produces no food, no music, no fencing, no housing, or anything else of utility or joy.

This poor woman took humiliating pictures of herself glaring at the camera, dancing awkwardly, and giving opinions. She received money for doing so.

She felt she wasn’t being paid enough money for her specialness, although she had enough disposable income to buy herself a pistol and then drive to YouTube headquarters to shoot people she had never met.

The unhappy woman promoted herself as an “athlete, artist, comedian, poet, model, actor, singer, director, producer” (http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/youtube-shooter-nasim-aghdam-left-behind-twisted-online-trail-article-1.3914285) as well as a vegan bodybuilder and an animal rights activist. Human rights, nahhhhhh.

Apparently she felt that real work – milking cows, breaking rocks, practicing law – was beneath the dignity of an artist, and was so obsessed with making and watching images of herself on a little plastic screen that in the end she ceased to exist at all.

Poor, sad woman – if only she had herded a few cows or worked the counter at the fast-foodery or volunteered at the local charity re-sale shop she might have realized through her aching feet and tired muscles that she was a child of God who was both useful and needed.

-30-

Breakfast with Old Man Briggs - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Breakfast with Old Man Briggs

“Why, then, God’s soldier be he.”

-Shakespeare

“I’m Old Man Briggs,” he laughed, shaking my hand
That famous merry twinkle in his eye;
He made the table at the Cracker Barrel
A festival of right good fellowship

But even as the plates were passed around
And with them too the happy banter of men
He sometimes seemed to drift away in thought
Into the past, into the mists, into -

His boyhood bayous, and the fields of youth
The desperation of Depression years
And still a boy, on the shingle at Normandy
Fighting across the smoky fields of France

Then home again to build the peace for us
With muscle and sweat, and with love and thought
Citizen-soldier, happy raconteur -
“I’m Old Man Briggs,” he laughed, shaking our hands

His place is empty now, just a little while
For we will see him again, at Supper

A Busy Beekeeper and His Beautiful Buzzing Bees - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Busy Beekeeper and his Beautiful Buzzing Bees

For Terry McFall, a Man of Bees and a Bees-y Man!

A beekeeper knows
That beauty is in the eye
of the bee-holder

As the Sun Rises over Big Linda's Get 'N' Go the Local Wal-Mart Day Shift Plots Revolution - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

As the Sun Rises over Big Linda’s Grab ‘N’ Go

the Local Wal-Mart Day Shift Plots Revolution

Against the patriarchal construct they
Rally in a corner booth at Big Linda’s
MePhones, sody-dranks, a full-up ash tray
Tabled as if these were the agendas

And uniformed in uniforms they sit
In conclave all unanimous to judge
Their boss to be: a sorry piece of (stuff)
A drab, a dork, a doof, a dolt, a drudge

A slime, a slob, a slug, a slag, a schlo -
Oh, wait! We’re late! The time! We’d better go!

Withdrawn by Instructor - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Withdrawn by Instructor

He wore a baseball cap, and tried to hide
Beneath its bill, hide from whatever was
Eating away his thirty-something soul
Adrift among the stagnant slush of life

He never bought the book, he never much
Looked up from the class notes he never took
His ballpoint pen asleep in an idle fist
No drafts, no drawings, no songs, no verse, no worse

Someone lied to him about following his dreams –
His dreams between theses and themes, it seems

Christos Voskrese! - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Christos Voskrese!

For William Tod Mixson

The world is unusually quiet this dawn
With fading stars withdrawing in good grace
And drowsy, dreaming sunflowers, dewy-drooped,
Their golden crowns all motionless and still,
Stand patiently in their ordered garden rows,
Almost as if they wait for lazy bees
To wake and work, and so begin the day.
A solitary swallow sweeps the sky;
An early finch proclaims his leafy seat
While Old Kashtanka limps around the yard
Snuffling the boundaries on her morning patrol.

Then wide-yawning Mikhail, happily barefoot,
A lump of bread for nibbling in one hand,
A birch switch swishing menace in the other
Appears, and whistles up his father’s cows:
“Hey! Alina, and Antonina! Up!
Up, up, Diana and Dominika!
You, too, Varvara and Valentina!
Pashka is here, and dawn, and spring, and life!”
And they are not reluctant then to rise
From sweet and grassy beds, with udders full,
Cow-gossip-lowing to the dairy barn.

Anastasia lights the ikon lamp
And crosses herself as her mother taught.
She’ll brew the tea, the strong black wake-up tea,
And think about that naughty, handsome Yuri
Who winked at her during the Liturgy
On the holiest midnight of the year.
O pray that watchful Father did not see!
Breakfast will be merry, an echo-feast
Of last night’s eggs, pysanky, sausage, kulich.
And Mother will pack Babushka’s basket,
Because only a mother can do that right

When Father Vasily arrived last night
In a limping Lada haloed in smoke,
The men put out their cigarettes and helped
With every precious vestment, cope, and chain,
For old Saint Basil’s has not its own priest,
Not since the Czar, and Seraphim-Diveyevo
From time to time, for weddings, holy days,
Funerals, supplies the needs of the parish,
Often with Father Vasily (whose mother
Begins most conversations with “My son,
The priest.…”, much to the amusement of all).

Voices fell, temperatures fell, darkness fell
And stars hovered low over the silent fields,
Dark larches, parking lots, and tractor sheds.
Inside the lightless church the priest began
The ancient prayers of desolate emptiness
To which the faithful whispered in reply,
Unworthy mourners at the Garden tomb,
Spiraling deeper and deeper in grief
Until that Word, by Saint Mary Magdalene
Revealed, with candles, hymns, and midnight bells
Spoke light and life to poor but hopeful souls.

The world is unusually quiet this dawn;
The sun is new-lamb warm upon creation,
For Pascha gently rests upon the earth,
This holy Russia, whose martyrs and saints
Enlighten the nations through their witness of faith,
Mercy, blessings, penance, and prayer eternal
Now rising with a resurrection hymn,
And even needful chores are liturgies:
“Christos Voskrese – Christ is risen indeed!”
And Old Kashtanka limps around the yard
Snuffling the boundaries on her morning patrol

Easter Vigil, Sort Of - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Easter Vigil, Sort Of

A vigil, no, simply quiet reflection
Minutes before midnight, with all asleep
Little Liesl-Dog perhaps dreams of squirrels,
For she has chased and barked them all the day;
The kittens are disposed with their mother
After an hour of kitty-baby-talk,
Adored by all, except by Calvin-Cat,
That venerable, cranky old orange hair-ball,
Who resents youthful intrusion upon
His proper role as object of worship.

The household settles in for the spring night,
Anticipating Easter, early Mass,
And then the appropriately pagan
Merriments of chocolates and colored eggs
And children with baskets squealing for more
As children should, in the springtime of life.

A Night of Fallen Nothingness - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Night of Fallen Nothingness

The Altar stripped, the candles dark, the Cross
Concealed behind a purple shroud, the sun
Mere slantings through an afternoon of grief
While all the world is emptied of all hope.
The dead remain, the failing light withdraws
As do the broken faithful, silently,
Into a night of fallen nothingness.

The Life and Times of Pontius Pilate, the Law West of the Jordan - column

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Life and Times of Pontius Pilate, the Law West of the Jordan

History, other than those weird little Jack Chick booklets and stuff about The Lizard People on the GossipNet, says little of Pontius Pilate. Apparently his career in the Roman diplomatic was fairly short before he was retired by suicide.

A life of loyal public service under the emperors was often rewarded with death, which was probably better than a farewell kiss from the president.

As a colonial governor Pilate would have been expected to keep the peace among all sorts of peoples, not because of the benevolence of Tiberius but because tax-tax is always better than war-war (as Churchill did not say).

One wonders if in his corner office Pilate displayed pictures of himself shaking hands with famous people, or maybe ordering their executions, and plaques from the Little Gladiator teams he sponsored. Did he give speeches at local business dinners? “I am Praefectvs Pontivs Pilatvs, but you may call me Poncho. I’m from Rome, and I’m here to help you grow your businesses.”

No doubt the after-dinner speech included a few wheezes: “Say, boys, you’ll like this one. A Greek, a Roman, and a Jew walk into a bar owned by an Egyptian…”

Pontius Pilate probably gave motivational speeches (which in itself should be a death penalty offense) and talked about thinking outside the box outside of which he never thought himself, and kept his resume updated in hopes of a better gig in a happier colony, maybe Crete or Cyprus or Hispania.

He would have been subjected to scrutiny by spies and investigations by special prosecutors, and in turn would have sent around the highways and byways of the Empire his own spies and, when he felt he had the power and the connections to get rid of some old pal he didn’t now like, special prosecutors under his authority.

His staff would have kept his files cross-indexed and neat, and at midday he probably joined the boys for a two-falernian lunch, properly submitted under his expense account.

Pilate named roads and bridges and theatres for his Emperor, had the usual suspects executed for the entertainment of The People, bless them, and probably told anti-Semitic jokes. He was so dull, safe, successful, and predictable that he was governor for some ten years before being recalled to Rome.

Nothing reliable is known of his end. Pilate is said to have been required to commit suicide instead of being given a cheap Seiko sun-dial as a memento, but perhaps he did indeed retire to his vineyards in central Italy, and took leisurely afternoons to write his memoirs, in which few were interested and which eventually were used by Germanic invaders to start a fire, and so lost to history.

Whether he remembered one Jesus of Nazareth is unknown.

-30-