Cerulean - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Cerulean

Once upon a time
I calligraphed “cerulean” -
Now I just write “blue”

Friends Don't Let Friends Sing Barbershop - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Friends Don’t Let Friends Sing Barbershop

For the CBC Anchormen’s Quintet

Take the keys (of C and G), call a cab
Take the ‘phone from the moaning baritone
Bury their sheet music beneath a slab
And chase from the bass the inverted cone

Hot coffee to purge demons a capella
With fervent prayers to our merciful Lord
Please save each and every harmonic fella
And free them from the ringing chord

Oh, call a priest, call a mom, call a cop
Because friends don’t let friends sing barbershop

Most Things End in Sorrow - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Most Things End in Sorrow

The happiest marriages we’ll ever know
End in death; the unhappy marriages
Decay in cycles of disappointment
And fall apart in court on a working day

A glorious autumn ends in blue-ice winds
A favorite childhood toy is forever lost
An anticipated promotion is denied
And golden youth in hospice slips away

But morning’s cup of courage freshens hope,
And the world is optimistically green

Oh, Let You NOT Show me a Cute picture - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Oh, Let You Not Show me a Cute Picture…

Oh, let me show you this cute picture
I found on the internet; it’s right here
Oh, wait, it was right here; let me find it
You’re going to like it, just the thing you like

Here it is - no, wait, that’s not it; now where
Is it; let me just scroll down here - no, wait,
Maybe I should just scroll the other way
I know you’re going to like this, really

I know you’re in a hurry but this is cute
Now isn’t this just the funniest thing…?

No?

A Copy of The Oxford Book of English Verse - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A copy of The Oxford Book of English Verse Remaindered from

the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham Public Libraries

This happy gift of 1939
Rescued from the good comrades’ loving fires
From the liberation of censorship
From the gentle criminalization of thought

This little book and its happy, dancing lines
Crafted with thought and care and art and love
A celebration of civilization
Oh, save it, read it, love it, smuggle it

Because

More dangerous to tyrants than weapons
Are the poems of a people living free

Cinco de Mayo - column

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Cinco de Mayo

When in the middle of the 19th century France decided that the conquest of Mexico would compensate for the loss of its previous North American empire, the Austrian empire provided one of their extra archdukes to serve as a sock-puppet emperor. Both the French and the Austrian governments expected to enrich themselves by looting, exploiting, and taxing Mexicans, a program which anticipated our own Internal Revenue Service.

President Lincoln was opposed to the scheme, not from any love of the Mexican people but from fear of French intervention on the Confederate side in the Civil War. There is a possibility that the Confederacy meant to seize Cuba from the Spanish and create an empire centered on the Gulf of Mexico, a Southern Mare Nostrum. Beyond all this, the Spanish, the English, and the French were already involved in Mexico and the Gulf for their own purposes. And beyond yet all this, Mexico, after years of civil war, was divided, with many considering government by the French better than ongoing violence, starvation, and economic collapse. Some of the quarreling Mexican factions invited France and Archduke Maximilian to Mexico.

In sum, everyone was against everyone.

The French army had not lost a battle in over fifty years (anyone who dismisses the courage, character, and aggressiveness of the French soldier is ignorant of history), and through superior organization, technology, and numbers, and poor intelligence from its spies, assumed that they would be victorious in Mexico.

Marching from Vera Cruz to Mexico City in the spring of 1862, the French were assured by spies and propagandists that the citizens of Puebla de los Angeles would welcome them with flowers.

Instead of flowers, Mexicans welcomed the French army with archaic Brown Bess muskets sold them by the English long before as war surplus. The Mexican victory was wholly unexpected, and the whole French invasion timetable had to be re-set.

The invaders reorganized, and with reinforcements and craftier leadership occupied Mexico City within a year and set the Hapsburg upon his throne for a brief reign that ended before a firing squad in 1867.

The theme of this first Battle of Puebla (there were two others) on the 5th of May, 1862 was that it showed that a poorly-organized but determined Mexican militia and populace could defeat a modern European army. This gave the people hope, and led eventually to their victory over the occupiers in 1867.

Maximilian was a liberal in the old-fashioned sense, and proposed reforms for agricultural laborers and the poor which in the end could not be carried out. Too bad Juarez had him shot instead of employing him; Maximilian had restructured the Austrian navy into a real battle force, and could have done the same for the Mexican navy.

On the fifth of May this year we have important elections in Texas, free elections. Maximilian, a monarchist, disapproved of government of the people, but Benito Juarez, a republican-with-a-small-r, said people should show up and vote for their leaders. He would be disappointed to see that most Texans don’t vote at all. They listen to the a.m. radio boys and complain about their several governing entities, but seem to think that self-government is a spectator sport.

Maximilian would have been okay with that sort of passivity.

We have many reasons to think about Cinco de Mayo this year.

-30-

We Lay Our Coats Down at the Feet of Saul - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

We Lay Our Coats Down at the Feet of Saul

We lay our coats down at the feet of Saul,
And stones we hurl, curses and stones:
                                                                libtard,
     Fascist, snowflake, reactionary, slime
     Commie, demoncrat, shrillary, trumptard,

     Republicrap, boomer, millennial,
     Commie, moron, alt-right, leftie, scumbag,
     Crayon-people, pansy, tape-worm, muppet, dweeb,
     Sock-puppet, Russkie, nazi, trash, and creep

And thus we deny the Cornerstone when
We lay our coats down at the feet of Saul

The Most Common Forms of the Scantron®©™ are the Shakespearean, the Spenserian, and the Petrarchan - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Most Common Forms of the Scantron®©™ are

the Shakespearean, the Spenserian, and the Petrarchan

No lovesick lad ever poured out his heart
To a Scantron®©™ card and its suave machine
Posed seductively in brushed aluminum
In a smoky corner of the faculty commons

Or with a thundering Number Two scribed
A manifesto that menaced the world
(But bubbled carefully within the squares)
And ground it through a Scantron®©™ 888

For indeed

Moses brought not Scantron®©™ down from Sinai
To teach God’s laws through an electric eye

TITANIC's Laugh Track - Rhyming Doggerel

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Titanic’s Laugh Track

Is there a man so cruel, so hard of heart
So like unto the treacherous Macbeth
So bloody, so bleak, his soul so broken apart
That he cannot laugh when Jack freezes to death?

Big Linda's Grab 'N' Go II - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Big Linda’s Grab ‘N’ Go II

A poor old man chants through his crumb-y beard:

(In iambic dimeter)

“The WORLD has CHANGED”
“The WORLD has CHANGED”

(sometimes unstressed-unstressed-unstressed-to-stressed,
Even though his biscuit is not impressed)

“The world has CHANGED”
“The world has CHANGED”

(and back to iambic dimeter)

“The WORLD has CHANGED”
“The WORLD has CHANGED”

While at another table a man shouts
Importantly into his busy-ness ‘phone:

“SO DO YOU WANT TO PAY YOUR MONTHLY BILLS
OFF EACH MONTH LIKE I DO? THIS IS A GREAT…”
(He pauses for a bite of his Big Linda
Braekfast [sic] Special)…“OPPORTUNITY
FOR YOU I NEED GOOD SALES REPS THAT’LL WORK
HARD TO REPLACE SALES REPS THAT WOULDN’T!”

A part of this healthy, nutritious breakfast

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.