Snakefight - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Snakefight

Two snakes in battle on a summer day
Writhing and twisting on a sandy road
Grappling desperately like taxing authorities
Fighting over a poor worker’s paycheck

Or like fierce coffee-break theologians
In anger ripping a scripture apart
Each clutching a bloody fragment to himself
But careful not to upset the 501C

And in the end, one snake swallows the other
Keeping him closer than a beloved brother

The Annual You-Know-What Examination - a rhyming couplet

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Annual You-Know-What Examination

The physician is a good man, wise and fair
But, ouch! - HIS FINGER DOES NOT BELONG THERE!





(But, hey, ya gotta do it because life is good and you want to be there for all of it.)

Returning an Electronic Gadget That Wasn't at all as Advertised and Wouldn't Fit into the Assigned Shipping Box for Return - doggerel

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Returning an Electronic Gadget That Wasn’t at all as Advertised

and Wouldn’t Fit into the Assigned Shipping Box for Return

What a surprise
It sparks, it dies
Return the prize
To those false guys

It wouldn’t fit
I thought a bit
Then stepped on it
And so it fit

Duct-Tape Automobile - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Duct-Tape Automobile

How awkward when a body part
Falls out onto the interstate
That fragment of FoMoCo art -
It spun away in a figure eight!

There is a new part now on order
For this old car; it ain’t no Lexus
It rolls along in taped disorder
And that is how we do it in Texas

God bless our state, and the strong duct tape
That holds together my Ford Escape



Please know that my wonderful Ford Escape is fifteen years old and is a strongly-built car with lots of Texas and New Mexico miles on the odometer. A bit of plastic trim fell from a window assembly a few weeks ago, and the tape is to keep rain and dirt out of the innards while a replacement is on order. A real Texan thinks of duct tape as both functional and in its own modest way aesthetically pleasing (“Aesthetically pleasing” is the English translation for the Texas vernacular, “purty.”

Wild Bill Hickok was Shot Here...and Here...and Here... - poem



Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

 

Wild Bill Hickok was Shot Here…and Here…and Here…

Old Number Ten Saloon – where Bill was shot
Sitting in this old chair – or maybe not
‘Cause down the street there is another bar
Where poor Bill died; that’s two beer joints so far

And yet a third, here in South Dakota
Right over there, behind that Toyota
Another of those authentic places
Where Wild Bill died over his eights and aces

Everyone has a different tale to tell

And so

We’re not real sure where Wild Bill Hickok fell


Deadwood, South Dakota is a beautiful little town down in a gulch and featuring both kitsch and solid historical attractions, a pedestrian-friendly main street with lots of shops, cafes, B & Bs, new hotels, and, yes, several saloons claiming that Wild Bill Hickok Was Shot Here.

Kafka and His Giant Insect / Which Might be a Cockroach / But Maybe Not / We Could go to Das Schloss and ask Mr. K - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Kafka and His Giant Insect

Which Might Be a Cockroach

But Maybe Not

We Could go to Das Scloss and Ask Mr. K

An insect woke up one morning and realized
He had been transformed into Gregor Samsa

From a life focused on eating hair and grease
Glue, soup, bread, paper, leather
Sewerage, butter, meat (fresh and decayed)
Makeup, cookies, sugar, toothbrush bristles
Cookies, pizza, flour, tacos, apple pie
Dead bodies, feces, and his own species

He now had to deal with the confusion
The sorrow of being Gregor Samsa

A Decomposition Book for School - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Decomposition Book for School

Cheaply manufactured in India
Its fake marbled cover fakier than ever
But not as fakey as this assignment
“Grendl symbolizes existential…”

          Cross out cross out crossoutcrossoutcrossout

“Grendl symbolizes…” my senior year
Nobody understands why I don’t want
To go to college, why I quit the band -
Grendl and I are both exiles, okay…?

          Cross out cross out crossoutcrossoutcrossout

I love my fountain pen; its deep, dark lines

Just like me

Refuse to be MLA marginalized

“Grendl symbolizes…”

A Votive in a Time of Disquiet - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Votive in a Time of Disquiet

I.

“No doubt they’ll sing in tune after the Revolution.”

-Kamarovsky, Doctor Zhivago (film)

Everyone seems to clench his fist these days
In solidarity with ephemera
While setting fire to green recycling bins
Hurling someone else’s bicycle through a window

Armed with their undergraduate degrees
The comrades liberate a coffee shop
Wifi-ing the revolution of the day
Empowerment by beating love to death

Loudsplaining authentic victimization
Posing for selfies with a stolen ‘phone

II.

Their inhumanity seemed a marvel of class-consciousness,

their barbarism a model of proletarian firmness…

-Doctor Zhivago, p. 349

Everyone seems to clutch his flag these days
In solidarity with a past that wasn’t
While setting fire to misspelled cardboard signs
Hurling someone else’s beer into a crowd

Armed with their lurid Confederate tats
The Something.Right liberate a dumpster
Bull-horning the counter-revolution
Empowerment by beating love to death

Bellowing their Reconquista of stench
Posing behind their cheap gas station shades

III.

“I used to admire your poetry...I shouldn't admire it now. I should find it absurdly personal.

 Don't you agree? Feelings, insights, affections... it's suddenly trivial now. You don't agree; 

you're wrong. The personal life is dead…”

-Strelnikov to Yuri, Doctor Zhivago (film)

Some few embrace civilization these days
In solidarity with humanity
While lighting one small candle as a votive
Whispering an Ave into the Light

Armed with wonder through pen and flute and brush
Recusants choose the liberation given
In singing of the eternal verities
Self-empowerment happily denied

With love, with poetry, music, and art
Celebrating life on this summer day

What's Wrong with Education These Days? - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

What’s Wrong with Education These Days?

The principal in a cool cartoon tee
His fashion sneakers squeaking across the floor
Sets out candy, pizzas, and canned sodas
Arranges a door prize, and assembles the faculty

Requires them to sign in so he can check on them
Orders them to hold hands and sing the school song
Reminds them they are all one big family
As a preface to his primary agenda:

To tell them to be more professional
The principal in a cool cartoon tee


from Lady with a Dead Turtle, 2014, available from amazon.com as bits of dead trees and on the Kindle.

Dear Leader Inspires His Obedient Comrades - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Dear Leader Inspires His Obedient Comrades

Avuncular in his style, jolly and loud
An epiphany with an entourage
Of functionaries who survey the crowd
For any lack of enthusiasm

Applaud they must, wearing upon command
Cheap slogan tees averring that their school
Is like totally awesome and ‘way cool
They leap and bounce and cheer as they are told

Chanting a theme, this year’s predictable theme
Desperately cute, a motivational meme -
Oh, those childish, subservient creatures!
The worst part is that they are the
                                                                           teachers

"Hey, Guys, Hold My Texas A & M Diploma and Watch This!" - column

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

“Hey, Guys, Hold My Texas A & M Diploma and Watch This!”

A Georgetown, Virginia branch of the D.C. Public Library has closed temporarily due to an infestation of snakes.

Well, hey, Washington, right?

The snake allusion is obvious; the surprise here is that the citizens of Georgetown occasionally read at all, taking a little literary time off from power golf, power tennis, power lunches, and power schmoozing with mysterious foreign powers.

One imagines The Honorable Maxine Waters curling up with John Milton’s Paradise Lost after a full day of inciting riots. Or maybe just curling up and hissing (Book X, line 508).

With snakes on a shelf President Clinton is not yet able to turn in Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.

Alexandria (not Alexandra) Ocasio Hyphen Cortez is reputed to know what a book is.

President Trump checked out How to Win Friends and Influence People, and concluded that he had written better books than that.

F.B.I. agents wiretap the audio books instead of taking them home, the C.I.A. spookies investigate Goodnight, Moon (one of Prime Minister Trudeau’s favs) for coded messages from Iraq, the superannuated Secret Service frat boys study all the books about how to throw good parties, and Congress investigates the librarians, threatening them with prison if they don’t admit under oath that they have read Dostoyevsky, Solzhenitsyn, and Yevtushenko.

We continue our reptilian theme near Beaumont, Texas, where a young woman had herself photographed in her Texas A & M graduation costumery while posing with an alligator said to be fourteen feet long.

Some have suggested that A & M is at fault for not teaching students that alligators eat pets, children, and the occasional adult, including vegetarians and Aggies.

Reptiles are all fun and games until someone gets eaten, okay?

But, really, teaching children about dangerous animals should happen at home. A reality is that lots of children no longer learn ordinary human behaviors at home. Even if they have a home. The authority figure cooking meth doesn’t get around to cooking for the children. Kiddie-garten and first-grade teachers must teach many of their charges about when and where to poo-poo and wee-wee, washing one’s hands, eating with utensils, and all the other usages that help distinguish (not always successfully) humans from reptiles.

Snakes get to skip the lesson on washing hands.

Even so, the Board of This and That who constitute the governing body of Texas A & M probably never considered as a topic for fish camp the basic mummy-doesn’t-want-you-to-be-popped-into-a-pie-by-Mr.-McGregor idea that fooling around with a fourteen-foot alligator is unwise.

To paraphrase an old wheeze, the joke is now “Hey, guys, hold my Texas A & M diploma and watch this!”

-30-

You are a Poem - (well, yes, a poem...)

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

You are a Poem

You are a poem; your stanzas are your life:
A prologue written in the long ago
(with some few emendations here and there)                               (ahem!)
A closure and an afterword await

     But now about this part of your life:

The iambs of your footfalls dance in time
While
           anapests
                           leap in search
                                                   of a rhyme
Stiff-built trochees stumble clunkily (ouch)
And alexandrines mourn the sometime sorrows of age

     And when writing your poem, remember…

Your poetry of life will be truly true
If you almost never write about
                                                     you

I Could Not Put Down this Unputdownable Flying-off-the-Shelves Must-Read Book That Defines a Generation - poem

Lawrence Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

I Could Not Put Down this Unputdownable Flying-off-the-Shelves

Must-Read Book That Defines a Generation

I couldn’t put this must-read down, nor yet
Its many woven layers of tapestry
(Or maybe layered weavings of mystery?) -
This book seethes with passion; much blood is let

Beautifully crafted in the tradition of
A riveting re-telling all gritty
Wild, bold, and haunting, nuanced and witty
A daring, different tour-de-force of love

Lyrical, satirical, and compelling
And when the heroine’s not whispering
                                 she’s yelling

Claudia of Rome - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Claudia of Rome

Every daughter is born of royalty
To rule and serve in lineal descent from God
But Claudia from her island of mist
Was borne away to Rome in captive shame

With her father in chains, herself in chains
To speak for their people, to speak for peace
Before the emperor, who in hearing them
Gave freedom to himself, and a crown to her

Though hostage far away from her girlhood home
With love she captured imperial Rome

That Clockwork School! - doggerel

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

That Clockwork School!

That clockwork school! If it’s not gearing up
Then it is winding down, except in the fall
Which then is when it’s gearing up again
But not in the spring, when it is winding down

Sometimes it’s just around the corner where
Presumably it is still gearing up
But maybe winding down, somewhere in town
Waiting for the fall to come back around

Then winding down, having worn out its spring
But back in the fall, you see; that’s the thing!

Yes, Leader Maduro, That is a Bomb - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Peace of Leader Maduro

Yes, Leader Maduro, that is a bomb
And you and your Ken-doll generals flinch
And all your medals and chains of office
Rattle like the bones of the Revolution

Look at your soldiers fleeing through the streets
Yes, look - they have no wish to die for you
“Justice!” you scream, “Maximum punishment!”
“And there will be no forgiveness!”

                                                               For whom?

The people and the priests you have murdered

Will pray for you

Absolution from the lips of the dead

The Slaughter of Holy Innocence - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Slaughter of Holy Innocence

Were you ever in love with someone not
Listed as an approved relationship
By roaming mobs of false analogies
In either-or assumptions basely masked?

Friendship and love are regulated now
Not by a written fiat of the state
But by the decibels of imbeciles
The bellowed mandate of the club and fist

The law of love is now the law of bans -
They’ve politicized even the touching of hands


(The allusion to Saint Matthew 2 is deliberate.)

Lunch at the Cleverly Named It's-Not-Really-A-Fish-Camp - poem (of sorts)

Lunch at the Cleverly Named It’s-Not-Really-a-Fish-Camp

A Penance in Two Parts

1.

Waitress-Speak

Or

What is the Correct Response When Someone Says “Thank You?”

No problem no problem sorry ‘bout that
no problem no problem sorry ‘bout that
your order should be here shortly no problem
no problem sorry ‘bout that no problem
no problem sorry ‘bout that your order
should be here shortly no problem no problem
sorry ‘bout that no problem no problem
sorry ‘bout that your order should be here
shortly no problem no problem sorry ‘bout that
no problem no problem sorry ‘bout that
your order should be here shortly no problem
no problem sorry ‘bout that no problem
no problem sorry ‘bout that your order should

Note: Read “no problem” as unselfconscious valley-speak with a nasal twang

2.

Sister-in-Law-Speak

So me and her tried this new place my grandson
said ****! so I said ****! back and then we
all just laugheddddddddddd oh man this is soooooooo good then
I said I was tired of her **** and me and her found this sale and then my
husband said **** So me and her tried this
new place my grandson said ****! So I said
****! back and then we all just laugheddddddddddd oh man
this is soooooooo good then I said I was tired
of her **** and me and her found this sale
and then my husband said **** So me and
her tried this new place my grandson said ****!
So I said ****! back and then we all just
laugheddddddddddd oh man this is soooooooo good then I said

Note: just one margarita but a whole bunch of cackling. LOUD cackling.

Is There a God? - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Is There a God?

Is there a God? And did He really build
This world for us in which to live and serve
Each other and Him in sweet caritas?

Is there a God? And does he really love us?

If this is so,

Why does He permit motivational speakers?

THE PRESIDENT WRITES IN ALL CAPS - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

THE PRESIDENT WRITES IN ALL CAPS

The President is writing in ALL CAPS today
And that’s all right because caps are okay:
They keep his head warm in the winter’s cold
He has ‘em in colors: red, white, and gold

And an old one in green from Viet-Nam
Where he was a-serving 1 of his Uncle Sam
Only he didn’t, but that doesn’t matter
He’ll dodge the issue with bluster and natter

Be grateful he sports his red MAGA cap
To cover his head, ‘cause it’s full of

                                                                      hair



1 allusion to Kipling's "Gunga Din"