No. - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

No.

Dixit ergo Iesus ad duodecim, “Numquid et vos vultis abire?”

“Will you also go away?” He asks us.

                                                                 No.

Only sinners mourn at the foot of the Cross
Only sinners approach the baptismal font
Only sinners recline at Table with the Lord

To whom shall we go?
                                      An empty shopping mall?
A 501C cafeteria?
A feast of ashes with the cardinal?

                                                                  No.

There is only one Place, one Space, one Grace

Only sinners are invited, and so
Our yes to Him – we will not go

"To Write Poetry of No Political Significance Whatever" - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

“To Write Poetry of No Political Significance Whatever”

“But my chief argument in defence of Wang An-shih is that…he retired from the Court decisively, ignored  all recalls, and took to the mountains to write poetry of no political significance whatever.”

– David Warren on the poet-philosopher Wang An-Shih

Recusancy is not pious quietism;
In silence it is a brave voice withdrawn
From pompous Kratos’ halls of treachery
From screaming Demos’ marketplace of noise

And up into the silent hills to save
Something of civilization, to sing
Matins among the mountain mists, to write
A page in praise of Creation, to live -

Recusancy is not quietism at all;
It is a firm rebuke to tyranny

The Platonic Ideal of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful - photograph

While Dressing for an American Legion Meeting - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

While Dressing for an American Legion Meeting

A pair of slacks, a pair of shoes, a shirt
A watch to count the weary meeting hours
Coffee with comrades in the old church hall
And all of these are very good indeed

But like old shoes, old pals, the scenes of youth
We must someday let them all go, and pass
Peacefully, one prays, through the spray and foam
And sail until dawn to that farthest Shore

Where only the NCOs must dress right, dress
And the coffee’s always fresh in the company mess


(But will the smoking lamp will be lit?)

A Poetry Installation at the Temple of the Muses - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Poetry Installation at the Temple of the Muses

 

              Number Forty Two: “You're trying to undermine my rehabilitation. Disrupt my social progress!”

              Number Six: “Strange talk for a poet.”

-The Prisoner, “A Change of Mind”

Installing a poem to factory specs
Setting iambic feet into concrete
And lifting adverbs to the tops of verbs
Through the use of heavy machinery

Metaphors must be government-inspected
For solidarity with the collective
And images most closely interrogated
For their relevance to the latest cause

The Good, the True, and the Beautiful

As cleared by United Auto Workers Local 2110
So you’d better like it; youknowwhatI’msayin’

Bridge of Sorrows - weekly column

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Bridge of Sorrows

Last week the Ponte Morandi, a modern bridge of interstate highway proportions, collapsed in Genoa, Italy. Thirty-nine deaths are known as of this scribbling

The Ponte Morandi was only 51 years old. Built according to the latest scientific principles and to a daring design by a civilization whose architecture, manufacturing, and design have earned the world’s admiration for centuries, the bridge failed and fell.

And yet in the area around Genoa, possibly in site of the wreckage, are bridges 2,000 years old. They don’t take big trucks because they weren’t meant to do so, but they still serve. The Ponte Morandi was meant to take big trucks, and did so for something less than 2,000 years.

Someone on the science / maths continuum looks at a bridge and considers the design according to the site and the various stress loads that will be made. Dr. Science then considers the quality of the materials and the professionalism of construction.

Someone else, that guy who thinks math is unscriptural because Jesus never told us to solve for X, looks at the same bridge and exclaims, “How pretty!”

But even the science-challenged among us can look at pictures of the Ponte Morandi and perceive that something was wrong in the design. The masses of concrete appeared to have been flung out too far between supports given that concrete is a glue of minerals and very heavy, with little tensile strength, and the spindly supports were inadequate for the load. Further, there seems – seems, and only from the pictures – to have been little provision for sway in any direction and from any cause. We all remember from Mr. Johnson’s sixth-grade science class that a triangular form will support more weight than a square because in a triangle the three sides each provide the anti-sway factor for each other, whereas the corners of a square are only hinges.

Engineering is the study of, among other things, bridge-building, real bridges, not metaphorical ones. The liberal arts, quite unfashionable these days, in their turn ask us if a bridge is needed in a given place so that people and trade can transit an obstacle and contribute to the common good, or if it is a political bridge to nowhere. The liberal arts – the fuzzy studies – also remind us that bridges have been built before, and if a bridge built 2,000 years ago still functions as a bridge we might want to apply our higher order thinking skills to learn how, and then apply the abstract principles to the specific needs of our own construction.

The two supports that converge on the apex of a triangle need each other in order to work; similarly, both hemispheres of our brains also need each other in order to work.

All that is something to think about while zipping along the long, concrete spans of our own flyover bridges whose footings are in swamps and bayous.

-30-

Barnum's Non-Human Animal Companions - weekly column

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Barnum’s Non-Human Animal Companions

Nabisco, now a subsidiary of Mondelez International, which used to be Kraft Something-or-Other, grovels to The Loud People Who Are Against Things to prove that it is a good corporate comrade. Nabisco has redesigned its famous circus trailer cookie box to free the cartoon animals from their cartoon cages.

Barnum’s Animal Crackers are little cookies shaped like animals. In your ‘umble scrivener’s youth they were packaged in a little box printed as a circus wagon. The wheels of the wagon continued from the sides to the bottom and were perforated as cutouts so that the little wagon could stand on its four wheels. Printed on the sides of the box were cages of critters which varied from time to time, but the essential nature of the box, complete with a little string for carrying it or hanging it from a Christmas tree, didn’t change until The Glorious Ever-Now.

This month Barnum’s animals are free of their cages, roaming in good fellowship across a printed veldt. The gorilla, being somewhat arboreal, is probably unhappy about this. All the animals, both arboreal and nonarboreal, carnivorous and herbivorous, stroll toward the viewer in oneness ‘n’ peace ‘n’ love, surely wanting a hug.

That famous rhetorical question still obtains: how many people has Walt Disney killed?

As the old alligator might say of its latest human meal, “New Look – Same Great Taste!”

Now that the cartoon animals are free to roam, perhaps someone could redesign our cities, beginning with Chicago, so that the humans could also roam free.

Given that the Mondolez-Nabisco Barnum’s Animals box has been purged of anti-social elements, the animal cookies inside could be next.

Instead of little lions and tigers and bears (oh, my!) the cookies could be shaped as carrots and kumquats and corn (oh, ich!), and made from reprocessed soy beans. The boxes could be printed with inspiring mottos: “Good Little Comrades Love Brussels Sprouts” and “Good Little Comrades Report Global-Warming Detractors to their Block Wardens.”

On one side of the box could show pictures of happy children being devoured by bears and alligators, with the enlightening reminder that “Good Little Comrades Always Remember That Animals Were Here First.”

And now we turn to the cultural insensitivity of Eskimo Pies.

-30-

An Open Letter to Really Important People / The Old Dime Box, Texas Statement - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

An Open Letter to Really Important People

The Old Dime Box, Texas Statement

A Manifesto Made Manifest in Manifesting Manifestingness

We post this serious looking document
Bloated with long vocabulary words
Sodden with weak dependent clauses
Marshaled in numbered ranks, down, down they go

To the GossipNet all serious like
And everyone has to pay attention to us
Because it’s AN OPEN LETTER, y’know -
You may sign it if you’ve got letters behind your name

Signatories:

Apostle-Disciple Magic Dawn, DD., Non-Binary, Author of Green Polar Bears I Am, Co-Equal-Director of the Anti-Oppressionist Theatre Against the Occupation, Agent of the Revolution, Auteur, Guest on The Wheel of Fortune and Parent of Two AMAZING children of indeterminate Gender with Their AWESOME and AMAZING Life-Partner Sven-Marie.

Massive Ferguson, M.Ed., Poet, Rector of Admissions, The University of Where the Old Circuit City Use to Be

Poncy Tworbst, M.A., PUBLISHED Author, Seeker, Inspirational Singer-Songwriter, PUBLISHED

Heather-Mistee La’ Thwitte-Tworbst, Ph.D., Director of Library Resources at Saint Margaret Sanger Homeschool Resource Authority Collective, Inc., Certified Ordained Consecrated Priest in The Worldwide Church of Me-ness and Pastor of the World-Famous Weddings ‘R’ Us Chapel of Rainbow Dreams in Magdalena, New Mexico

Lawrence Hall, HSG, Thinker of Thinky-Ness and, Like, Stuff, Endowed Chair he found at Goodwill, His Mark: X

(Sean Ian Johann Johnson, MBA, J.D., Chief Photocopier Operator at Donald Trump University and Fashion Editor at Gun, God, and Guts Magazine, was not able to sign today; he is sharing a cell with other White House staff and patiently awaiting The Day of Greatness.)

Panic and Its Attempted Vetoes - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Panic and Its Attempted Vetoes

There are no days free of panic attacks -
A fierce determination to recusancy
Is no defense against the men of peace
Clenching their fists and screaming out their love

There are no nights free of panic attacks -
A fierce determination to needful sleep
Is no defense against unhappy dreams
Judicial accusations of the memory

But even panic is no defense against
One’s fierce determination to write the truth

Where do I Apply for my Russian Bribes? - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Where do I Apply for my Russian Bribes?

Where, then, do I apply for bribery?
Russians are everywhere here, we are told
So why aren’t those nefarious oligarchs
Flinging dollars and dachas at poor me?

And the Chinese, poking and hacking about
(My last water bill was in Mandarin)
Have yet to pad my secret bank account
Or park a Porsche on my patio

But if they will…

I want to spy for the cool FBI
And party away with the CIA

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