Soft Dachshund, Warm Dachshund, Little Ball of Fur - doggerel

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Soft Dachshund, Warm Dachshund

With thanks to everyone who gives us Young Sheldon and The Big Bang Theory

Soft doxie
Warm doxie
Little ball  of fur
Happy doxie
Sleepy doxie
yap, yap, yap! YAP! YAP! YAP! Yap! Yap! Yap! YAP! YAP! YAP! Yap! Yap! Yap! YAP! YAP! YAP! Yap! Yap! Yap! YAP! YAP! YAP! Yap! Yap! Yap! Bark! YAP! YAP! YAP! Yap! Yap! Yap! Woof! YAP! YAP! YAP! Yap! Yap! Yap! Grrrrrrr! YAP! YAP! YAP! Yap! Yap! Yap !YAP! YAP! YAP! Yap! Yap! Yap!

What Was Jesus Writing in the Dust? - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

What was Jesus Writing in the Dust?

-Saint John 8: 1-11

It is the topic of many homilies:
What was Jesus writing in the dust there
At the feet of the woman those men didn’t like?
Possibly he was writing to you and me:

“I know what you do when no one’s watching.”

Or

“I know what you say in self-deception.”

Or

“I know what you think when you are silent.”

Or

“I’m going to fry your *ss if you hurt my child.”

And then there is this other mystery:
Why was there dust in the Temple, anyway?

A Toy Fire Truck and a Real Ambulance - weekly column

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Toy Fire Truck and a Real Ambulance

A friend who frequents re-sale shops and garage sales gave me a little Hubley fire truck that was some little boy’s Christmas gift long ago. Except for the axles and tires it’s a one-piece stamping with a double cab, two rolls of fire hose, a ladder, and access hatches port and starboard. On the bottom one can read “HUBLEY / LANCASTER PENNSYLVANIA / MADE IN USA / 402.” There are no USB connections, lights, batteries, or screens. You make it go by pushing it. It’s made of pot metal and some of the paint is missing, but it’s in good shape and the wheels still turn, so this little fire truck is still ready to roll on a living-room floor emergency call.

I’ve never known a little boy who didn’t want to be a fireman, and now little girls too grow up to be firefighters and EMTs and first responders.

Recently a neighbor had to do the 911 thing late at night, and within minutes Steve Sowder and Sue Sowder of the Kirbyville, Texas Volunteer Fire Department arrived in their personal vehicle with medical bags to begin remedying the situation. And then more people showed up, with rotating lights, and then more people, and then an ambulance, and I kinda lost count of all the responders who in only a few minutes were on scene out in the country.

Where would we be without our volunteer fire departments and all their first responders?

We’d be in a mess.

When there is a fire or a medical emergency in your home there is no effective substitute for properly-trained and professionally-equipped personnel to save a a life, a house, a business, a barn, a field, a forest, and all our hopes.

Beyond that, the existence of a well-trained fire service means that we can insure our property at reasonable rates.

And what are our wonderful firefighters and EMTs and first responders paid for all they do for us?

Nothing.

Indeed, they must hold fundraisers to support the purchase and maintenance of equipment.

Buy the barbecue, okay? And don’t ask for any change back.

So thanks to all those who serve, and on this occasion an extra thank-you to the Kirbyville Volunteer Fire Department. They saved a life.

Little toy fire trucks and ambulances are fun; real fire trucks and ambulances are glorious.

-30-

Mr. Trump's Tonkin Ghosts - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Mr. Trump's Tonkin Ghosts

To Our Commander-in-Chief and Manque Leader of the Free World

And All His Old Men Golfing Buddies

Scheduling Their Tee-Times Around Missile Launches

A dying nineteen-year-old can’t even scream
When half his face has been blown away
He can only gurgle, his remaining eye
Staring wildly in agony and fear

Your man-child plays soldier on guided hunts
Kitted out like Rambo, and KA-BLAMMING
A bighorn sheep the guide spotted for him
Taking he-man selfies while yelping “OOOOH-RAH!”

A dying nineteen-year-old can’t even scream
When half his face has been blown away



("Tonkin Ghosts" may well be the title of another work; if it is, please advise me so that I can change the title.)

Tree Frog in the Rain Gauge - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Tree Frog in the Rain Gauge

During a thunderstorm a little frog
For reasons best known to its grey-green self
Climbed stickey-toed into the chambers of
The gauge, then begged for life as the water rose

Made in China of toxic plastic for
The Weather Consortium Collective ®™
All-natural collection of earth-safe
Weather instruments to save the animals

I took it to the lawn, and gentled it out
During a thunderstorm, a little frog

A Hubley Toy Fire Truck - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Hubley Toy Fire Truck

A Boy’s happy Christmas in the long ago
Miss Dee found it in an old house she bought
Pot metal with the paint peeling away
Wire axles and rubber tires that still roll

No carpet in those years, a wood-plank floor
Was the dreamland for winter adventures
Between the gas fire and the Christmas tree
Between the morning and evening milkings

Somewhere an old man misses his fire truck -
His happy Christmas in the long ago

I Have Never Watched THAT SHOW - doggerel

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

I Have Never Watched That Show

I have never been one of the slacker drones
I have never been one of the sheep-y clones
I have never eavesdropped on lovers’ moans
I have never seen Jesus in traffic cones

and

I have never watched The Game of Thrones

We Are All Characters in a Russian Novel - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

We Are All Characters in a Russian Novel

Our steppes and birch woods are metaphorical
And so are we - who has not seen himself
In youth as the innocent Alyosha
Or in bad days as Dimitri or Ivan

Grushenka at times, and pale Katya too
The Grand Inquisitor at our dark worst
Old Karamazov lusting after Death
Foul Smerdyakov descending cellar stairs

Or gypsy dancers in a rented room
Rolling Polish officers for their pay


But who could ever be Father Zosima?

Everyone Writes a Poem Entitled "My Universities" - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Everyone Writes a Poem Entitled “My Universities”

Although some of my universities
Were universities, I take your point
For you too are a university
I want to know your course of study, your life

Tell me about your university:
Your favorite poet, how you see the skies
Do you like trains? Which hand do you write with?
Which crayon-color did you use up first?

Tell me a story that you tell yourself
While I polish your eyeglasses just right

Rosaries Might be Like Ball-Point Pens - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Rosaries Might be Like Ball-Point Pens

Rosaries might be like ball-point pens
A souvenir for you from Brighton Beach
Fabrique en Chine, blessed by the Bishop of Rome
A kind thought from gap years and honeymoons

But now those rosaries and ball-point pens
Repose in stasis beneath your Sunday socks
And the handkerchiefs Mee-Maw monogrammed
In silk for your high school graduation

Go find them
(No, no, not the socks or handkerchiefs...)

Words flung onto paper are gifts of light
And so are Aves whispered in the night

The Riddle of the Mysterious Sphynx - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Riddle of the Mysterious Sphynx

A wanderer came upon the mysterious sphynx
“Stranger, stand still, if you would choose to live;
I ask each passerby what he knows and thinks,
Thus now I ask a riddle, so stand and give.”

The wanderer answered her rightly that day

And then

The treacherous sphynx devoured him anyway

And Just Who Do You Think You Are, Smart Boy? - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

And What Monolith Might That Be?

There is no monolith I push against
If it is there I simply walk around it
Insolently, usually, hands in pockets
Pretending that the monolith is not

I have been cautioned about my attitude
And then I taped those cautions to the stone
Or made them into verse to be resented:
And just who do you think you are, smart boy?

And to tell you the truth I’m not quite sure
If I ever find out, I’ll let me know

A Sexy Young Philosopher Lapses into Existential Despair - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Young Philosopher Lapses Into Existential Despair

Once upon a time -

A young philosopher sat among men
In the shaded olive groves of Athens
Incense to the Muses, wisdom to all
His ideas soared like Athena’s owls

One day a wise ómorfo korítsi
Delighted him with her strong arguments
Delighted him with her dark Hellenic eyes
Delighted him with a dinner invitation

And as they reclined in symposium met
With verse and wine and wisdom in delight
He excused himself to the toualéta
Where on its walls he read in Attic verse:

If you sprinkle
When you tinkle
Be a sweetie
Lift the seatie

After that his fellow philosophers
Saw him gently into a nursing home

"I Went, And I Am Still Going" - a poem on the occasion of my retirement

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

“I Went, And I Am Still Going.”

This is a re-post of "All Change at Zima Junction." This morning I turned in my keys after some forty years of herding cattle (metaphorically), some seventeen of them with this institution. I am unemployed for the first time since I was five or so and was set to toddling out to the chicken yard every evening to gather the eggs in an old Easter basket. My mother said that the rooster often chased me and made me cry, but I don’t remember that.

And now - what adventure does Aslan have next for me?

The first book I bought upon returning home from Viet-Nam was the Penguin Modern European Poets paperback edition of Yevtushenko: Selected Poems. That 75-cent paperback from an airport bookstall in San Francisco is beside me on the desk as I write.

All Change at Zima Junction

For Yevgeny Yevtushenko, 1932-2017

Everyone changes trains at Zima Junction
Changes lives; nineteen becomes twenty-one
With hardly a pause for twenty and then
Everyone asks you questions you can’t answer

And then they say you’ve changed, and ignore you
The small-town brief-case politician still
Enthroned as if he were a committee -
He asks you what you are doing back here

And then you go away, on a different train:
Everyone changes trains at Zima Junction

“I went, and I am still going.”1

1 Yevtushenko: Selected Poems. Penguin,1962

Rain Makes Even Concrete Beautiful - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Rain Makes Even Concrete Beautiful

The rain makes even concrete beautiful:
A drop, then two, and then a singing shower
Baptizing the pavement with little pools
That catch the lights and bounce them all about:

Street lights all golden, rippling up and down
And automobile lights slipping across
The other lights, interrupted by feet
Splashing and slipping all the wet way home

And you, dancing about in the puddles -
The rain makes even love more beautiful


(A brief look through the InterGossip does not show that “Rain Makes Even Concrete Beautiful” has been used as the title for a song or poem or other “spot of art” (as Bertie Wooster would say). If it has, please advise me so I can change it.)

And You Paid a Company in New Jersey for This - weekly column

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

And You Paid a Company in New Jersey for This

Last week a 5th-grade child in Lumberton, Texas suffering through the STAAR test (which is the successor to the TABS, and then the TEAMS, and then the TAAS, and then the TAKS, all to the greater glory of the Texas Education Agency) found an illustration which contained a bad word.

You and I would agree that it is a bad word, though the purveyors of what now passes for popular entertainment are pleased to promote it to all, and it is flung around like poo by men and women of all ages in social situations. Hearing a bespectacled, demure-looking granny snorting the f-bomb in a coffee shop while surrounded by children does not speak well for contemporary mutual respect.

The Texas Education Agency, which is what bossy old Miz Grundy became when she went off to college and put on even more airs, cycles through a lot of taxpayer dollars to take care of themselves, bother other people, and inflict cycles of alphabet-soup exams on children.

The TEA is fond of bullying districts, and as an acquaintance more familiar with their ‘tude than I says, the TEA should now taste their own cod liver oil and be required to submit to the local school districts a three-part corrective action plan and regular status reports, and if they fail in remediating the matter of naughty words on their made-in-New Jersey tests to understand that their elected board (yes, you elected them) is subject to being replaced by an appointed board and a state monitor.

According to The Texas Tribune (https://salaries.texastribune.org/state-comptroller-payroll/departments/texas-education-agency/positions/commissioner-texas-education/), Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath receives $220,375 annually for his service to the children of Texas, so, yes, for that kind of cabbage he should being watching his own office and its doings.

The various exit-level exams used in this state are sold to Texas by Pearson Publishing, a British company headquartered in London and with marketing tentacles all over the world, and by Educational Testing Service in New Jersey, which is far more foreign than Britain.

A salient question is why Texas families are taxed by the Texas state government to pay out-of-state and out-of-country companies to generate tests for Texas children in Texas schools.

Are there no universities, schools of education, and publishers in Texas who can build exams (with or without awkward pictures) and publish textbooks for Texas children, or are we to be forever a cultural colony somewhere beyond Carlo Levi’s Eboli?

-30-

I Visited a High School ("Hisssssssss...!") - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

I Visited a High School

I visited a high school the other day
Walking past the police car at the door
Into a vestibule cold-camera-watched
Presenting identification at a window

Efficiently buzzed through into a hall
Which stank of aggressive disinfectant
Among the shoalings a poor unhappy girl
Angrily picked her nose and glared at me

And hissed behind my back as I went my way
(It’s all the fault of the teachers, they say)




(If you want to be alone for a while, go vote in your local school board elections. Everyone else is too busy complaining.)

The Sorrows of Younger Werther, B.A., M.A., Ph.D. Candidate - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Sorrows of Younger Werther, B.A., M.A., Ph.D. Candidate

A grown man in knee-pants and a cartoon tee
Flip-flopping along in his shower shoes
His hands up in surrender as he runs
A MePhone in his left, water bottle in his right

Nasaling “OmyGod! OmyGod! OmyGod!”
It’s his all-purpose whining upspeak chant
Wailed out for any grade less than an A
Or for a kitty-cute MeTube video

And now for a campus shooting: “Why me!?”
I just didn’t think it would happen here!”


(cf. Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther)

That Tricky Trompe L'oeil - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

That Tricky Trompe L’oeil

Wait! I thought I saw
A trompe l’oeil trompe-ing along -
I could have been wrong

A Worker's Response to Carol Vanderveer Hamilton's "May Day" - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Worker’s Response to Carol Vanderveer Hamilton’s “May Day”

As one of the blue-jacketed workers
As a defiant student
As a child of poverty
Who never had a bicycle to ride to the Sorbonne

I repudiate your vivid red flags
And your graduate-school keyboard revolution
And your catalogue of cliches’ and cant
And your crawling housefly symbolism

As one of the blue-jacketet workers
As a defiant student
After an all-night shift in the plastics factory
I like my cuppa Earl Grey tea in my bleeding hands

Someday I’ll have a bourgeois balcony
And from it look down on your stereotypes