When Dogs Don't Wanna be Dogs - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

When Dogs Don’t Wanna be Dogs

You send the pups outside to play
This so-soft, sunny summer day

The yard is big and safely fenced
A paradise nicely condensed

And there the dogs have cats to chase
Bugs to eat, and each other to race

Soft rubber toys to squeak and chew
Bowls of water and dog-food stew

And naps to take beneath oak trees
Tummies up in the soft, soft breeze

And yet –

As soon as you have let them out
Then all they seem to do is pout

Unhappy with their vast estate
They glare at you and seem to hate

They hate the cats, they hate their toys
You have denied them all their joys

They bark and scratch at all the doors
They’re kinda cute – like sophomores

Breaking the Dress Code - a weak, two-line wheeze, hardly a poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Breaking the Dress Code

We broke at last the secretive dress code
With an Enigma machine from Singer

A Scientific Afterlife - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Scientific Afterlife

What scientific wreckage is buried now
Beneath a chiseled granite sentiment?
Our clapped-out bones and flesh are not enough
To satisfy The Way That Things Work Now



Maybe our eyeglasses will hit the dirt
Along with dental fillings and dyed hair
Pacemakers with their batteries in place
Still firing dutifully after the peace



That now surpasses all understanding
With God (complete with medical branding)

System Errors - Please know that I did format these scribbles appropriately...

...Something or someone is making a mess of it all.

What is Poetry? - rhyming couplet (Something is botching the formatting)

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

What is Poetry?

Poetry is a language that
Is not prose. Nor is it a hat

"For if a Preest be Foul..." - poem (the system is botching the format - I hope you can read this at all)

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

If the Faith is a Lie

For if a preest be be foul, on whom we truste,

No wonder is a lewed man to ruste

-Chaucer, General Prologue, 501-502

If the Faith is a lie, then let it lie
Let’s not make it up as we go along
Waving a fashionably duct-taped book about
And chanting “This is all you need!”

Because some millionaire has told us to
Nor yet the famous ‘blogging priest who boasts
And posts photographs of his gourmet meals
While begging money for his many trips

If the Faith is a lie, then let it be
But it isn’t – and neither, please God, are we


(No armpit-drying during Mass, please.)

The Robotic Telephone Tree of Lingering Death - poem (of a sort)

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Robotic Telephone Tree of Lingering Death

Hello, you have reached your longtime hometown downhome Saint Swithin’s Family Medical Clinic now an outreach ministry of Consolidated #Jesus Industries Inc.where nobody knows you anymore and wouldn’t care if they did your health care is very important to us you are a valued customer our office hours are from 8 to 12 and 2 to 5 on alternate Mondays and 9-12 and 2 to 5 on Tuesdays and Thursday after Woodchuck Endangerment Awareness Day but before Greenpeace Day except when the latter falls on a Wednesday in which case our office hours are 2 to 5 only and on Saturday 8 to 12 if this is an outside pharmacy please dial X and follow the menu if this is a prescription refill please dial Y and follow the menu if this is to schedule an appointment please dial Z and remain on the line if this to reschedule an appointment dial A cubed and speak slowly when prompted to do so I’m sorry I didn’t quite get that would you like to try again I’m sorry I still didn’t get that if you would like to speak to an operator dial oh, I am sorry your time is expired please hang up and redial if you would like to speak with Dr. Name’s secretary please dial 3 if you would like to speak with Dr. Other Name’s secretary please dial 4 if you would like to talk with Nurse Practitioner Yet Another Name’s secretary please dial 5 if this is an emergency then please hang up and dial 911…

Summer Solstice - Did the Earth Move for You Too? - a wheeze

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Summer Solstice - Did the Earth Move for You Too?

The almanac says that the Solstice came
Shortly after the receptionist called my name
At 1056 – and how do they know
Of stars and planets in their dances slow?

We note the transcendent reality
Of our pale transient mortality
And guard our health with good ol’ common sense
I later noted this coincidence:

The transition to summer came to pass
While the doctor had his finger up my ***


(There might be some mystical symbolism in that, but I don’t know what.)

A Friend Asked Me to Look Over His Book Before Publication - a rhyming couplet and cautionary tale

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Friend Asked Me to Look Over His Book Before Publication

He asked me to review his book (I must be nuts)
I did just as he asked:
                                  And now he hates my guts

Your Liturgy of the Hours - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Your Liturgy of the Hours

A book of poetry is a prayer book
Your Daily Office of verses and lines
Attended prayerfully if possible
But, yes, attended in any event

Wavell’s Flowers for your next deployment
Young Yevtushenko for the bus commute
Or a little volume of Pushkin pushed
Into a pocket past your pocketknife

Beginning with Matins, and all through your day
Make the blessings of poetry part of your Way

A Hank Williams Night - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Hank Williams Night

You’re lonely in an apartment at night
But lonesome way off in a pickup truck

Lonely sitting in an IKEA chair
Lonesome on the tail-gate of an old Ford

Lonely over a glass of single-malt
Lonesome over a Marlboro and a beer

Lonely surfing the channels of emptiness
Lonesome listening to the silence of stars

And either way you hurt; she isn’t there
No, she sure ain’t

The Successor to Steve Allen's MEETING OF MINDS - rhyming couplet

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Successor to Steve Allen’s Meeting of Minds

A cookery show with noshes and gnaws -
People giving a ‘burger rounds of applause

Hospice Care - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Hospice Care

Whispered voices adrift about the house
The little cousins all sent out to play
Adults ingathered at the kitchen table
Taking communion from the coffee pot

The hospice nurse is in and out and back
A subtle shake of her head – he’s still alive
In the back bedroom, gurgling to an end
Frail fingers twitching on the coverlet

An evening of grieving, darkening fast
Whispered voices adrift about the past

For a Single Mother on Fathers' Day - a lapse into free verse

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

For a Single Mother on Father’s Day

No father
Could have been a better father
Than you
When duty called
You were there
And will be forever

You’re the best

A Paean to Dabblers - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Paean to Dabblers

Oh, yes, you should dabble amateurishly
With sketchbook, pen, guitar, and crescent wrench
With telescope and hiking boots and love
With verse that scans and prose that strongly speaks

For a dabbler, all the world is his adventure:
A coffee cup is as Old Santa Fe
A stroll in the garden a pilgrimage
To Canterbury or Santiago

And you should draw and write and sing these things
Oh, yes, you should dabble amateurishly

A Man's Not Dressed Without His Pocket Knife - column

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

(Recycled from 2009, and so possibly a re-post)

A Man’s Not Dressed Without His Pocket Knife

This last Christmas certain environmentalist groups advertised meaningful green gifts – instead of giving your child a bicycle or a football for Christmas you could donate the money you would have spent on your own kid to some stranger who’s shown you a picture of a polar bear allegedly drowning.

It’s a polar bear, citizens; it swims in the water and eats harp seals, you know, the cute widdy-biddy harp seals with the big ol’ eyes. The polar bear rips screaming baby harp seals apart with its fangs and claws, and the baby harp seals die far more horribly than if they got whacked in the back of the head, and then they get eaten. How’s that for a bedtime story, PETA?

When I was a child there was nothing I would have wanted more than to stumble sleepily but excitedly into the living room to find a card (printed on recycled paper with recycled soy-based ink) giving me glad tidings that a penguin had the new cap pistol I wanted. Sadly, my parents weren’t green, and so gave me cap pistols and baseball gloves and toy trains and an ant farm.

Although not as exciting as a new bicycle, a good pocket knife is a far better gift than being bullied into pretending to feel good about a fish or a ground squirrel. Giving a boy his first pocket knife is a traditional rite of passage, and having it taken away a day or two later for misuse is another traditional rite of passage. A knife, after all, is a tool, not a toy, and owning one is a grown-up thing.

My ol’ daddy said that a man’s not fully dressed without his pocket knife; experience demonstrates that this is true. The knife was perhaps the first tool used by humans, probably beginning with a sharp flint, and necessary for skinning a rabbit, slicing veggies, building a fire, eating, building, mending, opening, slicing, dicing, picking your teeth, and cleaning your fingernails. Mind the order of usage, of course! No one who lives close to the land or the sea or the workshop can function without a good knife to hand at all times.

Thomas Jefferson is often credited for inventing the first folding knife, which, while not as strong as a one-piece, is certainly easier to carry about. Manufacturers began adding extra blades, and then the Swiss got the idea of adding specific tools in miniature, resulting in the Swiss Army Knife. Where or not the Swiss Army carries Swiss Army Knives is a good topic of conversation. While these gadgets are fun, I’ll bet your old grandpa could accomplish with his single-bladed pocket knife whatever task was necessary before you could find and unlimber the designated thingie out of a Swiss Army Knife or a multi-tool.

A friend gave me a nice little lock-back with a single blade with saw-teeth. I found this knife so useful that a few weeks later I bought a larger model, made-in-America, even while thinking to myself that the last thing I needed was another pocket knife. And then a few weeks after that Hurricane Rita did not hit New Orleans, and that big ol’ American knife with its one large blade and saw-teeth paid for itself many times over with its survival utility.

Shiny things under the tree or for a birthday are fun: little plastic boxes that light up and make noise, and other little boxes that allow you to hear The Immortal Words of Our Time – “Can you hear me now?” and “She’s all up in my face!” But when you are long-gone, your grandchildren and great-grandchildren will not treasure your MePod or your cell ‘phone or your Brickberry, because those dinky disposables will have long since been recycled into beer cans or Chinese cars. But they will treasure your old pocket knife, its edge well-worn from good, honest use and from many sharpenings around a winter’s fire when the stories are told.

Sturdy, American-made pocket knives are great, traditional gifts for men and boys. They are also perfect for skinning baby harp seals.

-30-

If You Were Still a Child - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

If You Were Still a Child

If you were still a child, I would give you
A Kleenex or two, as I used to do
(Now blow your nose…) and maybe a cookie too
But now…this much is true…time flew…you grew

And yet

There is no expiration date on tears
No sign that reads “You Are Too Old for Fears”
No simple answers after the smoke all clears
No moon, no music high among the spheres

Where lovers’ dreams ascended in the night…
But, here, have another Kleenex, all right?

Did Churchill Destroy His Secret Underground War Room Computers in 1945? - doggerel

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Did Churchill Destroy His Secret Underground War Room Computers in 1945?

To be chanted whenever the O Machine 1 fails:

Rumor has it that the Enigma
Was to Churchill a foul stigma

And that the ancient, creaking Babbage
It was to him but so much cabbage

Colossus One and Colossus Two
Those gadgets too he began to rue

They say he let them rust and rot -
The pity is that he did not


(I checked with the Lizard People on this – Churchill’s secret Second World War computers, powered by a primordial Lemurian source of energy so dangerous that even speaking its name in the ancient language of the Atlanteans is said to be fatal, are secured in a locked vault on Oak Island and guarded around the clock (set to Martian time) by the Trilateral Masonic-Vatican Continuum of deadly albino flying fish.)

1 E.M. Forster, “The Machine Stops,” 1909, Much-anthologized

Scenery Shifting Beyond Life's Windows - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Scenery Shifting Beyond Life’s Windows

Once upon a time each morning began
With a ventilation shaft and the night’s
Foul fall of dreams, drama, and downed debris
Dammed and maybe damned against the window screen

And then an apartment window so high
I could see only the San Diego sky
Train windows, the Mojave through the glass
Then only for a little while
                                                  there was you

The scenery keeps shifting, and that’s okay
Life is a John Ford movie every day

There will be BLOOD (But Just a Few Milliliters) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

There will be BLOOD (But Just a Few Milliliters)

Please consider the seeming illogic
The seeming illogic of paying a man
A good and wise and educated man
To poke his finger upwards in your ***

After a visit to a wizard’s lab
Where a pleasant, professional young woman
Attaches a vampire butterfly to your wrist
And sucks your blood into a little phial

“Now you might feel a little pressure, okay?”
And then consider the happy logic
                                                          of staying alive