The Icon on Your Desk - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Icon on Your Desk

We kiss the frame of an icon because
We pray for a Breath of the Eternal

We gaze upon an icon because
We pray for a Vision of the Eternal

We set a light before an icon because
We were given a Light to set

"For English, Press 1..." - rhyming doggerel

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

“For English, press 1; for Spanish, press 2…”

But every caller speaks in an English tone –
Personne ne parle Français sur mon Anglophone!

Curating a Much-Need Curative for Curating - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Curating a Much-Needed Curative for Curating

To a Curator who Curates Everything

Today one reads that you curated tea
Before curating a bus into town
To curate your job at the coffee shop
And in the afternoon curating friends

Before curating to the artists’ loft
To continue curating the novel
You’ve been curating on for several months
While curating your classes and career

Your life is not a museum, you know
So DROP the CURATING; just let it GO

Existential Ankle Monitors - couplet

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Existential Ankle Monitors

We pay for our restraints, strap them to ourselves
And then we wonder why there is no joy

"...A Pool Where a Kelpie Lived" - a poem for children

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

“…A Pool Where a Kelpie Lived”

“A little below the bridge was a pool where a kelpie lived.”

-Sigrid Unset, Kristin Lavransdatter, p. 8

If you are blessed with a little back yard
The smallest of gardens, a bit of grass
Then you have pixies and fairies and sprites
They like you, but they’re awfully shy, you know

If in your garden there is a little pool
Even a dish of water for the cat
Then you have a tiny kelpie or two
(And they are much nicer than you’ve been told)

In flower and leaf and water and soft night air -
Oh, yes, there is sweet magic everywhere

I Hate Bicyles - not exactly a poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

I Hate Bicycles

I hate bicycles.

I hate repairing bicycles.

I hate replacing bicycle tires.

I hate dismounting bicycle tires.

I hate mounting bicycle tires.

I hate inflating bicycle tires.

I hate barking my knuckles when the wrench slips.

I hate scraping my knuckles when the wrench doesn’t slip.

I hate the fire ants on whose mound I inadvertently sat while repairing the bicycle.

I hate fire ant bites.

I hate bicycles.

Listening to the radio while repairing, replacing dismounting, mounting, inflating, barking, and scraping is fun, though.

Dignity in a Genuflection - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Dignity in a Genuflection

Sunflowers do not bend toward the Sun; they genuflect
Which is exactly right for morning prayers
They have waited in place throughout the night
For His morning, and true enough, He comes

And through the day His liturgies of Light
Illuminating the letters and margins of life
With all the ornaments of Creation
Delight each flower in its work and play

Ordering all endeavors to great effect -
Sunflowers do not bend toward the Sun; they genuflect

Are You Going to the Parish Picnic? - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Are You Going to the Parish Picnic?

Benedíc nos Dómine et haec Túa dóna quae de Túa largitáte súmus sumptúri.

Per Chrístum Dóminum nóstrum. Ámen.

Miz Busy with her homemade apple pies
Uncle Alfie lapsing into a snore
Young lads and lassies making goo-goo eyes
Miss Billie’s cookies (shhh…they’re from the store)

Children frolicking only with their ‘phones
Jolly old Ed basting burnt barbecue
An altar boy gorging until he groans
The teenagers’ gross game of choke and chew

Young marrieds getting into a squabble
Politics roaring like a thunderstorm
Bubba came drunk; he’s beginning to wobble
Tox ‘tater salad that’s gotten warm

Unidentifiable glop upon a stick –
No, I’m not going to the parish picnic

Telephone Service on Top of Mount Everest - rhyming doggerel

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Telephone Service on Top of Mount Everest

Thousands of meters high, and hardly a breath
A sales call there among the frozen scree
And if you fall there, screaming to your death
Are you charged an early termination fee?

Reclining Nude with Pet Frog - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Reclining Nude with Pet Frog

For a scribbler in that art magazine

           “…bodiless heads, green horses and violet grass, seaweed,
shells and funguses...conventionally arranged
 in the manner of Dali.”

-Evelyn Waugh, Put Out More Flags, pp. 31-32

Making messes is but poor huswifery
Tie-dyeing creativity into
A finger-painting school of assemblage
Asymbol’d: “Reclining Nude with Pet Frog”

In praise of working people and, like, stuff -
Your comrade cleaners whom you claim to love
Could tell you what a simp you are. They won’t
Because they need their jobs, dear precious poof

So, disappear your selfies into your ‘phone -
The 1960’s are over and gone

In Search of Lost Time and a Watch Battery - weekly column 10.4.19

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

In Search of Lost Time and a Watch Battery

Being among the last bearers of wristwatches, I occasionally need a watch battery, and these are difficult to find now.

Time is a curious concept. In one sense it can be said to be abstract, measurable only in observing the rotations and tilts of this shaky planet as it wobbles its elliptical orbit around the sun.

Christians perceive time as linear – it began with Creation and will end with Creation as God decides.

Other faith tradition say that time is a sort of cosmic sea, Samsara, and that life in its cycles of repetition is beyond time, sort of like waiting for an arrival or departure at Newark International Airport.

Before some clever German invented the clock, the measurement of time was dependent on where the sun was, and this varies greatly with the seasons. The monastic hours of lauds, prime, terce, sex, nones, vespers, compline, and matins regulated the day for monasteries and thus universities, businesses, and royal courts. However, monastic hours vary with the seasons, and, anyway, how can anyone determine compline and lauds on a rainy night?

When we speak of time we usually think of small and immediate measurements predicated on the solar day and broken up into hours, minutes, and seconds. Thus, while the concept of first light was (and remains) an appointed time for the beginning of a day on the farm, business appointments require more detailed measurements.

The Middle Ages (they are dark only to those who will not learn history) gave us all sorts of mechanical clocks thanks to the concept of fitting an escapement to geared wheels. The pocket watch, at first as bulky as a turnip, came later. And, really, who wants to carry a turnip around, even if it is an especially clever root crop specimen that can tell time?

Wrist watches enjoyed only a brief popularity. They were considered a sissy thing until the First World War, when manly men busy with rifles and bombs and geometrical tables for cannons needed quick access to a timepiece for properly scheduling the deaths of other men.

A hundred years later, and the wristwatch is mostly a historical curiosity, rather like London’s Big Ben. Most everyone checks the time by pulling from their pockets an electric telescreen which is bulkier and more to difficult to access than a pocket watch, but, hey, progress, right?

Still, time is fascinating, both in its measurement and in the abstract. We read that if we travel in space time alters, and that the accurate watches and clocks on a spaceship will, upon returning to earth, show a different time.

Whether or not space-time is fluid, it appears as a plot device in episodes of The Twilight Zone and Star Trek, and of course in Charlton Heston’s classic movie Planet of the Congressional Subcommittees: “Darn you! Darn you to Newark International Airport!”

My personal quest for a watch battery ended in despair, but a nice man manipulated a large brown delivery truck through one-dimensional space and with a fresh battery brought time back to my old eight-dollar Timex.

It’s about time.

-30-

How Dare You!? How Dare You!? How Dare You See What You Have Seen!? - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

How Dare You See What You Have seen?

The dribbling Head in That Hideous Strength
A man behind a curtain, pulling cords
How many fingers, Winston, six or five?
Mrs. Wilson holding the president’s pen

Doctor Wakefield will see your children now
Sender Gleiwitz is very clear tonight
Reporting North Vietnamese attack boats
Sailing in crop circles to Area 51

A child abused upon The People’s throne

Go to the rostrum

We will tell you what to say

Bring Your Bible to School Day - doggerel

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Bring Your Bible to School Day

Saint Matthew chapter 6, verses 1 through 4 -
They’re in the Bible too, and so much more

In Search of Lost Time and a Watch Battery - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

In Search of Lost Time and a Watch Battery

Time stops. The sweep hand seconds that no-motion
It fluttered in warning for several days
You were warned, and now you are out of time
That thing on your wrist is now but a weight

Oh, what is the nature of time? one asks
Oh, where is there a fresh 370?
The watch-opener reposes patiently
The tiny screwdrivers wait silently

Because without a 370 battery

(Which you can’t find in this town)

A watch is only useless tattery

Mr. Big Businessman in Knee-Pants - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Mr. Big Businessman in Knee-Pants

There wiste no wight that he was in dette

-Chaucer, General Prologue, line 279

If this were fifty years ago he’d sport
A cheap brown suit and a loud, too-wide tie
But now he wears knee-pants and cartoon tees
And fashion shoes that look like cancerous growths

And speaks like Chaucer’s merchant of his gigs
Contacts and contracts and deals to be made
Important ‘phone calls that must be taken now
In a voice of in-crowd guffawery

But when he clicks off his shiny MePhone
He asks for gas money to get him home

A Little Child Dancing in Prison - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Little Child Dancing in Prison

But it’s not a prison; it’s a unit
(Euphemisms make everything all better)
The morning sun rising above the fog
Sparkles merrily on bright razor wire

A barefoot little girl dances and sings
She has already been wanded and searched
Her princess shoes examined for contraband
She’ll put them back on after Mommy’s turn

She gets to see her daddy again this week
And that is why she is dancing in prison



Please understand that prison staff are not Disney baddies; adults sometimes hide drugs and other contraband in their children’s clothing.

When Life is a Waiting Room - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

When Life is a Waiting Room

A waiting room is not a room that waits
A waiting room is not a room who waits
Although in life there are bleak waiting rooms
A life itself is not a waiting room

Except when it is

Now, Children of Privilege, March Away - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Now, Children, March Away 1

Now, children, march away through Hamelin town
Obedient to the gauleiter’s wish
You must admire the emperor’s new gown
Shoal mindlessly ashore like grunion fish

And most obey, and upspeak programmed lines
Assembly-line rebels, they look alike
They wear their masters’ thrall-rings ‘round their minds
And call their servitude a climate strike

But who is strong? I really want to know
That one reflective child who just says

                               No.



1 As Henry V did not say

When Did Our Federal Government Become an Episode of THE VIEW? - weekly column

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

When Did Our Federal Government Become an Episode of The View?

“You in the West have no idea what it’s like to be ruled by peasants.”

-Mihai in Robert D. Kaplan’s Balkan Ghosts, p. 138

In majestic solemnity our great republic moves toward impeachment.

Oh, yeah.

Given that there are two obvious sides in the impeachment squabble, let us consider both positions.

The argument, or strophe, of one side seems to be:

They said that you said that he said that they said that you said that he said that they said that you said that he said that they said that you said that he said that they said that you that he said that they said that you said that he said that they said that you said that he said that they said that you said that he said that they said that you that he said that they said that you said that he said that they said that you said that he said that they said that you said that he said that they said that you…

But you get the idea.

The opposing side’s counter-argument, or antistrophe, appears to be:

Twitterkrieg toxic talkininity #poopypants manhood thing witch hunt garbage
removal battle look into risky unanimous point-of-privilege crime dog whistle fake news lock ‘em up nasty person twitterkrieg toxic talkininity #poopypants manhood thing witch hunt garbage nasty person removal battle look into risky unanimous point-of-privilege crime dog whistle fake news lock ‘em up toxic talkininity #poopypants manhood thing witch hunt garbage removal battle look into risky unanimous point-of-privilege crime dog whistle fake news lock ‘em up nasty person twitterkrieg toxic talkininity #poopypants manhood thing witch hunt garbage nasty person removal battle look into risky unanimous point-of-privilege crime dog whistle fake news lock ‘em up …

And, yes, we have seen it in HD and heard it in stereophonic they’ve-got-you-surrounded sound.

As for the epode, or resolution, that’s obvious:

A little of that governmental energy now wasted by both sides in palace gossip and in the great expense of another ill-considered show trial (remember Bill Clinton?) could be better directed to flood victims in Puerto Rico, Florida, the Carolinas, and now a few miles away, along the Texas gulf coast.

-30-

Gilligan's Island of Castaway Verse - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Gilligan’s Island of Castaway Verse

The discipline of reading at least one poem each day

The meter started getting rough aboard
A scheduled poetic three-minute tour
Across a sonnet or a blue haiku
Broken up by a wave of indolence

The Professor repairs an iamb or two
With a clam shell, seaweed, and coconuts
While Mary Ann recites “The Road Not Taken”
And the Skipper chases poor Gilligan

Who trips and falls, and finds a misplaced rhyme -
Maybe we’ll all get off the island this time!