A Brief and Unhappy Review of the IPhone 7-Plus - review

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

A Brief and Unhappy Review of the IPhone 7-Plus

 

 

 It is clunky, with features made more difficult (aka "progress")

1. My email contacts won't move over, tho' The Machine (O Machine!) says they have.

2. The home button is not a button but rather a balky, function-resistant touch screen. Double-clicking to minimize a screen for sliding away requires repeated efforts (I know, first-world problems).  When trying to slide away a screen it often doesn't slide away at all, but becomes a half-screen to no apparent purpose.

3. It's so much bigger than my old 5C, which fit comfortably in my pocket. The iPhone 7-Plus is the slab from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

4. I ordered a leather case for it; for now, I am reluctant even to carry it around the house for fear of dropping it because it is heavy, thin, and GREASY-SLICK.

5. There is no ear-phone port; one must buy the very expensive and easy-to-lose Apple buds. This is not important for me because I don't listen to music or books, but for those who do and who travel or spend time in public places, this is pretty much a matter of Apple being greedy.

6. I haven't tried the camera yet; I am told I will be very happy with it, esp. the portrait mode, which flattens the focal plane.

Hitchhikers May be Escaped Prisoners - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Hitchhikers May be Escaped Prisoners

-road sign

Well, yeah, that’s pretty much true of most of us
Who are adrift, looking for something else
Far from the shiny coils of razor thoughts
That lacerate our souls instead of flesh

Escaping is a risky endeavor, though
We might be caught, imprisonment made worse
But worse than being captured and returned
We might succeed

If we knew what lay beyond those sunset hills
We might not go

+Sue Lyon - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

+Sue Lyon

We are of an age
But when she was rockin’ a proto-bikini
I was still playing with electric trains
It wouldn’t have worked

The Apostrophe Apocalypse - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

The Apostrophe Apocalypse

sure we dont need no old punctuation
Its antiquated and masculinist
And oppressive like library late fees
Maybe well rid ourselves of other structures

ANDWRITELIKETHEROMANSDIDWITHOVTANYWORDDIVISIONPVNCTVATIONCAPITALLETTERSSMALLLETTERSORSENTENCESTRVCTURE
ERVSTONMILLEWESVACEBTNAWEWFIDRAWCCABSEMITEMOSDNA
BESIDESWEVEGOTOVRMEFONSSRIGHT

Oh, please:

Language is not about innovation
It’s all about clear communication

Eden and Gethsamane - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Eden and Gethsemane

Every morning in silence an old man reads
Verses while resting on a garden seat
Upon the pages falls soft, leafy light
Like meanings breathed into the given words

His shovel and rake are leaned against the oak
Where the too-fat squirrels gambol merrily
His hands and joints just don’t work well anymore
And so he gardens in the Book of Life

And then one morning he isn’t there
And then a gentle wind turns the page

Free Verse is Mucous - poem (in free verse)

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Free Verse is Mucous

Free verse is mucous
Dripping self-pityingly
Into a Kleenex

And speaking of Kleenex, pass me another…

"The Man Hath Penance Done" - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

"The Man Hath Penance Done"

“The man hath penance done,

And penance more will do”

-Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

We criticize some bishops, and rightly so
For sending out into the universe
Their resumes’ of wants and vanities
And shame: “That’s just the way the world works now”

But we must think on our more hidden shame
That smolders as a smaller heap of waste
Our wants and vanities, our lesser lists
And excuses: “That’s just the way the world…”

Oh.

We criticize the bishops, and rightly so
But first our own poor faults we’d better know

Do Kim Jong-Il and His Office Staff Play Secret Santa? - weekly column

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Do Kim Jong-Il and His Office Staff Play Secret Santa?

Some speak of an after-Christmas letdown. And perhaps it is true that all the weeks of expectations and demands and sometimes forced merriment crash down into a silence on the 26th.

But Christmas truly begins at midnight on the 24th of December and ends with the Feast of the Epiphany on the 6th of January. In the northern hemisphere our ancestors took those twelve winter days in feasting and celebration after the liturgies of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. The first Monday after Epiphany was Plough / Plow Monday, beginning the new agricultural year with farmers breaking up and turning over the soil in anticipation of spring.

This year Christmas Day falls on Wednesday, so most Americans must return to their metaphorical plows dark and early on Thursday morning, but maybe while wearing a nice, new coat against the cold.

More practically, the car or pickup might be wearing a new battery which will crank the engine without the need for jumper cables.

Most decorations remain up until Epiphany, which is exactly right, honoring the Infant Jesus and serving as a counterpoint against the cold, dark weather. The letdown comes when, at last, the tree and decorative angels and wise men and Disney princesses and plastic ivy and the lights, all those wonderful little lights, must be taken down and packed away until next year.

After the floor is vacuumed of pine needles (real or made in China of weird chemicals) and the furniture re-arranged, the low, grey skies outside the window remind us that winter has settled in for a long visit.

If the house is blessed with children parents are advised to wear slippers upon arising in the mornings lest their bare feet fall upon Barbie’s scepter or Ken’s sports car.

Christmas toys once engaged children – girls played with their dolls (pardon me while I dodge hashtags of outrage), boys played with their cap pistols (eeeeeek!), and living room floors and front yards were adventure lands of cars, airplanes, push-scooters, books about Robin Hood and Gene Autry and space cadets and Annette and her adventures, dump trucks, Barbie’s Dream Missouri Pacific train set, trikes, bikes, wagons, footballs, basketballs, kickballs, little green army men, little plastic cowboys and Indians, games formed up and won and lost, and occasional tears.

Christmas toys now seem to be a matter of silent, earphoned Children of the Corn staring dully and obediently into little glowing screens. What are The Voices that you can’t hear telling them?

The season of Christmas, now mostly known as after-Christmas, is good in its own quiet ways – social demands are fewer, the house is quieter, there are hidden resources of chocolate to be explored, and a good cuppa and a book by the fire is possible, where we can also meditate on the eternal verities, such as whether Kim Jon-Il and his office staff play Secret Santa.

Peace.

-30-

For Our Mothers on Christmas - poem (a re-post)

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

(I wrote this the first Christmas after my mother died)

For Our Mothers on Christmas

Beyond all other nights, on this strange Night,
A strangers’ star, a silent, seeking star,
Helps set the wreckage of our souls aright:
It leads us to a stable door ajar.

And we are not alone in peeking in:
An ox, an ass, a lamb, some shepherds, too -
Bright star without; a brighter Light within
We children see the Truth the Wise Men knew.

For we are children there in Bethlehem
Soft-shivering in that winter long ago
We watch and listen there, in star-light dim,
In cold Judea, in a soft, soft snow.

The Stable and the Star, yes, we believe:
Our mothers take us there each Christmas Eve.

The Fourth Sunday in Advent Slightly Misshapen - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

The Fourth Sunday in Advent –

Maybe I Should Have Shaped this as a Chalice

As George Herbert Might Have Done

At Mass I was tagged to serve as First Host
Because someone else was taking my place
As First Cup but then whoever had First Host
Had a cough. When I went to the vestry

I was told I was not needed and then
Somebody else told me that I was. Then yet
Someone else said I was not needed
And then yet again somebody else told me

That I was. And in the event, the church lady
Who organizes these things told everyone…

Christmas is Awkward - a poem for Christmas Eve-Eve

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Christmas is Awkward

(Don’t forget the codfish and oysters)

A stagecoach rattles its way to Dingley Dell
Along ice-rutted roads, with bugle calls
To alert the station ahead of needs
Especially horses and brandy hot

A coach-top ride in the cold of dawn is better
Than traffic jams along the interstate
Mandatory merriment on the radio
Desperate greetings at the old home place

The door is hardly closed when an auntie asks,
“And is there someone special in your life?”

Three Young People on Television Discuss Climate Change - not exactly a poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Three Young People on Television Discuss Climate Change

like, whoa, like, totally, like, a thing, like, panic, like, scientists have concluded, like, eleven years, like, for sure, actually, kinda, like, actually, adults don’t realize, adults don’t believe, the top scientists around the world, like, I’ll be 29, like, my planet’s going to die, like, that’s a really scary fact, like, absolutely, if we don’t make changes, definitely, climate change, definitely, so, like, snow in May, definitely, like, climate change, like our house is on fire, our government is not treating this, absolutely, on a whole, they’re not taking this seriously, climate action now, promoting, we want them to, so, um, us youth are going to be the ones, um, make sense of the mess, like, listen to me, listen to the youth, making changes, like, back burner, like, places around the world, actually, you need to start listening to young people, you need to listen to science, like, this is a crisis, we should be calling this a crisis, um, like, we need, um, like, to step back, um, and, like, subsidized, like, green energy, I feel that, like, we need to lower the voting age to 16 like I can drive a car like young generation like educating the youth like they tell us at school like I know about politics like my research absolutely not lots of teachers bring it up many people don’t have access to that…

Truthless at Almost Midnight - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Truthless at Almost Midnight

“Only the solitary seek the truth,

and they break with all those who don't love it sufficiently.”

― Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

A problem is that you might break with those
Who do not love the truth, and then you find
That you don’t seem to love it much yourself
And then the truth - it doesn’t love you at all

If you talk to the walls, they don’t talk back
The magic realism of poverty
Is no magic at all, and you are alone
With neither friends nor truth, only the walls

A problem is that you might break with

                                                                 everything

"We Are All Pursued by Bears, Mr. Hall!" - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

“We Are All Pursued by Bears, Mr. Hall!”

-Emily Grace Wilkinson

Encouraged by Amanda Paige Smith

Two of my merriest students,

alluding to Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale

And so we are - by bears of destiny
Instead of strident men contemptuously
Bears of our dreams, bears of our own night-bears
Who snuffling ask, “Don’t you remember me?”

And who can bear it? Remembrances there
Of an unfortunate long-ago bear
Whom we casually dismissed without a care
The bear was sent off-stage - it was unfair!

We bear the cares of life, oh, don’t you see -
We are pursued by bears of destiny

Or is it hamsters…penguins…three-toed sloths…?

Indo-China was my first University - very short poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Indo-China was my first University

The barracks were my university
As were the camps and fields and each grim night
But when I went to university
I found a place to write

Solitary Definement - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Solitary Definement

Your cell cannot be opened from within
Because that is the nature of a cell
Because that is the function of a cell
That one is kept within and not without

“SILENCE!”

Someone outside will have to open the cell
Having ordered the jailer to go away
To wherever it is that jailers go
He will open the door to a sudden fear:

“SILENCE!”

Your individual defense perimeter
Will cease to be a definition. What then?

silence

Empowered - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Empowered

Her name is Lexus-Ferragamo Smith
Her mother tells her that she is unique
And the television tells her that too
On the talk shows and game shows, all day long

The Fifth Joyful Mystery - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

The Fifth Joyful Mystery

May we all be found
In that high Temple someday
In spite of ourselves

Merr//(y^^Chr{i{[s))t,mas//( - not really a poem, but a grocery bag is involved

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Merr//(y^^Chr{i{[s))t,mas//(

Red and green smears on a crinkled plastic bag
One doesn’t need to read the words to know -
Higher-order thinking skills from the third grade
Lead the thoughtful passerby to infer
That the flying grocery bag wishes us
A Merry Christmas. Does anyone ever stop
To read a plastic bag? If the red and green
Lettering communicated Eat Poop
And Die would anyone notice? But the bag
The disposable bag disposed indeed
Skitters along the December highway
Tormented by the ragged slipstream of
Every muddy Christmas automobile

We Boast the Largest War Machine in the World - poem (screed, really)

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

We Boast the Largest War Machine in the World

We boast the largest war machine in the world:
Our long-range bombers dominate the skies
Our battle fleets roam all the planet’s seas
Our soldiers’ boots tread on God’s ancient lands

We boast the largest cash machine in the world:
Our bold young technonaires build palaces
Industrialists buy ever-larger yachts
Prelates fly first-class and enrich themselves

While disdained armies of our desperate poor
Sleep in the streets of our City on a Hill