Chat Details - When an Internet Service Suffers Its Own Systems Failure - poem

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

Chat Details –
When an Internet Service Suffers Its Own Systems Failure,

and in Which this Scrivener Encounters that Rarity,

a Customer Service Agent with a Brain

Luis Z (9:15:51 PM):

Thank you for contacting (Anapest)
Internet Customer Care. I'm happy
to help you today! Please give me just a
moment to review your account information
and I'll be right with you.


Luis Z (9:16:42 PM):

                                           Hello, Lawrence.
How are you?


Me (9:17:10 PM):

                               Fine, thanks.


Luis Z (9:17:32 PM):

                                                      I see you've contacted
us due you're trying to pay your bill, is that
correct?


Me (9:17:41 PM):

Yes.


Luis Z (9:18:16 PM):

                                       Lawrence, at this time we are
currently experiencing a system outage
which prevents me from accessing your account.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
Would you kindly call us back in 2 hours so that
we can complete this transaction once our systems
are back to normal? Is there anything else
that I can assist you with?


Me (9:19:00 PM):

                                               There is an irony

in an internet service unable
to access the internet.


Me (9:19:15 PM):

                                       Thanks for your note,
but in two hours I will be asleep.


Me (9:19:30 PM):

I can try tomorrow morning, if that's okay.


Luis Z (9:20:07 PM):

Thanks


Luis Z (9:20:10 PM):

                   That's okay


Luis Z (9:20:27 PM):

                                           Besides informing you about
the network outage, is there anything else
I can do for you today?


Me (9:20:31 PM):

                                          I trust I
won't be receiving any late / overdue
notices from (Anapest)?


Luis Z (9:21:06 PM):

                                           No


Me (9:21:39 PM):

                                                   Very good.
Thanks.


Luis Z (9:21:50 PM):

Lawrence, it has been a pleasure helping you
out! If there is nothing else I can help
you with at this time, thank you for chatting
with (Anapest) Internet. We appreciate
your business. I hope you have a great day!

An Elegy in January - poem

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

An Elegy in January

For Beverly Jean Keszeg Mixson

of Happy Memory

How very strange that this grey year has passed
In a confusing haste, amorphous and dim
Since that sad January day when life,
All meaning paused, collapsed within itself

Cold February rains fell upon her cairn
But then the happy leaf-time came to bless
That twice-blest earth where memories repose
Warmed by the sun, made golden in the fall

And now the cold has come again

How is it that the seasons flew so fast?
How very strange that one long year has passed

Plimsolls - a little doggerel about boat shoes

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

Plimsolls

I didn’t know I was wearing plimsolls
I thought I was wearing tennies
But when I look down at the dim soles -
Plimsolls? Dollars to the pennies!




(When I consider the burdened bathroom scale -
My cargo, too, is at the plimsoll line)

Robin Hood, Whitman Publishing, 1950s - Photograph

The Purpose of Civilization - poem

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

The Purpose of Civilization

The apogee of civilization
Is a small boy sitting under a tree
On a summer day reading wonderful stories
About the adventures of Robin Hood

The small boy may well go to university
Fight in the wars, and someday have a boy
Of his own sitting under a summer tree
Reading those stories about Robin Hood

And we must always remember that the point
Of civilization is that small boys
Are free to sit under trees and read stories
About the adventures of Robin Hood

In youth, in books, and in the summer wood -
Finding there the true, the beautiful, the good

Searching for a Lost Cemetery - MePhone Photograph

Searching the Woods for an Old Cemetery - poem

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

Searching the Woods for an Old Cemetery

For William Tod Mixson

The trail to the cemetery is mostly sand
Layered with leaves, debris, and memories
That fell upon the land, and were absorbed
Into the forest’s ancient unities

If a geologic catastrophe
Immortalizes the marks of our canes 1
In sedimentary rock, the future might wonder
What strange tripeds lived in the distant past

When a couple of ancients, you and I
Along this trail roamed under a winter sky


1 But surely not the Mark of Cain?

Mr. Peanut and the Doomsday Clock - weekly column

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Mr. Peanut and the Doomsday Clock

…send not to know

For whom the bell tolls,

It tolls for Mr. Peanut

-as John Donne did not say

The Doomsday Clock (shudder) is menacing us again, much like the monsters under Calvin’s bed in the much-missed Calvin and Hobbes cartoon strip.

Children were first threatened with clockworkery around seventy years ago – if you don’t eat all your oatmeal the Doomsday Clock will get you.

Or something like that.

The American people were told that there was a metaphorical doomsday clock and that the hands were set at ten minutes until nuclear destruction and would tick-tock to our fiery end if we did not buy bonds and think pure thoughts.

As the decades have passed, the Doomsday Clock has been dusted off, oiled, and brought out like a fiery Moloch for every crisis that must not be wasted: Communism, the Russians, the Chinese, the military-industrial complex, pollution, global cooling, global warming, A.I.D.S., the Democrats, the Republicans, the Russians again, the Chinese again, Italians, Ukrainians, opioids (but pass me a legal joint, bro), robotics, autonomous cars – we’re ticking doomed, I tell you, dooooooooooooomed!

And, hey, maybe this time it’s true.

After all, Mr. Peanut has been disappeared by the Planters-Nabisco-Kraft-Heinz Continuum and their special operations squad of ticking vegan albino ninja monks.

Planters Peanuts was an American company was created by two Italian immigrants – hey, and you know what those Italians are like, and probably spying for Mussolini – and their mascot was Mr. Peanut Man, a dapper nut-about-town with a top hat, monocle, and cane. He cleverly dropped his Italian accent and became a symbol of all that is great in godly American legumes.

The Planters company, now absorbed by Nabisco-Kraft-Heinz, still makes all sorts of great foods and treats from the humble, nutritious, healthy peanut in the U.S.A., Canada, and the United Kingdom. This suggests the continuation of a nefarious Italian plot to take over the English-speaking world.

Why was Mr. Peanut offed in a purported car accident? Perhaps he knew too much. His death was convenient for someone, right? They say he was sipping on a New Coke while driving his Edsel past the exploding Jack-in-the-Box just before running into Elsie the Borden Cow, but that’s what they – They – would have us believe. And why weren’t the security cameras working?

Well, it was a quicker and more merciful end than that of Chuckles the Clown as Peter Peanut on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

There are adults whose homes whose clocks and watches are all digital and who then complain that their children don’t know to tell time on a round-faced clock. Yeah, and why don’t they know how to plow behind a mule, hah?

How can our young be destroyed properly if they can’t tell time on a round-faced doomsday clock, hah? You answer me that, hah?

First they came for the tick-tock clocks, and then they came for Mr. Peanut.

It’s a pattern, I tell ya. We’re doomed.

-30-

Wooden Pulleys from my Grandfather's Farm - photograph

Ploughing Across the Gap - poem

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

Ploughing Across the Gap

Between old Monterey and Central Park
There must be other lands and other views
And different modes of discourse to be shared
Where surf and subway are not pillars of faith

Surely there are rough poets of the plough
Who speed it through the loam (and spell it “plow”)
Turning over words and ideas and love
And growing truth beyond the furrow’s end

A wheat field or an alligator slough -
Everyone is somewhere – so where are you?

Dreary January - MePhone Photograph

The Green Meadow Through a Doorbell Camera - poem

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

The Green Meadow Through a Doorbell Camera

For Thornton W. Burgess

And all the Little Folk of the Green Meadow

Old Man Coyote and his comrades yip
And howl and bark out in the midnight fields
But closer by, images grey and green
Record the doings of the lesser folk:

Billy Possum ambles across the lawn
In hopes of carrot-ends and potato peels
Bobby Raccoon and Peter Cottontail
Each night stop and exchange the latest news

Timmy the Flying Squirrel is seldom seen
Young Flash the Deer on the edge of the screen
In shyness skitters away into the dark
And Bob Cat claims the whole world as his park

At dawn the little folk will slip away
But they’ll return tonight to browse and play

Pushkin for Christmas - MePhone Photograph

Is He Woke? - poem

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

Is He Woke?

Yeah, every night about nine ****ed o’clock
To get himself ready for the night shift
Busting his knuckles on those worn-out valves
Up on a cracking tower at the refinery

Yeah, he’s woke.

January Dusk - MePhone Photograph

Re-Imagining the University Yet Again - poem

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

Re-Imagining the University Yet Again

Federal financial aid cisgender nouns
Labor market outcomes program-level data
Trans-discipline accountability
Post-colonial tuition and fees

De-masculinize this inclusive space
A different business model admissions pool
Competency-based binary evaluations
(Let no one question the chancellor’s pay and perks)

No

If we want civilization among us
Let’s pour ourselves a drink and argue The Good




NB: I employed “chancellor” as a catch-all for administration and the layers of good ol’ boys / good ol’ girls on boards. A correspondent suggested:

As long as you're questioning the chancellor's pay and perks, please also look into the HEAD football coach's salary, housing allowance, automobile and other perks, AND each of the ever-increasing salaries of those many specialized ASSISTANT coaches ... for offensive coordinator, offensive line, quarterbacks, running backs, defensive coordinator, defensive line, linebackers, defensive backfield, special teams, scouting, ...just to name a few.

I reminded my correspondent of the house warden in Doctor Zhivago who resents the eponymous hero for telling the truth, and says, “Your attitude is noticed, you know!”

Teenagers in the Book Store - poem

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

Teenagers in the Book Store

“Only the solitary seek the truth”

-Boris Pasternak

There were three, two of them flitting about
The third was sitting cross-legged on the floor
In a sweater and jeans, her shoes kicked off
Quite lost in a slender paperback of verse

The gum-chewer in charge, flying a toy dragon
An obedient girl following him
Approached and announced “We’re going.
“I said we’re going. Hey, I said we’re going - NOW.”

In camouflaged defiance the reader arose
And shelved her book,
                                     and smiled,
                                                          and whispered to me



“Thank you”



And I don’t know why

The Question Chernyshevsky and Lenin Asked - poem

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

The Question Chernyshevsky and Lenin Asked

 What is to be done?

On Monday there will be marches and rioting
Comrades and Activists and Anti-Thats
Bombs with the right hand, selfies with the left -
(Will anyone stay home and milk the cows?)

The tattoos of the Second Amendmenters
Will bristle at those of the New Red Guard
As trash bins burn in holy sacrifice –
(But who will wash the streets tomorrow dawn?)

They all scream for a Revolution, you’ll note -
(But did any of them ever bother to vote?)

Socialist Capitalist Brutalist Health Care - a poem of protest

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

Socialist Capitalist Brutalist Health Care

“Health care was affordable before it became free”

-many attributions

For FamousNameBrand Healthcare, Medicare, and a collection agency

Another bill for the CPAP today
This time from a collection agency
For an old machine paid for years ago
By Medicare, private insurance, and me

Contracts, receipts, copies of letters and notes
Are nothing to the computerized continuum
Along which elderly humans are abandoned
To drown in a miasma of incessant demands

Like the DVA they just seem to scoff:
Have the workers pay more and then
                                                  die off

Saint Anthony, Abbot, Had a Rabbit - nonsense

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

Saint Anthony, Abbot, Had a Rabbit

Saint Anthony, Abbot
Had a rabbit
Who
Chewed his shoe



(This bit of nonsense came to me in the pre-dawn several years ago while noting the date, 17 January, on the nice church calendar the funeral home gave me.)