Wednesday, July 8, 2020

Inactive Shooter - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Inactive Shooters

If only there were inactive shooters
And inactive shooting situations -
Cafes where nothing much is going on
And we forget to learn where the exits are

Terrorists too lazy to lock ‘n’ load
Bigots rising up only for another beer
Ku Klux Klankers taking a laundry day
Mad bombers playing barefoot among the flowers

A parking ticket making the front page -
If only there were inactive shooters




Previously published in a vanity anthology, Don't Forget Your Shoes and Grapes, available on Amazon as an e-book and as fragments of dead tree.

Tuesday, July 7, 2020

The Platonic Tree - poem

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

The Platonic Tree

(If Plato had considered a tree instead of a cave)

cf. Republic, Book VII


For a little child a tree is forever
It is as it was, and will always be
In a dreamy stasis beyond all time
True sunlight flickering pale shadows away

A tree is not a transient republic -
It is a monarchy, and crowned with green
For a royal fellowship ordained by God
This Summer Palace of princes and princesses

As royal children they rule over toys and dolls
Lizards and bees and beetles, dogs and cats
And little chameleons who sometimes pause
To count the coins in their pink moneybags

The ceremonies of ladies and their knights
Are properly observed beneath fair leaves
Upheld by arches and pendentives of oak
Through which sunbeams and magic daydreams fly

And when sweet summer’s children are quite old
Reduced to servitude in paying bills
And answering irrelevant messages
On shrilling importunate telephones:

They will cradle their cave-shadowy ‘phones

And remember that

For a little child a tree is forever

Monday, July 6, 2020

As St. Benedict Did Not Say: Work, Study, Prayer, and a Mask - MePhone Photograph



Sunday-Go-To-Meeting' Mask - Doggerel

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

Sunday-Go-To-Meetin’ Mask

Our faces adorned in baptismal white
We carefully approach the Altar of God
Touching each pew because the mask-y blight
Befogs one’s spectacles - awkward and odd

Because his eyeglasses are but a smear
Each obstacle thus is undetectable
The worshipper indeed approaches in fear
Each confusing visual dialectical

And then…

He falls in clumsiness undelectable
And makes himself an unholy spectacle!

Sunday, July 5, 2020

Logging, July 2020 - MePhone Photograph


The Good, the True, the Beautiful, and the Assistant Principal - poem

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

The Good, the True, the Beautiful, and the Assistant Principal

(Well, three out of four, eh?)

For David Pitts,
Who Honors his Students

Of math the assistant principal spoke:
The elegance of a geometric proof
When it brightens the mind, the eye the sky
Completing a song of the universe

Of poetry a teacher rattled on:
The elegance of rhythmic verse that tells
Of dancing stars and dreaming mists and life
Completing a song of the seasons of man

Because

All learning is not only right and dutiful
It is a matter of
                           The Good, the True, and the Beautiful

Saturday, July 4, 2020

Veterans Drinking Coffee at the Angkor Wat Happy Doughnut Shop on the Fourth of July - poem

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

Veterans Drinking Coffee at the Angkor Wat Happy Doughnut Shop
on the Fourth of July


Everything else was closed, so here we are
At the next table three textbooks are spread:
Physics, Algebra II, and Calculus
The owner’s kid, wiping counters today

Come-from-away children cook and clean, sweep floors
And in between their chores are at their books
The native-born are still abed, asleep
In a smart-phone hangover of lethargy

Last night a man rattled on about glory
He wasn’t with us on the Vam Co Tay

Friday, July 3, 2020

Isolated from the Book Shop for Four Months - poetry

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Isolated from the Book Shop for Four Months

But maybe not much longer…

A Barnes & Noble is a happy place
Where my book budget goes to lose itself
In the poetry section first, and then
To the music by way of the magazines

A Barnes & Noble is that happy place
Where my weary soul goes to find itself –
And that errant budget – among the shelves
Of civilization in a quiet room

Then coffee and croissants (and a six-foot space!)
Yes, Barnes & Noble is my happy place

Thursday, July 2, 2020

"Your Call is Important to Us" - weekly column

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


“Your Call is Important to Us”

In the garden of my electronic dreams:

1. Electronics manufacturers and service providers would build better stuff and hire more skilled people to make the gadgets work and the electrons flow instead of hiring script-readers who take an hour of the customer’s time to explain in vague terms why nothing is working and somehow infer that it's your fault for not knowing a superheterodyne bus bar from the Tiki Bar, but, hey, “Your call is important to us.”

2. The FCC and the FTC would DO THEIR JOBS about sneaky offshore billing, foreign and domestic scams, tricky contracts, and corporate bullying of the vulnerable.

3. “Tiffany” and “Brian” at customer service would be honest about what their names really are and what country they are calling from, and that they are working at a ‘phone bank for rotten wages because they were never able to pass freshman English.

4. Any service provider saying “Your call is important to us” would not be executed – not for a first offense, that is.

5. Whatever sick, twisted wretch who generated the latest (Famous Brand Name) series of browsers should receive life with only a slim possibility of parole.

6. InterGossip providers would stop LYING about everything.

7. InterGossip service for the rest of us would work as well as it does for rioters.

8. For every minute a customer is on hold he or she receives a dollar off the next bill.

9. Criminals, not police, would have to wear body cams, and if the cameras didn’t work then the U. K. Daily Mail and the electronic mob would presume guilt.

10. There would be no telephone trees (“If you know your extension…”). Just answer the da®ned phone.

11. Every time a customer receives a message saying “All our lines are busy right now…” the president of the company receives a mild electric shock.

12. Customer service representatives would answer the question that was asked, not drift off into an alternative universe.

13. NO ROBOTS (“I’m sorry, I didn’t understand that…”).

14. Every time MicroPlop declares a browser outdated (“heritage” or “legacy”), the customer receives a $500 rebate for the nuisance of having to learn the eccentricities of an unnecessary new dashboard which doesn’t work as well as the old one anyway and which loses all your bookmarks and addresses.

15. Every time a tech company says, “You’re due for an upgrade” instead of “We want to sell you a more expensive ‘phone,” someone gets a spanking.

Bonus: Mark Zuckerberg would be arrested for his haircut, and his barber subpoenaed for testimony.

And, hey, your call is important to us.

-30-



Sometimes We Must Wait - MePhone Photograph


Sunflower Apogee - Haiku

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

Sunflower Apogee

The sunflowers droop
And so do we – Midsummer
Is a sleepy time

Wednesday, July 1, 2020

Happy Canada Day!

Funny & Cool Canada Day Memes – Memeologist.com



From:

A Casual Conversation with a Goddess - poem

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

A Casual Conversation with a Goddess

What if the moon wants to whisper back to me?
The sky is dark and lonely high up there
Where the goddess sails through an eternally starlit sea
In orbits fixed above earth’s guarded air

Perhaps she is lonely for her brother Helios
And for Endymion, whom she still mourns
And for her sister, dear spritely Eos
Her playfellow in dances to Pan-pipes and horns

What if the moon wants to whisper back to me?
I should listen to her – don’t you agree?

Tuesday, June 30, 2020

Karens - poem

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

Karens

I love me my Karens, good, sweet, and kind:
Junior high love-notes and school yard flirtations
The prom date that never happened because
“I really like you – just like a brother”

Karen in the Navy, Karen at work
Karen the artist, Karen in the shop
Karen in her lab coat, Karen in class
Karen the doctor, and Karen the cop

I love me my Karens, good, sweet, and kind:
Dear happy memories, in heart and mind

Monday, June 29, 2020

Not to Decide is to Decide Blah-Blah - poem

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

Not to Decide is to Decide Blah-Blah

Not to decide is to decide indeed
A decision defiant in itself
To stand against all chaos and proclaim:
“I have not decided”

Not to decide is a courageous act
When a false binary demands your soul
Your spirit, your very self, and you respond:
“I decide for myself”

Not to decide is to dismiss a tyrant:
“You are irrelevant”

Sunday, June 28, 2020

Just Wear the Stupid Mask, Okay?

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

Just Wear the Stupid Mask, Okay?

Tiresome, didactic doggerel, but it’s important tiresome, didactic doggerel

Just wear the stupid mask, okay?
Yeah, yeah, we know you’re not afraid
Of any ol’ virus that comes your way
(Says your cousin the almost-nurses’ aide)

And someone on the GossipNet
He said that some doctor somewhere
Said Studies Show (oh, yeah, you bet) 1
That masks let through all sorts of air

Yeah, stud, you’ll take that virus down
Ground it with just one wrestling toss
And run its tentacles out of town:
You’ll show that bug just who is boss!

But

Your Granny’s still weak after surgery
And Uncle’s always short of breath
And children – you wouldn’t want, you see
To let your ego cause a baby’s death



1 Because, like, you know, Studies Show, and who are we to argue with such a reliable source as Studies Show?

Saturday, June 27, 2020

Sunflower and Moon, Dusk, 27 June 2020 - MePhone Photograph


Ships of Theseus - poem

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

Ships of Theseus

Every seven years, some say, we are renewed
In coded sequences not understood
Animal cells, well-timed, within us die
They leave forever, replaced and not refreshed

But even so, our selves are still our selves
And condemnations from the past endure
And praises, too, all of them a little worn
And the remember whens are an ever now

Then what...?

The eternal Wind

The eternal Wind that was before we are
Is the Forever following our little ships

Friday, June 26, 2020

"Let There be Sung 'Non Nobis' and 'Te Deum'" - poem

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

“Let There be Sung ‘Non nobis’ and ‘Te Deum’”

-Henry V

Vultures circle high in the airy blue
At a distance elegant in their sweeps
Far from the planet surface and its sorrows
As if they are searching for eternal truth

In truth they are searching for something dead
A putrid corpse to rip with their foul beaks
A life interrupted, breath stopped by death
A pig, a cow, a snake, a me, a you

That dark and croaking thing of rot and slime:
A vulture is but a messenger of time

Thursday, June 25, 2020

A Woke Editing of Brother Robert Frost - weekly column

(Transferring this drivel to the InterGossip made a mess of the formatting, but it was pretty much a mess before it got here.)


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

A Woke Editing of Brother Robert Frost

Several statues of Robert Frost grace our land, none of which has yet been mistaken for a Confederate general, but hey, that’s coming.

In anticipation of sculptures of one of our greatest poets being supplanted by animatronic images of, oh, Lenin or Stalin or Miley Cyrus’ get-thee-hence twerking for the cause of understanding that the coronavirus was here first, we must re-write Robert Frost for the sensitivities of the year of the common era 2020. Herein follows a Robert Frost poem beaten into submission and correct thought.

And, hey, DEFUND IAMBIC TETRAMETER!

Stopping Without Permission
by The People’s Scientific Forest on a Global Warming Evening

Whose Collective Scientific Forest this is we think we know
Their Kolkhoz is in The People’s Village, though
They will not see us slacking off our assigned labors unsupervised
To watch The People’s Collective Scientific Forest fill up with global warming

Our collective’s little horse must think it somewhat un-soviet
To stop without The People’s Assigned Living Spaces near
Between The People’s Collective Scientific Forest and global warming lake
The least comradely evening of the second year of our latest five-year-plan

He / She / They gives his / her / their Red Star harness bells a shake
To accuse us of some un-comradely lapse in focusing on our delegated purpose
The only other sound’s the Woodcutters’ Collective Choir, singing our new
          international anthem, Comrade Lennon’s “Imagine,”
And global warming wind and Twitter directives

The Collective Scientific Forest is utilitarian and properly gridded, and serves
          The Working People
But we have our comradely oaths and work assignments to keep
And kilometers to go before we take our assigned rest in our assigned bunks
And kilometers to go before we take our assigned rest in our assigned bunks

-30-