The Mirror Heal'd from Side to Side poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Mirror Heal'd from Side to Side

When a mirror looks
Into you, deep inside you
Does it see itself?


(An allusion to Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott”)

This is NOT the Age of Weinstein - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Blah-Blah-ing in the Age of Blah-Blah-Blah

No, this is not The Age of: Hefner, Clinton,
Obama, Trump, Harvey, Putin, Kim, Xi
Trolls, polls, super bowls, or cinnamon rolls
Kurz, Kaepernick, Ginger, or Mary Ann

Nor yet again an Age of: Gold or lead
Bronze, pewter, silver, nickel, aluminum
Chrome, nichrome, copper, brass, titanium
Thallium, thorium, thulium, tin 1

This is the age of You, unless you insist
On claiming this the age of something else


1 Yes, I had to look all that up

Mother of Exiles - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Mother of Exiles

Saint Mary’s Church of Frydek, San Felipe, and Sealy

The grasses of the coastal plain are still;
Across the road a summer field plowed under
Waits through October’s lingering heat for frosts
While the distant Interstate chants to itself

Our Lady of Frydek, Mother of Exiles!

First Nations, Spaniards, Mexicans, Czechs, Poles
Italians, Germans, English, Vietnamese

Have ended their pilgrimages here, with You
Where God has led them for His purposes

And here, dear brother, God has led you too
To wait with them, with Her, for history’s end

Which will be
The Beginning

You Russian Poets - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

You Russian Poets

You Russian poets must write your lines in blood
For often that is all that is left to you
By invaders, revolutionaries, and
“The briefcase politician in his jeep” 1

Perhaps every Russian is a Pushkin
In frost and heat, in every deprivation
Plowing in the face of the enemy
Building civilization with frozen hands

And always shaping noble tetrameters
Into an eternal song of Russian spring



1 Yevtushenko, “Zima Junction”

"Mild Suburban Christianity from 30,000 Feet" - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

“Mild Suburban Christianity”

A famous religion writer jets about
The world, from holy site to holy site
And being holy here and there, he writes
About his being holy here and there

And in his profitable scorn dismisses
“Mild suburban Christianity,” as if
Labor and thrift are somehow unworthy
Of a holy writer seated in first class

Editor-in-chief of This, President of That

(And free to be a non-profit 501C)

He asks for gifts from those suburbans mild

Viet-Nam Service Medal - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Viet-Nam Service Medal

A dragon lurks among the bamboo trees
And if sometimes half-hidden, still, always there
Sometimes half-forgotten, but always there
Is he a glorious dragon? Sometimes, yes

But then some nights he stirs the leaves awake
His eyes – they seem to flicker through the dark
His claws – they tear into the freighted soul
His blood – like Duncan’s, will not wash away

But dragons are good – what is it that one sees
If not a dragon lurking among the trees?

Sorting Out Russian Poetry - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Sorting Out Russian Poetry

Avant-garde post-modernism ego
Futurism symbolism acme
Ism constructivism cosmopol
Itanism formalism neo

Formalism futurism imag
Inism proletarian real
Ism absurdism maximalism

Socialist realism, nothingism -
Poetic beauty, in spite of the Isms

The Dreaded Microsoft 10 Security Alert Popup of Doom That Won't Go Away - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Dreaded Microsoft 10 Security Alert Popup of Doom

That Won’t Go Away

 

(In order to receive the best support, we request all users initially download and run the Genuine Diagnostics tool (MGADiag.exe) at this link http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=52012. Click "Continue", click the "Copy" button then “Paste” the report into a reply message in this thread.)

I took a miner's lantern and a pouch
Of vampire-bane and crawled into the dark,
Dark tunnels of Security Updates.
I may have slain the beast, but it was dark

(Microsoft Genuine Advantage > Closed - Office Genuine Advantage Validation Issues (Office) Read-Only)

So dark in there. I lunged with vague commands
All printed in translation from the Orc
And strange lights flickered, flickered, flick…off
Restart reboot alt control shift…huh?

(Post this question in the "Suggestions and Feedback for the Forums" Forum at the following address http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-us/suggest/threads.)

Silence. A stench of death…it’s dead, it’s gone…
But wait…no…NO! I hear a popup coming…!

(Marking as Answered. Your feedback is important. Bye.)

Penny Wise and Penny Foolish - column

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Penny Wise and Penny Foolish

Emptying one’s pockets at the end of a busy day of bringing home that metaphorical bacon reminds us of how useless is all that pot-metal we take as change and then carry around almost to no purpose.

In Ye Olden Days a pocket full of coins was a good thing: a cup of coffee cost a nickel, as did the daily paper and a Hershey bar, a Coca-Cola was six cents, a telephone call was a dime, and a hamburger was a quarter. These things weren’t cheaper; it’s that the money was worth more.

Around 1983 some alligator-shoe boy ruled that the copper penny should no longer be made of copper, but rather copper-clad, whatever that means. A penny now appears to be made of painted floor-sweepings, and is worthless. Dimes, quarters, and half-dollars, once made of silver, are as substantial as Monopoly® money. Purchasing power now begins only with the dollar, and a bouquet of dollars at that.

Why, then, does the government still manufacture play money, and why do we carry it around?

For adults the penny is probably a matter of sentiment. Although there is no longer any such thing as a piece of penny candy, we remember those childhood days and so remain attached to pennies that really aren’t even pennies. A penny is rather like Prince Albert in a can, which no longer exists even as the wheezy telephone joke: “Have you got Prince Albert in a can? Well, you better let him out before he suffocates!”

Canada rid itself of the penny in 2013, saving $11 million a year in bothering with them. The Dominion does not seem to have suffered thereby. Since Canadian pennies are the same size as U.S. pennies they show up in circulation south of the 49th fairly often. If you save your Canadian pennies then in a few years they will be worth, well, nothing. But the Maple Leaf is pretty.

Spanish escudos and reales have not circulated hereabouts since 1821 or so, and the English pound has not purchased any tea on the east coast since the tiff beginning in 1776. However, the old saying “penny wise and pound foolish,” meaning thrift in small matters but wastage in greater ones, lingers, much like the penny.

One wonders if, two hundred years ago, moms and dads in Nacogdoches, Anahuac, and San Augustine cautioned their children about being reale wise and escudo foolish.

-30-

Ite ad Joseph - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Ite ad Joseph

For Joseph Thaddeus Petty

Sunday, 8 October 2017

Then let us go in to Joseph this day,
His day, soft-cradled in his mother’s arms;
He does not rule Egypt, but rather, our hearts
In the ordained hierarchy of love

His sisters in their turns nestle him too -
“Be sure to support his head – yes, that’s right” –
Their playmate new in the garden of life,
Their brother in the cloisters of Creation

He sleeps, so, shhhhhh – now let us slip away
For we have greeted Joseph on this happy day

The Big Kids - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Big Kids

For Claude Bevil Blanchette Hall,

Of Happy Memory

1954

Sprinkled by the janitor from a coffee can
The oily smell of the green sawdust sown
Along the old school hallway’s green tile floors
And pushed along with a long-handled broom

My brother’s at the door with my lunch money
He’s one of The Big Kids, 5th grade, y’know
High up on the third floor, where we can’t go

Not yet

What’s it like to be one of The Big Kids?

2017

My brother’s on a higher floor again
And what’s it like up there, where we can’t go?

Not yet


Claude Bevil Blanchette Hall was the son of Claude Duval Blanchette and Katherine Mattie Bevil Blanchette.

Claude Duval Blanchette was an officer on the tanker SS Muskogee, which was torpedoed off the Carolinas on 28 March 1942 with the loss of all hands. His son, Claude, was born on 12 October 1942, and died on 6 October 2017.

After the war Katherine married Hebo Ogden Hall.

All happy, happy memories.

“Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and make perpetual Light to shine upon them.”

Houston Man Accused of Decapitating Mother - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Houston Man Accused of Decapitating Mother

He was a quiet man who always kept
His lawn neat would give you the shirt off his back
Was on his way to Bible study wouldn’t
Harm a flea that’s not the (name) that I know

Seemed like a normal everyday guy to me
Never saw this coming just can’t believe it
Let us come together and stand as one
Because that’s not the kind of people we are

We just won’t let them change the way we live
He just snapped so GoFundMe tee-shirt give

Truck Stop Restroom Cologne - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Truck Stop Restroom Cologne

Denny’s / Flying J, Orange, Texas

Check out the boom-chick in the parking lot -
Love and diesel fumes are in the air.
Tattoos and cigarettes, oh, man, she’s hot!
Industrial peroxide tints her hair
Like rainbows in a toxic fuel-oil spill.
Her waist is a rockin’ forty-four,
A pavement Venus posed before the grill
Of a Peterbilt outside the truckers’ store.
How can the lovestruck swain lure her to his cab?
Persuade her to give him her innocent all?
A ripped-shirt display of a manly ab?
Wait - what’s that machine on the restroom wall?

Cool dude, you’ll never have to truck alone
If you scent yourself with restroom cologne.

Paleo-Yuppies at Work and Play - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Paleo-Yuppies at Work and Play

Fading slowly from the existential struggle,
Waving their MePhones about in protest,
They swarm to Starbuck’s for adjective coffees,
Uniformed in knee-pants and bulbous sneaks
And Chinese soccer tops with little checkmarks,
Their graduate degrees at parade rest,
And in confusion, suddenly-stalled careers
Raging against the thirty-something machine.
Not trusting anyone under forty,
They rustle their foam cups and resumes’
Instead of suspicious Democrats,
And demand promotions and Perrier.
They mourn pinstripes and leather briefcases,
And the old floppy disc of yesteryear,
And fumble their PowerPoint Presentations
Tho’ once they illuminated the world
With colored markers on glossy whiteboard.
They no longer play games on a Commodore
Or rock to neo-Carib fusion jazz;
Their Rush is Right baseball caps are now filed
In trays of antique curiosities
Beside the moldering hippie stuff shelved
In an adjunct of the Smithsonian
Where curricula vitae go to be eaten
By a computer virus named Vlad.
Now, as the sun sets on Ferris Bueller’s day,
They count and verify their MeBook friends –

They did not change the world, not at all, but
The world changed anyway, and without them,
And in the end they love neither Jesus
Nor The Force; like Eve, they bow to an Apple.

Paleo-Hippies at Work and Play - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Paleo-Hippies at Work and Play

Having withdrawn from the existential struggle,
Surrendering their arms and protest signs,
They muster in Denny’s for the Senior Special
Uniformed in knee-pants and baseball caps
And Chinese tees that read “World’s Greatest Grandpa,”
Hearing aids and trifocals at parade rest,
And quadrupedal aluminum sticks
Raging against the oxygen machine.
Not trusting anyone over ninety,
They rattle their coffee cups and dentures
Instead of suspicious Nixonians,
And demand pensions, not revolution.
They mourn classmates dead, not The Grateful Dead.
They do not burn their Medicare cards
Tho’ once they illuminated the world
With their flaming conscription notices.
They no longer read McKuen or Tolkien
Or groove to ‘way-cool Peter, Paul, and Mary;
Their beads and flowers are forever filed
In books of antique curiosities
Beside a butterfly collection shelved
In an adjunct of the Smithsonian
Where manifestos go to be eaten
By busy mice and slow-pulsing fungi.
As darkness falls they make the Wheel, not love

They did not change the world, not at all, but
The world changed anyway, and without them,
And in the end they love neither Jesus
Nor Siddhartha, but only cable t.v.

Saint Garden Gnome - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Saint Garden Gnome

An obscure barefoot friar in Italy
Long labored in the Perugian sun,
Heaped rocks upon rocks, and then other rocks,
Up to a wavery roof of broken tiles,
Repairing with his bleeding hands God’s church

Then, better known – it wasn’t his fault – this friar,
With others in love with Lady Poverty,
In hope and penance trudged to far-off Rome
To offer there his modest Rule of life,
Repairing with his mindful words God’s Church

Along the delta of the steaming Nile
He waved away the worried pickets, crossed
Into the camp of the Saracens
Preaching Christ to merciful Al-Kamil,
Offering with a martyr’s heart God’s Faith

Saint Francis is depicted in fine art
In great museums and in modest homes -
And you can find him too, down at Wal-Mart,
Between the plastic frogs and concrete gnomes.

A Lady and Her Two Knights - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Lady and Her Two Knights

For their Nona and Papaw

Three young adults walking along to Mass
Pals from childhood, arms around each other,
Laughing, and pausing briefly for a mama-picture -
For them, even October is their spring

And in this springtime of their lives they offer
All of their happiness to Our Lord Himself,
All together Ad Altare Dei,
To God who giveth joy to their youth1

Three friends laughing, taking the morning air:
Two knights honored to escort their lady fair

1paraphrased from the Missale Romanum of 1962

A Dachshund Among the Leaves - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Dachshund Among the Leaves

For Liesl-the-Wonder-Dachshund, of Happy Memory

A merry dachshund yaps, and leaps for leaves
Wind-strewn across the still-green summer grass
As Autumn visits briefly, and looks around
To plan his festive moonlit frosts when soon
Diana dances across November’s skies.

Old and Unselected Poems - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Old and Unselected Poems

Pale, penciled scribblings, old bits, old notes
Forgotten drafts in old books shelved away
And lines painfully worked out during lectures
About Napoleon’s painful hemorrhoids

And the declensions of those Latin nouns
Which with their verbs Omnis Gallia divisit
Or something like that, forgotten long ago -
But not
             her hair
                          her voice
                                         her smile
                                                         her eyes

Others cannot write to her happy theme -
She writes herself as iambs in a dream

About Windows Creator Update - a caution

Apologies, but about Windows Creator Update...

My two-year-old laptop was NOT happy with Windows Creator Update with regard to functionality and the clarity of the screen images.  I was able to uninstall, but there are residual buttons that won't go away.  You might want to check with your I.T. person before accepting Windows Creator Update into your machine.

Again, apologies for being off-task.