Saturday, September 28, 2024

His Check Engine Light is On - a weak excuse for a poem but there's a nice fresh metaphor

 


Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

His Check Engine Light is On

 

He came by today, a friend from long ago

“I haven’t seen you in a hamster’s age.”

“Yep, too long.”

“How ya doin’?”

“Good enough for government service.”

“Wanna beer?

“Thought you’d never ask.”

“Kids all doin’ good?”

“Yeah; real proud of ‘em. All grown and gone. Yours?”

“Oh, yeah, doin’ doin’ just fine.”

“Heard you was in th’ hospital last year.”

“Yep, made almost about three months of of it.”

“Too much fun.”

“Yep.”

“At our age…”

“Yep.”

“Kids these days.”

“Yep.”

“You okay now?”

“Better’n I deserve. You?”

“Well, you know, my Check Engine light’s on.”

 

 

Fresh metaphors are scarcer than crocodile feathers. Thanks, Chris.

Meditation and Merriment in Early Autumn - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Meditation and Merriment in Early Autumn

 

     We cannot stay young and strong for long -

     Both of us have grey hair at the temples

 

-Du Fu, “To the Recluse Wei the Eighth”

 

After summer rains the earth is still green

In the cooling breeze oak leaves dance happily

Old lawn chairs are the humble chairs of poets

Old lawn chairs are the glorious thrones of kings

 

The seasons remind us of our mortality

We sit and ponder the mysteries of change

We will die, to be replaced by other poets

Who will sit and ponder the mysteries of change

 

And still, whatever these deep thoughts betoken -

I need to mow, but the lawn mower is broken

 

 

Three Hundred Tang Poems

Translated by Peter Harris

London: Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets, 2009

The Cosmic Inertia of a Six-Pound Dachshund - short poem

   

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The Cosmic Inertia of a Six-Pound Dachshund

 

Why is the resistance factor

In shifting a six-pound dachshund

Who does not want to be shifted

Greater than that of tons of iron?

An All-You-Can-Eat Buffet of Summer Bugs poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

An All-You-Can-Eat Buffet of Summer Bugs

 

(He was small in the spring)

 

When a tree frog moves up in the world

He becomes a fashionable window frog

No longer the pain of a rough tree bark life

But rather the pane of easy living

 

(He grew larger during the summer)

 

My bedroom window is his buffet

An all-he-can-eat buffet of bugs

Delicious summer bugs shared around

With an uncommon house gecko of style

 

(He’s really big now)

 

I look out at a hungry tree frog, you see

But now – is he looking hungrily in at me?

Thursday, September 26, 2024

Boeing, Studebaker, John Deere, and my Tupperware Coffee Cup - an elegy

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Boeing, Studebaker, John Deere, and my Tupperware™ Coffee Cup

 

 

“The days are gone…

When wonderful things were worked among them”

 

-The Seafarer, trans. Burton Raffel

 

 

My Tupperware coffee cup is as a chalice

With which I salute the beginning of each day

Cool, colorful, comforting craftsmanship

An honest, utilitarian work of art

 

We are told such things will be no more

“Made in USA” is “Factorum Romae

Younger nations will find us camping among the ruins

Of works and arts we no longer comprehend

 

A colonial soldier might note that once we were a great people

His colonel will reply, “Tosh! They’re simple savages.”

 

Smart*ss Watch - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Smart*ss Watch

 

It clings to my wrist like a faithless friend

Good fun to pal around when we met

But getting just a little tiresome with time

Unreliable in his many promises

 

He fails to make the appointments that we set

Or note the weather or mark activities

I dunno; maybe he’s making time with that Timex

My long-time steady who could sure tick my tock

 

Sweet face, delicate hands - she’d been around, but

Maybe I was wrong – I think I’ll dial her

Wednesday, September 25, 2024

On Reading a Poem by Du Mu - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

On Reading a Poem by Du Mu

 

Everything is far away

China is ever so far away

The dynasties are far away

A golden dragon might fly us there

 

The moon is across the river

The blue-black river in the mist

A fishing boat is tied to the gate

The water-gate of our inn

 

What do they mean, the moon and boat?

Maybe the moon and the boat mean nothing

They simply are; they are themselves

Or perhaps we mean the moon and boat

 

Because of Du Mu and his words

The moon and the boat are forever

The blue-black river is forever

In reading of them so are we

 

 

“A Night at the Inn While Travelling”

Three Hundred Tang Poems

Translated by Peter Harris

London: Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets, 2009

Monday, September 23, 2024

Hobbit Day - short poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Hobbit Day

 

22 September

 

I read that today is Hobbit Day

On the autumn equinox every year

I was both delighted and surprised

Even though in our shared adventures, dear friends,

 

Every day is Hobbit Day


I first read The Hobbit as a discarded paperback at the Station Hospital in Da Nang.

Sunday, September 22, 2024

Such Men Will Someday Live in Palaces - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Such Men Will Someday Live in Palaces

 

Cf. Saint Matthew 11

 

I am only a visitor here, unqualified to speak

Of the incessant sufferings of men of God

Who may not go beyond the compassing wire

To see a reed shaken with the wind

 

For they sometimes are wind-struck reeds themselves

Planted for a time in this desert of penance

But they are men, and do not easily shake -

When the bitter wind blows they stand up straight

 

They do not raise their fists against the wind

But rather their hearts in manly strength and faith

 

Such men will someday live in palaces

Friday, September 20, 2024

At Rao's Bakery - Coffee, Croissants, Children, and the Constitution - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

At Rao’s Bakery - Coffee, Croissants, Children, and the Constitution

 

At dawn - hot coffee and a fresh croissant

A family grouping at the table next

And a little child whispering to her mother

The Preamble to the Constitution

 

I turned and said, “Oh, I want to hear that again”

Proudly the little girl stood beside her mom

And in a strong, clear voice began: “We the People…”

 

 

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

 

 

I can’t do that anymore. Can you?

 

The child certainly earned an ‘A’ today

This coffee / croissant / American day

A Road Crew Singing "Red, Red Wine" - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

A Road Crew Singing “Red, Red Wine”

 

A road crew of only two riding with the fill

In the bed of a county pickup truck

Patching potholes in the late summer heat

Singing “Red, Red Wine” over and over

 

“Red, Red, Wine”

 

One takes off his sweat-soaked striped shirt

A voice from the cab tells him to put it back on

They stop and take shovels and out they leap

To shovel with the shovels fill into holes

 

“Red, Red Wine”

 

They sing those three words over and over

The only words of that song they know

 

“Red, Red Wine.”

 

On a road cratered with holes and emptied dreams

Thursday, September 19, 2024

Move the Metaphor; Move the Needle - short poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Moving the Metaphor

 

“Moving the needle” isn’t moving anymore

As a metaphor it is out of the groove

 

Although politics are spinning at 78

The needle is quite worn down, and so am I

Wednesday, September 18, 2024

If Mr. Vance Says You Ate Someone’s Pet Cat Then Obviously You Ate Someone’s Pet Cat

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

If Mr. Vance Says You Ate Someone’s Pet Cat

Then Obviously You Ate Someone’s Pet Cat

 

 

“Show me the man and I will show you the crime”

 

-many attributions, usually to Lavrentia Beria, sometimes to Stalin

 

 

"In Springfield, they're eating the dogs…They're eating the cats.

They're eating the pets of the people that live there.”

 

-Presidential candidate Donald Trump, 10 September 2024

 

 

"If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do." 

 

-Vice presidential candidate J. D. Vance on CNN, Sunday, 15 September 2024

 

 

Little children in school are threatened with bombs

 

Because someone said that someone said

That someone ate someone else’s pet cat

 

Patients in hospitals are threatened with bombs

 

Because someone said that someone said

That someone ate someone else’s pet cat

 

City office workers are threatened with bombs

 

Because someone said that someone said

That someone ate someone else’s pet cat

 

A Lutheran university is threatened with bombs

 

Because someone said that someone said

That someone ate someone else’s pet cat

 

A few Proud Boys [sic] stumble around in the street

 

Because two Heroic Men of Destiny said

That someone ate someone else’s pet cat

Monday, September 16, 2024

I’m Proud of My Childless Cat Lady Daughter - two lines in response to certain stuffy old politicians

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

I’m Proud of My Childless Cat Lady Daughter

 

Some call her a childless cat lady

At work the staff call her “Doctor”


The Terrifying Creepy Chilling Iconic Sniper’s Lair - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The Terrifying Creepy Chilling Iconic Sniper’s Lair

 

Some call it the sniper’s lair, some the sniper’s nest

Some call it a creepy lair

Some surely call it chilling and iconic

Because to InterGossip posters everything

Is chilling, iconic, jaw-dropping, and a bombshell

 

It’s just a sad, sagging old chain-link fence

With some sad old man’s wannabe G.I. Jerk

Army wannabe soldier-toys hanging from it

The Kalashjackov was real enough

The poor fool’s mind, not so much

Sunday, September 15, 2024

Runes Recently Discovered - poem and photograph


Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Runes Recently Discovered

 

We have mysterious runic messages still

Appearing this morning – there, on the road – see them?

Some say these irregular scrawls mark utilities

But you know, there are Wee Folk in these woods

 

 


15 September 2024

Saturday, September 14, 2024

If Li-Po Were my Houseguest - quatrain

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

If Li-Po Were my Houseguest

 

If Li-Po were my houseguest tonight

I’d probably have to drag him inside

After he’d been drinking to the moon’s silver light

And heave him into his bed with a gentle chide

We Don't Understand, But We Hope - Poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

We Don’t Understand, But We Hope

 

We don’t understand it, but we hope in it

The change from that which is to that which isn’t

Or is the change back again and no change at all

Which maybe means the blood and pain remain

 

We recline in a rented banquet room

We follow in fear along a narrow street

We watch in horror upon a death-haunted hill

We are called to an empty tomb which isn’t empty

 

We are called to a dented Cup which also isn’t empty

(Maybe $200 at the church supply store)

Cradling a Mystery from before time

A plate of bread that looks like bread but isn’t

 

The Altar is where the arc of history bends

 

Mystery

 

Who among the servers did the dishes

And did she accidentally drop a Cup?

 

(That part’s not important)

Friday, September 13, 2024

I Had a Flat Tire Along the Silk Road - not a Tang quatrain

 


Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

I Had a Flat Tire Along the Silk Road

 

A bandit-princess stole my trail-lost heart

To play with carelessly one idle day

She teased me a road sketched on her magic chart

But I had a flat tire along the way




In reading Li Po (variant pronunciations and spellings in English) and others, and trying to understand Tang quatrains, well, I don’t understand much. The forms and content are so varied as to make the term almost undefinable to my simple English soul. But nature, irony, loss, and separation are apparently common, as well as rhyme, so I took them and iambic pentameter for this not-really-a-Tang-quatrain.

Tropes, Dopes, and Culture Worriers - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

 

Tropes, Dopes, and Culture Worriers

 

I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. 

 

-Tolkien, from a letter rebuking a German publisher, 1938

 

 

One does not imagine Tolkien schlubbing about

In a garish cartoon tee and baggy shorts

A Glock strapped to his 50-inch waist

Shopping the dollar store in a Trumpy cap

 

One does not imagine Lewis following QAnon

Encouraging Peter to take an AR to Latin class

Or quartering the Cross of good Saint George

With a swastika’s spidering wheel of shame

 

Not all evil comes from outside the Shire –

Sometimes evil is our own internal desire

 

On the time J.R.R. Tolkien refused to work with Nazi-leaning publishers. ‹ Literary Hub (lithub.com)

 

Why does Lord of the Rings appeal to the radical right? – The Irish Times

 

Behind the Catholic Right’s Celebrity-Conversion Industrial Complex | Vanity Fair

Thoughts of Home from Behind the Wire - poem

 Thoughts of Home from Behind the Wire

 

Over the South China Sea

 

We could see China past the portside wing

The forbidden land of our enemy

Who encouraged the Viet-Cong in our destruction

But allowed us peaceably to pass

 

Refueling in Japan

 

We could see Japan from behind chain-link fencing

The industrial land of an ally now

They sold us tape recorders and radios

And airplane fuel from beyond the wire

 

Thank you for your service

 

Honored fighters for freedom almost home from the wars

Penned freely behind pig wire and gates and bars

My Grandfather's Hayfield - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

My Grandfather’s Hayfield

 

From my own fields I can hear the band

The high school marching band, oom-pah, oom-pah

From several miles away, with merry songs

and merry cheers around the homecoming bonfire

 

That was my grandfather’s hayfield in my youth

Before the town and school replaced the past

The shaking baling machine compressing grass

Where the team captain gives his whup ‘em speech

 

I found a terrapin where the cheerleaders dance

From my own fields I can see my youth

The White Lady of the Well - a senryu

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The White Lady of the Well

 

She visits at dusk

She’s watching you;

                                 turn around -

She’s just over there

Tuesday, September 10, 2024

For English Pick Up the Anglophone - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

For English Pick Up the Anglophone

 

For English pick up the Anglophone

For French the Francophone

For others in Canada the Allophone

          (“‘Allo! ‘Allo!”)

For Mandarin or Cantonese the Sinophone

For Portugal the Lusophone

In Deutschland perhaps the Deutschesphone

          (or perhaps not)

And in Russia the Russophone

 

Please phone in, everyone

 

Because isn’t it wonderful -

So many phones, and each with a direct line to God

Monday, September 9, 2024

Li Po Writes to us from His Mountain - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Li Po Writes to us from his Mountain

 

Li Po, “Ancient Air,” p. 84

A Book of Luminous Things, ed. Czeslaw Milosz

 

We read of the poets of China

In the days of the Golden Tang

In the time of The Gathering of Kings

When The Silk Road carried dreams

 

Government officials were the poets

And poets were the government officials

Who knew The Five Classics by heart

And wrote of China in Tang quatrains

 

They were writing to the Emperor

And now they are writing to us

Sunday, September 8, 2024

God in the Hands of Angry Sinners - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

God in the Hands of Angry Sinners

 

As Jonathan Edwards did not say

 

How do they find so much hatred in their Book?

 

Why do they bind their scriptures and themselves

In anger, duct tape, and camouflage

Why do they raise high the AR and their fists

Instead of salvation and the Holy Cross?

 

Where do they find so much hatred in their Book?

 

Why have they abandoned the altars of Truth

For the flagpole idolatry of the pagan state

In coven-circles facing each other and a pole

Like Canaanites and their wooden Asherim?

 

Why do they find so much hatred in their Book?

 

If they would look beyond their own perimeter wire

They would see

A Maiden dancing

            In Galilee

For Booger-Dog of Happy Memory - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

For Booger-Dog of Happy Memory

 

And for his pet human Max

 

The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is his dog.

 

-George Graham Vest

 

His fuzzy little bed is empty today

His dinner is untasted, his water bowl full

Awaiting his ungentlemanly slurps

And his favorite toy seems lonely and lost

 

He will not claim space on my pillow tonight

Nor chase dream rabbits while cuddling with me

Nor lick my nose to wake me up at…

(Geez, Booger, do you know what time it is!?)

Leaping and barking to be allowed outside

 

He will not bound into the kitchen at dawn

Happily barking his joy unto God

Circling and snuffling for his breakfast treat

A bit of bacon or egg from a loving hand

 

Because his brave little soul has flown

To wait for me at the foot of that glorious Throne

Friday, September 6, 2024

Cleaning a Metaphorical Rifle - short poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Cleaning a Metaphorical Rifle

 

The Detachable Magazine Holds Ten Lines

 

There is no such thing as an unloaded word

And once a word has left the barrel it’s gone

You cannot call it back – were you sure of your aim?

Draft Beer, Not Students - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Draft Beer, Not Students

 

A slogan from the 1960s

 

In illo tempore:

 

A young man swaggers across the ‘versity quad

Smoking a Marlboro or affecting a pipe

‘Way cool in his sports coat and turtleneck

Shakespeare or physics held loosely in his hand

 

A young woman passes through the ‘versity quad

Smoking a Parliament or checking her mirror

‘Way cool in her pencil skirt and layered look

Shakespeare or physics held closely to her heart

 

Sed in tempore nostro:

 

Pronouns galumph across the ‘versity squad

One fist raised in hate, the other clutching a glowing box

Thursday, September 5, 2024

You are not a Banana - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

You are not a Banana

 

Sticker Not, Lest Ye be Stickered

 

A banana bears a sticker to say it is a banana

(The banana, that is, not the paper sticker)

Even though a banana is obviously a banana

(It has a yellow skin and some squashy stuff inside)

 

If we take the banana sticker from the banana

And stick the ticker to a tomato

The tomato is not then a banana

However much someone claims it so

 

Sticking sticky stickers to humans is also wrong

A man is himself; a woman is herself

If we stick a sticky sticker to a human

As a joke, well, that’s just a bit of fun

 

But if as a judgement then we are false witnesses

 

Stickers, nothing but stickers, excuses

Failures of intellect, truth, and caritas

Stickers are two-dimensional; they have no depth

Stickers are useless even on bananas

 

And our brothers and sisters are not bananas

Falling Into Truth - poem

   Lawrence Hall, HSG Mhall46184@aol.com                                                    Falling Into Truth   The fall of October’s leave...