Comparing our Secret Service with Barney Fife is Inappropriate - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Comparing our Secret Service with Barney Fife is Inappropriate

 

Because we love and respect Deputy Fife

 

In art, incompetence can have a certain charm

But in stupid men with guns the charm is lacking

Our agents can’t even keep themselves from harm

Their greatest skills are in shacking and slacking

 

Colombian floozies and slanting roofs

Unman the best of them; they lose their guns

They lose laptops, but never their 90-proof

And break into private property for poopy runs

 

To them a President entrusts his life –

He’d surely be safer with Deputy Barney Fife

 

Night of the Murdered Jewish Poets - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Night of the Murdered Jewish Poets

 

12 August 1952

 

When a tyrant has completed his catalogue of hate

Sent thousands to the noose and millions to the pyre

He ponders fresh murders as he sits up late

Whom else can he summon to his satanic fire?

 

There is agony in his soul – someone must pay

Those scribblers of verse – now there is treason

Another list, a list, without delay!

Poets to the Lubyanka – I need no reason!

 

I listen, I hear my night-whispering muse:

“Death is upon you, death, but first, but first…

  

                  the Jews.”

Why Are the Presidential Candidates Yelling at Us? - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Why Are the Presidential Candidates Yelling at Us?

 

The candidates bluster and scream on TV

But I will never vote for anyone, you see,

Whose concept of leadership is yelling at me        

And Suddenly My Feet Were Splashed with Conoco Gasoline

 While fueling at a Conoco station this morning my feet were suddenly splashed with gasoline. I was standing by the filler but not looking at it. 

I was only slightly annoyed (old shoes, so no biggie) and went inside to advise the clerk so that she could be aware of this safety matter.  However, she only paused long enough from eating her sandwich to ask which pump and to say that she would tell her boss. No apology, no thank-you, no nothing except the chewing of a sandwich

Given the indifference, I went ahead and reported the matter, which was not my original intent. I asked corporate for credit for that gallon or so of gas on the ground.

The Boy in White - prison poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The Boy in White

 

He paused in the sun, unsure where to go

His uniform was new and neatly pressed

He carried a new blue mattress and two plastic bags

Containing his prison issue for the next three years

 

No guards were near so I talked with him

I didn’t ask him, but he freely spoke

He told me his story; it might be true

And then

Authority told me to move. I wished him well

 

He was paused in life, unsure what to do

A frightened teenager in his new prison whites

The British Army Pocket Knife - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The British Army Pocket Knife

 

A great big chunk of folded Sheffield steel

For pocket, backpack, toolbox, or workbench

Rope work, leather work, awning work, rifle repair

Gutting a rabbit for dinner if it comes to that

 

No plastic-y Swiss gimcrackery for us

One tightens the blade by taking a hammer to the rivets

And sharpens it hastily on a handy rock

Wash off the mud and the blood and it’s good to go

 

It’s clanky, clunky, and out-of-date – it’s British

As British as can be - and so are we

 

 

I’m not British, but I needed a voice and a rhyme. My Hall ancestors were transported from Northern England to the New World for being bad, and the same for my deBeauville / Beauville / Beville / Bevil ancestors from Chesterton and my McQueen ancestors from Scotland.

 

I love my nifty British Army knife.

A Garden is a Department of Metaphysics - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

A Garden is a Department of Metaphysics

 

 

When the soul lies down in that grass,

the world is too full to talk about.

 

-Rumi

 

 

A garden is a Department of Metaphysics

Promethean fire and shadows in a cave of light

Leaves of trees falling upon more leaves

The leaves of books left open to the sun

 

The lecture lawn is furnished with old chairs

Old garden chairs rusty with wisdom and age

From duty to weather and men, the several cathedrae

Of the learned Order of Gaffer Swanthold

 

Athena’s owl calls from the nearby wood

Calling all men to silence and reflection

 

 

Rumi, untitled poem, trans. Coleman Barks and John Moyne

A Book of Luminous Things, ed. Czeslaw Milosz

 

In this context “men” is gender-neutral. Wrecking an iambic foot in obedience to the moods of an external authority is not poetry; it is weaknessssssssssssss.