Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                  Old and Unselected Poems

Why do publishers entitle volumes of verse
                                   New and Selected Poems?
Is it the editors’ lack of imagination?
Or is it some sort of secular rubric
An inky “We’ve always done it that way?”

When you finish writing a poem it is new
It didn’t exist before you, and now it does
And someone who reads your poem has selected it
It wasn’t selected until someone picked it up

Every poem is forever new and selected
And to the joy of your friends, so are you

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

            Somewhere in New Mexico I tipped a Waitress 25%

        NOT I - NOT ANYONE else, can travel that road for
        you.   You must travel it for yourself.

                                         -Walt Whitman

On a cool autumn morning in New Mexico
A greasy spoon along the interstate
Walt Whitman and I enjoyed breakfast together
Bacon and eggs, hash browns, coffee and toast

And it was very good – no heaves of gas
But Whitman found an errand in some other soul
And sang a different self to California
McKuen rode with me the rest of the way

Breakfast was ninety-five cents; I added a quarter
The waitress was happy, and so were we all

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                         Do You Miss Your Trapper-Keeper?

This is the middle of June so why
Haven’t the back-to-school sales begun?
This year’s cooler than cool styles
Have been stored in shipping containers

For months or years on Indonesian docks
Or in warehouses in Long Beach
The teeny-boppers who modelled those clothes
Might be in graduate school by now

If school were as cool as the ads
Taylor Swift would be the principal

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                     From Shakespeare: Happily Lacking in Originality

                                    Cf. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 76

A new sort of sunrise cannot be invented
Our loving moon is the same year after year
Summer lawns for barefootin’ are old news
Happy yellow bathtub ducks splash forever

And so my love for you cannot be renewed
Because it has no expiration date
My iambs and occasional rhymes are always fresh
From singing joyfully of ever-new you

A new sort of sunrise cannot be invented -
Except when you say “Good morning!” each day

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                       Don’t Be Still, My Heart

A brilliant young surgeon fitted my heart
With a scientific gadget to keep me alive
And I am alive, and grateful to him
Every time I read and laugh and mow the lawn

But now I read he’s been struck off the list
For a wicked crime – it was on the news
He listened to me and now I wish I could
Listen to him, and maybe help in some way

I read and think and pray and mow the lawn -
Don’t be still, my heart

Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                             1957: The Year We All Became Soviets

                 “…we’re going to get science applied to social problems
                  and backed by the whole force of the state…”

              Mark Studdock in C. S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength

Soviet Science launched a beeping toy into space
In the name of Progress; a mass-murderer ordered it so
And a month later Science launched and killed sweet Laika
Abandoned in orbit to die alone

Brave America suffered the Aunt Pittypat vapours:
We too must launch our slide-rules into space
And set our children to study Sovietism
Send civilization into orbit to die alone

Dogs and apes and men have flamed out in crashes
And Alexandria again is but pale ashes

Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                   Mockingbirds at Dusk in a Time of War

They might be fighting; they might be he-ing and she-ing
Their leaf-rich oak could be their arena
Or it might serve them as their bower of bliss
For love in this magnolia-scented dusk

They’re still at it, whatever their “it” might be
But breaking off to blitz the subtle cat
Sneaking about in quest of a bunny or squirrel
But who from feathered fury must now retreat

They might be fighting; they might be he-ing and she-ing
But then
They might be mocking the rest of us


Bower of bliss – cf. Spenser’s *The Faerie Queene