Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                      Hurricane I: Outer Bands and Inner Thoughts

Sun gives way to clouds
Stillness to winds, birds circle
Searching for meaning

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

           Reading the Magna Carta Will Make Us Smarter

                  (And it bans fish weirs in the Thames)

The Kings have been subject to the law since 1215
But are American presidents? That remains to be seen

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

     A Sunday Morning Church Message: “Some Folks Need Killing”

             “…disciple-makers through the power of Jesus Christ!”

                                            -Lake Church

A lieutenant-governor strutting and yelling in church
Demanded the deaths of “some folks” unspecified
The faithful of Lake Church heard out his deadly cause
And then obediently applauded him -

The man who might someday order their executions

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                            Hurricane Track Attack Forth and Back

Spaghetti models are not really spaghetti
But only colored lines across electric maps
Squiggling in iridescence around the Gulf
Slithering atop the waves, then to your house

The weather reporters’ cliches fall from the skies
As microbursts of bottled-water-babbles
Canned goods and fresh radio batteries
Tune to this station as your roof blows away

Spaghetti models are not really spaghetti
But watch the newsie in the street – he’s getting all wet-ty!

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                      Yes, We Are a Republic – Much Like Haiti

              As for the men in power, they are so anxious to establish
              the myth of infallibility that they do their utmost to ignore
              truth.

                                -Pasternak­, Doctor Zhivago

In America every night is Kristalnacht
Everyone seems to hate everyone else
Gunfights in our parks, mass murders everywhere
Communist-made fireworks celebrate freedom

From state to state a reichskirche is on the march
Employment is down, prices are up
Vultures circle our dying President
Some in Congress promote raw genocide

The Supreme Court authorizes presidential crimes -
As St. Thomas More said to Lord Norfolk:
                                                                ­  “I show you the times”

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                         It Wasn’t the Fourth of July

                 That we may wander o’er this ****** field
                 To book our dead, and then to bury them

                                 -Henry V IV.vii.75-76

It wasn’t the fourth of July, but it was about then
Near the Cambodian border, on the Vam Co Tay
Searching for two American airman whose machine had gone down
Down, down into the steaming green Vam Co Tay

Bloated and floating, quite still when we saw them
The sloshy prop wash bumped them about a bit
Empty eye sockets, mouths open in silent screams
We poncho-linered their bodies aboard the boat

Cigarettes of despair against the stench and rot
This was not what we sang about in school

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                            The Haunted Electric Toothbrush

This morning at dawn
I was alone
I heard a moan
A mysterious groan
A ceaseless drone
It wasn’t the ‘phone

It was my toothbrush

It had on its own
Turned itself on

My Philips Sonicare ™© and (legal protections in a peach tree) has done me good service for years. This morning it turned itself on atop a glass shelf with other little bottles of this and tubes of that, making an unusual moaning / groaning / droning that took me some time to sort out. It is a great device; when it finally hands in its lunch pail (as Bertie Wooster would say) I will buy another just like it.