Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                    Columbia University’s Judenfrei Dream


         It was surprising to see how many of the university faculties
         knuckled under to the Nazification of higher learning…

             -Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third *****, p. 251


As a poor kid from rural Texas
I would never have been admitted to Columbia
And now I would not permit Columbia
To be admitted to me

(not that either of us ever asked the other)

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com


                       The Rabbit Held Very, Very Still

                             Dedicated to Elmer Fudd

The rabbit held still
The rabbit held very still
Caught raiding my garden

(No rabbits were harmed in the making of these scribbles. I distracted Luna-Dog and Astrid-the-Wonder-Dachshund to another part of the yard.)

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

       That Which Does not Exist Will End in the Next Half Hour

The MePhone beeps and then reports
That the rain that isn’t falling
Will stop in the next half hour -
This may be a metaphor for life

And if not life, then ten to twenty
If the presiding judge is lenient

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

We are brothers and sisters, not bananas

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com


                                           ­  Cigarettes and Despair


You’ve been to junior high; you know the drill
When childhood fragments into hormones and emotions
And nobody told you it was coming
The fear, the wild uncertainty, the loss

You’re expected at funerals and weddings
(Shhhhhhhhh! They do what!? I don’t believe it! Why!?)
You’re too old to play with toys anymore
Too young for Jack Daniels and midnight rides

You steal a couple of Daddy’s cigarettes
And smoke behind the smokehouse, in despair

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                       Seekers after Eternal Truth


             “Things are hopeless, hopeless! But they’re not serious.”

                          -Finian McLonergan in Finian’s Rainbow


We are all seekers of eternal truth
Searching the holy texts for messages
Asking the stars to say more to us
Questioning the smile of Our Lady Moon

We want to know existential reality
The universe and our places in it
We ask the elders, we ask the winds
We ask the winds from North, South, East, and West

We all look for Narnia behind wardrobe doors
(We also do laundry, windows, and floors)

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                        Feeding the Squirrels and Birds at Dawn

A squirrel sits upon a little mound of corn
And faces the east with its nimble forepaws
Clasped gently together as if in prayer