Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com


                                      Asymm­etrical Peacefare


                                       The centre cannot hold

                              -W.B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”


But now there is no center to be held
Everywhere the ceremony of guilt backlights a cult
A cult of power where the powerful forgive each other
And where the powerless will never be forgiven

There is no center; only orbits in bellowing decay
Honors and offices pinned to hollow souls
A cult of power where the powerful discard each other
And where the powerless are still unforgiven

A bell, a knell, a slow-rolling toll, a shoal
Where an angel writes of us on a curious scroll

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                  Show Me Who You Read

Show me who you read

You love Thoreau’s hut on Walden Pond
You fly with Wendy and Peter to Neverland
You pet Mary Oliver’s marvelous dogs
And tell Yevtushenko not to be so full of himself

Show me who you read

You stand at an angle with Cavafy
You ask Frankl how he found meaning after all
You gaze into Tolkien’s palantir
And at bedtime say good night to the moon

Show me who you read

But I already know

You read by the light of a dreaming star
And everyone loves the starlight you are

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                The French Government Collapses

                                                4 December 2024

How can a government possibly collapse -
Did the National Assembly suffer a fainting spell?
Did the cabinet consume poisoned croissants
Or discover they’d been deceived by a California wine?

Perhaps a statue of Saint Joan of Arc
Newly gowned in haute couture from Wal-Mart
Lies prostrate in the Champs Elysee
Next to a made-in-China guillotine

How can a government have worked all in vain –
Did everyone in office go in Seine?

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                   Old Mr. ‘Possum and the Moon

Old Mr. ‘Possum is a garbageman
Who quietly works his appointed nightly rounds
Unappreciated as he tidies this
And cleans up that, all without any fuss

The other animals don’t seem to like him much
For his wobbling, waddling walk, his untidiness
His pointy nose, his all-draggledy tail
And his awkward shape like a loaf of oaf

But when he lifts his eyes to the queen of the skies
He knows that to her he is a knight in disguise

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                  Another Argument Against the Death Penalty

Each one of us is a murderer
To someone else whose memory is long

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                            I Beg Your Pardon, Mr. President, Sir

One faction despises the Constitution
The other is all about corruption and sin
They laugh and give each other absolution
But your poor daughter caught with a little smoke –

She’s in for ten

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                                  You are Offline

Neither God nor the InterGossip seems to listen:
A question posed is answered with a sneer
Or a silence as cold as this late-autumn dusk
Or a relationship well into decay