Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

      Bombshell: The U. K. Daily Mail is Saying the Same Thing

Everyone is saying the same thing jaw-dropping everyone is saying the same thing iconic everyone is saying the same thing breaking cover everyone is saying the same thing bombshell everyone is saying the same thing haunting everyone is saying the same thing mysterious everyone is saying the same thing eye-watering everyone is saying the same thing ******* clad everyone is saying the same thing toned abs everyone is saying the same thing backlash everyone is saying the same thing jaw-dropping everyone is saying the same thing cleavage everyone is saying the same thing bombshell bombshell bombshell

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                      The Holy Eucharist and Then Apple Butter

Church is where someone you don’t even know
Gives you a jar of homemade apple butter
And wishes you a happy Christmas

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                            Somewhere in Syria There is a You

Somewhere in Syria there is a you
Pondering all the existential questions:
What is the meaning of life? Is God real?
Can you get to your job without getting shot?

Your notebooks were hidden from the old regime
Your notebooks are now hidden from the new
Is there enough food for today, for tomorrow -
Rough men with guns are beating on your door

Somewhere in Syria there is a you
In the next few seconds – what will you do?

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

      The United States Postal Service is Holding my Mail Hostage
                       in Exchange for my Credit Card Number

The Postal Service claims that my zip code is not my zip code
They want confirmation and three cents to redeliver
They want my credit card number for those three cents
As if anyone can trust the USPS

They can’t even get mail delivery right:
They place other people’s letters in my mailbox
And the packages I receive have often been penetrated
By busy little postal workers’ hands

And for this they want my credit card
As the old cliché says, what could possibly go wrong?

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?