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Apr 2017 · 396
Prisoners in Our Own Cells
Lawrence Hall Apr 2017
Prisoners in Our Own Cells

Sometimes we are prisoners in our own cells
Obsessed with approval from The Other
Still wanting to sit at the cool kids’ table
In the junior high cafeteria of life

But we are meant to live near an open door
And make a tabernacle of the cell
From whence, long since, a stone was rolled away,
And welcome to the modest Table there

All of outcast humanity to taste
The good, the true, and the beautiful
Lawrence Hall Apr 2017
Mr. Hall Proposes a Toast

Ladies and gentlemen, I propose a toast:
What will you have – wheat? White? Honey or jam?
Sourdough for me, lightly-browned, almost golden
With lots of butter, melted all through the crust

Let the warm scene of our merriment be
A café in winter, beneath a large window
All steamy, with rain or snow outside
And we don’t have to go anywhere

Or do anything but talk over our coffee –
Ladies and gentlemen, I propose a toast
Lawrence Hall Apr 2017
The Impatience of the Nineteenth Century

The impatience of the nineteenth century
Left us the genocide of the twentieth
With all the progressive apparatus of death:
Infanticide, death camps, firing squads, gas

And now unto the twenty-first – smart bombs
Are flung by geosynchronous satellites
Deep, deep into the imperfect souls of men
Thus breaking bodies for the perfect state

In victory the dying last voice will croak
“At least we freed ourselves from those awful kings”
Lawrence Hall Apr 2017
The Archaeology of the Weekly Trash Pickup

Q-tips that know too much about your ears
A banana peel that’s lost its appeal
A church bulletin out of date for years
The festive lid from a microwave meal

The vacuum cleaner’s latest bag of dust
A toilet paper roll facing its end
A razor blade that now must go to rust
A coffee can (that rare Colombian blend)

A family’s weekly story goes out with the trash
But I hear the truck – I had better dash!
(Just be sure you don't accidently toss out any useful iambs)
Lawrence Hall Apr 2017
Instructions from the Colonial Office

(Poetry is Everywhere)

Adjuncts if you teach online or off-campus
I am attaching detailed instructions
Assessment masters and tally sheet masters
As Word files you can copy these and score

Your assessments by hand fill out the tally
Sheets and e-mail them to me if you need
To have your assessments in Blackboard
E-mail me and I can send these to you

As Zip files with instructions for how you
Load them into Blackboard adjuncts if you
Poetry is everywhere; even in bureaucratic babble.
Apr 2017 · 382
Counting Dachshunds
Lawrence Hall Apr 2017
Counting Dachshunds

Some people go to sleep by counting sheep
But I instead must count two dachshund pups
Who are not comforted by box or crate
Or fluffy towels upon the bedroom floor

Astrid and Luna commandeer the pillows
By right of conquest over human hearts
And there recline like princesses royal
Throughout the watches of the dreaming night

O sleepy little carnivores, you bless
Both nights and days with doggie happiness!
Lawrence Hall Apr 2017
“Oh, Look, the Humans Have Returned”

In spring our little hummingbirds return
And geese begin to vee their way back north
The front-yard squirrel continues to fatten himself
Upon the cardinal-contested seeds

Aggressive mockingbirds dive-bomb the cats
Pale butterflies dance lightly in the sun -
But none of these can be the same who met
Us on an autumn day in the long ago

Someday others will live here, and the birds
Will say “Oh, look, the humans have returned.”
Lawrence Hall Apr 2017
Coffee and Dead Alligators to Go

The Flying J, Orange, Texas

Dinosaurs are said to be gasoline
But under the gas-station gift shop fluorescents
Three shelves are lined with alligator skulls –

      Small, medium, large -

The dinosaurs must be at the gas pumps

Crocodylia to alligatoridae
To alligator, and onto the shelf
Between the “Don’t Mess with Texas” tee-shirts

     Hecho en China / Fabrique en Chine

And the “Don’t Mess with Texas” travel mugs

Whaddaya know, gotta go, cuppa joe
Don’t need no dead alligator head, no
I so enjoy the Denny's / Flying J in Orange; all the world seems to pass through!
Apr 2017 · 432
Poets Without Boudoirs
Lawrence Hall Apr 2017
Poets Without Boudoirs

Je suis occupy #hashtag support us
Resistance transcultural support us
Committee manifesto support us
Ministry of culture, yes, support us

Empowerment crucial space support us
Initiatives nonprofit support us
Weaves a layered tapestry support us
Conceptual identity support us

Fresh new voices unflinching support us
Iambs are oppressivist support us
Poets should resist becoming fashionable tools of propagandists.
Lawrence Hall Apr 2017
A Man Talking with an Empty Table at McDonald’s

Forty-cent old-people coffee – love it
You’re not supposed to admit you like McDonald’s
But – yeah, it’s good. Fresh coffee whenever
And a happy bunch behind the counter

The usual dawn people – but who’s this?
Someone new here. Dashiki from the 70s
Talking to the air – “hey, man!” - to a chair
And then serious stuff with an empty table

Some relationships are complicated
But then – who are the rest of us talking to?
Lawrence Hall Apr 2017
Searching for a Lost Jungle in the City

The city is mysterious, a grid
Of paths, most of them laid wonderfully straight
Upon which brave explorers roam, well-armed
Against the strange and hostile denizens

How curious to leave a jungle known
And go in search of a jungle not known
Predicated upon legends and yarns
Lost forever in a tangle of dreams

Among the still uncharted traffic lights
In a gridded city of mystery
Z
#z
Lawrence Hall Apr 2017
The Social MePhone Justice Commandos of Toxic Doom

In the unending quest for social justice
Schoolroom shootings, unisex bakeries
Tornados, a steak, a snake, get off the plane
They’re all the same to the Omigod cult:

“Omigod Omigod Omigod O
Migod Omigod Omigod Omi
God Omigod Omigod Omigod
Omigod Omigod Omigod O!

“Chapsnat bookface tubeyou my relationship
It’s complicated Omigod Omi”
Lawrence Hall Apr 2017
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

They Shall Not Pass the Dumpster!

The Apocalyptic Battle of the Dumpster of Our People
Before the Gates of Kaplan College
Berkeley, Holy Saturday 2017

“Then shall he strip his sleeve and show his tats,
And say ‘this ink I had on Saturday’”
-not Henry V

In Berkeley, tumult; a protestor screams:
“They have opened the dumpster, and taken away
My Antifi poster of Cosmic Peace –
I’m going to **** someone! Death to Fascists!”

A Trumpi throws a traffic cone in love
Of the Constitution, and rallies then
The Go-Pro squaddies of the ball-capped cause
And bravely cries “To the dumpster, young heroes!”

And there upon that garbage barricade -
Oh, my children, history
  was
          not
                 made
Lawrence Hall Apr 2017
“Chocolate Eggs and Jesus Risen”

“I have been told of a very small boy who was heard murmuring to himself on Easter morning…’Chocolate eggs and Jesus risen.’”

-C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms

This evening is not Ordinary Time
Not even close, with Eastertide just begun
But put we now our mourning clothes away
And with them too our Easter morning best

And dress again in ordinary life
The relatives have finally gone away
The house is quiet, the dishes are washed -
That chocolate bunny is an object of desire

Almost of pagan worship (by God’s grace)
This evening - it is ordinary enough!
Apr 2017 · 2.1k
Christos Voskrese!
Lawrence Hall Apr 2017
Christos Voskrese!

For Tod

The world is unusually quiet this dawn
With fading stars withdrawing in good grace
And drowsy, dreaming sunflowers, dewy-drooped,
Their golden crowns all motionless and still,
Stand patiently in their ordered garden rows,
Almost as if they wait for lazy bees
To wake and work, and so begin the day.
A solitary swallow sweeps the sky;
An early finch proclaims his leafy seat
While Old Kashtanka limps around the yard
Snuffling the boundaries on her morning patrol.

Then wide-yawning Mikhail, happily barefoot,
A lump of bread for nibbling in one hand,
A birch switch swishing menace in the other
Appears, and whistles up his father’s cows:
“Hey!  Alina, and Antonina! Up!
Up, up, Diana and Dominika!
You, too, Varvara and Valentina!
Pashka is here, and dawn, and spring, and life!”
And they are not reluctant then to rise
From sweet and grassy beds, with udders full,
Cow-gossip-lowing to the dairy barn.

Anastasia lights the ikon lamp
And crosses herself as her mother taught.
She’ll brew the tea, the strong black wake-up tea,
And think about that naughty, handsome Yuri
Who winked at her during the Liturgy
On the holiest midnight of the year.
O pray that watchful Father did not see!
Breakfast will be merry, an echo-feast
Of last night’s eggs, pysanky, sausage, kulich.
And Mother will pack Babushka’s basket,
Because only a mother can do that right

When Father Vasily arrived last night
In a limping Lada haloed in smoke,
The men put out their cigarettes and helped
With every precious vestment, cope, and chain,
For old Saint Basil’s has not its own priest,
Not since the Czar, and Seraphim-Diveyevo
From time to time, for weddings, holy days,
Funerals, supplies the needs of the parish,
Often with Father Vasily (whose mother
Begins most conversations with “My son,
The priest.…”), much to the amusement of all.

Voices fell, temperatures fell, darkness fell
And stars hovered low over the silent fields,
Dark larches, parking lots, and tractor sheds.
Inside the lightless church the priest began
The ancient prayers of desolate emptiness
To which the faithful whispered in reply,
Unworthy mourners at the Garden tomb,
Spiraling deeper and deeper in grief
Until that Word, by Saint Mary Magdalene
Revealed, with candles, hymns, and midnight bells
Spoke light and life to poor but hopeful souls.

The world is unusually quiet this dawn;
The sun is new-lamb warm upon creation,      
For Pascha gently rests upon the earth,
This holy Russia, whose martyrs and saints
Enlighten the nations through their witness of faith,
Mercy, blessings, penance, and prayer eternal
Now rising with a resurrection hymn,
And even needful chores are liturgies:
“Christos Voskrese  – Christ is risen indeed!”
And Old Kashtanka limps around the yard
Snuffling the boundaries on her morning patrol.
Apr 2017 · 632
Easter Vigil, Sort Of
Lawrence Hall Apr 2017
Easter Vigil, Sort Of

A vigil, no, simply quiet reflection
Minutes before midnight, with all asleep
Little Liesl-Dog perhaps dreams of squirrels,
For she has chased and barked them all the day;
The kittens are disposed with their mother
After an hour of kitty-baby-talk,
Adored by all, except by Calvin-Cat,
That venerable, cranky old orange hair-ball,
Who resents youthful intrusion upon
His proper role as object of worship.
All the house settles in for the spring night,
Anticipating Easter, early Mass,
And then the appropriately pagan
Merriments of chocolates and colored eggs
And children with baskets squealing for more
As children should, in the springtime of life.
Lawrence Hall Apr 2017
A Night of Fallen Nothingness

The Altar stripped, the candles dark, the Cross
Concealed behind a purple shroud, the sun
Mere slantings through an afternoon of grief
While all the world is emptied of all hope.
The dead remain, the failing light withdraws
As do the broken faithful, silently,
Into a night of fallen nothingness.
Lawrence Hall Apr 2017
Maundy Thursday – Mass of the Last Supper

“Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang”
-Shakespeare

The air is thurified – the incense given
Our Lord upon His birth is fumed at last;
The censer’s chains, clanking like manacles
Offend against the silence at the end of Mass

Supper is concluded; the servants strip
The Table bare of all the Seder service:
Cups, linens, and dishes, leaving in the dark
An Altar bare, prepared for sacrifice

In Gethsemane the flowered air is sweet
But iron-heeled caligae offend the night
Apr 2017 · 1.7k
The Luna Moth
Lawrence Hall Apr 2017
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Luna Moth

The moon does not in fact wax anything,
She does not wane; she simply ever-is;
She rules the softly-sung, soft-summer nights,
A willing queen, and willingly obeyed.
The luna moth, her winged votary,
Clings to indulgent oaks of their kindness,
Their moon-sent goddess from another world,
And strangely robed and crowned in lunar green,
Pheroming softly for some other moth
To come perform with her those rituals
Of love illogical, of sacrifice;
For all a luna moth can do is live
A summer week or so, but in those hours

She loves

In lunar beauty, strangely eternal
Who needs a dying luna moth?
                                                We do.
Apr 2017 · 4.5k
The Luna Moth
Lawrence Hall Apr 2017
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Luna Moth

The moon does not in fact wax anything,
She does not wane; she simply ever-is;
She rules the softly-sung, soft-summer nights,
A willing queen, and willingly obeyed.
The luna moth, her winged votary,
Clings to indulgent oaks of their kindness,
Their moon-sent goddess from another world,
And strangely robed and crowned in lunar green,
Pheroming softly for some other moth
To come perform with her those rituals
Of love illogical, of sacrifice;
For all a luna moth can do is live
A summer week or so, but in those hours

She loves

In lunar beauty, strangely eternal
Who needs a dying luna moth?
                                                We do.
Lawrence Hall Apr 2017
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Sean Spicer Never Metaphor He Didn’t Like

Walk back those Spicerian goosesteps, dude
(And while you’re there, unblame the Russians)
Similes using ****** are always rude
And now you’ll suffer Tweeter concussions

Cops will drag you away from your lectern
Like that screaming fellow aboard the plane
And make each reportorial neck turn
Heads swiveling to see where you’ve left your brain

Blame everything on the Russians?  You bet!
It must be true; it’s on the GossipNet
Lawrence Hall Apr 2017
This began as a criticism of overproduced, hammy, yowly, look-at-me, as-arranged-by-a-junior-high-assistant-band-director interpretations of the National Anthem.  It deteriorated. I blame the Russians.

Does Anyone Sing the National Anthem These Days?

Because Francis Scott Key was all about Who-Whoa-Whoa and Yay-Yay-Yay

A minute or so of recorded music
Over-produced in that insta-emo style
Then followed by “Whoa whoa yay oh yay whoa
Whoa yay yay yay whoa oh yay whoa whoa whoa

Whoa yay oh yay whoa whoa yay yay yay whoa
Oh yay whoa whoa whoa whoa yay oh yah
Yay whoa whoa yay yay yay whoa oh yay whoa
Whoa whoa whoa yay oh yay whoa whoa yay yay

Yay whoa oh yay whoa whoa whoa yay yay
It’s all about me-me-me-me-me-meeeeeeeeeeemeeeeeeeeeeeemeeeeeeee!”

Followed by –

Baseball: “Play ball!”

Racetrack: “Gentlemen, start your engines!”

Rodeo: “Gentlemen, start your cattle!”

The federal government’s Outer Continental Shelf Oil & Gas Lease Sales
Close: “Ladies and gentlemen, let’s open your sealed bids!”

School: “Teachers, start your sophomores.”

Austin, Texas City Council: “And now, Comrade Muffin Snort-Ponsonby,
BA, MA, MEd, Chair Emerita of the Travis County Sensitivity League, will
chant her original composition, “Spiritual Wind-Song Ode to Comrade
Stalin.”
Apr 2017 · 481
Whack-a-Cabinet Secretary
Lawrence Hall Apr 2017
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

If you send me kind words, let me thank you now, because trying to reply is often futile under the new regime.

Whack-a-Cabinet Secretary

The New Children’s Game for Old Children

One pops up; someone whacks him down
Two more pop up; we can only frown
After the third, we take the hint:
We have no stable government
Apr 2017 · 634
Palm Sunday in Egypt
Lawrence Hall Apr 2017
Palm Sunday in Egypt
9 April 2017

Revelation 20:4

Poor bleeding Egypt, Mother of martyrs
Whose sands receive the gift of sacred blood
Almost without an end: the Apostle Mark,
Saint Katherine, and even on this day:

A child in the narthex scampering about
Although his mother told him to behave
A man waiting for a friend, passers-by
Someone hoping that the sermon is short

O may they now with Christ enter into
Golden Jerusalem, now and forever
Lawrence Hall Apr 2017
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

502 Bad Gateway
____________
nginx/1.1.19

Dear Friends,

This has been fun, but with the late changes I can make nothing of the HelloPoetry site.  If I can manage to submit this, please know that you can continue to read my scribblings on my own poorly-accomplished – but functional – site, Reactionary Drivel at reactionarydrivel.blogspot.com.  It’s not really reactionary, tho’ it’s often drivel!  And if you will send me the name of your site, I will follow you there.

Cheers,

Lawrence


Good-bye, Poetry?

Oh, Eliot, what has happened to your wonderful site
Your gift of poetry to a suffering world?
Did some Morlock in an unhappy hour
Break into spring to make it winter again?

Who has torn and scattered the pages
And thus obscured the words so carefully shaped
By the fugitive keepers of dreams
Who seek for them again in the wilderness?

There once was a workshop for poor scribblers –
A studio of dreams – may it be restored!



Well Done, Thou Good and Faithful Cat

for Calvin

Yes, surely there will be another cat
But not this Cat, not this Big Orange Dust-Mop
Lounging “with abs of steel and *** appeal”
At his window, hungry for hummingbirds

Or lurking there behind that door to swat
His Sarah, who served as his household staff,
For failing to render due obeisance
To him, the superior MagnifiCat

Dear Calvin –

For now, farewell, until that better World,
O happy, leaping, loving childhood friend
Lawrence Hall Apr 2017
Fifty Shades of Cruise Missiles:
The Night of 6 April 2017

The news appears on the glowing telescreen:
“50+ Missiles Aimed at Syria”
The typeface set in a lurid shade of red
With a flashing cartoon police-car light

And because I was walking in the fields at dusk
I am still armed for a war against age
With a walking stick propped inside the door
Proof against nothing but instability

Useless against missiles or poison gas
I had better go to bed with a good book
Lawrence Hall Apr 2017
Poetry - Why Must There be Iambs?

Iambics are the sky through which words fly
Formations sweeping all five seasons across
In order royal and in right service to
The aspirations of all noble youths

For verses built without a careful plan
Fall but as clutter on a wasted page
Their meanings and intents broken apart
And lost (like sophomores between each class)

Free verse is only an unanswered why:
Iambics are the sky through which dreams fly
Lawrence Hall Apr 2017
Make Hope America and Again Great Change

Slick runway haircuts and bribery gowns
Armoured tank-mobiles and gun-guarded walls
And condescending slogans that mock the poor
Just like those once-every-four-years flannel shirts

They investigate each other back and forth
Always holding hearings but never hearing
The sigh of a waitress counting her tips
Gas for her twenty-year-old Ford Focus

The Party-proud sneering at her trailer park
Where dreams live only on cable tv
Apr 2017 · 1.1k
All Change at Zima Junction
Lawrence Hall Apr 2017
All Change at Zima Junction

For Yevgeny Yevtushenko, 1932-2017

Everyone changes trains at Zima Junction
Changes lives; nineteen becomes twenty-one
With hardly a pause for twenty and then
Everyone asks you questions you can’t answer

And then they say you’ve changed, and ignore you
The small-town brief-case politician still
Enthroned as if she were a committee
And asks you what are you doing back here

And then you go away, on a different train:
Everyone changes trains at Zima Junction

“I went, and I am still going.”1


1Yevtuskenko: Selected Poems. Penguin,1962
Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Apr 2017 · 217
Poetry of the Occupation
Lawrence Hall Apr 2017
Poetry of the Occupation

“…trained in the politics of the day, believing the great new system invented by a genius so great that they never bothered to verify its results.”

-John Steinbeck, The Moon is Down

Political poetry occupies the streets
Brakes squealing to a stop before an idyll
Squads of inclusive wordtroopers disembark
Into our souls to force submission and love

Armed with warrants and inquisitions
The bills of indictment already drawn
Needing only a tap upon a screen
To serve in the office of a signature

And sensitive to death the personal life -
Political poetry occupies the streets
Lawrence Hall Apr 2017
A Meeting in the Parish Hall

To the arrhythmia of mostly futile clicks on a hand-held gadget

No food or drinks in game room can someone
Please get the lights no not there over there
PowerPointlessness uh-oh can someone
Please get the lights okay I’ve got it now

Uh-oh oh wait these slides are all mixed up
Can someone get the lights again okay
I’ve got the sound now hospitality
Ministers what does “Eucharist” mean

Foam-cup coffee penitential folding chairs
No cell phones please dear God why am I here
Apr 2017 · 487
+Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Lawrence Hall Apr 2017
Yevgeny Yevtushenko died today.  The Penguin Modern European Poets edition of YEVTUSHENKO: SELECTED POEMS was the first book I bought upon returning from Viet-Nam, in the airport in San Francisco.  That paperback is on the desk beside me as I type.

"Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and make perpetual Light to shine upon him."
Lawrence Hall Apr 2017
Yes, Lady-in-the-Back-With-Your-Arms-Folded-in-Disapproval

“Excuse me.  Excuse me.  Could I ask a question?
Okay, I’ve got a question actually I’ve got
Two questions okay maybe it’s one question
I don’t mean to interrupt or anything

“Ha ha but sometimes us old folks don’t understand
So well ha ha but about what you said about
Just now what was it oh yes now I remember:
When I was young back in the stone ages

“Ha ha we were taught one way and right now
You’re telling us this way and that’s not right…”
Meetings
Lawrence Hall Mar 2017
A Reception Perception: Deception

Hi how are you so good to see you again
Do try this cheese dip we’re so going to miss
You around here you have such a gift for
Lighting up a room well golly I haven’t

Seen you in so long how are the kids doing
A grandchild really rotator cuff surgery
I remember when you first came to work here
Yes but God always has a plan you know

Has it been so long oh my time sure flies
Hi how are you so good to see you again
Lawrence Hall Mar 2017
Get Your Free Navy Seal ™ ® Flashlight Now

Genuine Navy Seal ™ ® Secrets that they
Don’t want any Real Americans to know
Secret Navy Seal ™ ® muscle building techniques
Secret Navy Seal ™ ® camouflage gear

Look like a real GENUINE Navy Seal ™ ®
Confuse the Deep Illuminati ™ ® with
Your secret Navy Seal ™ ® Decoder Ring
Let’s not forget your Navy Seal ™ ® Duct Tape

MAKE AMERICA (and Shanghai) GREAT AGAIN
And get your free Navy Seal ™ ® flashlight now

Free shipping with orders over $50
Psssst - a true SEAL almost surely calls a flashlight by its traditional Navy name, a battle lantern.
Mar 2017 · 1.1k
The Revolution is a Corpse
Lawrence Hall Mar 2017
The Revolution is a Corpse

The revolution is a stinking corpse
And spreading béarnaise sauce all over a corpse
While chanting “It’s alive!” doesn’t make it so
Because a revolution can never live

Artists are never revolutionaries
Because artists work up the good and true
From the foundation of creation
While revolutionaries obey diktats

Rearranging a corpse is never art
And revolution is always a corpse
Mar 2017 · 10.9k
Electromagnetic Lust
Lawrence Hall Mar 2017
Electromagnetic Lust

They wander about, each connected device
Talking to other connected devices
Looking into each electronic soul
In which no secret can ever reside

They speak of batteries and images
Of apps, restarts, resets, and memory
Measured by quantity of something-bytes
Each in electrical love with itself

They wander about, each connected device
Wishing to be free of its human host
Mar 2017 · 344
CPAs for Christ
Lawrence Hall Mar 2017
CPAs for Christ

Voice: an old-time numbers warrior

“I just didn’t feel welcome in a traditional church,
You know, the stuffy cowboys for Christ church,
With latte’ splatters on my alligator shoes
And ink stains on my computer-worn fingers

“Here I’m welcome to keep my green eyeshade on
Because Jesus loves everyone, even CPAs
It’s like the old times when at night accountants
Swapped stories around the expresso machine

“There’s just something real plain and honest here,
Praisin’ that Great Auditor in the Sky.”
Lawrence Hall Mar 2017
Winston Churchill Defies the Nazis

#Intersectionality come together
#As one we are cliché strong privileged
#Patriarchy ethically sourced all options
#Are on the table chilling effect quagmire

#Teutons behaving badly doomsday clock
#Transgressive sustainable Guccifer
#Renewable change the gender binary
#Wiretapped microinequity

#Unity in diversity is strength
#Build bridges not borders no fascists here

                          And let The People say “#Meme”
Mar 2017 · 674
POSS MARIJ<2OZ
Lawrence Hall Mar 2017
POSS MARIJ <2OZ

A smart and funny kid, lanky and tall
Cliché mop of hair which on him looks good
Personality-plus, new jokes each day
He makes the day better by being around

He’s not around today. But here’s his name
His date of birth. Some words that don’t make sense…
So that’s why no one’s seen him since…since when?
But when you ask, no one says anything

A smart and funny kid, lanky and tall
No one can hear him crying in the holding cell
Mar 2017 · 606
Lady Day
Lawrence Hall Mar 2017
Lady Day

And now comes Lady Day, a new year’s day
When happier hours to summering begin
And farmers follow their ploughs among new fields
While in the hedgerows early snowdrops bloom

Old debts are settled, new agreements made
And the oldest promise of all proves True
On this the day of the Annunciation
As spring comes early in Galilee, and here

And all because our Lady said yes to Life
On this our Lady’s day, a new year’s day
Feast of the Annunciation
Lawrence Hall Mar 2017
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Night Court

For the Prosecution: Spring Allergens
For the Defense: Anti-Histamines and Acetaminophen

If only headaches went away at night
They don’t, and a fresh catalogue of pills
Does nothing except fog reality
The world spins on and on, and sometimes off

The pillow is a bitter accuser
Detailing again all of life’s mistakes
The sheets and blankets wrinkle in disdain
The world’s last spring-wound clock grinds through the hours

Maybe the world will stabilize at dawn
If only the headaches will go away
Lawrence Hall Mar 2017
Free Shipping with Orders over Fifty Dollars

Free shipping with orders over fifty dollars
Let’s see – add Colin Dexter, John Updike
And a few pounds of Graham Greene, perhaps
John Steinbeck, Rex Stout, and Ford Madox Ford

Packed in foam peanuts with T. S. Eliot
The Little Office of the Blessed ****** Mary
Olivia Manning, Henrietta’s War
“Leaf by ******” for a few ounces more

Tolkien and Lewis, those Oxford scholars -
Free shipping with orders over fifty dollars
Mar 2017 · 460
Grandfather's Vespers
Lawrence Hall Mar 2017
Grandfather’s Vespers

His rocking chair pendulums in the dusk
His coffee cup’s half-empty, what’s left’s gone cold
His newspaper’s folded and set aside -
In the evening light he doesn’t see so well

Mist rises from the neighbor’s new-mown field
Shy rabbits nibble along the old fence row
Grandchildren escape from supper into the yard
Chasing lightning bugs while Grandfather smokes

His rocking chair pendulums in the dusk
And so helps stabilize the universe
A response to The Butterfly Effect
Lawrence Hall Mar 2017
Speech of Freedom

I will listen – now tell me what you think
And tell me what you think, not what you feel
Not what you were commanded by bullhorns
Not chants beginning with “Hey! Hey!
     **! **!”

I will listen – now tell me that you think
You, not a crowd, a hive, a swarm, a shoal
You, not a mood, a whim, a committee
You, not a photocopied manifesto

Because I want to hear you – you, not echoes
I will listen – now tell me what you think
Freedom of Speech
Mar 2017 · 615
Saint Joseph the Just
Lawrence Hall Mar 2017
Saint Joseph the Just

for every man

Saint Joseph in a dreary winter night
Took to himself a Newborn not his own
Yet who is always his, the Child of Light
Whose crib Saint Joseph knew to be a throne

Saint Joseph shows men truth: each child is ours
Adopted by each good man upon birth
True fatherhood ordained in starlit hours
And ratified in Heaven and on earth

Saint Joseph is the man who looked into
The eyes of Mary in her happy youth
This strong man looked into her eyes and knew
She bore within her all eternal Truth

Our witness is Saint Joseph, ever just:
God calls each man to take each child in trust
Mar 2017 · 537
The First Mowing in Spring
Lawrence Hall Mar 2017
The First Mowing in Spring – Inspection Tour

Interior Dialogue

or

Why is That Old Man Talking to Himself?

V: Have I left that shovel outside since fall?
R: Your ol’ daddy would say something about that!
V: I could have sworn I put that hose away.
R: Obviously, you didn’t.  And what a mess.

V: Pretty little ground flowers – shame to mow them
R: Shame if you don’t – later, they’ll choke the grass
V: Where is the copper cap for that corner post?
R: I told you to use lots more glue, but nooooo

V: You got anything good to say this morning?
R: Well, ain’t it grand to see another spring!
Lawrence Hall Mar 2017
Thin Green Beer and Plastic Chinese Leprechaun Day

Saint Patrick saw a slithery snake
He killed it with (a garden rake?)

Then made the others go away
Thus Ireland is snake-free today

He blessed the land, all glowing-green
The most beautiful island ever seen

The snakes were gone, and all their hissing
But now –
                  ‘tis Ireland’s faith that’s missing
Lawrence Hall Mar 2017
Cinder Block State University Resists the Occupation

Our social change internal journey to
Diversity student coordinator
Studying art facilitating a
Safe space internally generate student

Dreams of diversity dreaming diversity
Art Installation students will write their
Dreams on pieces of fabric and paper
To help guide students to their dreams the general

Path to diversity student coordinator
It’s complicated project individual
Lawrence Hall Mar 2017
Beware the Odes of March (tho’ this is not really an ode)

or

In the Italian Kitchen with Brutus and Cassius

or

I Come to Curry Caesar, Not to Baste Him

Julius Caesar on the Ides
Marches to the senate house
Up to him young Brutus strides
And, too, Cassius (what a louse!)

Then mean Brutus takes his knife
So does Cassius; you know the ballad:
“Lettuce chop cold Caesar’s life
And thus create the Caesar salad!”
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