Advent Rosary

Dark Advent is a silent waiting time
When autumn chills into pale, year-end days
And joy seems smothered by hard-frosting rime:
Cold is the debt that spring to winter pays

The seasons link to seasons in a chain,
The chain of being that links, also, our souls,
Seasons and souls, not always without pain:
Summer’s wild lightning falls and thunder rolls.

Linked to us too, rose by mystical rose,
This holy Advent is Our Lady’s Grace
To us who wait in exile sad; she knows
Where souls and seasons sing, the Night, the Place.

Seasons and souls, linked to days dreary-dim:
Follow them with roses to Bethlehem

The Local Department Store’s Last Christmas

The overly-arranged rat-packery
Of cool-cat Christmas songs from the fifties
Descends like stardust date-expired upon
The ghosts of Christmases that never were

The aisles are teeming only with those notes
Because unlike the music of the past
Old customers have not been stored on tapes
To be replayed among the China-made

White Christmas Drummer Boy Jingle-Bell Rocks
Only mechanical air wah-wah-wah

Frost on the Windshield

Poor Kirbyville is mostly closed this morning
The cinder-block bakery is empty
And the only fast-foodery’s not yet open
Its neon tubes still dark against the stars

But the stop ‘n’ rob is busy enough
The gas pumps serving as anchorages
For trucks and boats, some headed to the lake
After taking on coffee and gasoline

And sausage-biscuits greased and slammed, and wrapped
In yellow paper of such painful sadness

For Ngo Dinh Diem

No flame eternal burns over your lost grave
Unknown beneath an hourly parking lot
Or maybe out back among the garbage cans
No guards of honor pace in mirrored boots

Forth and back in mummery choreographed
Along a field of honor’s concrete walk
No busloads of tourists leave gift-shop wreaths
No bands or speeches mark your martyrdom

Nor would you need them
Nor would you want them

For your small flame is on an Altar set

Sergeant Schultz Saw Everything

This sad world needs another Sergeant Schultz
That merry miles ponderosus who
Carried his rifle like a walking stick
And celebrated strudel instead of glory  
His innocent joy repudiated
The burning-soul ******* of war
In seeing nothing he saw everything
Through ordinary men living in hope
The liturgy of daily happiness -
This sad world needs another Sergeant Schultz

Not a Good Comrade

No man is free if he gives up himself
And disappears into sad howlingness
Subsumed in sinking, shrieking subservience
Thrall-teed in the overseer’s livery

A label on a shabby baseball cap
A programmed pixel smeared across a screen
A rusty caltrop cast into the road
A shifted pea under a shuffled thimble

As crowd, as mass, as demographic noise -
No man is free if he gives up himself

Upon Learning that the Southern Poverty Law Center Maintains an Enemies List

Does anyone maintain a list of friends?

The construction flagman who smiles and waves
The neighbor’s boy who visits for a game of chess
The Friday morning coffee commandos
The waitress who flirts with all her old men
The helpful sackboy at the grocery store
The man who repairs your air-conditioner
The nurse-practitioner who makes you all better
The crossing guard who keeps the children safe

Does anyone maintain a list of friends?

The First Sunday of Advent

A calling-crow-cold sky ceilings the world,
Lowering the horizon to itself
All silvery and grey upon the fields
Of pale, exhausted, dry-corn-stalk summer

The earth is tired, the air is cold, the dawn
False-promises nothing but an early dusk
As calling-cold-crows crowd the world with noise,
Loud-gossiping from tree to ground to sky

Soon falling frosts and fields of ice will fold
Even those fell, foolish fowls into the depths
Of dark creek bottoms where dim ancient oaks
Hide darkling birds from wild blue northern winds

Crows squawk of Advent disapprovingly,
As Advent-autumn drifts to Christmastide
When all the good of the seasonal year
Then warms and charms the house, the hearth,  the heart.

How Lovely Not to be in Jail Tonight

How lovely not to be in jail tonight
And have to share a small and smelly space
Under an eternal fluorescent light
With a dude who don’t like yer race or yer face

How grand to have a bed that’s enough
With sheets and pillows and blankets all clean
And not a bare mattress sour-stained and rough
Against a wall of cinder blocks in green

And howlings from a soul who has lost life’s fight -
How thankful not to be in jail tonight

After Thanksgiving - We Are One Debris

A paper napkin with a turkey on it
Discarded outside by an errant child
Culturally appropriates among the leaves
It seems to want to join its fallen brothers

Raw and natural in their native state
In multicultural deconstructions
Like, you know, all spiritual and stuff
Becoming one existential leaf-mold

Filtered through November’s hipster glasses
A paper napkin with a turkey on it

Thanksgiving – Places for Everyone

Somehow there are places enough for everyone
A tectonic shifting of tableware
A tsunami of saucers, plates, and bowls
The good Thanksgiving and Christmas settings

A rare bottle of Chateau du Supermarket
Gallons of iced tea, and soda for the kids
So many at the children’s table this year
And who will now sit in Grandfather’s place?

This year he dines at that Table in Paradise
Where there are always places enough for everyone

Chris’s Little Shop of Sonnets

O sing of gasoline, **** oil, and grease,
And chemicals too, incorrectly stored,
And may these toxic wonders ever increase
In service to Harley, Chevy, and Ford

O sing of tools, milled from wood, steel, and brass,
Aluminum, copper, even bits of string,
For forming function, volume, shape, and mass
In cylinder, piston, rocker, and ring.

O sing, old radio, those Beale Street Blues
In tune with that engine, and make it smoke,
Shake that rusty icebox all full of brews,
In Chris’s cave of motorized Baroque.

Sonnets and workshops are messy (it seems)
because
Iambs and wrenches build truth out of dreams

Borodin’s  "On the Steppes of Central Asia"

Lost in a remote province of the mind
A youth attends to the cheap gramophone
Again: On the Steppes of Central Asia,
A recording by a mill town orchestra
Of no repute.  But it is magic still:
While washing his face and dressing for work
In a clean, pressed uniform of defeat,
For ten glorious minutes he is not
A function, a shop-soiled proletarian
Of no repute.  Beyond the landlord’s window,
Beyond the power lines and the ***-holed street,
He searches dawn’s horizons with wary eyes
For wild and wily Tartars, horsemen out
To blood the caravans for glory and gold.
A youth greets the day as he truly is:
A cavalryman, a soldier of the Czar,
Whose uniform is stained with victory.

“Thank You for Being
Such a Valued Customer”

From the Satellite Provider

And, oh! Have we got a deal for you!
We looted a channel, we’ve raised your rates
We know you’ve paid, but you’re still overdue
We teased you with some weekend movie baits
Which ought to be included anyway
We’re the worst service in history’s annals
We fu(dge) your contract almost every day

And

We want you to buy even more channels!

The Greatest Gift of the Enlightenment

A merciful machine is the guillotine
Empowering a compassionate society
To actuate therapy efficiently
Imagined by a diverse team of dreamers
Who saw what was why, and asked themselves why not
This greatest gift of the Enlightenment
Built using the latest technology
Sustainable wood from certified rainforests
And recycled metals crafted by artisans
Places the consumer at the center
Enhances higher order thinking skills
And promotes community values
Authentic ecosystem solutions
Embrace the needful progressive experience
A solution addressing social needs
And building teamwork across the spectrum
With voices for the voiceless voiced with love
And it all began with an idea, a dream
In someone’s kitchen, dorm room, or garage

The Sea-Road to Constantinople

                 For Tod on his Birthday

A coastal lugger wallows in the waves
Almost adrift in its poor steerageway
Slow-yawing northeast from the blue Aegean
Into the soft-murmuring Marmara.
Athens is in the past, and soon, ahead,
Constantinople’s walls will catch the dawn.
Our sticks, our packs, a space upon the deck
A book of verse, a cup, a spoon, a bowl,
Some prayers the priest was pleased to copy out
For us poor pilgrims who with weary feet
Were pleased to board a northbound boat at last
And rest through sunlit days with pipes alight
And words and prayers afloat among the sails,
Among the gulls that circle ‘round the mast.
All travelers pray for their hearts’ desires
To wait for them ashore at journey’s end;
For us, ours is to serve the Emperor -
A little further, there beyond the stars.

That Young Man from Nantucket

As filtered through National Public Radio

There was a young man from Nantucket
Whose foot was caught in a bucket
He said with a grin
As he massaged his shin
          “Vers libre is a more affectively responsorial mode of
          privileging  my authentic voice with regard to the cultural
          norms that speak to the existential realities of my heritage
          instead of the mask of the external culture that fails to affirm
          my needs predicated on the living organic wholeness of, like,
          y’know, my own special existentialness, and, like, stuff.”

This week at work I received a Homeland Security form with a terse note that I had filled it out incorrectly - in 2003.  But I had not filled it out at all; this was new form (already out of date by its own testimony) predicated on a Department of Justice form which I did complete correctly; it had simply expired.

Altho’ I obediently completed the form,  I rendered part of the form (page 7 of 9) into not-really-a-poem, in lines of ten syllables:


          I Attest That I Am

employment eligibility
verification department of home
land security u.s. citizen
ship and immigration services u
scis form i-9 omb
no. 1615-0047
expires 03/31/2016
start here. Read instructions carefully be
fore completing this form. The instructions
must be available during completion
of this form anti-discrimination
notice: it is illegal to discrim
inate against work-authorized indi
viduals. Employers cannot specify
which document(s) they will accept from an
employee. The refusal to hire an
individual because the docu
ment presented has a future expi
ration date may also constitute il
legal discrimination. Section 1.
Employee information and attest
ation (employees must complete and sign
section 1 of form i-9 no later than
the first day of employment, but not be
fore accepting a job offer). Last
name (family name) First name (given name) mid
dle initial other names used (if any)
address (street number and name) apt.
number city or town state zip code date
of birth (mm/dd/yyyy)
u.s. social security number
e-mail address telephone number I
am aware that federal law provides
for imprisonment and / or fines for false
statements or use of false documents in
connection with the completion of the
form. I attest, under penalty of
perjury, that I am (check one of the
following)…

I Attest That I Am

An Abandoned School

Young dreams, now scattered fragments on the floor:
A little handle into a corner flung
The disc of sizes never again to fit
A number two pencil into place for a trim
Nor will the made-in-Chicago hopper
Ever again save for the classroom prankster
Sweet-smelling slitherings of cedar shavings
To fling about while Teacher’s at the board.

A new Ticonderoga ****** into
The spinning Scylla and Charybdis blades
Was tested by steel, the dross savaged away,
By turning the handle and grinding away,
And from this grim ordeal emerged The Point,
The perfect point, the adventurous lead…
It’s not really lead, stupid, it’s graphite;
That’s what Teacher said.  Don’t you know anything?

Girls are stupid.  They play with dolls and stuff.
I’ve got a real cap pistol.  I’ll draw it.
You want to see? Look! No, wait, that’s not right;
It’s better this way…Ma’am?  Uh…integers?
Arithmetic is stupid.  Science is fun.
I’ve got most of the Audubon bird stamps
And I liked it when we cut up the frogs
Old people are so mean. I’ll never be old.

A leaking pipe drips the minutes away
Outside a broken window summer sings
Its songs of freedom as it always has
The desks are gone, the electricity is off
The air smells of education and decay
The classroom now is littered with the past:
A broken crayon, a construction-paper heart,
A silence longing for children’s voices.

Dostoyevsky’s House of the Dead

In shackles of shame and under the rod
Our brothers lie upon the Russian earth
In penance suffering for the sins of all
Their common cell is floored with filth and mud
Their common bed a shelf of planks and fleas
Their common air befouled with stench and pain
Their several labors in the heat and cold
That blow the seasons lost across the steppes
Exhaust their limbs and cruelly tease their eyes
With river-visions of what might have been
For them there is no hope within this world

And yet

At drumbeat-dawn there is hardly a man
Who does not kneel before the ikons nailed
As surely to the wall as convicts’ sins
Are nailed with Jesus to the shameful Cross
And take that Cross unto himself in depths
Of degradation and despair that bless
The bad thief first, and even so, the good

Conscripting the Dead

Saturday Night, 12 November 2016

They’ve drafted now his hymn of innocence
Into their revolution against the poor
To sing in praise of dreamers they despise
To canonize the poverty of the rich

They weaponize the poetry of love
And drive sweet words into cold camps of hate
There to be regimented and uniformed
And beaten into a tribute unwilling

His alleluia is not their war song
It cannot be; it is his hymn of hope

Upon Re-Reading Doctor Zhivago

for two comrades

Love lost along abandoned railway lines,
Grave-cold, grave-still, grave-dark beneath dead snow,
A thousand miles of ashes, corpses, ghosts -
Sacrarium of a martyred civilization.

A silent wolf pads west across the ice,
The rotting remnant of a young man’s arm,
Slung casually between its pale pink jaws -
A cufflink clings to a bit of ragged cloth.

Above the wolf, the ice, the arm, the link
A dead star hangs, dead in a moonless sky,
It gives no light, there is no life; a mist
Arises from the clotted, haunted earth.

For generations the seasons in darkness slept,
Since neither love nor life were free to sing
The eternal hymns of long-forbidden spring -
And yet beneath the lies the old world sighs

The old world sighed in sudden ecstasy
A whispered resurrection of the truth
As tender stems ascended, pushed the stones
Aside, away into irrelevance.

And now golden sunflowers laugh with the sun
Like merry young lads in their happy youth
Coaxing an ox-team into the fields,
Showing off their muscles to merry young girls.

The men of steel are only stains of rust,
Discoloring fragments of broken drains,
As useless as the rotted bits of brass
Turned up sometimes by Uncle Sasha’s plow.

For this is Holy Russia, eternally young;
Over her wide lands high church domes bless the sky,
While Ruslan and Ludmilla bless the earth
With the songs of lovers in God’s eternal now.

Harvest Time in the Fens

St. Michael’s Church, Chesterton

A calendar knows little of a day,
Of any day; its arbitrary squares
Mark seasons as they amble on their way
From holy Advent ‘til the harvest fairs,

When summer’s crops, all red and gold and blue,
Along with piglets, ducks, some well-fed hens,
Are carted squeaking, squealing, creaking to
Saint Michael’s fields in the Anglian fens.

Old Father William lifts a pint (no less!)
With farmers selling cows and chicks and corn,
For he is merry too, and quick to bless
The laboring marsh-folk on this autumn morn.

Earth, sky, and air mark seasons as they fall,
And now comes Martinmas, joyfully, for all.

19 July 1943

Amid the wreckage of a bomb-blown street
In prayer among the smoke and stench of death
A man in anguish kneels and begs of Heaven
Mercy upon the broken people of God
Amid the wreckage of humanity
The blessings of a saint, like incense, drift
Into the hidden places of each soul  
The healing peace of God amid the ruins
Amid the wreckage of a bomb-blown street
Amid the wreckage of humanity

Mid Watch, But Without a Watch

Guarding an empty clothesline until four
With Springfield rifle at right shoulder arms
And sometimes something else: left shoulder arms
Because some NCO is sure to pass

And yelp about the proper rifle carry;
Until he does, the solitude is sweet
The San Diego night all damp and still
The recruit thinks and dreams, but dare not speak

While being trained for combat in Viet-Nam
Guarding an empty clothesline in the night

Pupils Fixed and Dilated

He was not permitted to die in peace
The only mercy granted was release
From fear, and mortars falling from the sky
There was no possibility of saying goodbye
And the river water stank, as did the night
His end was as flickering as the light
Pale gaspings, a fluttering pulse, dead sweat
D5W, battle dressings, and yet
The only mercy was in his release
He was not permitted to die in peace

The War Correspondent

A helicopter skeetered bravely in
And pitched and yawed against the enemy fire
That wasn’t there.  The manliest of men
Descended unto us in flawless attire

His tailored khaki suit was starched and pressed
Its creases as sharp as a Ka-bar knife
Never was a reporter more perfectly dressed
For getting the news while risking his life

The C.O. sped him past our positions
And hustled him into the T.O.C.1
To ensure each noun and preposition
Would be written for the greater good, you see

Much ink and Scotch were undoubtedly spilled
In air-conditioned comfort, no heat or mud;
With scripted heroics his notebook was filled
No need to stain his suit with his precious blood

After an hour he was hustled back
To Saigon for an evening reception
After he wrote of a great attack
And wired New York his immaculate deception

A helicopter skeetered bravely out
And yawed and pitched against a ******’s shot
That wasn’t there.  A great Communist rout?
There’s more than one kind of jungle rot


1Tactical Operations Center - command bunker, often air-conditioned.

No One Ever Said the War was Over

No one ever said the war was over
They were honest in that one thing, at least
Since that which never began cannot end
Not for those in a war that never was
Some made fortunes, some got a bus ride home
Some shook it off, and made it out okay
And some stare vacantly in lonely rooms
Red, yellow, green – what did they ever mean?
“Thank you for your service” – what does that
mean?
No one ever said the war was over

Scrambled Eggs in Rainwater

Field Medical Service School

Shivering in the rain, up in the hills
Of Sunny Southern California
Kerosene cookers and their gust-blown smoke
Squid-wet Corpsmen in flying wet slickers

Mess kits held out to sullen, cursing cooks
Slam-slopping glops of sausages and eggs
Cold coffee in aluminum canteen cups
No cover, no shelter for floating food

Or for sergeants bellowing in the dark –
And we laughed through it all, for we were young

Alexandria in a Seabag

The barracks is a university
So too the march, the camp, the line for chow
McKuen shares our ham and lima beans
John Steinbeck helps with cleaning guns and gear

(You’re not supposed to call your rifle a gun)

The Muses Nine are usually given a miss
But not Max Brand or Herman Wouk
Cowboys and hobbits and hippie poets
And a suspicious Russian or two

Tattered paperbacks jammed in our pockets:
All the world is our university

Central Standard Dachshund Time

Turn back the clock, but not a dachshund’s tail
Since dog and tail will turn right back again.
And then around three times, and without fail
She’ll want outside, and then –
                                                        She’ll want back in

To spin, for that is what a dachshund does
A doggy dance, a prance, and all four paws
Buzz, and where she is isn’t where she was
In violation of space-time and Newton’s laws -

On Saturday night we turn back the clocks
But there’s no winding down a baby dox

Lawrence Hall

          No Way, Shape, or Bombshell, Actually

No way, shape, and form literally dropped
A bombshell to the next level, with no
Ifs, ands, or buts defining a generation
While living in the shadows of America

Where the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree
Going viral in trending a hashtag
Through user-generated content link-bait
Engaging the meme traffic actually

Cloudwising virtual reality
Thinking outside the box form shape way no

(And let the people say “icon”)

Not-So-Wildflowers

Wildflowers are not really wild, you know
They are not forward like catalogue blooms
Demanding the best seats in the garden
And the most delicate of drinks and soils

Wildflowers smile softly, sweetly at the sun  
Shy fairy-folk of forest, field, and fen
Dancing through the warm mid-year months and then
Withdrawing quietly at summer’s end

Like children yawning, and wanting their beds -
Wildflowers are not really wild, you know

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Following a Path Worn by Pilgrims
                         -Doctor Zhivago, p. 75

No one is first along a pilgrim road
Other footsteps began our journey for us -
To Bethlehem, Emmaus, Damascus –
Wherever the heart is centered in hope

Someone has stepped on this cactus before
And sat on that rock to pull out the spines
And muttered about the indignity
Of a holy man pestered with stickers

But humility is part of the search

Because

No one is last along a pilgrim road

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Ella’s Unicorns

There is no reason why pale unicorns
Should not cavort in frosty fields at night
Or dragons play around the moonlit pond
Annoying the naughty naiads bathing there

For startime is the magic dreamy time
When flowers and leaves are given whispering speech
And laughing faeries flit from tree to tree
In games of hide-and-seek until the dawn

The world would be strange without unicorns
Cavorting in the frosty fields at night

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

           An American Legion Meeting

O let us sit, our coffee cups to hand
And discharge half-remembered boot camp yarns
As ragged volleys of camaraderie
Blasted through well-defended hearing aids

O let us not raise funds for this or that
Through weekend fish-fries in a parking lot
Or catalogue good deeds inflicted on

Those

For whom our kindness is a border breached

O let us sit, our coffee cups to hand
And remember again the Vam Co Tay

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

               Last Sunday after Pentecost

A calling-crow-cold sky ceilings the world,
Lowering the horizon to itself
All silvery and grey upon the fields
Of pale, exhausted, dry-corn-stalk summer

The earth is tired, the air is cold, the dawn
False-promises nothing but an early dusk
As calling-cold-crows crowd the world with noise,
Loud-gossiping from tree to ground to sky

Soon falling frosts and fields of ice will fold
Even those fell, foolish fowls into the depths
Of dark creek bottoms where dim ancient oaks
Hide darkling birds from wild blue northern winds

Crows squawk of Advent disapprovingly,
For Advent-autumn drifts to Christmastide
When all the good of the seasonal year
Then warms and charms the house, the hearth, the heart.

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                Indian Summer

Late, errant honeybees still swarm about
The hummers’ feeder in the afternoons
While lingering sunlight warms October days
Like lovers reluctant to say goodbye

Our little apian friends in chorus sing
A fading summer-song, before the frost
Sends workers home among soft, leafy ways
Of air and mist, over stubbled fields at rest

In that quiet hour before the moon
Ascends to light the autumn safely home

Bourgeois Sentimentality**

A beagle puppy napping on the hearth
The morning offering whispered at dawn
Young lovers flirting on a garden bench
The chair in which Granddaddy used to sit

Cranky old men who feed the birds each day
Cool boy-band posters on a teenager’s wall
Red spider-lilies in the autumn sun
And children’s toys scattered all over the yard

“Bourgeois sentimentality!” some cry:
Well, yes, yes it is – by the Grace of God

To Incorporate Institutional Effectiveness into
                                 Our Everyday Language**

)/)/)/ is updating our assessment plan for
Instructional units beginning this fall
2016 semester. After
Visiting with /)/, our SACSCOC
Consultant and Dr. /) yesterday
About our assessment process, it was
Determined that it is in our best interest
To clarify, verify and hopefully
Simplify the current random selection
Assessment process. Therefore, in lieu of
The use of the random selection process,
The plan for this semester and moving forward
Is to assess all students in all sections
Of courses used in the assessment process
And to report data on all students,
NOT just assessing or reporting data
On a random sample. In order to provide
Appropriate artifacts, we will choose
Representative samples (examples
Of great, fair and low achievement artifacts)
To be included in the artifacts
Collection for SACSCOC reporting. However,
We do still need to collect all artifacts
So we have those in the event they are
Needed. This will give us a better picture
Of how our students are performing.  

I know that we are changing directions
And I ask that you be patient as we
Navigate through this process and determine
How best to collect, assess, and use the data
We receive to make continuous improvements
For the good of the students and to
Incorporate institutional effectiveness
Into our everyday language.

Thank you for your willingness to assist
In this process and determining the best
Ways to help our students. Stay tuned as we
Look at and develop some additional
Templates or formats to report the data.
Please share this information with your faculty.

Disaster Preparedness Checklist**

Double-A batteries, a map out of town
A tank full of gas, a mind full of plans
A flashlight, toilet paper, a radio
A can opener and cans to go, go, go

Leather gloves and duct tape, whistles
Waterproof matches, and match-proof water
Blankies and ponchos and a change of clothes
A medical kit and a pocket knife

But

No one ever lists a box of cigars,
And a Wodehouse for reading by lamplight

Leafy Labor Day and Summer’s Last Dragon*

In a happier world, children this day,
Barefoot children, running about in play
Would pause now at the end of summer time -
New school supplies from the old five-and-dime

Write those first smudgy lines with a new ink-pen
For tomorrow the new school year takes in
And count their cedar pencils, one, two, three
Then out again to the Robin Hood tree

A wooden sword, and a dragon to slay
In a happier world, children this day

(Their Robin Hood wants to slay a dragon,
and so a wrathful dragon slain shall be;
Little children know best about these things)

Liturgical Dance*

The liturgy has always served as dance
Timed to the *courteis of the universe  
Choreographed with planets, moons, and stars
To celebrate and sing and taste the Truth

Thus every gesture, every careful step
Leaps wildly across the sacred arc of time
And circling ‘round, and ‘round again all meet
In elevation silent within a Cup

But pause and kneel now at the sacring bell:  
The liturgy has always been a dance

A Novitiate in the World

     “…you will go forth from these walls,
     but will live like a monk in the world.”

     -Father Zossima to Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov
      
Every vocation is a novitiate
And every labor a monastic prayer:
Matins and Lauds are sung over coffee,
Then Terce for the plough, the lathe, and the wheel

Sext is gratitude for the midday meal
And None is the hour for downing tools
Soft Vespers is the song of happy homes
‘Til Compline sends all good folk to their beds -

Final vows are taken at death; for now,
Every vocation is a novitiate

Ode to Barnes & Noble

Patrick Leigh Fermor never roamed these aisles
Sir John Betjeman never rhymed these aisles
Graham Greene never despaired of these aisles
And Rod McKuen was never here alone

And anyway the two or three feet of poetry
Are hidden far away in the back behind
The puzzles, records, comics, and plastic toys
And solitaries plugged into their machines

But on a winter weekday a writer’s retreat -
A yellow pad, coffee, and a window seat

It’s All About Family

A rush to change into trousers and shirt
Discarding pajamas and morning quiet
And a half-eaten breakfast burrito -
Dear God, the relatives are here again

They never ‘phone; like mayflies they appear
First peeking through the windows, and only then
Ringing the doorbell, breathless with gossip
And detailing their medical dysfunctions

They seem to settle in for the summer
While one’s soul longs for a burrito lost

Road Breakfast

Greasy spoons are a little too clean these days
After the sweet incense of cigarette smoke
Was purged by a Vatican II of health
Along with the morning paper. It’s all

Plastic tablets and gourmet coffees now
Multi-colored packets of chemicals
Flatware in little cellophane envelopes
Bright cartoon tees instead of stained work shirts

Cross-trainers where muddy boots used to rest -
Greasy spoons are just too d**d clean these days