Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                              In Memoriam – Ayden Rose



                 Eternal rest, O Lord, grant unto your daughter

                                           Ayden Rose

                  and make perpetual Light to shine upon her



Ayden was a neat, funny kid in my 9:00 o’clock class
Hard-working and smart, and more than a little bit saucy
As eighteen-year-olds are supposed to be
She grew up to be a triple-threat teacher and coach

And on Monday night some hero shot her in the back


When stupid people ask me about Viet-Nam

                        (“I guess you seen some action, huh?”

I tell them that for our children here in America

It’s much worse

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                   Prisoners Working in the Early Morning Rain

We have all worked in the rain – building fences
Getting up the cows for milking twice a day
Sloshing through the muck to make deliveries
And usually with some choice in the matter

Prisoners have choices too – cells or a work detail
In designer costumes with horizontal stripes
Not much of a choice, but the work is needful and good
Picking up the litter of freedom and patching the road

Through the wipers I wave. They wave back. Rain -
We have all passed by our fellow man in the rain

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

      Your New (Famous Name Brand) Credit Card Has Arrived!

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digits of your social download the app
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I didn’t quite get that call 1-***-***-XXXX
this call is being monitored for your protection
we didn’t tell anyone that enable
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Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

               Encounter with an Aging Hippie Benedictine Tertiary
                                    at the Church Door

The old man’s tee said QUESTION AUTHORITY
In the narthex, where we lay our scene
(Shakespeare lay his scene in Verona, but this was not Verona)
I joshed about deferring to seniority
For he was a tertiary Benedictine

He raised his quavery voice as best as he was able
To squeak that all teachings can and should lay
Upon some sort of philosophical table
And then he rattled his walker and clattered away

I do not know what any of this might mean –  
But I think I was dismissed as a Philistine

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                  My Great Replacement Theory

                       (or maybe just a lesser replacement theory)

Teenagers opened the doors for me at Mass
Which used to be my job, but they stepped up
And in stepping up they are replacing me
Which is good - I miss my youth but delight in theirs

A boy and a girl giggled and whispered
In a language I don’t know except that
Having once been young, I know it well -
A perfect translation was in their eyes

All languages come from Old Solar, Lewis says
And to Old Solar will someday return
We must all be replaced someday
For in Creation’s Great Dance that is a step

Teenagers opened the doors for me at Mass
And God will open another door afterward



Cf. C. S. Lewis, *The Space Trilogy

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                            Orgiastic Screaming from Below

           Those who called for Nonsense will find that it comes

                         -C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength

We have seen Milton’s Pandaemonium
Choreographed on a wide palantir
Fallen angels praising the Great Fallen One
In a High Council of electrified lies

Great thunderings of fire and rolling smoke
Issuing from a shiny plastic throne of power
The Great Fallen One framed in Elvis lights
On the floor the lesser ones screaming in ecstasy

The Great Fallen One has a plan for us
After all the balloons, too, have fallen

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                 The Mysterious World of Azalea

If I were a child, this would be a happy place
A hidden leaf-mould world, all darkly green
Summery green beneath the shaded sun
Between the roots, beneath the leaves, alone

If I were a child, this would be a happy place
A brand-new comic book, some army men
A Roy Rogers cap pistol without any caps
A plastic Tarzan swinging from branch to branch

If I were a child…but alas, I’m not -
I’m pruning back limbs and checking for rot

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                          Who Gives a Fig?

Some people say that they don’t a give a fig
Which we would never hear from a happy fig tree -
The one at the bottom of the garden gives its fruit
As a blessing to every passing animal

Squirrels and rabbits, sparrows and mockingbirds
Share in this sugary summer delight
I speed by on my riding lawnmower
And take a fig myself, only to give it away

Some people say that they don’t a give a fig
But I think we need more figs in our lives

(As Amanda Holmes did not exactly say)

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

         Convention: Day 4 – A Workshop in Obedience Training

[This doggerel is recyclable and may be employed in both the Republican and Democrat conventions.]

The cult formed obediently for his look-at-me show
Where every response was a fist and a cheer
He didn’t tell his sycophants what they needed to know
But only what he wanted them to hear

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                 For Bob Newhart of Happy, Happy Memory


         “He will not refuse one who is so blithe to go to Him.”

           -Saint Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons


With just a telephone, a clipboard, and a stutter
He was a happy band of some of our best friends:
May we with him
At last approach that Inn where all are welcome

The joy he gave us proceeds before him
The angelic choirs soften their hum and throb
Because
That loving Voice we all most long to hear
Will gently say,

                                                     “Hi, Bob.”

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

          Convention: Day 3 – Any Kind Words for the Constitution?

[This doggerel is recyclable and may be employed in both the Republican and Democrat conventions.]


We both were raised in destitution
We both went off to war
We swore the same oath to the Constitution –
The Constitution - are you with us so far?

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

         Convention: Day 2 - Grima Wormtongue Gives a Speech

          [This doggerel is recyclable and may be employed in both the
          Republican and Democrat conventions.]

I’m strong against that wicked man, strong and brave!
(But for a cabinet seat I’ll be his slave)

This doggerel is recyclable for Republican, Democrat, and all other conventions.

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                               When Reptiles Embrace

They closely embrace, as brother to brother
But which will be first to betray the other?

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                             How Many Moons Can You See?

               It was a full moon and, shining on all the snow,
               it made everything almost as bright as day.

          -C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

When the subject of vision came up
(as it must with an ophthalmologist)
I told Dr. Talbot that I saw two moons
When only one of them would be sufficient

But which one?

After a gentle touch of surgery
I now see only one moon, which is nice
But I rather miss that other moon
And wonder if in her exile she misses me too

Where is she?

On whatever planet you happen to live
I don’t think you can have too many moons

(This scribble is recyclable for Republican, Democrat, and all other conventions)

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                     A Cautionary Reading from John Milton
       For All Who Consider Attending Any Political Convention

So having said, a while he stood expecting
Thir universal shout and high applause
To fill his ear, when contrary he hears
On all sides, from innumerable tongues
A dismal universal hiss, the sound
Of public scorn…

                                  …he would have spoke,
But hiss for hiss return’d with forked tongue
To forked tongue, for now were all transform’d
Alike, to Serpents all as accessories
To his bold Riot: dreadful was the din
Of hissing through the Hall, thick swarming now
With complicated monsters…

                   -John Milton, Paradise Lost X.504ff

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

           Fire Ants Devouring the Corpses of Unhatched Wasps


                      Nature does not, in the long run, favour life.

                  -C. S. Lewis, “On Living in an Atomic Age,” 1948


A formation of formicidae trekked north-northwest
Across a vast and lonely sunbeaten expanse
Their imperial quest a fallen wasps’ nest
Between a lawn chair and a potted plant

The ants greedily ripped open the paper shells
Like Christmas crackers for the goodies inside
The ghastly drippings of pupae in their jaws
Fragments of dead wasplings for their demanding queen

A formation of formicidae trekked east-southeast -
What, then, is the number of an unnumbered beast?

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                             We Were Dressers of Sycamores


                                         Amos 7: 12-15
                                         Saint Mark 6: 7-13

           From the readings for the 15th week in Ordinary Time


All of us are sent, one place or another
On curious missions little understood
No detailed instructions, no notes, no maps
Take this road and go on until it ends

And greet the folks you meet along the way
Some of them will need your help, your love
Some of them will give you help, their love
And one of them might ****** you

All of us are sent, one place or another
We can’t get out of it; we're needed, brother

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                         Those Who Stereotype “These Professors”

                                                   Exodus 20:16

These professors

Dr. Moriarty was a PFC on certain Pacific islands
Who could bayonet an enemy
Clear a jammed machine gun under fire
See his pals blown to pieces next to him
And work out subtle textual analyses

These professors

Dr. Chambers was a retired colonel of Marines
A natty little man in blazer and bowtie
Who could bayonet an enemy
See his pals blown to pieces next to him
Deconstruct the minutiae of energy distribution
And toss a foul-mouthed football player out on his sorry ***

These professors

Dr. Dale was a butcher until his thirties
When he entered college for the first time
He knew your hamburger from the outside in
The economics of building a business
He probably could have bench-pressed a Ford Fiesta
And when he spoke of Wordsworth, Keats, and Coleridge
You could feel the air of The Lake Country

These professors

“These professors” were complete men
Strong in war and word and wisdom and work
Unlike envious Unferths who learn life only second-hand
                    From Fox News and John Wayne movies
                    And closed loops of echoing InterGossip sites

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                  On the Events of 13 July 2024

                                                  …that we but teach
****** instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague th’ inventor. This even-handed justice
Commends th’ ingredience of our poisoned chalice
To our own lips.

                                    -Macbeth I.vii.8-12

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Macbeth, Doctor Zhivago, Captain Call, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Allen Ginsberg, and Rod McKuen Visit the Dentist but Have to Wait for Beowulf's Root Canal

         In gratitude for all the wonderful dentists, hygienists, and
                       technicians who keep us chewing!


                                  Macbeth Visits the Dentist

Is this a drill which I see before me
The whirring drill outstretched to my teeth
O happiest gas! Come let me clutch thee!
Before my body I throw my dental shield


                            Dr. Zhivago Visits the Dentist

Poor dental hygiene is for crowds of mediocrities
Only individuals seek dentistry
And they shun those who tolerate bad teeth
How many things in the world deserve our loyalty?

A dentist whose papers are in order


                            Captain Call Visits the Dentist

Call saw that the dentist was looking at him
The nitrous oxide drained out of him
Leaving him feeling tired
“I hate a bad tooth. I won’t tolerate it.”


                 Yevgeny Yevtushenko Visits the Dentist

For a tooth to come out
Some of the pain must be devoted to Stalin
Soviet dentistry demanded happy endings
I knew I could floss and brush better than Mayakovsky
Bella’s teeth were second only to those of Akhmatova
Only I could make Babi Yar all about me and my teeth
When I saw a dentist in Zima Junction
I saw the truth of the Revolution in her little mirror


                     Allen Ginsberg Visits the Dentist

I saw the best teeth of my generation destroyed by sugared sodas and a failure to brush and floss

dragging themselves through the medical complex at dawn looking for a fix

thinning-hair old hipsters burning for relief from aching jaws at the healing hands of dedicated professionals among their shining instruments

dedicated professionals who did not drop out of the University of Arkansas and never saw Mohammedan angels among the rooftops


                                   Rod McKuen Visits the Dentist

I am like a molar; I have chewed alone
Gnawed a hundred hamburgers
Never found a bone
Still and all I’m toothy
Reason is you see
Once in a while along the way
Dentists have been good to me.

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                Beowulf Visits the Dentist

Arise from the nitrous oxide

From the somnolence, dreams, and pain

With forge-hammered teeth

And then go out

Go out and bite something

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                         ­   Ford vs Chevy

In an era where everyone was either Ford or Chevy
I was an MG roadster
Unreliable
But lots of fun

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                        “Is That MePhone Surgically Attached to you?”


“Is that thing surgically attached to you?” the teacher sighed.

“You can’t talk to me like that!” the MePhone replied.

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                    How is Your Adventure So Far?

                                  Tell me, what is it you plan to do
                                  with your one wild and precious life?

                                 -Mary Oliver, “The Summer Day”

Even if you are looking up at an I.V. drip
Instead of green leaves and a summer sky
Your adventure is not nearly at an end
Not even in this life – and the next life, wow!

Your childhood joys have never slipped away
That cheesy 45 rpm that graced your first dance
Has not come to the end of its groovy grooves
You’ve still got the happiness, the moves

Your first job, boot camp, university
Riding a big red bus ‘round Piccadilly Circus
Drinking from your canteen on a mountain top
Your first kiss, that evening in Rome – there’s more to come!

Your first car is still parked in the driveway
Waiting to take you where you always meant to go

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                        Their Ephemeral Temples Look Much the Same

Their ephemeral temples look much the same
In a semi-circle the faithful sit or stand
And turn their eager faces to an altar flood-lit
To be magicked by their leaders and gods

They wave their arms in ecstasy and awe
While lantern-slides of flags and martyred heroes
Ripple as electronic waves beamed into their eyes
Commanding free obedience through spontaneous scripts

At dawn

Contractors will tear away the plywood and paint
Take down the plastic statues and columns
The recordings of programmed emotions
And heave them into the beds of rented trucks

Preaching or politics, or some other game:
Their ephemeral temples look much the same

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                        Two Chairs Overthrown

Overnight the wind tossed two lawn chairs about
The revolution abandoned them bottoms up
Unoccupied and whoopsy-daisy down
Leaving them unable to grace the dawn

Sheet-metal thrones, unoccupied, alone
Ozymandian relics among the grass
Where once (yesterday dusk) two wise men sat
And ruled the lawn with their single-malt thoughts

Oh, who will raise these royal seats and speak
With authority and knowledge to all who seek?

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                  Hurricane II: Outer Bands and Second Thoughts

Clouds give way to sun
Winds to stillness, birds circle
In healing symmetry

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                      Hurricane I: Outer Bands and Inner Thoughts

Sun gives way to clouds
Stillness to winds, birds circle
Searching for meaning

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

           Reading the Magna Carta Will Make Us Smarter

                  (And it bans fish weirs in the Thames)

The Kings have been subject to the law since 1215
But are American presidents? That remains to be seen

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

     A Sunday Morning Church Message: “Some Folks Need Killing”

             “…disciple-makers through the power of Jesus Christ!”

                                            -Lake Church

A lieutenant-governor strutting and yelling in church
Demanded the deaths of “some folks” unspecified
The faithful of Lake Church heard out his deadly cause
And then obediently applauded him -

The man who might someday order their executions

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                            Hurricane Track Attack Forth and Back

Spaghetti models are not really spaghetti
But only colored lines across electric maps
Squiggling in iridescence around the Gulf
Slithering atop the waves, then to your house

The weather reporters’ cliches fall from the skies
As microbursts of bottled-water-babbles
Canned goods and fresh radio batteries
Tune to this station as your roof blows away

Spaghetti models are not really spaghetti
But watch the newsie in the street – he’s getting all wet-ty!

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                      Yes, We Are a Republic – Much Like Haiti

              As for the men in power, they are so anxious to establish
              the myth of infallibility that they do their utmost to ignore
              truth.

                                -Pasternak­, Doctor Zhivago

In America every night is Kristalnacht
Everyone seems to hate everyone else
Gunfights in our parks, mass murders everywhere
Communist-made fireworks celebrate freedom

From state to state a reichskirche is on the march
Employment is down, prices are up
Vultures circle our dying President
Some in Congress promote raw genocide

The Supreme Court authorizes presidential crimes -
As St. Thomas More said to Lord Norfolk:
                                                                ­  “I show you the times”

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                         It Wasn’t the Fourth of July

                 That we may wander o’er this ****** field
                 To book our dead, and then to bury them

                                 -Henry V IV.vii.75-76

It wasn’t the fourth of July, but it was about then
Near the Cambodian border, on the Vam Co Tay
Searching for two American airman whose machine had gone down
Down, down into the steaming green Vam Co Tay

Bloated and floating, quite still when we saw them
The sloshy prop wash bumped them about a bit
Empty eye sockets, mouths open in silent screams
We poncho-linered their bodies aboard the boat

Cigarettes of despair against the stench and rot
This was not what we sang about in school

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                            The Haunted Electric Toothbrush

This morning at dawn
I was alone
I heard a moan
A mysterious groan
A ceaseless drone
It wasn’t the ‘phone

It was my toothbrush

It had on its own
Turned itself on

My Philips Sonicare ™© and (legal protections in a peach tree) has done me good service for years. This morning it turned itself on atop a glass shelf with other little bottles of this and tubes of that, making an unusual moaning / groaning / droning that took me some time to sort out. It is a great device; when it finally hands in its lunch pail (as Bertie Wooster would say) I will buy another just like it.

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                              An Old Crucifix on the Garden Gate

Summer is better in theory than in practice
A vision through the window of a shady lawn
All green beneath perfect Robin Hood oaks
Bright leaves, a chair, a book, a glass of tea

But the thermometer stands at 97
Even the shade itself wants to burn one’s skin
Wasps seem to seek their end in suicide dives
Wanting to die beneath the swing of a hat

Summer is better as abstract theories
And in our happy childhood memories

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                   The Honor of Being Posted to an Enemies List

             Trump Amplifies Calls to Jail Top Elected Officials,
             Invokes Military Tribunals

                                        -DNUZ, 1 July 2024

Our leaders are making lists of enemies
We should want to be at the top of them:
Resistant and insolent, contemptuous
Of tyrants and their pathetic disapproval

I fear that I am not important enough
To be on anyone’s national list
But then perhaps the local party faithful
And their Q Boys will write me up instead

True Americans will be booed and hissed
But what an honor to be on that list!

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                        Shakespeare: But I Gave You Your Start

                          Cf. Shakespeare’s Sonnets 79 & 80

Once upon a time you and I were alone
I wrote of your virtues and your beauty rare
You posed for me, for a portrait painted in verse
You gave my poor iambics a forever glow

Your best is so much better than my good
And so I understand if you have found another pen
To pleasure you with far more skillful words
While I am left with an empty, unmade page

There are other poets of superior art
But please remember that I gave you your start

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                         The Principal Who Liked His Pizza

If test scores made HIM look good – pizza for all
And a hallway plaque with HIS NAME at the top
If HE could claim an academic win – pizza for all
And another plaque with HIS NAME at the top

If the drama team won a competition – pizza for all
And another plaque – HE was HIS favorite topping
If the football team won district – pizza for all
And a bigger plaque with HIS NAME at the top

And when the evening sun set over the gym
Five or six of those pizzas went home with HIM

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                  James Bond Faces Aunt Agatha’s Inquisition

                   No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to REDACTED

                   Rewriting James Bond: Offensive references to be
                   removed from Ian Fleming’s 007 novels | Euronews

Ian Fleming’s novels are *******; that’s the point
Laddy boy books for laddy boys and laddy dads
An escape from duties and domesticities
With the weekly cigar and the weekly glass

The sentencing:

Assign him Jane Austen as his reading list
No car chases, gunfire, or bikinis
Henceforth he may drink only herbal tea
And breathe only candle-scented air

Reduce him to a weakling all pale and harried
And then complain that he’s not the man you married

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                  National Public Radio on Saturday Morning
                  While Driving to the Dump in an Old Pickup
                  Whose Radio Receives Only Two Stations

Wait, wait; don’t bore me

(knowing chortles and polite applause)

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Except for the title none of this is mine; the direct quotation following is from Shakespeare:

                                              Jill Macbeth

…Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood,
Stop up th’ access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
Th’ effect and it! Come to my woman’s *******,
And take my milk for gall, your murd’ring ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature’s mischief! Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark
To cry, “Hold, hold!”

                                         -Macbeth I.v.41-62

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Macbeth, by William Shakespeare

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                            Monsoon Coffee

The old men argue whether we have monsoons
Or if our afternoon thunderstorms are unworthy
Of scientific labels, notations, or marks
To be discussed on the six o’clock news

Each day at four I take my coffee outside
To sit beneath the oak and take the air
With a book, the Wordle, or an empty mind
As thunderheads rise like monsters in the east

Fearsome clouds menace the sky-paling moon
And breezes wind themselves up for the daily monsoon

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                         ­  Double Haters

                            The windiest militant trash
                            Important Persons shout

                      -W. H. Auden, “September 1, 1939”

No
I am not a double hater
I am a single writer
Since both parties chose to crater
I refuse to choose either blighter
They offer us only Stink and Stank
So I will leave my ballot blank

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

               You Are Not Something Burnt into the **** of a Cow

So many people want to be brands
I hope you are not a brand
I want to read your words, not your brands
You are a poet
You are not a label on a tin of tomatoes
Or something burnt into the **** of a cow

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                      The Percolation of Our Beautiful Green Earth

Like MeeMaw’s aluminum coffee ***
The earth percolates through all the seasons
Of rain and drought and freeze, of dust and mud
The ground we work gives up its annual troves

The tiller’s tines turn up old pocketknives
Old nails, old screws, old bits of window glass
An unfired flash cube from a party long ago
Gardening is also archaeology

I excavate from the machine while sitting in the shade
Decades-old fence wire wrapped around the blade

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…!

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                            Waiting-Room Art:
      Same Old Bicycle Leaning Against the Same Old Sunlit Wall

We’ve all seen that bicycle, that sunlit wall
In photographs taken in Italy
And Austin (don’t forget the bike-lock now)
In paintings from old-lady art classes everywhere

Perhaps that bike and wall are a Statement
About Milieu and Patina and, like, stuff
Neoformalist New Socialist Realism
Inverted kitsch deflating the patriarchy

I propose a fresh vision: what I would like
Is that old wall crumbling, and crushing that bike

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                     You’re in Good Shape – for a Man Your Age

                         Which is what my NP and doctors say

My heart has a gadget to make it tick
I stumble about with a walking stick
My brand-new glasses are ever so thick
My neck it suffers a perpetual crick
And I just don’t get around so quick
But I’ve still got my hair; it’s pretty slick
And I’m young in spirit, still doing my schtick!

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                      Giv­ing People The Bird

                                An Empty Chick-fil-A Car
                      Idling in the Medical Clinic’s Red Zone

Blocking the patients-only zone is a bit absurd
Or maybe Chick-fil-A is simply giving us The Bird

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                            From Shakespeare: It’s Complicated

                                  Cf. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 78

Oh, yes, you have long been a muse to me:
Erato, certainly, a goddess in jeans and sneaks
Euterpe when you sing along to the radio
But maybe now a sad Melpomene

Oh, yes, you have long been a muse to me
To my poor eyes to scan and deeply see
And then translate your joy into iambic lines
In gratitude, in hope, in forever words

Oh, yes, you have long been a muse to me
But now to others – and are we not to be?

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                The Hanging of Jake Spoon

                 Nothing in his life / Became him like the leaving it

                                         Macbeth I.iiii.7-8

At dusk. Heat. Heat and dust. Jake’s last slow ride
Words through a fog of fear, last words, slow words
Old pals and dead enemies on either side
Slow cooings and callings from unseen prairie birds

Smooth Jake, always good for a laugh and a drink
A ladies’ man, a gamblin’ man, a man of charm
Unreliable, yes, not one to pause and think
Tho’ he never meant nobody no harm

He suddenly spurred his pacer, making amends
His moment of nobility, to spare his friends