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Lawrence Hall Feb 12
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                         Welcome to the Beatnik Revolution;
                            All Major Credit Cards Accepted

                                    Vist (sic) Our Website

I saw the derivative minds of that generation destroyed by free
                    verse
Obedient in their disobedience
Against the stuff they were told to be against
And not being much for anything

Waving copies of that little Howl book
Obedient in their disobedience
1,210,000 copies in print
All Rights Reserved. Vist (sic) our website

Validated by the Library of Congress
Obedient in their disobedience
Feb 12 · 61
He'll Beat Her Up
Lawrence Hall Feb 12
He’ll beat her up
She’ll call the police
Tearful reconciliation
He’ll beat her up
She’ll call the police
Tearful reconciliation
Maybe counseling
He’ll beat her up
She’ll call the police

Or maybe there will be stuffed toys tied to a chain-link fence
And a hearse passing slowly through the gates
Some discount-store candles lined up along the curb
Gas-station flowers
Journalists will write “makeshift shrine” and “icon”
Someone will write a song
                    (“You people just don’t understand”)
Someone will write a book
                    (“You people just don’t understand”)
And The People will buy posters and tee-shirts
Lawrence Hall Feb 11
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                              I Don’t Want to go to Mass Today

To be frank (altho’ my name is not Frank)
I just don’t want to go to Mass today:
The perfumed lady who wants (and needs) a hug
The narthex politics of Trump or no Trump

The obligatory Sign of Peace handshake-around
The pimply-backed tattoos on the girl in front
The usual wheeze about the NFL
The altar-servers flicking gang-signs to their friends

But still, God on the Altar incarnates -
We are commanded there, and even better

We are wanted
Lawrence Hall Feb 11
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com


                                       Dragons for Your New Year

                                          For Doris and Anthony
                                       Who have known dragons

                    Eustace had read only the wrong books; they had a lot to
                    say about exports and imports and governments and
                    drains, but they were weak on dragons.

                   -C. S. Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader


The dragons are a polite and ancient race
And very conscious of their dignity
It would not do to neglect their seasons and feasts
Lest they neglect to visit you this year

They want to bring good fortune to your house
But first you must make a place for them -
Their breath will warm your room, your hearth, your heart
Their knowledge will make your children worthy and wise

Their songs will send your family happy dreams
For dragons are a polite and generous race
Feb 10 · 109
Super-Servile Sunday
Lawrence Hall Feb 10
A re-post from 2021. I have for years avoided watching any part of the Super Bowl because it subsumes individuals into a baying mob. This is un-American. When people surrender their individual selves they lose the capacity to think. This year it is a matter of hordes of people who feel - hardly think - that the game is rigged by the Democratic Party (I repudiate both parties, btw) as part of some bizarre plot to give the autumn election to poor old Mr. Biden. They have also accused a pleasant and apparently apolitical musician of being a part of their demented fantasy. It just won't do.

I apologize for the probably unnecessary exposition.

                                           Super Servile Sunday

O sink not down to that corrosive couch,
Docile before the Orwellian screen
That regulates the lives of the servile,
Dictating dress and drink, demeanor, dreams

Declare your independence from the sludge
Of vague obedientiaries who fling
Away their empty lives in submission
To harsh, diagonal inches of rule

Poor weaklings chanting tainted tribal songs
In chorus hamsterable, huddled, heaped
While costumed in their masters’ liveries
And feeling little while thinking even less

The very model of the State’s non-men
Predictable and dull, submissive ghosts
Crowded, herded through cosmic cattle chutes
Reflected in dim, noisy nothingness.

But you…

But you, O you, be not of them, but be
A wanderer in the moonlight, one known
To God and to His holy solitude.
Lawrence Hall Feb 10
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                      Your Favorite Author is Nothing Without You

Your favorite author would be nothing without you
Her words, his words would echo in emptiness
Without your thoughts to sort them into being
And graft them onto the arts of sub-creation

Ideas left idle on a printed page
Repose in dormancy, in darkness, in silence
But when you read them they bloom into life
Your eyes and lips free them for all humanity

You enrich and send forth all that is good and true -
Your favorite author would be nothing without you
Lawrence Hall Feb 10
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                        Reader Responses in the U. K. Daily Mail

RepubliCraps. Demoncrats. Repugs. DemoCraps. MAGA. Magats. Maggots. Clown. Orange clown. Clowns. Clown show. Absolute clown show. Absolute ****** clown show. Diaper Joe. Dr. Potatohead. *****. Selected not elected. Deplorables. Trailer trash. Absolute trailer trash. Said no one ever. Oh wait. Lock her up. Lock him up. Throw away the key. Absolutely. Joebama. Drumpf. Dump. Woke. Wokista. Wokerati. Absolutely Woke. Biden’s America. Trump’s America. Mean tweets. No mean tweets. These teachers. These schools. These universities. TDS. Absolute TDS. Liberal idiots. Extremist idiots. Absolute idiots. ROFL. Grab some popcorn. …in 1, 2, 3…  Dumpster fire. Absolute dumpster fire. You can’t make this stuff up. Train wreck. Absolute train wreck. Car crash. Absolute car crash. Total car crash. The jokes write themselves. At its finest. Pure evil. Absolute pure evil. Cue crickets. Of biblical proportions. Of epic proportions. Of absolute epic biblical proportions. Rinse and repeat. Rules for thee but not for me. Two-tier justice system. Absolute two-tier justice system. You could look it up. Follow the science. Full stop. LOL. End of. Absolutely. Fact. FACT!!!!!
Lawrence Hall Feb 10
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                             The Disinterment of Neruda

      Qui sine peccato est vestrum, primus in aliam lapidem mittat

This Neruda - the Fascists murdered him
This Neruda - let us ****** him again
The people read and love his poems too much
And they ignore ours – let us dig him up

This Neruda – we will dig him up
And subject him to our Inquisition
We now will tell you what each fragment means
Each fragment of each word, his flesh, his bone

We have our bullhorns and our three-beat chants
His poems will mean what we tell you they mean

Shut up
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                        Let’s Meet Again at the Robin Hood Oak

                                                        1.

­In my boyhood, to the Robin Hood oak
I tip-toed in those hot summer afternoons
With my three sharp arrows and my little bow
Craftily eluding the sheriff’s men

I softly whistled and waited, and then anon
From out of the sun-shimmering heat
From out of the merry magical greenwood
An answering whistle sighed through the air

Great skill at making a bow or a plan -
I was a favorite among Robin’s band

                                                         2.

In my old age, to the Robin Hood oak
I slowly walked in lonely afteryears
Carelessly, for I was a baron now
With my ownership and my walking stick

I whistled and waited, and waited more
From out of the sun-shimmering heat
From out of the merry magical greenwood
There was only a silence, a silence sad

Little boys grow up, and then must disappear -
And that’s okay; the magic is forever here
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                         Poetry and Jazz Stroll into a Smoky Bar

Poetry, like jazz, is itself
If you feel a need to explain it
You’ve failed
                          Art sings itself
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com


               Wipe That Geographical Expression Off Your Face

                Alas, poor country! / Almost afraid to know itself

                                    -Macbeth IV.iii.164-165

We are now a geographical expression
An almost amorphous land mass occupied
By violent tribes of shifting loyalties
And assemblies of squabbling Merovingians
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                        A Burning Car in Baghdad


                    The delusion that by force you can impose the
                    Millennium on the human race is one of the most
                    dangerous delusions in existence.

                           ― Agatha Christie, They Came to Baghdad


In the center of Baghdad a burning car
Illuminates long centuries of pain
Inflicted by schemes of improvement upon
A city of scholarship, wisdom, and art

Militias, commanders, air-strikes, and bombs
So clever that they can single out one car
Without harming another at the traffic light -
And somehow this will make the world all better

Dullard journalists will type “***-for-tat”
Because they don’t know anything else to say

And neither do I
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                       Cups and Jugs and Kettles and Beds

                                          St. Mark 7:1-13

Let the coffee cups rattle with denunciations
About the contextual meaning of “beds”
At the fossil table in the roadside café
That Javneh of theological studies

For the health and comfort of our other guests
No smoking, please
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                         A Sanitary Pad Along Beer Can Road

                       To walk abroad, and recreate yourselves

                                        -Julius Caesar III.ii.256

A sanitary pad along Beer Can Road
Sodden and heavy with the waning night’s damp
And beer cans shining in the morning sun
Completing a picture of misadventure

I once found a ratchet wrench about here
And a knot of twist-ties further along
And a couple of disposable lighters for toking crack
I’ll just give this latest detritus a miss

But on my morning stroll I won’t pass by
Without a prayer for happiness for all

Especially my nocturnal predecessors
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                       That was a Rough Night

          Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you about mine

                                    -Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese”

Foul accusations fly through the darkness like bats
With putrid fangs of poisons, curses, and spells
To twist the blessings of all your yesterdays
Into broken disappointments in the night

The Tempter accuses you; you accuse yourself
Soul-broken on your Procustean bed
Surrendered to the mercy of the merciless
Under the false authority of frauds

Frauds who will wither away at dawn:
Be brave, and wait and pray - for Light will come
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                         ­  A Dusty Drum Kit

                             In a re-sale shop in Huntington, Texas

Fronting for decaying videotapes
And clocks that will never again chime the time
Through tinny mechanical syncopation
A drum set reposes without percussion

An arpeggio of silent despair
Whose cymbals and snare impatiently wait
As do the bass and other impedimenta
For the hand of a youth who has something to howl

The next kid through the door might bell the cat:
“There it is – I will rhythm the truth with that!”
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

        The Latest Atmospheric River End-of-the-World
             Pineapple Express Bomb Cyclone from H**l


                     The news is falling! The news is falling!

                             -as Chicken Little did not say


An apocalyptic storm of such intensity
We’re all going drown in a flood of breaking news
The streets already overflowing with hyperbole
From reporters in damp shoes awaiting their cues
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

               A Quatrain to Explain the Infinite Monkey Theory

If you set a monkey at a typewriter
To type and type for all eternity
What he will type, that little blighter
Is a politician’s speech – nonsense, you see!
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                  Sacrifice in a Low Place

                                           Cf. 1 Kings 3

I would go to a high place and sacrifice to God
But there is no high place; this is an alluvial plain
Dark with conifers except along the sloughs
Dark in their own ways with cypress and oak

And I am old, too old to be a prophet
And I have often asked for all the wrong things
So I will take those things into the dark
And leave them at the foot of a pagan oak

I will learn the statutes from the whisperings
I will go into the quiet, and listen for God
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

A Rotor-Tiller and the Feast of the Presentation

Names have not been restored, as Aslan says
Some are pleased to call this Ground-Hog Day
Although there are no ground hogs here
But the Presentation is everywhere and forever

I passed the morning deconstructing the tiller
                                    (instead of sacred texts)
Working debris from around the tines
Thinking about the coming spring and how -
How the Presentation is everywhere and forever

Names have not been restored, as Aslan says
Still, the Presentation is everywhere and forever
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                   Browsing the Poetry Titles in the Book Store

            I soon had a thorough understanding of the rules.              
            For a poem to go through there had to be a few lines  
            devoted to [         ]

                     -Yevtushenko, p. 68, A Precocious Autobiography

Call Me by the Post-Colonial Things We Carried Without Borders in the Boat in the Twilight Garden of our Being Unsilencing the Silent Voices Songs of Our Powerful People Aimlessly in Fire New and Selected Hopes To Change Your Life Forever Becoming the Healing                                                          ­                                                       You Always Wanted to Be in the Emptiness Within While Searching the Soul of the Underself in Quest of Anti-hierarchy For Elegies of the Lover
Who
Never
Was
But
Who
Might
Be on the Silences of Screaming Wings in a Rhapsody of a Plangent Tangent of Voided Meanings at the End of the             Rainbow World When a Golden Sickle Pierced the Sighings of                     the Moon in  Your Shivering Hand Leaves in the Exiled Gentleness of              Barbed Wire Pillows Comforting Your Cerulean Soul-Quest of Meaningful    Meaninglessness adrift in the Writhing  


Arms of your Powerful Weakness as a Twinkling Pancreas Vaults        Ambition Through Disconnected Quotes from Shakespeare Who was My           Soul-Twin Aflame with Passionless Passion for a Forbidden Vegetable Incarnadining     the Cosmic Cypress of Your Unattainable Body Through the Music of                 the Trapezoids as the Forbidden Kiss of Life

And, like, stuff
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

       “My Oath of Enlistment Does Not Have an Expiration Date”

Well, yeah, it does

If it doesn’t then I’m out of uniform
If it doesn’t then I’m absent without leave
                    (54 years – you’d think someone would have noticed)
If it doesn’t then I need to report to base
If it doesn’t then I must obey President Biden

If it doesn’t then I must obey all officers
                    (Is that a shavetail ensign at my door?)
If it doesn’t then the manual of arms…
                    (With a walking-stick? Really?)
If it doesn’t then I gotta get up at 0400
If it doesn’t then my Sperry Topsiders need a shine

I left my oath of enlistment in Viet-Nam
There, with the memories of many dear friends
It will rest in peace without any regard
For someone else’s made-in-China slogan tee
Lawrence Hall Jan 31
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                           She Had a Thing About Amarillo, Texas

She bought a revolver and a box of cartridges
And on her way outta town she put six rounds
Into the Amarillo city limits sign
And for the most part lived happily ever after
This is something told to me long ago. Amarillo is great fun and could be a vacation destination.  And leave the signs alone!

25 Amazing Things to Do in Amarillo - Lone Star Travel Guide
Lawrence Hall Jan 31
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

    Elon Musk Invites Us Down for Chips and Dip and Destruction

                They have pulled down Deep Heaven on their Heads

                             -C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength

He’s implanted a chip, says Mr. Musk
Into the brain (certainly not the hip)
Of some poor patient who’s now just a husk
A talking head, a thing, a radar blip

And what could go wrong with this poor android
A man now fitted with an electric brain
Adjusted and programmed and tweaked and toyed -
A failed experiment thrashing in pain?

And if he fails, this humanoid chip
Musk might use him for guacamole dip
I am not a Luddite. Chips, as with eyeglasses, pacemakers, and artificial joints, will be used by good and wise doctors and scientists to make our lives better. But I do not trust just anyone in the matter
Lawrence Hall Jan 30
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

     A Penny Candle – and if You Don’t Have a Penny, Love will Do


          The key to the lighting of a church candle is that, in its tiny
          light, all the mystery of life is drawn up into an eternity
          excluding only sorrow and loss.

                                               -Tod Mixson


It’s not just that a candle struggles against darkness
But that we do too, trying to sort the chaos
With weary eyes and unsure, trembling hands -
But it is something that we’ve lit the candle

It’s not just that a candle flickers in the darkness
But that we shape against shadows all our hopes
Bundling them into a pilgrim’s haversack
For whatever remains of our journey to Light

For in the end we give the candle away
Offering it to a passing Whisper in the night
A Penny Candle
Lawrence Hall Jan 29
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                 This Smart Watch Will Last

                      Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in

                              -Henry David Thoreau, Walden

I do not set the time; time simply is:
The dawning day requires no entrance code
The morning frost need not be set to wake
The yakking crows cannot be switched to “Off”

The lingering fog sends no notifications
The bare-limbed oaks re-set themselves in spring
The sky is the background app refresh
The wind is a warranty for life

All these good things are made to be -
I do not set the time, but God sets me
Lawrence Hall Jan 29
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                               The Army of God and, Like, Stuff

They’re loud and they’re smarmy
They boo and they hiss
They say they’re God’s Army -
But does God know this?



An 'Army of God' Vigilante Group Plans to Head to the U.S.-Mexico Border (esquire.com)
Lawrence Hall Jan 29
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                              Nones as a Religious Category


                               …afterwards our pupils
                               will not forgive in us what we forgave

                                             -Yevtushenko, “Lies”


If children ask for bread will we give them

Musical stylings of abysmal mediocrity
Packaged in the poster-art palettes of the sixties
When the altars and the hymnals were stripped
Of everything beautiful, true, and good

When

Latin missals were reduced to baby-talk
Felt banners appeared like refrigerator art
The Body of the Lord was shoveled aside
In a malformed tabernacle of hammered scrap

And maybe that’s why the young people leave -
We’ve given them little in which to believe
Lawrence Hall Jan 27
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

               Quatrain on the Death of a Cow-Hippie Head-Banger

He was good. And I miss him. His funny hair
His high-intensity eyes, his love for life
The way his guitar was made a part of him
The heart of him, each chord a gift to God
Lawrence Hall Jan 27
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                      Quatrain on the Topic of Public Executions

On a wide-screen TV made in China
Americans scream for the deaths of Jews
And public executions for people they don’t like
Alabama kills humans with poison gas
“Alabama has done it…And now so can you.”

                        -Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall

AG Steve Marshall expects other states to follow Alabama’s ‘textbook’ nitrogen execution (msn.com)
Lawrence Hall Jan 27
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                           The Confusions of Being Human

                    To live life to the end is not a childish task

               -Pasternak, “Hamlet” (one of the Zhivago poems)

What do you do when you find yourself standing
Or maybe sitting, or kicked back with a cigarette
Among the smoking wreckage of institutions
The institutions that framed our actions and thoughts

Existentialism is inadequate
After all, we did not create ourselves
Each of us is an outward-looking I
A dependent center of reactions

But the unities upon which we depended
Have failed and collapsed upon themselves
Leaving us alone and stunned on an ashen plain
Alone and stunned and sorting out the pieces

And we can only sort them, not create them
For we are not God
                                               This is all a mystery
Lawrence Hall Jan 26
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                        M­alware is not Malwear

This site has been reported as unsafe

Malware is not malwear, although malwear
Might be more fun, depending upon the wearer
Hey, malwearer, what’s your sign? You come here often?
Want to come to my place and check out my passwords?

These files might not be safe for your computer

Malware appears uninvited on my screen
To tell me I’ve got uninvited malware
And offering to do a Hengist and Horsa on it
But not promising not to go away

But of the fruit of this app thou must not eat

We are all victims of Treason of the Long Malware
On an electronic Salisbury Plain
Lawrence Hall Jan 26
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

              Avon Man and the Mystery of His First-Best Bed

                   I gyve unto my wief my second best bed…

          -Attributed to Shakespeare in his will. Or Churchill. Or
          Milton. Or Elvis. Or Some Famous Man. And Shakespeare
          was secretly a Catholic. (No, he wasn’t.) (Yes, he was.) (No, he
          wasn’t.) (Yes, he was; I read it on the InterGossip.)

That second-best bed doesn’t matter a pop
Those anyones whoever slept in it are deads
Memorialized as dashboard bobbleheads
At Ye Olde Anne Hathawaye gifte shoppe

Kinge Richarde nevere cryede, “mye kyngdome fore ye bedde!”
Yea, goode olde Sirre Erpinghame joked, “Now lye I like a kynge”
So what’s the deale withe the firste-beste bedde thynge?
Thatte seconde bedde is where the Widowe rested hir hedde

Ande thusse ye scholares maken withouten cessatione
Unsupportede argumentes and allegationes
When it comes to Shakespearean scholarship, this isn't it.
Jan 25 · 71
Dentistry and Dogs
Lawrence Hall Jan 25
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                         ­ Dentistry and Dogs

                  What would the world be like without dogs?

                                                 -Mary Oliver

Our little bit of the world was frozen that day
At the dentist’s office something that makes something else
Do something else was frozen and would not work
And so I waited with Mary’s book about dogs

Dog is one of the messengers of that rich and still magical first world.

The frost was still upon the windowsill
As an hour passed for me and Mary’s dogs
Their adventures in the woods, their lonely times
Their happy glances into their human’s eyes

Our new dog, named for the beloved poet, / ate a book

Even though the something else was frozen in ice
Our little bit of the world was warmer for a time

Because of the dog’s joyfulness, our own is increased


Quotes from Mary Oliver, Dog Songs, Penguin, New York: 2013
Jan 24 · 99
Hickory-Doomsday Clock
Lawrence Hall Jan 24
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                    Hickory-Doomsday Clock

                                       Analogue or Digital?

That Doomsday Clock has ticked since 1947
The sweep hand always dancing on the edge of doom
Sometimes a missile more (7, 6, 5, 4…
Sometimes a virus less (a jab, I guess)

I’ve been thinking of buying me one
Maybe from the times-table at Wal-Mart
Or as a timeless fashion from Amazon
I want to know the hour we’re going to die

But are we truly any closer to Heaven?
That Doomsday Clock has tocked since 1947
Doomsday Clock
Jan 24 · 141
Out-Outpatient Surgery
Lawrence Hall Jan 24
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                       Out-Outpatient Surgery

A little happy pill along the way
A fuzzy memory of the waiting room
A bright fluorescent-lit consulting room
A slippery fake-leather patient chair

The nurse and I spoke of children and dogs
(Dang! That needle hurt!)
And about the rain outside this winter day
(Dang! That needle hurt even more!)

And the doctor spoke (of what?) (of what?)
Soothingly through the sounds of cutting flesh
Soothingly through the smells of burning flesh
And lengths of suture flying before my eyes

At home I took a happy codeine pill
While Randolph Scott rode across the TV
Nurses and doctors make you all better
Life is good
Lawrence Hall Jan 23
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

            The ***, ***, ***-Obsessed Oklahoma Legislature

         Oklahoma Bill Would Ban Sending **** Selfies Unless You're
         Married (reason.com)

The Geriatric Anti-*** League of Oklahoma
As sponsored by Senator Dusty Deevers
(And let the puns on “Dusty Deevers” bloom)
Want to save all prurient thoughts for themselves

The senator lasciviously lists the forbidden:
"****** ******* which is normal or perverted…
"lewd exhibition of the uncovered genitals
buttocks, or, if such person is female, the breast…”

That stapler in jiggly Jell-O
Had better guard its virtue in Oklahoma
Cf. The Junior Anti-*** League in Orwell’s *1984* and a gag in *The Office*
Lawrence Hall Jan 23
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                          You Are Not a Series of Adjectives

Adjectives can sometimes be useful things
And even aesthetically pleasing, you know
But
You are not a series of adjectives
You are yourself – and how wonderful you are!
A repudiation of identity politics
Lawrence Hall Jan 22
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                An Apology to Brazos Bookstore
                                        on Banned Books Week

               Oh, our descendants will burn with bitter shame
               to remember, when punishing vile acts,
               that most peculiar time, when
               plain honesty was labeled 'courage’

           -Yevtushenko, “Conversation with an American Writer”

Dear Brazos Bookstore:

Several years ago I wrote you a polite note
Suggesting that you were a bit hyperbolic
On the touchy subject of banning books
“This is America,” I said; “it doesn’t happen here”

I was wrong
I apologize

And you are brave

Cordially,
Brazos Bookstore
www.brazosBookstore.com
2421 Bissonnet St, Houston, TX 77005

(I have no professional connection with Brazos Bookstore, that wonderful, independent purveyor of books and an agora of ideas.)
Lawrence Hall Jan 21
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                               Awkward Adolescent Verse

              Poetry…
              The authority of empires, driven mad,
              Threatened it so many times,
              But it was the rulers who perished

                     -Yevtushenko, “Poetry is a Great Power”

They stole his boots even before he died
And scavengers have eaten out his eyes
His flesh and blood commingle with the mud
His rotting hands still claw the earth, the pain

A dime-store notebook, shredded with his heart
Once pencilled with his awkward, juvenile lines
Of undeveloped images and clumsy rhymes
Which will not be shaped and sharpened in this world

Among young bodies rats squabble and hiss -
Someone will be given a peace prize for this
Lawrence Hall Jan 20
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

       CBCListen, 20 January 2024: How to Feng Shui Your Fridge

I don’t think so
That doesn’t sound very nice
Lawrence Hall Jan 20
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                         ­    Methodist Pecans

Methodist pecans

Connie-the-Haircut-Queen sells us pecans
Every Christmas, good Methodist pecans
A fundraiser sponsored by the women’s club
To be baked into cookies and pies for Christmas day

Methodist pecans

They used to come from my grandfather’s trees
But now they’re grown and gathered somewhere else
Packaged in plastic, certified, and sealed
But still they’re good Methodist pecans

Methodist pecans

And in January when the hail-storms rattle
Stuffed in a barn-coat pocket while tracking cattle

Methodist pecans - Texas blessed and Texas’ best!
Lawrence Hall Jan 20
19 January 2024, Friday in the second week in Ordinary Time

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                           Quomodo Catholici inter se Loquuntur?

Scortillum, scortillum, scortillum!
(Catholic news sites - I’ve had my fill of ‘em)
I resorted to a translation program; my Latin is very poor.
Lawrence Hall Jan 20
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                 Sailing a Couch into History

         We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny,
                           but what we put into it is ours.

                         -Dag Hammarskjold, Markings, p. 51

Through eating, fatting, sleeping, video games
En couchant in a stasis ossified
By the low expectations of the zeitgeist
(“What’s a zeitgeist?”) some flail into history

The ironic echoes of Call of Duty
Flatten against an empty ‘tater-chip bag        
Yesterday flung into the baby’s crib
(“Ain’t no one seen little Shawnee today?”)

His MePhone case is manly hunter green
He's checkin’ out the fantasies on a glowing screen
Lawrence Hall Jan 19
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                   In the Foggy Dawn - a Hawk on a Fencepost

For him the hayfield is his restaurant
A baby mouse, perhaps, or a tasty rabbit
But I prefer a bacon-egg-cheese croissant -
For breakfast we are all creatures of habit!
Jan 18 · 213
You're Going to Be Okay
Lawrence Hall Jan 18
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                           You’re Going to Be Okay

You’re going to be okay
Your feet hit the deck this morning
You offered up that cup of coffee to God
And He delighted in your happiness
Lawrence Hall Jan 18
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                Let’s Have a Little Less Holiness, Please

Insurrectionists…wrote “In God We Trust” on a set of gallows erected at the Capitol…

I Have Seen Christian Nationalism Up Close. It Terrifies Me | TIME

An AR and a Bible and a wheezecake pose
Promoting murders in the Name of God
Our god is a god of vengeance and love
Let us shoot straight, hold hands, and share Jesus

An AR and a Bible and a noose
These glories are anointed by God’s love
Them Jews crucified Jesus, you know
Does this bandana make my brain look fat?

An AR and a Bible and camouflage -
Lock and load for the empty words barrage!
Lawrence Hall Jan 18
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com


   What Do These Teachers Teach These Children in These Schools?

PETA thinks this is how farmers get the wool off sheep? 😂 | Not the Bee

Sheep-shearing isn’t a topic in English class
Not here in cattle country; we give sheep a pass
Lawrence Hall Jan 18
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                       My Illegal Oxygen-ish Apple Watch

Apple WILL be banned from selling smartwatches in the US from TOMORROW over claims it stole medical tech - after court rejected tech giant's appeal | Daily Mail Online

My Apple Watch ™ © ® has the oxygen feature –
Do I confess to the Law? Or to the preacher?
Lawrence Hall Jan 17
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                               When a Judge Rebukes Mr. Trump

‘You just can’t control yourself’: Judge threatens to kick Trump out of courtroom (msn.com)

One…I mean it! One…Two…I mean it now!
You can’t carry on like that in my courtroom!
No, no, I really mean it this time! Two…!
I’m the judge so you can’t disrespect me!
Don’t make me go to three!  I mean it now!
I run a strict court so you gotta do what I say!
Two…! No, no, I really mean it this time!
No, no, I heard what you said about me!
You made me go to three so this is your fault!
The laws apply to everyone, okay!
Three…! I really, really mean it this time!
You’re grounded, buster; I mean it this time!
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