-Drudge

What do you look for in an eyeball lab-grown
While maybe it is looking back at you
And if you are looking for an eyeball
What are you looking for an eyeball with?

Will we have eyeballs grown for occasions -
A lovely blue for a day at the beach
And a stunning black for the opera
And Harris-tweed brown for a country weekend

But maybe lab eyeballs are just a rumor
A corn-ea attempt at vitreous humor!

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

             Lingering Death by Medical Office Telephone Tree

“The marshal’s been shot! Somebody get Doc!”

“Hello. You have reached Polysyllabic Medical Associates
Our hours are (mumble, mumble, mumble)
Our fax number is (mumble, mumble, mumble)
We are located up the stairs on Front Street
Next to the Long Branch Therapeutic Outreach Centre
And boutique, Florals by Miss Kitty
All patients and visitors are required to wear masks
If this is a medical emergency
Hang up and telegraph 911 from the depot
If you need a refill, contact your pharmacist
If you are a doctor, dial 1
If you know your party’s extension, dial it now

(Beep)
That number is not recognized; please try again
(Beep)
That number is not recognized; please try again
(Beep)
That number is not recognized; please try again
(Beep)

If this is for an appointment, dial 4

(Beep)
That number is not recognized; please try again
(Beep)
That number is not recognized; please try again
(Beep)
That number is not recognized; please try again
(Beep)

If you would like to speak with a nurse, dial 5

(Beep)
That number is not recognized; please try again
(Beep)
That number is not recognized; please try again
(Beep)
That number is not recognized; please try again
(Beep)”

“Somebody, go get the undertaker.”

“Hello. You have reached The Garden of Memories
Formerly known as Boot Hill
Our hours are (mumble, mumble, mumble)…”

Ubi Petrus

                                          For Inky and Jason


                                      “Ubi Petrus, ibi Ecclesia”

                                        - St. Ambrose of Milan


Where Peter was, there also was the Tomb --
Blood-sodden dreams cold-rotting in old sin,
The Chalice left unwashed, the Upper Room
A three-days’ grave for hope-forsaken men.

Where Peter is, there also should we be,
Poor pilgrims, his, a-kneel before the Throne
Of Eosian Christendom, and none but he
Is called to lead the Church to eternal Dawn.

Where Peter then will be, there is the Faith,
Transubstantiation, whipped blood, ripped flesh
A solid reality, not a wraith
Of shop-soiled heresies labeled as fresh.

Where Peter is, O Lord, there let us pray,
Poor battered wanderers along Your way.

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                        ­The Fuel Pump Screen Queen

She’s fresh and lovely on the television screen
Promoting a recipe for a sugar-free treat
And fashion tips for being In The Scene -
Her face on the fuel pump is ever so sweet

She looks so summery in her fashion tee
As gasoline vapors waft through the air
She whispers a makeup hint only to me
And the best techniques for brushing my hair

She speaks to me so charmingly and nicely
That I forget the fuel dials spinning so pricely

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                         Are We Looking Through Sauron’s Eye?

Through our glowing palantiri we watch
Dark images, shadowy and flickering
Ghostly men gathered around machines –
Are we looking through Sauron’s eye?

A silent flash, and structure disappears
Enveloped in blackness and liquid flame
Arcing bits of metal and bits of men -
Are we looking through Sauron’s eye?

Are we looking through Sauron’s eye?
And is that eye now turned on us?
A poem is itself.

Picket Fences at Camp Tien Sha

There were picket fences at Camp Tien Sha
And a sign that read “Welcome to Viet-Nam”
And nobody ever asked why that should be
Both the fences and – just why were we there?

Picket fences – so could it be that bad?
Concrete transient barracks built by the French
Hot, foul, dark, and dank – it could be that bad
Mortars in the night – Welcome to Viet-Nam

Waiting for orders – did they forget us?
There were picket fences at Camp Tien Sha

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                  An Unskilled Rotor-Tiller Tiller of the Soil

Plough Monday was by-passed some weeks ago
The Virus of Many Names kept me abed
And then the snow and ice kept me inside
And then – indolence, indolence, okay?

But today, oh, today!

The morning was fresh and cool and damp and still
I wheeled the tiller into the garden patch
Fresh gasoline, then primed the little bulb
And turned the red plastic lever just so

And pulled the cord
And pulled the cord
And pulled the cord
And said bad words
And pulled the cord
And pulled the cord
And pulled the cord
And snarled bad words
And pulled the cord –

Pow!

For smoke and fire
And noise – hooray!
Then forward the tines

The tines at first bounced off the new green grass
I pulled the smoke and noise machine back, back
And held the smoke and noise machine in place
And wrestled it, pinning it to the earth until

It bit into the grass, the bright spring grass
And hurled it back, and then some earth, and more
And still more earth, sweet earth, the nourishing earth
Flung up and out and back again, and down

And there the earth must rest for a few weeks
Then to be turned again, sweet and warm
To receive the ready seeds of happy new life
And join in the miracle of Creation

And in the summer when the soft breezes blow
Zinnias and sunflowers and wild marigolds
Will lift their heads and sing hymns to the sun
And bees and hummingbirds hum the “Amen”

And in those days I will speak kind words
To them all, and study rotor-tillers no more

No writer ever seems to exhaust the ink
That oozes from extruded plastic tubes
Made by machines and chemicals that stink
The crowded banks of the fetid Huangpu

Cheap plastic pens are given, shared, and sold,
Tapped and gnawed, pocketed, stolen, lent, and lost
Drying and dying after they grow old
Misplaced, mislaid, decayed, but seldom tossed

A ballpoint helps us with our thoughts to think
But no one ever seems to exhaust the ink

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                               Squirrels Without End, Amen

Whenever I take my book to the front-yard oak
The squirrel stretched from the feeder to the trunk
Flees in a seed-strewn panic across the lawn
To a farther tree, free of human menace

This is a young squirrel; its predecessor
Arched from feeder to trunk in exactly the same way
But held its ground, or, rather, its rough old tree
And chittered defiance in contempt of me

By summer’s end this squirrel too will stare me down -
I wonder what Pasternak wrote about squirrels

That lopper-thingie on the end of a pole
Indelicately intrudes among the leaves
Telescoped out, its harsh geometry
Unnatural among the greenery

There seeking out an elusive apple spared
The nightly browsings of the day-shy deer
Or the nightly pillagings of raccoons
Who destroy more than they will ever eat

But there’s that apple – careful, careful – snip:
And down it falls, with an apple-saucy flip!

Memorial Day III: Something about Life

“Live.  Just live.”

-Yuri in Doctor Zhivago

The plane lifted, and the cheering was wild
And then pretty quickly the pilot said
“We are now clear of Vietnamese
Territorial waters.”  There was joy,
Even wilder cheering for most, and quiet
Joy for a few.  For one, Karamazov
To hand, peace, and infinite gratitude.
“I’m alive,” he said to himself and to God,
“Alive.  I will live, after all.”  To read, to write,
Simply to live.  Not for revolution,
Whose smoke poisons the air, not for the war,
Not to withdraw into that crippling self-pity
Which is the most evil lotus of all,
But to live.  To read, to write.
                                            But death does come,
Then on the Vam Co Tay, or now in bed,
Or bleeding in a frozen February ditch;
Death comes, scorning our frail, feeble, failing flesh,
But silent then at the edge of the grave,
For all graves will be empty, not in the end,
But in the very beginning of all.

In a deep summer dusk that seems forever
A twilight of fireflies and magic found
Small children barefoot ‘round the universe
Happily pursued by a mysterious It

Home base is the foot of the old porch steps
Beneath a pantheon of elders wise:
Mothers and fathers and uncles and aunts
And in their Old Gold cigarette incense we

Tumble like puppies on those old porch steps
In a deep summer dusk that is forever

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

                      Decolonize Unpacking Actualization

Let’s unpack the cliches and hyperbole
The nuclear option and we’ve got this
What we know now we have our options frontline
Off the table Armageddon option

Privileged out of an abundance of caution
Like an actual warzone actually
Or forging a road, a path, a plan
(Says he who never saw a blacksmith’s forge)

Decolonize decolonization
And actuate actualization

(By blazing a trail that unlocks the future)

But What About the Dog?

Bedtime is a poem written with love:
You change into your jammies at 8 o’clock
You wash your hands and face, you brush your teeth
You kneel beside your bed and say your prayers

And then the dog leaps up onto your pillow
And then your mother says the dog can’t stay
And then you plead, and doggie looks so sad
And then your mother sighs and says, “All right,

“But only for tonight,” then kisses you

(but not the dog)

Childhood is a poem written with love

The White House Staff & Boys’ Choir

Gas-station shades, and identification
Dangling from their necks like nooses at rest
Ganymedes hoping to be noticed today
Dancing attendance upon the Throne of Games

Castrati commanded to tune their throats
Each secretly fearing he will be next
To be stripped of all for that walk of shame
Passes and pass codes passed on to others

Little Ken dolls flung about in childish glee,
While decorative generals nod and agree

So Bubby said that on graduation night
He and Jamby was gonna leave the gym
Toss their rented caps and gowns to some friends
Rev up their Harleys, and leave forever

This little town, where nothin’ ever happens

They had made their plans, you see, real good plans
They’d pack what they needed in their saddle bags
And thunder night and day to Florida
Because there was good jobs waitin’ in Florida

Away from this town, where nothin’ ever happens

They wasn’t gonna stop except for gas
Gas and eats and beer and the American road!

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

They wasn’t gonna really stop until
Their front wheels touched the cold Atlantic

Not like in this town, where nothin’ ever happens

But they didn’t.  

                                     And next year Bubba rolled
His pickup on that curve next to the school

This little town, where nothin’ ever happens

No one seems to care; no one really listens
If you don’t play football, baseball, or basketball
Nobody cares. Most teachers don’t know me
And I don’t know them. We need orange jumpsuits

You can’t ever talk to the principal;
He’s too busy, and if you do, he finds
Something wrong with you, and gives you a sermon
Maybe his Jesus loves me, but he sure doesn’t

The assistant principal doesn’t know us
Or care about us; she just screams at us
Unless you’re an athlete. She likes athletes
Everybody just seems so uncomfortable

Or like they don’t want to be here…

“WHY AREN’T YOU IN CLASS?!  WHO’S YOUR TEACHER?!”

Reptilian Whisperings

Ipse *** caro sit reservat iram, et propitiationem petit a Deo: quis exorabit pro delictis illius?

He that is but flesh, nourisheth anger, and doth he ask forgiveness of God?  who shall obtain pardon for his sins?

-Ecclesiasticus 28:5

Like Cleopatra’s asp they want to cuddle
Against one’s heart: resentments slithering
About, indignities, enormities
Demanding incessant indulgences

Their reptilian whisperings hissering
Self-pity, inverted self-spiraling,
In closing, falling, dying loops until
Nothing is left even to pity itself

They are writhing about us even now -
Like Cleopatra’s asp they want to cuddle

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                    Christmas Eve Eve Eve

Winter arrives, they say, at 8:31
And how do they know? The light doesn’t change
The soft pale light filtering through the fog
Upon the grey-brown fields who have fallen asleep

While we speak of lockdowns and rollbacks and deaths
And plan for the least-attended Christmas Mass
The fields and forests hardly speak at all
Only in their prayerful whispers of the Eternal

Time is  told to us by the sun, moon, and stars -
And all the seasons arrive in God’s good time

Paleo-Hippies at Work and Play

Having withdrawn from the existential struggle,
Surrendering their arms and protest signs,
They muster in Denny’s for the Senior Special
Uniformed in knee-pants and baseball caps
And Chinese tees that read “World’s Greatest Grandpa,”
Hearing aids and trifocs at parade rest,
And quadrupedal aluminum sticks
Raging against the oxygen machine.
Not trusting anyone over ninety,
They rattle their coffee cups and dentures
Instead of suspicious Nixonians,
And demand pensions, not revolution.
They mourn classmates dead, not The Grateful Dead.
They do not burn their Medicare cards
Tho’ once they illuminated the world
With their flaming conscription notices.
They no longer read McKuen or Tolkien
Or groove to the Mamas and the Papas;
Their beads and flowers are forever filed
In books of antique curiosities
Beside a butterfly collection shelved
In an adjunct of the Smithsonian
Where manifestos go to be eaten
By busy mice and slow-pulsing fungi.
As darkness falls they make the Wheel, not peace -
They did not change the world, not at all, but
The world changed anyway, and without them,
And in the end they love neither Jesus
Nor Siddhartha, but only cable t.v.

Seventh Day in the Octave of Christmas 1

“Lest our old robes sit easier than our new”

Macbeth II.iii.37

Does the year fail, or is it we who fail?
This Octave day in darkness cold begins
And on the radio the same dark news
That began this fading Gregorian year

The well-turned compost heap of history
On which we flung the grounds and husks of hope
Expecting little, and so not disappointed
No resolutions, then, no black-eyed peas

No cabbage; let the months fall as they will:
Does the year fail, or is it we who fail?

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                   Ten Knots along a Cord

                       A trewe swinkere and a good was he,
                       Lyvynge in pees and parfit charitee

                                 -Chaucer’s Prologue

See the plowman walking home from the fields
He plods along with the pace of centuries
There is no haste, for time hardly exists
Only the seasons, rolling like cosmic tides

And in his hand, ten knots along a cord
To count each Ave as it passes his lips
And through his heart and hopes and gratitude
His soul secure along the links of being

See the plowman dreaming home from the fields
His feet upon the earth, his head among the stars

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                             I Met a Girl in Newfoundland

She was seated behind the courtesy desk
At the Costco in Saint John’s
All bundled up and shivering
On a drizzly morning in July

“Oh, it’s not that cold,” I laughed
“I’ve never been warm in my life,” she replied
“I’ve never been off this island
And I’ve never been warm in my life”

After a pause, I slunk away
To ponder my coldness that summer day

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                   Keats Helps Carry a Cat to the Veterinarian

          [I]f Poetry comes not as naturally as the Leaves to a tree
                                 it had better not come at all

             -John Keats, Letter to John Taylor, February 27, 1818 1

The leaves come naturally from the trees today
As autumn floats away, onto the pages of life
Memories set down, one word at a time
Or phrases scribbled in heart-leaping haste

But in humility the poor poet perceives
That lines often don’t come naturally at all
Resisting as fiercely as hissing cats
Being crated for a trip to the vet

No

Poetry doesn’t come as easily as all that -
Come, Mr. Keats, and help me with this cat!


1 John Keats – "Keats's Axioms" -- Letter to John Taylor, February 27, 1818 | Genius

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                  A Reasoned but as Yet Inconclusive Debate
                             on the Events of 6 January 2021


Some assembly was required; the arguments are from:

The Merchant of Venice IV.i
The Constitution, Amendment XIV, Section 3
The Jerusalem Bible, Psalm 106


The quality of mercy is not strain’d
No person shall…hold any office
Happy are we if we exercise justice

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes
Civil or military, under the United States
And constantly practise virtue

But mercy us above this sceptred sway
Who, having previously taken an oath
We have sinned quite as much as our fathers

(Mercy) is enthroned in the hearts of kings
To support the Constitution of the United States
We have been wicked, we are guilty

And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
Shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion
For the sake of his name, he saved them

When mercy seasons justice
Against the same
Having faith in his promises

For both the Jews require signs, and the Greeks seek after wisdom#

-Douay-Rheims

Having barely graduated from school
Being fitted with wisdom just won’t happen
But a sign would be nice, a miracle
Just a small one, to make sense of all this

I wouldn’t know a Q source from shoe polish
But don’t patronize me with bumper stickers,
Reimagine Truth as paradigm shifts,
Or shout out with a Sola Scriptura

I am already my own stumbling block
And my own foolishness (complete with notes)

Ash Wednesday in Libya

For Anthony Germain of the CBC

The wisdom of the desert is dispersed
Among the industrial monuments
To mechanized ******, wireless chaos,
And war-**** for touch-screen degenerates

On this Ash Wednesday night while smoky flares
Obscure, with false, flickering fumes, the stars
God sent to dance above those ancient lands,
You choke and weep among the ashes of

More victims of pale Herod’s shopping trips.
So of your kindness grant that we, your friends,
May wear your ashes for you on this night,
For you, a truth-teller among the liars,

And for the weary innocents who flee
The ashes of their burnt and blasted world

A grown man in knee-pants and a cartoon tee
Flip-flopping along in his shower shoes
His hands up in surrender as he runs
A MePhone in his left, water bottle in his right

Nasaling “OmyGod! OmyGod! OmyGod!”
It’s his all-purpose whining upspeak chant
Wailed out for any grade less than an A
Or for a kitty-cute MeTube video

And now for a campus shooting: “Why me!?”
I just didn’t think it would happen here!”


(cf. Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther)

I. From a Vietnamese / Cambodian / Egyptian / Israeli / Lebanese /
Sudanese / Syrian / Afghan Child’s Garden of Verses

Flare light
Flare bright
First flare I see tonight
I wish I may
I wish I might
Not be blown to death tonight

II. From an American Man’s Twooter of Self-Pity

Subtle beep
Subtle beep
‘wakening me from my sleep -
Oh, no! I’m going to die!
Not meeeeeee! Don’t wanna fry!
It’s all about ME – boo-hoo!
Poor ME! Poor ME! I’m gonna SUE!

“…or if we must be wakeful, cheerful…”
-from St. Thomas More’s evening prayer in A Man for all Seasons

Soft, healing sleep now rolls away, away
One’s senses flicker unreliably
The electronic weather panel glows
The CPAP whispers a leaking-air hissssssss

Awake. And why? The day was cruel enough
And now the night reproaches with things done
And things not done, all mixed in raw reproach
Life-choices laughing, mocking, taunting

Perhaps sleepless Macbeth can tell us why
With mirth displaced, all through these haunted hours

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                               A Child’s Garden of Worse(s)

                   Some poets wrote verses which were not meant
                   to charm the reader but to get them a Stalin prize.

                  -Yevtushenko, A Precocious Autobiography, 1963

The children who are permitted to live
Are not permitted to read what they want
When they ask for adventures our censors give
Ideology, instead of a jaunt

The children who are not submissive to the code
Not following this week’s fashions in science
Or who presume to kick against the goad
Will be inclusively loved into compliance

And from the Hippocrene a taste, a drink?
Oh, no! Children are now forbidden to dream or think

If the Russians Find Out
That the Iced Tea was Bugged…

If the Russians find out that the iced tea
Was bugged they may well conclude that Area 51
Has tested Tom Brady’s jersey which was stowed
In a bus station locker in Donetsk

With the claim check issued to Kellyanne Conway
And passed to a North Korean operative via
A secret drop in a hollow pumpkin
Behind a voting machine in Spokane

That was hacked by a rogue albino nun
Carrying secret numbers for Rand Paul

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

   Thoughts During that Famous Light Collation on Good Friday

This morning I mowed the lawn, the springtime lawn
Then messed about with flowerpots and bees
In this little safe space of happy green
A shadow of Heaven beneath wise Plato’s oak

This evening I will visit Jerusalem
And follow timidly the Stations of the Cross
Not wanting to be noticed by Romans or Greeks
(Setting aside the fact that I am a Roman)

Time stops - with faltering steps and a contrite heart
A journey into the dark, and then – waiting

A poor old man chants through his crumb-y beard:

(In iambic dimeter)

“The WORLD has CHANGED”
“The WORLD has CHANGED”

(sometimes unstressed-unstressed-unstressed-to-stressed,
Even though his biscuit is not impressed)

“The world has CHANGED”
“The world has CHANGED”

(and back to iambic dimeter)

“The WORLD has CHANGED”
“The WORLD has CHANGED”

While at another table a man shouts
Importantly into his busy-ness ‘phone:

“SO DO YOU WANT TO PAY YOUR MONTHLY BILLS
OFF EACH MONTH LIKE I DO? THIS IS A GREAT…”
(He pauses for a bite of his Big Linda
Braekfast [sic] Special)…“OPPORTUNITY
FOR YOU I NEED GOOD SALES REPS THAT’LL WORK
HARD TO REPLACE SALES REPS THAT WOULDN’T!”

A part of this healthy, nutritious breakfast

When Lot’s wife shook with
Anger or fear, and looked back -
What there did she see?

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                     Dull Substance Indeed!

                                   Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 44

When we are young we are like airy spirits
Smooth and lean and lithe, strong in limb and hope
Earth, water, air, and fire sustain our flights
Beyond all time, beyond the weight of substance dull

But with age, even the stars grow heavy and dim
The orders four of all created things
Burden our love with distances and walls
Pulling us down, wrecking our happy dreams

I cannot run to you, I cannot fly
And yet I know you’re here, in my poor mind’s eye

Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome

See now Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome
Three celebrants mitred with golden light  
And vested in pillar, temple, and dome
They lift life’s elements in sacred rite:      
  
Jerusalem the Wild, where prophets sing
Athens the Reasoner, amid her vines                    
Rome, the Giver of Laws, whose trumpets ring:
All send us civilization through wonders and signs                        

In faith and form and word and polychrome -
See now Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome

The cold is more poetic than the warm
A man coat-huddled against December’s winds
Evokes more sympathy in those dark days
Of stinging sleet and menacing blue clouds

The warm is less poetic than the cold
A man hat-shielded against September’s sun
Evokes no sympathy in those bright days
Of dripping sweat and dripping-too sun screen

And though McKuen sang “Listen to the warm”
There’s music in the cold while icicles form

For Our Special Prosecutors,
Who Guard and Guide Us

Oh, borscht!  Those pesky Russkies under my bed
Were marching around all night, changing my votes
Beaming mysterious rays through my sleepy head
And snooping through my lesson plans and notes

They programmed my radio with Marx and Lenin
Plastered a poster of Putin to my wall
Sailed Admiral Kuznetzov across my linen
Layered a Petrograd accent over my Texas drawl

The special prosecutor says no further discussions –
Everything’s the fault of those perfidious Russians!

The Smart Phone That Came in From the Cold

Along the bridge that was a wall a phone
Whispered endearments to a thermostat
Hoping to turn it as a double agent
Which would betray the satellite TV

Beyond the talking doll that talks too much
The new refrigerator’s ice machine
Betrayed its memory chip to a light bulb
Which killed an activity tracker gone rogue

Your teapot is a data dump – it’s true!
And your fountain pen is ratting on you

“Whatever Power or powers there might be,
The rules can’t possibly apply to ME.”

“And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes”
-Chaucer

Everyone is a palmer this holy day
Seeking the strange, elusive shores of truth
Each pilgrim bearing in his eager hands
A palm frond and a photocopied hymn

The pilgrimage begins in the parking lot
And marshaled by the blue HANDICAPPED signs
Ascends to the doors, the narthex, and in,
Up to the Altar, there where all worlds meet

Come to Jerusalem; you’re on the way -
Everyone is a palmer this holy day

Sunflowers do not bend toward the Sun; they genuflect
Which is exactly right for morning prayers
They have waited in place throughout the night
For His morning, and true enough, He comes

And through the day His liturgies of Light
Illuminating the letters and margins of life
With all the ornaments of Creation
Delight each flower in its work and play

Ordering all endeavors to great effect -
Sunflowers do not bend toward the Sun; they genuflect

The merry banter of the waitress flirting
With her old men the negotiations
For a coffee refill the rattle of flatware
And the clatter-clat of the breakfast plates

The buzz of conversation and over there
A Bible verse and a head bowed in thanks
“Then Grandpa shot Billy” and too the hum
Of how’s-the-weather going to be later on

The usual beginning to another work day…
But wait…but what…what did that old man say?

(To the tune of Detroit Diesels)

When we were sailors we seldom thought about
Being sailors. We thought about, well, girls
And happenin’ tunes from AFVN
‘Way down the river in happenin’ Saigon

We thought about cars and beaches and girls
And would a swing ship bring any mail today
In big red nylon sacks of envelopes
Love postmarked in a fantasy, The World

We thought about autumn and home and girls
While sandbag stacking and C-Rat snacking
We thought about being clean and dry again
While pooping and snooping in Cambodia

When we were sailors we thought about our pals
And what they were, and who
                                                       before the dust-offs flew

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

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                   My Songs are off Spotify

I’m going to take my songs off Spotify
Not that I know what Spotify might be
Or that I have any songs to take away
Only that it seems to be a thing these days

I want to be censured by Republicans
Not that Republicans know what they might be
Or that they ever notice me at all
Only that it seems to be a thing these days

I want to think today and pray for you -
Now those are exactly the things to do!

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.”

Upon reading Amon Towles’
A Gentleman in Moscow

Civilization requires a little effort
Ties must be knotted correctly, shoes must be polished
Cuffs must be linked, but not at all gaudily -
Elegant understatement at all times

On every occasion say, “Thank you” and “Please”
When addressing a lady one’s hat is off
And if tomorrow they are going to shoot you
Or beat you to death in a re-named street  

Do comb your hair, and try to stand up straight:
Civilization requires a little effort

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

             ***! It’s the Most Agonizing Awful Pain Ever!!!!!!!!!

                                        (Have you got an aspirin?)

Unless it involves writhing on the floor
(Or another appropriate surface)
Feeding the ducks, explosions behind the eyes
Flailing at the end of a cosmic centrifuge

Shrieking in pain hearing a butterfly
Floating around some twenty miles away
Grasping at bottles of futile agony pills
And begging for a merciful end to life

Unless it’s all of these, and sometimes more -

It’s not a migraine