"The old order changeth, yielding place to new” 1

On that cold night Sir Bedivere looked long
Into the dawnlight where three Queens gold-crowned 2
With Arthur passed at last into the West
And the sun rose, but not upon the King

Then in the silence of the raw new year
A masterless knight turned unto the hills
And after wanderings there took the cowl
And among new faces told the beads of worlds

For us – our old year too is someone’s new
With quiet grace and faith we pass from view


1 This line appears both in “The Coming of Arthur” and in “The Passing of Arthur” in Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, framing the arcing narrative.

2 The three Queens, too, appear in “The Coming of Arthur” and in “The Passing of Arthur.”  They are perhaps symbols of faith, hope, and charity from 1 Corinthians.

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                             Broccoli on the Primary Ballot

                         (as President Bush maior did not say)

Broccoli, limp broccoli, that’s all I see
Just rotting broccoli all stink, stunk, stank
No real choices today, only broccoli –
The same old broccoli, putrid and rank

No Exit 1

I fled it, down the minutes and down the hours 2
I fled it, from each InterGossip troll
I fled it, despairing, with weakening powers
But I could not escape the super bowl

1 No Exit, Jean Paul Sartre
2 “The Hound of Heaven,” Francis Thompson

An After-Market Warranty for my Catholic Space Laser

             “...tremulous little people of dim intellect and hyperactive
               imagination...need that Wondrous Explanation that will
               quiet all their fears, thrill them with villains to revile, and
               never tax their feeble powers of intellection.”

                        -John D. MacDonald, Reading for Survival

The Great Texas Emu Bubble, crop circles
Power crystals, cryptocurrency
Jewish space lasers, messages from Q
Lizard people abducted by aliens

Enron, obey the science, the settled science
Chloroquine, tulips, herd immunity
Your Norton has expired, buy magic beans
Invoice #666 needs to be paid today

Your uncle in Nigeria is in lots of trouble
And don’t forget the South Sea Bubble

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

                     Six Months of Heat and Slanting Yellow Light

Six months of heat and slanting yellow light
And heat and damp and slanting yellow light
And heat and rot and slanting yellow light
And heat and pain and slanting yellow light
And heat and pain and burning yellow light
And heat and pain and sour yellow light

Summer

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?

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

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

                               All Intelligence is Artificial

No, no, we are not banks of blinking lights
And random teletype-type taps and beeps
Like Patrick McGoohan’s educational General
Or George Jetson’s mainframe at Spacely Sprockets

And we are not new Robby-the-Robots
Nor one with The Borg, with electric eyes
Scanning decaying humans for their flaws
Devouring a pancreas and a battery for lunch

We are within and through God’s intelligence -
The artificial part is that we must work it

What Would Chaucer’s Pardoner Say?

Someone has opened a McDonald’s there
Around the corner from Saint Peter’s Square

And this has distressed a cardinal or three -
Yankee capitalism, don’t you see

But Big Mac pays thirty thousand in rent
Each month to the Vatican (Heaven-sent?)

Which owns the building, a profitable touch
Thus paying the water and light bills and such

So bring on the sodas, ‘burgers, and fries
Through golden arches under Roman skies!

An Empty, Rusting Boxcar

This day will be just like so many others
An empty rusting boxcar creaking and grinding
Along behind other rusting boxcars
And followed by yet more rusting boxcars

Along a railway line from nowhere to nowhere
Across far plains, dry, featureless, and void
Dreams ride the rails like hoboes from the past
But they never seem to arrive anywhere

An empty rusting boxcar creaking and grinding
This night will be just like so many others

Borodin: On the Steppes of Central Asia

Lost in a remote province of the mind
A youth attends to the cheap gramophone
Again: On the Steppes of Central Asia,
A recording by a mill town orchestra
Of no repute.  But it is magic still:

While washing his face and dressing for work
In a clean, pressed uniform of defeat,
For ten glorious minutes he is not
A function, a shop-soiled proletarian
Of no repute.  Beyond the landlord’s window,

Beyond the power lines and the ***-holed street,
He searches dawn’s horizons with wary eyes
For wild and wily Tartars, horsemen out
To blood the caravans for glory and gold.
A youth greets the day as he truly is:

A cavalryman, a soldier of the Czar,
Whose uniform is glorious with victory.

Look Back in Petulance

A Kitchen Microwave Drama
Featuring Angry Young Persons

Dramatis Personae:

Rainblossom – an existential performance artist

Skydream – a self-authenticating air-vegan

The stage is set as the world of our dreams, peopled with only the good who dream dreams and vision visions and, like, you know, and don’t eat our forest friends, and stuff.  The actors are dressed in hand-dyed Colombian ruanas to represent The True.

Rainblossom –

I demand that you validate our soul!

Skydream –

As a cosmic sunbeam of otherness

I must not.

Rainblossom –
                       O where are my comic books?

Skydream –

They have been cleansed, just as my soul has sung
Unto the Cosmic Dissonance of love

Rainblossom –

Oh, Oh, Oh

Skydream –

                     Look, Look, Look

In unison –

                                     A vision of…Truth

Rainblossom –

But our truth, not some other bogus truth

Skydream –

                                                              ­                 Woke, Woke


                                                 fin

*The writers, cast, and crew of The Green Street Meadows Collective of Artists and Workers with Fists and Dreams and Words United Against the Occupation (Your Major Credit Card Welcome) neither need nor desire your cheap, shallow, bourgeois, sexist, racist applause to validate our existential worth. Be in awe, and then slink away in your individualist privileged guilt.

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                     Underneath that Mango Tree in 1962

                           Underneath the mango tree
                           Me honey and me make boolooloop soon

Maybe the honey is in her eighties now
Sitting underneath a mango tree
Playing with her grandchildren in the undertaker’s wind
Smoking a cigarette and remembering a handsome boy

Bring me a poem.  You can find them anywhere –
In the Aer Lingus, sitting next to you
And sometimes scattered among the summer leaves
Misplaced in gutters or floating in the air

Strolling along Bachelors’ Walk, or maybe
Adrift upon the Liffey-water, where once
The gunboats roared like dinosaurs, their years
Passing like smoke, like burning, falling walls

Poems everywhere –

Beside the fire, drinking a cup of tea
Or talking with a friend – poems everywhere!

Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.

     The Tempest III.ii.129-130


Be not
Afraid
Iambs
Are just
The way
We speak
They are
Our natch
Ural
Rhythm

Or:

Be not afraid; iambs are just the way
We speak; they are our natural rhythm 1

Sometimes they must be squashed a bit, and then
(Hear “natural” as two syllables, a pair

Othertimes “natural” is read as three) –
Be a skilled artist in your poetry!



1 “Rhythm” is a trochee, not an iamb
   But let it stay, that poor, little lost lamb

Shakespeare in the Pork

Is this a protest which I see before me,
Clichés to abuse the script? Come, let me meme thee.
I have a master’s degree, so hold still.
Art thou not, sign waver, a Democrat?

Or art thou but a pale Republican
Proceeding from the heat-oppres’sed drain?
     (that swamp metaphor, remember?)
I see thee yet, in form as palpable
As a 1950s fraternity boy

Civility thickens, and threatens life’s play
So all ideologues, just
                                           go
                                                      away

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

                                 Before the Magi Came

                                 -1 Maccabees 4:36-60

Yes, long before the holy Magi came
Judah the Maccabee brought forth his gifts
First scourging the Temple clean of false gods
In prayerful preparation for the True

And then presented God with oil and bread
A consecrated Altar of undressed stones
Incense and lamps and songs and grateful hearts
And an octave of inextinguishable light

Thus, long before the holy Magi came
Even before the Star, Judah brought a flame

Duct-Tape Automobile
How awkward when a body part
Falls out onto the interstate
That fragment of FoMoCo art -
It spun away in a figure eight!

There is a new part now on order
For this old car; it ain’t no Lexus
It rolls along in taped disorder
And that is how we do it in Texas

God bless our state, and the strong duct tape
That holds together my Ford Escape

A Harvey Refugee Reports:

When she with cats, papers, a change of clothes
And her old college bag to hold them all
Was one refugee among others in a dump truck
A Houston Airport Authority dump truck

Dieseling through rain and water and fear
With muck and mud sloshing across their feet
A woman next to her then laughed and said,
“Now we’re the people they take pictures of”

But there was no Capa to frame the scenes
Only oh-my-Godders with MePhone screens

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

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                       I Do Not Count the Clock

                                      Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 12

I do not count the clock when I’m outside
I do not count the leaves, fallen and sere
I do not count the silver in your hair
Though I celebrate them all the same

(But not the clock; there is no love in clocks)

These golden days have beauties of their own
Their richness born from the promises of spring
The culminations of summer’s growing days
Crowned with silver by the first falling frost

I do not count the clock when I’m outside
I do not count the clock when I’m with you

The Bishop of DaNang

In Grateful Memory:
Pierre Marie Pham Ngoc Chi,14 May 1909 – 21 January 1988

What did he think of his Americans
Some six or so, just kids, in jungle greens
Receiving from his hands the Sacrament
Of Confirmation there, among Marines

A Quonset hut chapel in the morning sun
Blistering the steel in its passage to noon
Anointing all with gun oil and with sweat
“Do you reject Satan and all his works…?”

The Word and his blessings, a group picture -
And what did the NVA think of him?

A Diva’s Demands

Let be set out a wooden crucifix
Of indifferent and artless workmanship
Upon a table where the lamplight falls
In yellow circles on a book or two,
And sheets of paper and a quirky pen.

Let be set up a surplus Navy bunk
With mattress and blanket, and pillow too,
If Brother Guestmaster has them to hand,
Luxury enough for merciful sleep,
Or combat desperate against fearful dreams.

Let be set into the wall a hook or nail
To serve the office of a wardrobe there,
Burdened with little but perhaps too much:
A decent habit for the liturgies,
A worn-out coat, a hat against the sun.

Let be set into the cell an exile,
A man of no reputation at all,
Unnoticed in the streets, unseen, unknown,
But who delights in anonymity,
Here in this palace in Jerusalem.

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

Saharan Dust

The sky is a visitor from Africa
Come all the way to the Americas
To say hello, and bless these skies awhile
With a hemispheric umbrella pearl-grey

How like an overcast of dreams it seems
Shielding the land away from the summer heat
Shading the green into an all-day dusk
Almost iridescent in glowing layers

The sun will return soon, but for now
The sky is a visitor from Africa

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                               A Failure to Practice Caritas
                         for a Certain Fellow Human Being

                            "I have never wished a man dead,
           but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure."

                               -attributed to Mark Twain

When God's good time puts an end to that snake
And obsequies are read over that foul mistake
And the interment prayers are reverently spake
Oh, let us not forget the wooden stake

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                Indian Summer

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

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

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

Within the Octave of Christmas

For Eldon Edge, Patron of Christmas Bonfires

The wan, weak winter sun has long since set
And on the edge of stars a merry fire
Sends sparks to play among the tinseled frost
That decorates the fields for Christmas-time.
Within this holy octave, happy men
Concelebrate with beer, cigars, and jokes,
This liturgy of needful merriment.

Because

The Holy Child is safe in Mary’s arms,
Saint Joseph leans upon his staff and smiles,
The shepherds now have gone to watch their sheep,
And all are safe from Herod for a time.

Our Christmas duty now is to delight
In Him who gives us joy this happy night.

Young Karamazov – once upon a time
Strolled dreaming through the happy hopes of youth
And surely wondered about spring and love
Wrote clumsy verse, perhaps, for a pretty girl

Then fell unfortunately into fashion:
The acquisition of proud vanities
Through the disposition of dreams and souls
Until he was only an old man who

Sat brooding through the bitter schemes of age
Old Karamazov – lost upon a time

The Death of a Good and Faithful Spider

A good and faithful spider lived its life
In spinning and dusting and catching pests
In the ikon corner among the saints:
Kyril and Methodius, Seraphim

Tikhon the Wonderworker, Vladimir
Anna of Kashin, Nicholas the Czar
Zosima, Xenia of Saint Petersburg
And all the cloud of holy Slavic witness

Whose images were guarded worthily
By a little spider who served God well

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

                             A Busy Dachshund Puppy

She leaves you a gift on the kitchen floor
And another on the living-room rug
And barfs up half a frog just inside the door
And barfs again – a poorly-digested bug

She bites into cranky old Pepper-Cat’s tail
(Something so twitchy must surely taste good)
And Pepper-Cat spanks her; oh, what a wail!
(Dear pup, there’s a difference between could and should)

And in the evening, while you doze over a book
She rests upon your heart, and gives you that look
And her big eyes ask,
                                  Am I your very good dog?

Oh, yes

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

                                     ­  Bagram Air Base

                                      Shelley was Right

I met a veteran from an antique land,
Who said – “A looted fortress of concrete
Stands in the desert...Near it, on the sand,
Half sunk lies a computerized spreadsheet

Whose clever numbers and totaled-up tallies
Tell that our keyboard commanders well read
The shifting winds in political rallies
(Never mind an accurate count of the dead)

And on the side of a wrecked deuce-and-a-half:
My name is Builder of Democracies;
Look upon my Works, ye Mighty – and laugh!
The well-built airbase remains yet today

To that colossal base still standing there
The Chinese army speeds from far away.”

Not a Good Comrade

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

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

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

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

                                      Where Danger Lurks

You must be careful about your surroundings
Not overly tense but ready for anything
Balanced on your feet, looking around
Paying attention to everyone’s hands and eyes

Always ready for an unexpected punch
Some long-ago resentment coming to boil
Or a random stranger who doesn’t like your face
Your voice, your shoes, your shirt, your tie, your coat

In a fetid cesspool of drama and divorce –
I allude to a Christian funeral, of course

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                                         Front Toward Enemy

If
In what we may laughingly call real life
You can read these three words

                                     FRONT TOWARD ENEMY

You’re in the wrong place

Rachel, Weeping for Our Children

From an idea suggested by Kelly

No soldiers come, with glaring eyes, with death
To drag our children out into the road
To ****** away their lives into the dust
With pilum, gladius, or manly fist

With Romans as advisors standing by
Amid obscenities, curses, and screams
A fog of witness for that old excuse:
It’s all about the quality of life

Confusion now persuades with soft, soft breath
And therapists come, soothingly, with death.

To Our Commander-in-Chief
                       and Manque Leader of the Free World
                       And All His Old Men Golfing Buddies
                Scheduling Their Tee-Times Around Missile Launches

A dying nineteen-year-old can’t even scream
When half his face has been blown away
He can only gurgle, his remaining eye
Staring wildly in agony and fear

Your man-child plays soldier on guided hunts
Kitted out like Rambo, and KA-BLAMMING
A bighorn sheep the guide spotted for him
Taking he-man selfies while yelping “OOOOH-RAH!”

A dying nineteen-year-old can’t even scream
When half his face has been blown away

Community College for Everyone

“Tolle Lege - Take up and read”
-a child’s voice in Saint Augustine’s Confessions

You do not need permits or paperwork
A license, vouchers, sufferance, consent,
Authorization, sanction, approval,
Passport, certification, charter, chit,

Security clearance, brevet, code, key,
Party card, registration, ration book,
Rubber stamp, fingerprints, user name, badge,
Photo identification, pin number

To read a poem on a summer afternoon
You do not need permits or paperwork

Let the childhood dose of cod liver oil
Perish from its own sour smell and foul taste
Send yellow squash to the poor children in China
May Popeye keep his spinach to himself!

But not bananas!

The appeal of the peel, yes, what a deal!
A wrapper that children may throw away
A summer-yellow star sky-spiraling
Onto the garden grass (it’s good for the soil)

Alas, poor banana, joy to eye and tongue:
Why is it that the Cavendish dies young?

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

                        A Student Walkout with Hissy-Chants

But

I heard of one student who refused to go
Who bravely thought for herself, and so said no
And she’s the one student I want to know

STEMinists

That women must be as shallow as men
And thus surrender all their high estate:
Art, music, government, medicine, law
Science, literature, administration

To be programmed, obedient to machines
That turn, tilt, twist, light up and make noises
Measure this, adjust that, obey, obey
Functionaries in a factory – why?

To bow before gadgets, just like the men -
The old Eden thing, all over again

“No doubt they’ll sing in tune after the revolution.”

                         -Kamarovsky in Doctor Zhivago (film)

Kerenskys marshaled in two ordered lines
Unsure exactly how to stand, to pose
Merry banter, backpats, handshakes, and smiles
A show, a glow of Party unity

And then – a hiss, a strike, a spit, a spat
In sixty-second bursts atop the tomb
Comrade against comrade, a free for none
The audience applauds the ****** fun

Who is the Trotsky, and who the Stalin, then;
Who will die in exile, and who will win?

Lunch at Denny’s

With a Side Disorder of Screaming Child and Bellowing Mother


Pajama Child, running and screaming: “Bye-bye. Bye-Bye! BYE-BYE! HEY!!! BYE-BYE!!!!”

Momma, not looking up from her MePhone: “Don’t run, honey. No. Don’t run! I SAID, ‘DON’T RUN!!!”

Pajama Child, standing in her seat and chewing her food over diners’ backs: “Wlb. Glb. Blrt! Uerk! Blye-blye!

Momma, not looking up from her MePhone:: “One…!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!­!!!!!!”

Pajama Child: “NO! CAN’T MAKE ME! NO, YOU! NO, NO, NO, NO!!!!!!!!”

Momma, not looking up from her MePhone: “Twoooooooooooooooooooooooooo…!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Pajama Child, throwing food: (SHRIEKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!!”)

Momma, not looking up from her MePhone: “NO! I MEAN IT THIS TIME! One………!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Pajama Child, running and screaming around the restaurant: “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

Momma, not looking up from her MePhone: “Twooooooooooooooo…!!!! I mean it this time!!!! Twooooooooooooooooooo…!!!!!!”

Pajama Child: “NO, YOU! CAN’T MAKE ME! BYE-BYE! BYE-BYE-BYE!”

Momma, not looking up from her MePhone: “Do you need a spanking? I mean it this time!”



I blame the teachers and Donald Trump. I mean it. No, really.  I mean it this time.

Is That a Prophet on Your Roof?

A woman of Shunem gave to Elisha
A small room on her roof, furnishing it with
A bed, a chair, a table, and a lamp
And, truly, what more does a man of God need?

It’s possible that the neighbors gossiped
About keeping a prophet on the roof
And what did the owners’ association say
About extra rooms and extra prophets?

A little room in which to pray and sleep,
And friends – what more does a man of God need?

You have mislaid your keys, but that’s okay
I can help you find them, as you found me
Among the wreckage of my scheduled days
Unscheduled nights and, yes, unscheduled dreams

I like the way you lose your keys, the way
You stir your coffee counter-clockwise
And fiddle with the sweetener ‘til it’s right
And take a sip, and love me with your eyes

You have mislaid your keys, but that’s okay -
Before there was you, I had mislaid my life

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

              About That Beautiful Lady Sipping a Cup of Earl Grey

You’ve noticed her, I see – just a word of advice:
I was chatting with her over cups of tea
I mentioned that Earl Grey also tasted nice over ice -
There was ice indeed as she turned away from me

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

                                 A Faraday Cage of the Mind

                                The dwarfs are for the dwarfs

                                 -C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle

They wire themselves into a Faraday cage
As they make ossification great again
Raising their hands not in salutes but in fists
Their voices not in hymns but in foul hate

They wire themselves into a Faraday cage
Hug to themselves a past that never was
And circulate deception among themselves
In closed incestuous loops of rumors and chants

They wire themselves into a Faraday cage
So that a genuine thought will never penetrate

The Evolution of Sophomores

Poor sophomores like polliwogs within
Their small Samsaric Sea do swim about
And seemingly without purpose or point
Startled by shifting shadows or loud noises

But polliwogs in time absorb their tails
Then grow their legs, and hop ashore to eat
Mosquitoes, moths, and flies and dragonflies;
Sophomores acquire their driving licenses

And seemingly without purpose or point
Do drive about their small Samsaric Sea

Remembrance Day / Veterans' Day - 3

Bad Morning, Viet-Nam

No music calls a teenager to war;
There is no American Bandstand of death,
No bugles sound a glorious John Wayne charge
For corpses floating down the Vam Co Tay

No rockin’ sounds for all the bodies bagged
No “Gerry Owen” to accompany
Obscene screams in the hot, rain-rotting night.
Bullets do not ****.  Mortars do not crump.

There is no rattle of musketry.
The racket and the horror are concussive.
Men – boys, really – do not choose to die,
“Willingly sacrifice their lives,” that lie;

They just writhe in blood, on a gunboat deck
Painted to Navy specifications.

Instructions from the Colonial Office

(Poetry is Everywhere)

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

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

As Zip files with instructions for how you
Load them into Blackboard adjuncts if you