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

                                            An Electric Light Bulb

An electric light bulb is a marvelous thing
A globe of glass and gas and wires within
You can almost hear the filaments sing
When light upon a page lets your reading begin

By what magic does this wonderful device
Receive invisible aethers from long wires
This strange glowing pearl beyond any price
As it relights from Sol its little fires

An electric light bulb is a poet’s delight
Framing pentameter all through the night

Interstate Ten before it was an interstate
Arrowing west to California, one lane
That way and one lane this way; one way west
And one way back again
                                                    admitting defeat

In the desert a rest stop. Desperate trees.
They seemed as desperate as a pilgrim
Lost in his going somewhere, and they
Weren’t going anywhere among the dunes

They said to one pilgrim, “Whatever dream
You’re living – it might not work out, okay?

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

Snakes fighting in a rutted logging trail
A chicken snake against a rattlesnake
Whipping the dust with their reptilian lust
For death among the ridings of despair

The rattlesnake is an endangered species
The chicken snake is okay with that, and strikes
The thrashers poise and pounce, loathsome and foul
Until the chicken snake slowly takes the rattler

Through peristalsis down into its maw

with the rattlesnake

Writhing desperately for a forced recount

Curating...

                         To a Curator who Curates Everything

Today one reads that you curated tea
Before curating a bus into town
To curate your job at the coffee shop
And in the afternoon curating friends

Before curating to the artists’ loft
To continue curating the novel
You’ve been curating on for several months
While curating your classes and career

Your life is not a museum, you know
So DROP the CURATING; just let it GO

Thirteen Reasons...


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

                                  -Dag Hammarskjold

1. God made you; you can never be replaced
2. God made you for some purpose – live to find it
3. Someone is blessed each day in knowing you
4. You must live so that others may live
5. Someone desperately needs your kindness right now
6. You haven’t yet written your book, your story, your
song
7. When you offer up your suffering, you help others
8. Children running barefoot through the flowers of
spring
9. Children running barefoot through the leaves of
autumn
10. Dachshund puppies. And children. And flowers. And leaves
11. Coffee and a talk with a good friend
12. Breakfast and the Sunday morning funnies
13. That space in the pew God has saved for you


-from Coffee and a Dead Alligator to Go

Possibly a re-post

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                  Shakespeare Didn’t Drive a Clapped-Out MGA

                                  Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 49

A time will come when you will audit me:
My prospects as a husband and provider
The possibilities of a comfortable home
And maybe the Mercedes you deserve

I amuse you now, but not for long:
A studio apartment with a rabbit-ears TV
A hideaway bed for frolics in the afternoon
Sale-table wine and Bugler-rolled joints

Not quite Rod McKuen, to my dismay:
It’s not if but when you go away

Camping on the Edge of Forever

For HM3 Michael Dean Marconett, USN

of happy memory

Wild stars, beyond a Sterno stove’s tame glow,
We’ll live forever as we live this night:
Coffee and cigarettes and comradeship,
Our backs against the sun-warmed Sierras
As the cold falls from infinite darkness
To keep the snow in place another night,
To smile in ancient silence back at you,
To make a glowing, slumberous twilight until dawn.
Those C-rations were good after a day
Of scrambling among prehistoric rocks
Made musical by the dinosaur creek,
Water as cold as the dark end of time.
San Diego glows in the south-southwest,
Silently, inefficiently, light lost.
But you, wild, happy star, will still shine down
On dreaming youths, tonight and other nights,
Counting for us, for them, each millennium.

The Farmer to Saint Swithin

O good Saint Swithin, please, to you we pray
On this your high-summer rain-making day

Of your blest kindness send us soft, sweet showers
The kind that gently fall for hours and hours

To heal the sunburnt land of thirst and drought
And nourish the corn that sees the winter out

And if you grant the boon we humbly ask
We’ll work the harder on each rural task:

We’ll ditch and fence and plough, and milk the cow
Share with the widder-folk, and feed the sow

Count out some plantful seeds for poor men’s needs
And tell God’s Mysteries daily on our beads

Mother of Exiles

Saint Mary’s Church of Frydek, San Felipe, and Sealy

The grasses of the coastal plain are still;
Across the road a summer field ploughed under
Waits through October’s lingering heat for frosts
While the distant Interstate chants to itself

Our Lady of Frydek, Mother of Exiles!

First Nations, Spaniards, Mexicans, Czechs, Poles
Italians, Germans, English, Vietnamese

Have ended their pilgrimages here, with You
Where God has led them for His purposes

And here, dear brother, God has led you too
To wait with them, with Her, for history’s end

Which will be
The Beginning

Green Chemicals Against the Evil U.R.I.

Mercy in green, green chemicals in green
Labeled with a catalogue of cautions
One desperately ignores in desperate quest
For a cessation of foul miseries:

The red, inflam’ed throat that censors speech
Fevers fogging over the ways of the mind
Agues arguing against those motions of the limbs
That other times do joy in youth and health

But…coffee next Friday morning you ask?
Yes, yes - I hope to be alive by then

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

                               The Daily Mail’s New Profits Plan

Go away, Daily Mail.  Go away, Daily Mail.
I’m not going to spend any money on you
I know that your clips are sweet
But my money clip is mine to keep
And my credit limit insists that I must be true

When you're demanding like this
You’re really easy to resist
Go away, Daily Mail
I won’t pay, Daily Mail
You’re just a clickbait away, Daily Mail
App delete, Daily Mail
I will not beg you to stay


Legal stuff about “Go Away, Little Girl,” a sweet, charming song:
Written by: Gerry Goffin, Carole King
Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

      “Anglo-Saxon Students Would Not Like to Be Taught by a Jew”

                                                      cited in
                   -Stanley Kunitz Lyrics, Songs, and Albums | Genius

To the Privileged Youth of Columbia University:

As a child of situational poverty
I am so grateful for all my Jewish teachers

Including

Moses
Joshua
Jeremiah
Samuel
David
Solomon
J­esus, Mary, and Joseph
Saint Peter and the others in The Twelve
Saint Paul
Elie Weisel

Chaim Potok
Herman Wouk
Leon Uris
Franz Kafka
Leonard Cohen
Anne Frank
Bernard Malamud
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Philip Roth
Osip Mandelstam

Saul Bellow
Isaac Asimov
Woody Allen
Mel Brooks
Edna Ferber
Yip Harburg
George Cukor
Mel Brooks
Oscar Hammerstein
Alan Lerner

Carl Reiner
Rod Serling
Franz Werfel
Alan Arkin
Claire Bloom
Leonard Nimoy
Chaim Topol
Ed Asner
Mel Brooks
Peter Falk
Werner Klemperer

Jack Klugman
Walter Matthau
Tony Randall
Mel Torme
John Banner
Kirk Douglas
Lorne Greene
Eli Wallach
Sam Wanamaker
Morey Amsterdam

Leo Genn
Otto Preminger
Jack Benny
Leslie Howard
Ernst Lubitsch
Cecil B. DeMille
Mortimer Adler
Allen Bloom
Harold Bloom
Irving Berlin

Boris Pasternak
Emil Ludwig
Eric Wolfgang Korngold
Elmer Bernstein
Max Steiner
George Gershwin
Dimitri Tiomkin
Samuel Fuller
Alexander Korda
Zoltan Korda

Emeric Pressburger
Erich von Stroheim
Billy Wilder
William Wyler
Fred Zinnemann
J. J. Abrams
Peter Bogdanovich
Michael Curtiz
Stanley Donen
Stanley Kramer

Howard Caine
Leon Askin
Robert Clary
Dinah Shore
Stephen Sondheim
Volodymyr Zelinsky
Simon Schama
Louise Gluck
Siegfried Sassoon
Isaac Rosenberg

Joseph Brodsky
Rob Morrow
Vasily Grossman
Stanley Kubrick
Viktor Frankl

And more, so many more, a cloud of witnesses
Whose names are written in gold on a scroll in Heaven

But somehow, in this world of beauty and truth
And humanity’s aspirations to the good
All you have found are bullhorns, trash fires, chants
Clinched fists, obscenities, lies, and shrieking hate

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

                  My Garage Sale One-Dollar Mister Spock Clock

All stern he is, in science department blue
Behind the clear face of an old-fashioned clock
An hour hand, a minute hand, a sweep hand too
Orbiting around our wise Mister Spock

Behind his back a motor, made in Taiwan
Powered by a double-A Duracell
Counts the minutes and hours as they drag on
(There is no dilithium fuel cell)

Spock scans for me the starndate, no fuss at all
Always at his post on my office wall

Voices visions #resistance
PayPal and all major credit cards selfie
Occupation under Trump diversity
In Trump’s Amerika alt.woke.taghash

Get your rosaries off my recycled batteries  
Transgressive lines in a paradigm ****(f)t
We need to start the conversation, so shut up
While I’m centering thoughts and prayers on me

But the baby’s nappies need changing again
And who is going to carry the garbage out?

Snowlight

White snowlight, glowlight, brightening the woods
By praying down the sky to float among
The dark and creaking pillars of ancient oaks
Whose trunks and limbs are black with clinging ice

Drear, mouldering autumn leaves now lie at rest
Beneath soft-shoaling ripples of rare snow
Pale, iridescent light dances between
The clouds and the ground, and then back again

Shadowless colorings, pearlings, and frosts
At play with miracles in January.

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                 Still Listening to the Warm

Rod McKuen was the coolest of the cool
And now he’s not
Which makes him warmer than ever
On the pencil-marked pages of our youth

"Listen to the Warm" is still good advice

My two-year-old laptop was NOT happy with Windows Creator Update with regard to functionality and the clarity of the screen images.  I was able to uninstall, but there are residual buttons that won't go away.  You might want to check with your I.T. person before accepting Windows Creator Update into your machine.

Again, apologies for being off-task.

Humans to Download Their Souls onto Microchips
                                          So They Can Live Forever

                                                        ­  -Headline

And so all hopes and dreams and fears and loves -
That beautiful girl who kissed you one night
Your after-school job, your first little car
Recruit training, your Navy buddies, the sea

Your wedding day, your children at their play
Your coffee pals at the Old Men’s Café
The songs you wrote, the dreams you dreamed, your - self
Light-beamed and streamed into a little pill

The chip was lost; in someone else’s drive it sits -
He replaced your soul with Elvis’ greatest hits

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

                                A Lust-Crazed Darwinian

                                           Isaiah 11:6-9

Outside the window I see in the autumn oak
A face-off between a squirrel and a cat
Small cat. Large squirrel. Insults given and received
They would **** each other, just like humans

The Romantic wants to see them at play
The Darwinian wants to see who wins
And if the squirrel would eat the brains of the cat
Just as the cat would eat the brains of the squirrel

And leave little headless corpses on my porch
Which is why I am a hopeful Romantic

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

                                         Beaten and Shot

          To Blessed Stanley Rother, Padre Francisco, Padre Apla’s
                                            – a petition

Missionaries and martyrs, pray for us
That we may still our anger and intemperance
And listen not to the voices of hate
But rather to the small still voice 1 of love

Missionaries and martyrs, pray for us
That we may think before we write in blood
And resolve our differences through God’s peace
With prayer, understanding, and fellowship

Missionaries and martyrs, pray for us
That we never state a thesis as death

Blessed Stanley Rother – thank you


1 1 Kings 19:12

The Death of a Good and Faithful Spider

In Tod Mixson’s ikon corner a good and faithful spider fulfilled its vocation in an arachnid-life well spent.

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

                      Prayer Group in a Cinder-Block Room

A Prisoner's Voice:

We’re all here for all sorts of different crimes
I made it for about three years last time
Built my business back up, rented a house
Married my baby-momma and started being a dad

And I was feeling good about everything
My old customers came back and trusted me
I was sure grateful to them; went back to church
My wife and kids and mom were proud of me

I got cocky; I thought I had it all whipped
I’m back in this white suit for another ten

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

                      Afghanistan, Graveyard of 19-Year-Olds

                     “You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.”

                             -Holmes’ first words to Watson in
                                     A Study in Scarlet, 1887

Ghosts shriek in the wind from the Hindu Kush
Falling upon the lowlands in despair
Of any reality beyond death
In the blood-sodden sands where sinks all good

Walls, monuments, souls, hopes – all blow away
In the wreckage of long-fallen empires
Their detritus trod upon by tired men
Whose graves will be the howling dust of time

And yet the empire masters will return
And leave fresh offerings of more young men:
A British Enfield, a Moghul’s lost shoe,
A cell phone silent beside the Great Khan’s skull


From The Road to Magdalena, Lawrence Hall, 2012, available via amazon.com

“Afghanistan, graveyard of empires” is a common saying whose source is unknown.

A Ritual is Never Hollow

A ritual is never hollow; sweet words,
Happy ancient words, from the dawn of time,
Sung through the air, refreshing as a waterfall
Discovered at dusk on a marching day:

A ploughman bidding his beads to Jerusalem
A child who’d rather not sit still during Mass
A holy sister hymning along the Rhine
A wise man seeking still that elusive Star

Heal chaos through their living in the Hours -
Oh, no – a ritual is never hollow

These are not tears of sorrow or joy;
These are tears from allergens, m’boy.




(As Tennyson did not say)

Prologue to The Canterbury Downloads

There is a pilgrimage which no one plans
For youth and age, across a room, a poem
Sending each other ordinary English words
One by email, the other by Pony Express

Some journey to Canterbury to pray
To God at good Saint Thomas Becket’s shrine
Some to the Burgate for a coffee shop
And texting over a mocha “The droghte of March”

One asks about the rising middle class
Of a lad who hasn’t a date for the prom

A group of journalists arrived from Moscow and were told that the Afghan National Army…had taken the ridge. (They) were posing for victory photographs while our soldiers lay in the morgue.

-Svetlana Alexeivich, *Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War

A touchy old man who never went to war
Now poses with his decorative generals  
In their tailored Ken-and-Barbie battle dress
All prepped for combat in the officers’ club

New president, same as old presidents
And generals, awarding each other medals
And promotions for their golden resumes’
For sending not-their-children off to die

While they prosper on defense industry bids,
Afghanistan is the graveyard of our kids

*Shhhhhhhhhh…Don’t disturb Congress;
they’re fast asleep.

Most Things End in Sorrow

The happiest marriages we’ll ever know
End in death; the unhappy marriages
Decay in cycles of disappointment
And fall apart in court on a working day

A glorious autumn ends in blue-ice winds
A favorite childhood toy is forever lost
An anticipated promotion is denied
And golden youth in hospice slips away

But morning’s cup of courage freshens hope,
And the world is optimistically green

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

              The Terrifying Creepy Chilling Iconic ******’s Lair

Some call it the ******’s lair, some the ******’s nest
Some call it a creepy lair
Some surely call it chilling and iconic
Because to InterGossip posters everything
Is chilling, iconic, jaw-dropping, and a bombshell

It’s just a sad, sagging old chain-link fence
With some sad old man’s wannabe G.I. ****
Army wannabe soldier-toys hanging from it
The Kalashjackov was real enough
The poor fool’s mind, not so much

A pompous pine lives down the road, a tree
So well aware of his own dignity;
I speak to him on evening walks, and he,
He nods a centimeter in courtesy

Vouchsafest Thou?

Do you enjoy the word "vouchsafe" as much
As I?  It isn't as musical as the phrase
"Thence forward," or “joylich,” “leman,” and such
Or "confusticate," - who says that these days?

“Wherefore,” “abroche,” let us now celebrate
“Antic” English words: “aforetime,” “perforce”
“Slowcoach,” “freshet”, “befall” - at this late date?
And dear “daffadowndilley” (but of course!)

“Declaim,” “forsooth,” “marchwarden,” and “descry,”
And let us not forget the sweet “day’s-eye!”

Light fog, dense air - how should one think of them
The sun – he seems to be holding his breath
Until, oh, nine or so, when he exhales
Soul-******* heat upon the steaming earth

The Massey-Ferguson sits patiently
Through all those dawn-lit diagnostic chores:
Check the oil, check the gas, and **** the points
Safety checks all ‘round before the mowing begins

Old hat, old gloves, old boots, a fresh cigar
And old eyes focused on a field afar

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

                  An Artless Meditation on the Joyful Mysteries

I. The Annunciation

May we all hear the Angel’s silver voice
In spite of ourselves

II. The Visitation

May we all help each other along the way
In spite of ourselves

III. The Nativity

May we all wait in the cold outside the Stable
In spite of ourselves

IV. The Presentation

May we all be presented in the Temple some day
In spite of ourselves

V. The Finding of the Child in the Temple

May we all be found in the Temple some day
In spite of ourselves

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

                                 Refilling the Hummingbird Feeder

Now here is a bee
So anxious for me    
                     to be
Far away from it

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

               From Vespers to Compline this October Night

How peaceful it is to sit outside
In the cooling dusk as the stars appear
In the healing dusk as the busy-ness fades
Through unspoken Paters and Aves

How peaceful it is to sit outside
In the Vespers night of crickets’ hymns
In the Compline night of one last prayer
Whispered up to God through the dome of Heaven

How peaceful it is to sit outside
And be still

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

                                        Participation Ribbons

John Wayne as Steve Williams: “How'd you do last season?”
Charles Coburn as Father Malone: “We showed up for every game.”
Steve Williams: “I'd say that was raw courage.”

                               -Trouble Along the Way (1953)

I’ve heard of participation ribbons
But I’ve never seen one. Do they exist?
People seem to disapprove of them
But participation means showing up

There are those who wake up every morning
Feed the kids breakfast, fire up an old car
Make the school run, and then are off to work
At the cafe’, the store, or the auto shop

That’s participation, all right, and courage
A ribbon? Most folks deserve a medal

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

One hears of a load of codswallop
But no one knows what a codswallop is
And only by the load, or can you buy a dollop?
And just who is in the codswallop biz?

You don’t have to stand up, but I wish you would -
Standing up for the flag is standing up
For each other, me for you, you for me
But if you don’t, forgive me anyway

You don’t have to stand up, but I wish you would -
Because some fifty years ago That Man’s
Heel spurs kept him from crawling through the mud
With me; he’s not much of a stand-up guy

You don’t have to stand up either, but if you do –
I would be humbly honored to stand with you

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                           Like Children Dancing

Like children dancing, leaves form up in rows
Then skitter across each corner and street
As shoals in rolling ranks overflowing other ranks
Or little tornadoes laughing through circles and swirls

Like children celebrating their youth and strength
Leaves tumble and run before the shifting wind
‘Way up into the air and back to earth
In happy games of catch-me-if-you-can

Like children in the afternoon, just out of school
Autumn leaves joyfully mock every rule

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 thin 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.

Gossamer is that
Substance which is excreted
From a spider’s *ss.

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

                Tryptophan Dreams after Thanksgiving Dinner

                      (channeling our inner Dorothy Parker)

Sleepy now, from excess of meat and cup
But unlike the poor turkey, we will wake up!

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

                                  A Lawnmower in Idle Repose

I found a treasure of bluebonnets in a weedy ditch
Next to the shell of a rotted armadillo
That’s where the mower stopped (“son of a /////!”)
(Apologies for the verbal pecadillo)

I bought the mower from a long-time friend
It worked for an hour and came to a stop
Its beginning was also pretty much its end
Its career has been long visits to the shop

One of life’s great truths (there are many more):
Never, ever buy a used lawnmower

If you were still a child, I would give you
A Kleenex or two, as I used to do
(Now blow your nose…) and maybe a cookie too
But now…this much is true…time flew…you grew

And yet

There is no expiration date on tears
No sign that reads “You Are Too Old for Fears”
No simple answers after the smoke all clears
No moon, no music high among the spheres

Where lovers’ dreams ascended in the night…
But, here, have another Kleenex, all right?

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

                                Abraham Lincoln and Macbeth

                           After life’s fitful fever, he sleeps well

                                              -Macbeth III.ii.23

To imagine a modern president
Having a favorite Shakespearean play
Is not to imagine a president at all

Heaves of Gas

I sing the bodiless electronic
Manly working man blank verse flannel shirt
All gone now
Pajamas and video games
Cupcake competitions instead of schoolyard tug-o’-war
A gap-toothed grilled-cheese sandwich singing under the sea
Bi-polar bears alt.yawn Revolutionary Proletarian Art with    
      Selfie  Sticks
Banana Daiquiri Republic
Must be nice to be a thinker all great
Adored by all, and subsidized by the state
Made in Nicaragua by free-range artisans, I think
Re-Presentation
Rhinestone tattoo flipflopped knee-pantsies and a cartoon tee
Die, Webinar, Die
Up the Revolution you can’t make me clean my room
Machine against the rage on the cosmic app
Renewable green sanctions
Double-double boil and bubble a froth’ed mocha decaf with a
      tinkling of Cinnamon
We are the drones we have been waiting for

Three Generations in the Student Commons

I. Berets, Coffee, and Cigarette Smoke

Much merriment and argument, and songs
Of love or revolution sung around
An old piano or a new guitar,
And poetic verses falling like leaves

II. Ball Caps, Diet Sodas, and Purity of Thought

All turn and tune to a cinder-block wall
Upholding the Orwellian telescreen
Cartoons and Vanna White, and then at noon
With Gilligan, the Skipper too, still lost

III. Pink Hair, Bottled Water, and Fear

No merriment, no argument, only silence
As paling shadows, unaware of each other
Bow down, like Eve before that Eden-tree,
And worship the little boxes in their hands