Against the patriarchal construct they
Rally in a corner booth at Big Linda’s
MePhones, sody-dranks, a full-up ash tray
Tabled as if these were the agendas

And uniformed in uniforms they sit
In conclave all unanimous to judge
Their boss to be: a sorry piece of (stuff)
A drab, a dork, a doof, a dolt, a drudge

A slime, a slob, a slug, a ****, a schlo -
Oh, wait! We’re late! The time! We’d better go!

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

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

                                              Jill Macbeth

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

                                         -Macbeth I.v.41-62

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Macbeth, by William Shakespeare

Let us now face the sun, and not ourselves
And so forswear the mirrored loop of Us
That zeitgeist chasing its ossified Now
Into a spiral of dark nothingness

A club that looks endlessly at itself
Sharing dismal, universal handshakes1
Can never see the Incarnation dawn
As joyful, laughing Light upon the world

His star is in the east, and too His sun -
Let us worship the Lord, and not ourselves

1Yes, pinched from John Milton

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Sean Spicer Never Metaphor He Didn’t Like

Walk back those Spicerian goosesteps, dude
(And while you’re there, unblame the Russians)
Similes using ****** are always rude
And now you’ll suffer Tweeter concussions

Cops will drag you away from your lectern
Like that screaming fellow aboard the plane
And make each reportorial neck turn
Heads swiveling to see where you’ve left your brain

Blame everything on the Russians?  You bet!
It must be true; it’s on the GossipNet

Once upon a time
I much loved “cerulean” -
Now I just write “blue”

“Found a Dead Body This Mornin’ Early”

Rainy and cold. Breakfast at the café
Early. Warm inside. Windows all steamy
Still dark. That first cup of thank-God coffee
Sausages, eggs, and wheat toast on the way

An old friend walks in. Hangs up his wet coat
“Coffee, please.  Pancakes.”
               “Are you off to work?
How about that early project?”
                “Naw, I’m done

Think I’ll go home and hit the recliner;
Found a dead body this mornin’ early”

Frost on the Windshield

Poor Kirbyville is mostly closed this morning
The cinder-block bakery is empty
And the only fast-foodery’s not yet open
Its neon tubes still dark against the stars

But the stop ‘n’ rob is busy enough
The gas pumps serving as anchorages
For trucks and boats, some headed to the lake
After taking on coffee and gasoline

And sausage-biscuits greased and slammed, and wrapped
In yellow paper of such painful sadness

The squirrel makes a fuss - he must discuss
Drink-sharing with the thirsty honeybees
Who hover greedily above the bowl
And claim all water rights for bees alone

The squirrel pleas with “Please!” to all the bees;
In conclave met they buzz, and grant the fuzz-
Y neighbor limited let to get wet
If when drinking his fill he holds real still

And the bees’ pet human has come and gone –
He leaves them water, then leaves them alone

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

                   The Weekly Transport of Discarded Hopes

                                “They didn’t let me finish!”

                     -attributed to Isaac Babel upon his arrest

Bumping the weekly trash along the lane
Along the lane and through the colding dusk
A sack of faith appeals and banana peels
And coffee filters with no grounds for hope

Bumping the weekly trash along the lane
Out-of-date beans and last month’s magazines
Used printer ribbons, with words left to die
And crumpled notes for projects never begun

Arrested, jailed within a plastic bin
Awaiting a lorry and some big, strong men

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

                                     The Nunc Dimittis in Two Parts


I. Simeon

A young man wouldn’t get it
Which is one of the reasons why
In humility he hears
The Bible all his life


II. Anna

A young man wouldn’t get it
Because he doesn’t hear
The humility all around
He talks instead of listens

Rachel, Weeping for Our Children

From an idea suggested by Kelly Rogers

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

No 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.

Little men arguing in shabby rooms
Meetings, manifestos, revolvers, bombs
Informers, spies, social organization
Speeches, minutes, dues, What is to be Done?
The great cause of the Proletariat
Greetings from our good comrades in Smolensk
Nihilism, committees, secrecy
The thirst for culture is aristocratic
Nihilism is the only art of the people
Rumors, whispers, clandestine magazines
The unification of workers and peasants
Resolutions passed in the factory soviet
Clenched fists to reject the personal life
Electrification and equality
Cigarettes, *****, the people’s justice
Against the parasitical bourgeoisie
Solidarity to destroy the kulaks
His poetry reeks of sentimentality
Self-centered intellectual decadence
The people’s will for the people’s party
Education for the twentieth century
Lift high the red banner,
                                                fill full the graves

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

                                I was Hangin' with Miss Marple Last Week

         “I think, my dear, we won't talk any more about ******
                     during tea.  Such an unpleasant subject.”

                                 -4:50 from Paddington

I visited Miss Marple this past week
In her little home in St. Mary Mead
Fluffy in her appearance and pink of cheek
Troweling with vehemence another garden ****

Kindness itself, she asked me to sit down
On a wooden bench near the hollyhock
A warm soft evening with the bees around
And the hourly chime from the old church clock

Tea and scandal at four, soft-scented soap –

     And in Pentonville, forlorn of any hope

A murderer awaiting the hangman’s rope

V: “There was this police chief and the cartels
beheaded his wife so it was vengeance
ride time and then they raided this house with
armored personnel carriers and 7.63

machine guns and stuff and BOOM! and there was
heads in the walls ‘cause they’d hid the bodies
in the walls man it was gross and then they
sneaked up on the super-secret cartel

bunkers and silently killed all the guards…”
R: “Well, I guess I got to get to work now…”

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

                                 Flying to London on Nitrous Oxide

                                              For Dr. Armstrong

Doctor A. dropped a black cloth over my eyes
As if I were facing a firing squad in a vinyl chair
An uncomfortable vinyl chair
The firing squad is not in the chair; I am

How silly to think of a firing squad in a vinyl chair I mean how would they all fit, eh

I give the finger to an oxygen thingie
And air is piped into my itchy nose
scratch scratch
“I’m turning the nitrous on now, just let me know…”
What shall I think about during dentistry…?

A holiday in London long ago
I’m walking along crowded Oxford Street
A motor-scooter cop is writing a ticket
For a tiny little car that’s double-parked

Across the street is a used-book shop
I want to browse the old Oxford editions
(OUCH!)
But first I’ll find breakfast
I’ll find breakfast
I’ll find breakfast
(oh that one’s only a little ouch)
And what a happy breakfast!
In this little café with windows all steamed
And I find a seat among the shoppers and workers and shoppers and workers and the nice English waitress is from Viet-Nam and I was in Viet-Nam and she is still from Viet-Nam I was only in Viet-Nam and she is very English and writes on a pad eggs and sausages and toast and eggs and sausages and toast and after breakfast I’ll walk across Oxford Street for Oxford Books I can see in the dusty window and the nice English waitress takes my order for eggs and sausages and toast and somehow I never get across Oxford Street to browse the Oxford books because “I’m switching you back to Oxford oxygen now and you’re all done just sit there for a few minutes” and she wipes the drool off my chin and the ordinary air hisses through the nasal cannula and I feel a little fuzzy and I’m not in London and there are no eggs and sausages and toast but yes I can stand now and yes just go see Erin at the front for the paperwork and then I’ll ride in the passenger seat to Jack in the Box for some sort of golly-gee-**** breakfast swaddled in paper and coffee in a paper cup which I will have to chew and swallow on the right because my left is all numb and I’ll dribble on myself and I wish I were in London but I’m not but coffee from Jack in the Box after being NPO after midnight is okay too…

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                       Is There no Sulky Gas?

To the dentist this morning but woe and alas
Only a cleaning - no laughing gas!

Ha, ha, ha!

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

                        The Man Can Execute a Snappy Salute

By God, the man can execute a snappy salute
Though he never made the first day of boot camp
Maybe he learned to salute from watching Patton
Or John Wayne movies, over and over

By God, the man can execute a snappy salute
Even while propped up by his briefcase boys
Showing off his practiced thousand-yard stare
While thirteen flag-covered coffins are carried by

By God, the man can execute a snappy salute -
And the brave young people who trusted him

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.

                         The Several Olympic Committees

Sewerage, filth, top-****, toxins, debris
Deadly bacteria, openly-floating poo
The pollution of the ages flowing free –

(They say the River Seine’s in bad shape too)

Gilligan’s Island...

            The discipline of reading at least one poem each day

The meter started getting rough aboard
A scheduled poetic three-minute tour
Across a sonnet or a blue haiku
Broken up by a wave of indolence

The Professor repairs an iamb or two
With a clam shell, seaweed, and coconuts
While Mary Ann recites “The Road Not Taken”
And the Skipper chases poor Gilligan

Who trips and falls, and finds a misplaced rhyme -
Maybe we’ll all get off the island this time!

But the Animals were First

“We read in Isaiah: ‘The ox knows its owner,
and the *** the master’s crib….’”

-Papa Benedict, The Blessings of Christmas

The ox and *** are in the Stable set
In service divine, as good Isaiah writes
A congregation of God’s creatures met
In honor of their King this Night of nights

And there they wait for us, for we are late
Breathless in the narthex of eternity
A star, a road, a town, an inn, a gate
Have led us to this holy liturgy

Long centuries and seasons pass, and yet
The ox and *** are in the Stable set

(A MePhone rattles and twanks and pings like Robby-the-Robot gone bad.)

Woman: “Yeah?”

(silence)

Woman: “YEAH?”

(silence)

Woman: “I’m in the hospital.”

Noise from MePhone: (think Charlie Brown’s parents)

Woman: “I’m in the hospital!”

MePhone: (Charlie Brown’s parents)

Woman: “I’M IN THE HOSPITAL!”

MePhone: (a small child babbling)

Woman: “I’M IN THE HOSPITAL!”

MePhone: (a small child babbling)

Woman: “YEAH!”

MePhone: (a small child babbling)

Woman: “YEAH!”

MePhone: (incoherent noises – could be a ******)

Woman: “FOR MY COLONOSCOPY!”

MePhone: (the ****** continues)

Woman: “FOR MY COLONOSCOPY!”

Offstage, a young woman in scrubbies: “Mr. Lawrence…?”

(Deo gratias)

Exit, pursued by Too Much Information.

Love in the Corner Booth

Somewhere along US 96

His ducktail haircut from 1957
Fading to white, her voice without makeup
Sharing scripture verses and something about
Her latest operation and her miseries

Outside along the row of pickup trucks
A green-haired waitress smokes a cigarette
The fuzz of her Harley-Davidson coat
Pressed flat for love against the window glass

They’ve got a sale on tires down at Wal-Mart
Along the four-lane Christmas passes by

Lighting a Candle before Mass

We light a candle for

       All good people
       All bad people
       And all good causes

Because

        All people are good
        All people are bad
        And we’re working on the causes

Who can tell the Faw from the Aunty Faw?
CarryBOO herds in ballcaps, tees, and tats
Outlaw-scary-masks and gas-station shades
Parachute-pantsies and designer sneaks

          You write no books, you sing no songs – you shriek
          You do no work, you make no art          – you shriek
          You do no good, you help no one           - you shriek
          You make no thoughtful arguments      – you shriek

And all of you dressed like corpses-in-law:
Who can tell the Faw from the Aunty Faw?

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com


                                              A Carrier of Bodies

                                   My stretcher is one scarlet stain

                         -Robert W. Service, “The Stretcher Bearer”

In illo tempore:

I don’t know that anyone shouted, “Corpsman up!”
Like in the movies; I was already up
There, where smoking metal scraps stopped in some kid’s flesh
Red fragments of flesh screaming in the sun

Later:

Carrying bodies of literature was impossible
But I tried; Wordsworth and Keats during the day
Holes in the patients and in sterile drapes
Red fragments of flesh in the E. R. at night

Now:

In the evenings I carry Wordsworth outside
And my older self, to a chair at dusk

A sunrise has no trigger warning, no:
The dawn is not that misty night which was;
A sinister click, and the radio speaks
Tidings of discomfort and joylessness

          Someone must be made to suffer for this1

There is no trigger warning from the clock
Announcing brutally the need to rise
As from the dead, and dress for this day’s work
Which lacks all hope of glamour and success

          Someone must be made to suffer for this

Life is not fitted with warnings, and so
One’s discomfort is the fault of others

           Someone must be made to suffer for this


1“Someone must be made to suffer for this” is a mimeme from Frederick William Rolfe’s Hadrian VII.

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

                                    A Visit to the (Euphemism)

             With Praise for The Sacred White Bowl of Our People

Several times each day the call of sanitation
Requires of each of us a digestive salutation
Within an appropriate private station
For needful purgation and evacuation

All of mankind, of every land and nation
Even Thracian, Haitian, Croation, Dalmatian
Must discreetly retire for a brief duration
To return to the earth a small donation

In this we must conclude, in explanation
From the indignity of the situation
With no exception, and no aberration
That Man is not the glory of God’s Creation

(All employees must wash their hands before returning to work)

Upon Reading Literary Reviews

Off the beaten path – is that part of the trail
That was blazed after the door to the future
Was unlocked with the key of somethingness
As an imaginative entrée, hmmmmmmm?

How dangerous it now must be to walk
Beneath that stress-fractured ceiling of glass
Paving the way that was blazed and unlocked
With the key to the future where dreams live

The oppressed voiceless up in champagne class
In resistance to the something-archy

And let The People yawn “iconic”

A Take Away from the Take Away Steak Fingers

King Henry II: Forks?

Thomas Becket: Yes, from Florence. New little invention. It's for pronging meat and carrying it to the mouth. It saves you dirtying your fingers.

King Henry II: But then you ***** the fork.

Thomas Becket: Yes, but it's washable.

King Henry II: So are your fingers. I don't see the point.

-Becket, 1964

Encapsulated in bivalves of foam
As bottom feeders in the fast-food chain
Small fragments of a poor dead cow, chopped, shaped
And formed into cow fingers that are not

For it behooves the diner thus to know
That cows haven’t any fingers at all
But the dear diner does, and digitally
Renders the cow fingers as nutrition

And that is all there is about cow fingers -
Not a topic on which the gourmet lingers

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

                       The Retiring of Old Snow

Clinging to blue shadows and shades and trees
Stained ice and sleet and snow from days ago
Silently steams away as vapour, as mist
Beneath today’s yellow and slanting sun

On Monday eve the skies were low and grey
And Tuesday morn soft flakes began to float
And then the rattle of indelicate sleet
Sent every creature to its appointed burrow

And now the little that’s left hides from the breeze
Clinging to blue shadows and shades and trees

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

                           A Tribute to Gussie Fink-Nottle

                From an idea suggested by W. K. Kortas

Now be ye all upstanding, and charge your drinks
And let us lift a glass of orange juice
To all inebriated newt fanciers
(And God bless Market Snodsbury Grammar School)

And of all inebriated new fanciers
None is fancier than Gussie Fink-Nottle
None better with the newts, none worse with the girls
(And God bless Market Snodsbury Grammar School)

God bless the newts in Trafalgar fountain and pool
(And God bless Market Snodsbury Grammar School)

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                             Dense Fog Advisory

One wonders why fog should always be dense
Forever faulted for having no sense

Maybe because it’s a low-hanging cloud
Low-hanging around with a low sort of crowd

In Mixed Meter, A Meditation Upon Alarm Clocks:


The healing sleep of which Macbeth spoke enviously…

SHATTERED!

The metal ////cans kicked across the room
A giant light fixture hurting my face
Because I thought a top rack a safer space
Large men yelling things my mother would not approve:

“REVEILLE! REVEILLE! REVEILLE!
RISE AND SHINE, AND GREET THE NEW DAY!
LET GO YER ////S AND GRAB YER SOCKS!
GET OFF YER LAZY ///ES YA SORRY SQUIRRELS!”

A hundred and sixty bare feet hit the deck
In perfect Navy unison at 03-my-God-is-this-real-00

And somehow, all these many years later
The soft ding-**** of a tiny MePhone
Sounds even worse

Ye Olde All-Natural Organic Cleverly-Named Rustic Soap Purveyors, Ltd.

Our licensed soap-istas take dried wasp-****
And whatever stuff the hay-baler missed
And through our hand-made, slow-cold processes
Crank out our pure, adjective-cluttered soaps

Sustainable, certified, organic
we harvest ****** ditch water legally
And extra-****** jimpson weeds (so extra-
****** they’ve never been out on a date)

We’re your natural neighbors; your major
credit card welcome
                                          (but, psssst, it’s just soap)

If the Faith is a Lie (pretend this is centered)

               For if a preest be be foul, on whom we truste,
                   No wonder is a lewed man to ruste

                    -Chaucer, General Prologue, 501-502

If the Faith is a lie, then let it lie
Let’s not make it up as we go along
Waving a fashionably duct-taped book about
And chanting “This is all you need!”

Because some millionaire has told us to
Nor yet the famous ‘blogging priest who boasts
And posts photographs of his gourmet meals
While begging money for his many trips

If the Faith is a lie, then let it be
But it isn’t – and neither, please God, are we

A Processional with MePhones

From an idea suggested by Anthony Germain,
The Duke of Suffix after the Order of Scrabble©™

In greeting students on their way to class
One speaks only to the tops of their heads
As they process in ‘tudes of ‘umble prayer
In silence each bowing to her small god

(Or “his” as the gendered pronoun might be)
Speaking to no one, detached from the world
Navigating as does the sightless bat
By strange sensations known only to them

One ‘phone, one soul – that is the ratio
And each dull brain stilled ever in statio

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

         The© Happy™ Home© Akku-Rite™ OTC Covid-1 Test©

The picture on the box features a couple
Cuddling cutely in domestic bliss
As they poke the swabs way up each other’s nose
(Oh, don’t be scandalized; they’re married, of course!)

These and other fine products are distributed by
Consolidated HelthKare Medical, Inc.
Makers of the Kut-Kut© Home Vasectomy Kit
And
Ol’ Doc Zeke’s™ Happy Mule© Diarrhea Remedy™

Ol’ Doc Zeke’s™ Happy Mule© Diarrhea Remedy™
Is not approved for use in humans (wink, wink)

A vigil, no, simply quiet reflection
Minutes before midnight, with all asleep
Little Liesl-Dog perhaps dreams of squirrels,
For she has chased and barked them all the day;
The kittens are disposed with their mother
After an hour of kitty-baby-talk,
Adored by all, except by Calvin-Cat,
That venerable, cranky old orange hair-ball,
Who resents youthful intrusion upon          
His proper role as object of worship.

The household settles in for the spring night,
Anticipating Easter, early Mass,
And then the appropriately pagan
Merriments of chocolates and colored eggs
And children with baskets squealing for more
As children should, in the springtime of life.

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                Garage-Sale Rolodex® for Seventy-Five Cents

        I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed,
        debriefed, or numbered. My life is my own.

                -Patrick McGoohan as Number Six in The Prisoner

The Rolodex was once a symbol of power
Of knowledge marshalled into sequences
Orderly sequences alphabetized by names
By names and cross indices of subjects and dates

Of enemies or allies or contacts, rarely friends
Condensed in ink on smoothly finished cards
Restrained in place by colored plastic tabs
Awaiting the stroke of an office tyrant’s hand

The Rolodex was subsumed within The ‘Phone
Thus still your life cannot be called your own

Why should I do that? I can hear all right
And I can’t see behind my ears anyway
I never use my ears for work or play -
I’ll just give them a washrag-wash tonight

Why is that old woman talkin’ at me
I wasn’t botherin’ that bossy old cow
Ain’t none of her busy beeswax anyhow -
I wish all them women would let me be

Old women asked if I washed behind my ears -
So long ago –
                          I kinda miss the nosy old dears

A Soldier Smoking a Cigarette

A soldier lay beside a railway line
Smoking a cigarette, not thinking of much
Among some hundreds of other conscript lads
Upon a grassy glacis above the fields

The boxcars waited in the stilly heat
The soldiers waited like young summer wheat
Occasionally stirred about by winds unseen
And finally stirred about by orders unheard

They rippled into the cars, and were taken away -
A shadow lay beside a railway line

Neo-Post-Colonial Artificial Intelligence Deconstructed

All intelligence is artificial
We do not huddle in burrows, issuing forth
Only to chase down other living things
Beat them to death, drink their blood, and eat them

We moderns huddle in cubes above the ground
With indoor plumbing through pipes that sometimes freeze
While we are gazing, searching for lost truths
In glowing screens made in slave-labor camps

And we have stopped slaughtering other creatures -
We have machines to do that for us now

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

                               The I.T. Department Goes Wild

We are subject to the whims of every I.T. blighter
But never have we heard
That Hemingway was locked out of his own typewriter

“Why, then, God’s soldier be he.”

-Shakespeare

“I’m Old Man Briggs,” he laughed, shaking my hand
That famous merry twinkle in his eye;
He made the table at the ******* Barrel
A festival of right good fellowship

But even as the plates were passed around
And with them too the happy banter of men
He sometimes seemed to drift away in thought
Into the past, into the mists, into -

His boyhood bayous, and the fields of youth
The desperation of Depression years
And still a boy, on the shingle at Normandy
Fighting across the smoky fields of France

Then home again to build the peace for us
With muscle and sweat, and with love and thought
Citizen-soldier, happy raconteur -
“I’m Old Man Briggs,” he laughed, shaking our hands

His place is empty now, just a little while
For we will see him again, at Supper

Is there a man of such steely self-control
Of such virtue, character, fortitude
Strength and pride in his manly role
Confidence and heart and stern attitude

Valor, endurance, resolution, will
Courage, patience, defiance, intellect
Manliness, ruggedness, rock-like, chill
Decision, quality, all cool and collect

That he doesn’t have to go and upchuck
Whenever he hears that “Desiderata” muck?

The White House Office of Warfare and Shopping

Some jets fly off to the wars, carrying the young
The desperate sons and daughters of poverty
Sent there by men in immaculate suits -
Thank you for your service, now go away

Some jets fly off to the shops, carrying the young
The beautiful sons and daughters of Arlington
Sent there by men who keep them as pretty pets -
Did you have a nice time in Paris today?

Some of the young die in deserts of pain
Some of the young call for more champagne

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

                                                 Reading the Room

I don’t know to read a room, but look –
I’m still pretty good at reading a book!

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

                           The 7th of June, 1944 and 1970

My father beached at Normandy on the second day
(He was okay with having missed the first)
From there through France to Belgium in the mud
For a ****** Christmas in the icy Bulge

Munich, Buchenwald, Dachau, Zwickau
For me DaNang, Saigon, Ben Luc, Moc Hoa
I met a child in a Japanese army cap
But he wouldn’t sell it. We all have history

I wish I had that Japanese army cap
And that we knew what any of this means

Old and Unselected Poems

Pale, penciled scribblings, old bits, old notes
Forgotten drafts in old books shelved away
And lines painfully worked out during lectures
About Napoleon’s painful hemorrhoids

And the declensions of those Latin nouns
Which with their verbs Omnis Gallia divisit
Or something like that, forgotten long ago -
But not
              her hair
                             her voice
                                              her smile
                                                           ­    her eyes

Others cannot write to her happy theme -
She writes herself as iambs in a dream

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

                          Non-Profit, NGO, and a Yo-**-**

The status of my bank account tells me
That I too am a non-profit organization