Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

         A One-Line Dismissal of Tucker Carlson Isn’t a Poem, But…


                                   Democracy dies in dorkness

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

                               An Active School Meeting in Progress

                              (A motion to adjourn is always in order)

This morning I drove by my old school
A staff meeting was being committed inside
Perpetrating crimes against intelligence
“HELLO MY NAME IS”
                              10,000 years of civilization?

Doughnuts and foam cups of coffee

“IT’S A GREAT DAY TO BE A WILDCAT!”
Or a lion, a tiger, a platypus
The new superintendent loves Jesus
His family, children, and America

Doughnuts and foam cups of coffee

He introduces the motivational speaker
Who loves Jesus, his family, children
America, and unsourced parables
“MAKE THIS THE BEST YEAR EVER! HOO-AH!”

Doughnuts and foam cups of coffee

The coaches sit in the back reading the sports pages
And Campbell’s Texas Football – a point of privilege
English teachers count split infinitives in the program
“LET’S ALL HOLD HANDS AND SING OUR ALMA MATTER [sic]!”

Doughnuts and foam cups of coffee

Generally speaking I’m against the death penalty
I’d make an exception for motivational speakers

It’s for the children

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


        May Our Children Live Long Enough to Invade Greenland


Man arrested entering the Capitol with a machete and three knives

                                          -U. K. Daily Mail


No weapons in the Capitol; it’s a rule
The adults who work there must be safely bubbled
But when some pimply oaf brings a gun to school
No one in D.C. seems especially troubled

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                            Ill Manners in Paris

                          Opening Ceremony at the Paris Olympics

All are welcome at the Table of the Lord
But first
It’s always good manners to wash your face and hands

Grandfather’s Saint George medal – hide it first
The ikon of Saint Seraphim – that’s next
Babushka’s crucifix – O, how she loved it
The picture of the Czar – away! Away!

Do not betray your thoughts – a careless word
A smile not authorized, a memory
A fragment from a cheerful Christmas song:
These do not advance The Revolution

Beneath our Brave Red Star they must lie hidden
While our dear comrades love and watch us all

Tolkien’s Shelob the Spider

                “…a great malice bent upon him…gloating over…
                  prey trapped beyond all hope of escape.”

                                     -Tolkien, The Two Towers

A poisonous lump of flesh in malignant repose
Her lair all befouled with scraps of souls
In life sought out with her multiplex eyes
Her Sauron-eyes - it was the hopes that died first

Should a sunbeam shine in, it would be darkened
Should a breath of air waft in, it would be poisoned
Should a sprig of green appear, it would be withered
Should a prayer be whispered, it would be cursed

A poisonous lump of flesh in malignant repose
Within whose realm of hate nothing ever grows

(allusions to The Two Towers and Beowulf)

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

                          Holy Saturday 2021, the 2nd Covid Year

Lent begins in winter and ends in spring
The Stations of the Cross, the self-denials
Are trivial, perhaps, but then so are we
Better that way:

                                     The harrowing is not here

There once was a scoundrel, Rasputin
Whose diet was entirely free of gluten
          Since it was all whiskey and gin
          And big helpings of sin -
But he died from poison and shootin’

The Buddhas of Bamiyon

What secular new gods will be carved out
Of cultures and of stone, and heaved up to
The pedestals of corrasable truth
To be adored or else ignored in turn?

Make velcro now the test of reality
And transience transcendence in pale mists
As Plato’s shadows flickering in the cave
Denied in turn by fresh eternal truths

And in a century, when new gods frown
What creakery old gods will be thrown down?

So, like, like, so, like, so, you know, like, so,
Like, so, like, you know, it was like, you know,
Like, so, like, you know, like, so, like, like, so,
Like, so, you know, like, so, like, so, like, like,

You know, it was like, you know, like, so, like,
So, you know, like, so, like, like, so, like, so,
You know, like, so, like, so, like, like, you know,
It was like, you know, like, so, like, you know,

Like, so, like, like, so, like, so, you know,
So, like, so, like, like, you know, actually…

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

              The Power was Out, the Road was barely Passable,
                                   a Man Wore a Glock

The dawn was hot and wet and sticky and still
In quest of a coffee and a croissant
I stowed a chainsaw into the four-wheel-drive
And dawdled into town, clearing windfall from the road

The breakfast buffet at the Valero, and then out
Some men blocked the door, swapping pills and cash
I begged their pardon and walk through their deal
One wore a Glock on his hip; they all glowered at me

The dawn was hot; the paper-cup coffee was warm
I drove home and got my old generator to work

Heat Advisory – But Whom Does the Heat Advise?

“Heat advisory issued as temps expected to reach triple digits”

-Houston Chronicle, 29 July 2017

Hey, temps, you’ve been reaching for those digits
For centuries.  Always you reach, sometimes
you grasp, those urged indoor activities
while counting up to three in Fahrenheit

And not in that ungodly Celsius
Which is simply not our kind of measure
We need no Frenchified logic like that
For the Bible is free of decimals

Hey, temps, you’ve been reaching for those digits -
Now cuddle up with an air-conditioner

A Morning Meeting with God’s Anointed One
and His Team Fist-Pumping Woo-Hoo

He pads his expenses and prays over us
About a great evil spreading its claws
We too must pray to drive out the darkness
Because dissent is sent by Satan, amen

But be ye positive, not negative
Hold hands and be one united company
Be anointed in Jesus, just like the boss
Who feels his critics should be jailed, amen

Think less, work more, do not presume to judge;
Now go ye forth and peddle that discount sludge!

Amen

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                          Grooving in Area 52

Maybe…

The Beatles got it wrong back-then-ago
When groovy discs through grooves grooved out our songs -
For we now groove in an Area 52
Not in a groovy screen-door submarine  

Certainly…

We groove and grok in ******* behind chain-links
Where elderly men ****** their guitars
And middle-aged women dressed as majorettes
Jiggle duct tape and weight-loss medications

Maybe…

The Beatles grooved it right ago-back-then -
Old grooves, dull mediocrity still lock us in

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

                          The Holy Bible as a Base for a Potted Plant

On a shelf in our local pharmacy
A somewhat tattered Bible has reposed for years
And on that Bible is positioned a potted plant
And above them on the wall a cowboy cartoon

The iconography is elusive to me
One seeks for meaning in an assemblage:
So why this thing in this place at this time?
Existentially speaking (as we said in the ‘60s)
                        Why?

A curious piece of iconography
On a shelf in our local pharmacy

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

                        Colonial Rule from Low Earth Orbit

                         Telling lies to the young is wrong

                                      -Yevtushenko, “Lies”

Corporations and nations orbit the earth
Colonial rulers as satellites and drones
Enneagramming through our attic beams
Their mad, malevolent multi-wave streams

Ideas not our own – they coil and writhe
As sinister blue lights through days and nights
Device calling silently to device
In unheard hissings of infogoguery

We rattle our electronic chains about
And proclaim our freedom
                                          (as we are told)

A fuzzy structure there beside the road -
It proves to be the rib cage of the dead
Which nights before enclosed the heart and lungs
Of a creature on its errands dutiful

Gone now to buzzards and bacterial decay
On this, neither the Road to Damascus
Nor to Emmaus, and the Good Samaritan
Could have done nothing had he come along

It sinks into the dust, and so will we
Beneath the tire-treads of mortality

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

                     A Time Capsule for our Noblest Soldier

                          “In war I do not like to take sides”

                                         -Sergeant Schultz

If there must be time capsules buried beneath
Statues of bold men wearing uniforms
As a remembrance of man’s noblest ideals
Let us have one for dear ol’ Sergeant Schultz

A recipe for Hans' apple strudel
A bottle of his favorite Pilsner beer
A Cuban cigar from Colonel Klink’s stash
And a menu from the Hofbrau House

But especially the strudel

If we must honor soldiers, as some assert
Then let us include their favorite dessert

Thought it was Over

Thought it was over. It isn’t. A call,
A telephone call late at night. Prepare
Once again up and out with the curfew dawn
Yawning in the windshield, searching the night

Another paper cup of coffee for the road
The last breakfast biscuit at the gas stop
Three days out of date. It’s embalmed by now
Lines for gas, only there isn’t any gas

Lines for ice, lines for food, roads flooded out
Thought it was over. The coffee is cold

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

          The Understated Joys of Crows and Bedroom Slippers

The morning lawn is white with frost and mist
And speckled black with a claque of sneaky crows
Bullying the little birds aside for the seeds
Before the squirrels are up to contend for them

Into my Christmas slippers I push my feet
Slowly so as not to startle the birds
But they spy me through the window and rustle off
In insolent protest against all men

Because their feet are cold and mine are hot
Since I have slippers, and the crows have not!

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

                    The Police Department’s *****-Pictures Squad


           The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 26 January 2025


The police department’s *****-pictures squad
Under the direction of their sharia-ish chief
Will save us from sin at the degenerate Mod
And thus they rule us in matters of art and belief

They raided the museum, eager for filthy pictures
And found four images of infant innocence -
Such being repugnant to official strictures
The police seized the artwork, claiming moral offense

But

The grand jury no-billed the pictures, gave ‘em the nod
Rebuking the lusts of the *****-pictures squad!




Fort Worth Police to return seized photos to Modern Art Museum | Fort Worth Report

Civil liberties groups demand Fort Worth police end child ******* investigation against museum | Fort Worth Report

Texas bill threatens $500,000 daily fines for museums displaying 'obscene' art

This legislation would penalize museums for “obscene” photography, but is it a dangerous idea for the art community? | Digital Camera World

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

              Barefootin’ Among Watermelons on a Summer Afternoon

                    For J. W., His Dad, and His Uncle Brandon

J. W. is blessed with family and purpose and love
Guided study and chores and structured faith
Happy barefootin’ days among the watermelons
A fishing pole and buzzing-bee summer afternoons

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

                    The Destruct Sequence Has Been Activated


                   Upon the occasion of suddenly feeling old  
                   while sitting comfortably in a lawn chair
                   on a rare warm afternoon in February


The destruct sequence has been activated:
The photon torpedoes have all been fired
The memory software is badly outdated
The phaser comm panel cannot be re-wired

The main drive has stopped; the batteries are failing
The passageways are blocked with fallen debris
The controls on the bridge are uselessly flailing
The ship is listing slowly, degree by degree

Everything aboard ship is antiquated –
The destruct sequence has been activated

On Reading Yet Another Essay on the Death of Reading

Yet another essay beginning with “I”
Sophomore thesis: no one reads anymore
The power of books, the great ideas
The shared experience, the care of souls

The temptations of social media
(Really? No one ever said that before)
Escape, new points of view, humanity
Foundations of faith (but never the roofs)

If reading is dead -

If reading is dead, then who reads those essays,
Those many essays on the death of reading?

The Weight of a Rifle

                 I had quite forgotten the weight of a rifle.

                -C. S. Lewis to his brother, 11 August 1940,
                         upon joining the Home Guard

Despite the cold and the morning mist
Some of the fellows reported wild boars
Up against the tree line across the fields
So with my old rifle I took a walk

I found their feral diggings and rootings
And stood and listened to the autumn winds
Sighing in the tree tops, but there were no hogs
Robert Frost could have made something of it

I marched for miles in my merry youth
Laughing and singing by squad and company
M-14 rifles slung over our skinny shoulders
Our government thought this was a good idea

I found some bright-red holly-berries this morning
Which was more fun than shooting at hogs

Or at other men

Letters of C. S. Lewis, ed. W. H. Lewis, Harvest / HBJ, San Diego, 1966

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                          Battle Stations Aboard the Bismarck

When general quarters sounded that morning in May
Did a seventeen-year-old apprentice cook
Rushing to his topside battle station
But remembering the chief’s daily admonitions

And the way his mother kept her kitchen clean
Notice on a galley table a speck of dust
And pause to brush it away
When general quarters sounded that morning in May

He asked me to review his book (I must be nuts)
I did just as he asked:
                                       and now he hates my guts

The Dog Not Taken

Two roads diverged on a paper ballot
Rejecting both, I voted for my dog

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                        A Burning Car in Baghdad


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

                           ― Agatha Christie, They Came to Baghdad


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

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

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

And neither do I

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

                         Our Fearless Leaders / Have Got / The Shot

But as for us, well, we have not

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

               A Quatrain to Explain the Infinite Monkey Theory

If you set a monkey at a typewriter
To type and type for all eternity
What he will type, that little blighter
Is a politician’s speech – nonsense, you see!

I wish I wuz a sheriff’s deputy
The traffic laws would mean nothing to me

I’d cruise through the red lights and all them stop signs
But give everyone else lots of tickety-fines

At the café  I’d park in the handicapped zone
Then drive by the school yakking on my cell phone

Turn signals for me? A thing of the past!
And when scooting through town I’d drive real fast

Yeah, if I wuz a sheriff’s deputy
The traffic laws would mean nothing to me

Little Plastic Army Men in Action on a Snow Day

If I were a boy

I’d range my toy soldiers before the fire
Vast armies of plastic in green and grey
With the cannon blasting the enemy -
A glorious victory again today!

If I were a boy

I’d eat my morning cereal with Robin Hood
Propped up in his Whitman book before me
Its pages open to an England where
Every day is summer, green upon the lea

If I were a boy

My mother would remind me, to my sorrow
That I have a ‘rithmetic test tomorrow

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

                                 The Mystery of the Lunar Month

The reality of the lunar month
A tiny bat jerking and jinking through the dusk
In pursuit of its evening mosquitoes
Beneath a far-up vapor trail

The mystery of the lunar month
Calculated by wise ones in the long ago
With night far gentler than the solar heat
And minds more subtle than the glare of day

Each a mathematical autocrat
(Smoking an after-dinner ziggurat?)

As in an Agatha Christie mystery
A man - he ghosts into a consulate
As a flickering image upon a screen
The image, yes, but not the man is seen

          (A soft midnight splash in the Golden Horn)

As in an Eric Ambler mystery
Perhaps he is another Dimitrios
Another identity, and in the rain
Someone else slips aboard the Belgrade train

          (A soft midnight splash in the Golden Horn)

The inspectors inspect; the leaders lie:
We would not have it that Our subject should die

          (And softly flows the current through the Golden Horn)

Vaches Sans Frontières

An American
Cow goes “Moo.” A Canadian
Cow goes “Eh.”   Merci.

In the old French barracks, shelvings of cots
No ventilation – that was for officers
The night was hot, wet; sleep was difficult
No one knew anyone or anything

A siren. Life paused. Should we do something?
We barefooted outside in our skivvies
Hot. Silent. Still. Stuffy. Respirations
Is this a false alarm? Is it over now?

BLAM!
                                
Boom. BOOM! Boom-boom-boom-boom. BOOM!

And during a pause

a small voice said, “I don’t think they want us here.”

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

                   About that Bicycle Leaning Against a Sunlit Wall

About that bicycle leaning against a wall
All artsy and stuff in the slanting sun
“Take my clear photograph!” it seems to call -
Nah, put away your Leica - it’s been done

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

                 The Last Literary Magazine I Will Ever Buy

A weighty enough tome for fourteen dollars
Guest-edited by a famous visiting poet
For that much money there should be more hollers
But it’s mostly free verse, wouldn’t ya know it

Self-pitying free verse (oh, how I have suffered)
First-person pronouns shattered and scattered about
From each other with white space well buffered
Each polemic a sustained, censorious pout

The thesis of each yelp in this literary gong?

All that we say and do and think is wrong

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

               Guilted to the Cemetery Next to the Sewage Plant

                          The dead with charity enclosed in clay

                                             -Henry V IV.viii.121

I did not want to go to the cemetery today
And do things with Hobby Lobby flowers
Made in China plastic $8.95
And floral foam in chemical green blocks

The streets of my youth are rubble and weeds
The woods of my youth are now trailer parks
The church of my youth is a hollerin’ place
For even they have lost all dignity

The soft wind sighs over our people’s graves
The stench from the sewage plant sweeps in waves

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

                                           A Tom Bombadil Day


                         “How bright your garden looks!”

                            -Gandalf, The Lord of the Rings, Book I


Tomato seedlings from the hardware store
Happy little things, six of ‘em to a pack
I sing to them as I drive them home
They seem amused: I am no Tom Bombadil!

I sing to them more nonsense songs
(If no sniffy old Lobelias are listening)
As I gently, gently transfer them
With a pat and a prayer into the earth

And I sing to them; you will understand
For you too have lived in the dear old Shire

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

                                 Oath Peepers Security Cameras

The security cameras around the house aren’t much
The cheapest available on Yarmuk.com
They take dim pictures of the UPS guy
And fuzzy grey shots of ‘possums at night

A problem is that they think they’re Army cameras
That the batteries they took never expire
That the science of optics has been betrayed
And that light is whatever they want it to be

Along the windowsills they belch and *art:
“Tina Modotti is a traitor to art!”

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com


                                    A repost for Canada Day:

                           Come Laughing Home at Twilight

Beaumont-Hamel, 1916

And, O!  Wasn’t he just the Jack the Lad,
A’swellin’ down the Water Street as if –
As if he owned the very paving stones!
He was my beautiful boy, and, sure,
The girls they thought so too: his eyes, his walk;
A man of Newfoundland, my small big man,
Just seventeen, but strong and bold and sure.

Where is he now?  Can you tell me?  Can you?

Don’t tell me he was England’s finest, no –
He was my finest, him and his Da,
His Da, who breathed in sorrow, and was lost,
They say, lost in the fog, among the ice.
But no, he too was killed on the first of July
Only it took him months to cast away,
And drift away, far away, in the mist.

Where is he now?  Can you tell me?  Can you?

I need no Kings nor no Kaisers, no,
Nor no statues with fine words writ on’em,
Nor no flags nor no Last Post today:
I only want to see my men come home,
Come laughing home at twilight, boots all mucky,
An’ me fussin’ at ‘em for being’ late,
Come laughing home at twilight.

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                    Draining the Blood of Humans at Twilight


                           A powerful monster //  living down
                           in the darkness growled // in pain…

                         -Beowulf, Burton Raffel translation


In the sinister dusk // they seek our blood
A ghastly enemy // of disgusting thirst
Stealing up from the swamp // and primordial mud –
Well, we stole their habitat // – mosquitoes were here first!

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

              The Great Canadian Dairy / Diary Dispute of 2022

         "Canada must now do the right thing and come into full
           compliance with its obligations on diary [sic].”

   Brady: Canadian Dairy Dispute Settlement Achieved Thanks to
  USMCA’s Improved Enforcement | U.S. House of Representatives

How many nights have Americans lost sleep
Through fear and righteous anger that in the darkness
An illegal liter of perfidious Canadian milk
Might sneak across the 49th Parallel

The lights burn late in the Pentagon tonight
While border guards watch the wicked north
Lest a stick of malicious Canadian butter
Attempt to overthrow our Constitution

We watch all our borders constantly now
Against Canadians hiding in a Trojan cow

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

               Whatever Happened to all our Little Notebooks?

We all saw the same old bumper sticker:
This is not a rehearsal; this is your life
And so we carried little notebooks around
Discreetly jotting down the overheards

In coffee shops and class, the mid-night shift
The bus to work, the elevator up
The escalator down, the line at the bank
For the poems or plays or novels we’d write

The cafeteria was a notebook itself
Between the salad and dessert we fell in love

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

           Reading the Magna Carta Will Make Us Smarter

                  (And it bans fish weirs in the Thames)

The Kings have been subject to the law since 1215
But are American presidents? That remains to be seen

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

                            Port aux Basques in September

                    “Only a fish storm, no threat to anyone…”

                          - a weather guy south of the 49th

To our weather guy there is nothing north of Maine
He has never seen Port aux Basques
With summer snow still bright along the hills
Above ***-holey Canada 1 (mind the moose)

(“Only a fish storm, no threat to anyone…”)

He has never heard of Cape Ray or the Newfie Bullet
Or seen the little fishing boats tacking in at dawn
Or the astrolabe that says to the voyager
“Now here at last is your dear New-Found Land”

(“Only a fish storm, no threat to anyone…”)

He will never mourn the wreckage and loss
Because for him there is nothing north of Maine

(“Only a fish storm, no threat to anyone…”)

Town of Channel-Port aux Basques | Canada's Ferry Gateway to Newfoundland

For Anna Akhmatova

Oh, we have strolled the winter avenues
Of the great Czar’s queen city of the North
And argued about Pushkin, over tea,
Great cups of tea in noisy little shops

Where at each table sat a poet or two
With pocket-wrinkled sheets of wild new verse
Set out like armies in desperate defense
Of the holy soil of the Motherland

Yes, we have strolled along the frozen Neva
In dream-bearing Aurora’s sacred light

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                    Lent is Not About Giving Up Things Lent is Not About
                    Giving Up Things Lent is Not About Giving Up Things
                    Lent is Not About Giving Up Things

All of my life I have been told
That Lent is not about giving up things
So was there a time when anyone
was told otherwise?