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

                         Reliable InterGossip Service Providers

                            This one is dedicated to Spectrum

Don’t tell me that they are unreliable
All of my providers have been quite precise
Sure, the picture and sound are not often viable
But the bills are always on time – how nice!

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

                         Preparing a Wordle for the Third World War

I would have said that the Cold War was the Third
Viet-Nam was hot enough for me
But the old men rattling their dentures in anger
Assure us that this new war is the one

Today I withdrew some cash from the bank
Topped off the gas tanks and the lawnmower cans
Bought water, toilet paper, and batteries
And propped my walking stick beside my bed

My daughter says that tomorrow we start WORDLE
With “PEACE” - her warfare is the best of all

I love few things better than a cup of tea
But with that advert – shouldn’t they pay me?

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

        The Writer, the Reader, and the Synapse Between Them

                                               Per V.B. & W.K.

From the writer to the reader
From the speaker to the listener

Like a 16-year-old crossing a field at noon
A little word has a lot of ground to cover in the heat
A mile of open ground to a wall and some trees
Where confusion does not want it to arrive

From the writer to the reader
From the speaker to the listener

If we send a little word across a field
But stay behind ourselves and only watch
To see what happens - how responsible are we
If the word dies screaming among the wheat

From the writer to the reader
From the speaker to the listener

Like a 16-year-old crossing a field at noon
A little word has a lot of ground to cover in the heat

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

                                 Breakfast in Constantinople

The waitress greeted us in Saint Petersburg
We drank strong coffee in Alexandria
Our omelets were served in Cambridgeshire
As we gossiped in the narthex of Hagia Sophia

We briefly sat in the halls of Congress and idled
And said good morning to Shelley and Keats
We admonished die Rheintochter to behave themselves
But they ignored us and flirted with some sailors

What fun in table-talk as the day begins -
There’s nothing more joyful than breakfast with friends!

I Don’t Want a Mind of my Own

No, no, I don’t want a mind of my own
A mind is a gift, and must be returned
To the realm beyond the stars whence it came
For now it is in service to humanity

A mind does not belong to its bearer
Nor is it the property of the state
Or the bombinate Men of Destiny
Or the vacuous Spirit of the Age

A mind belongs to – oh, but well you know
In Truth, I don’t want a mind of my own

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                       To Accept Israel

                    “Israel was not created in order to disappear - Israel will
                    endure and flourish. It is the child of hope and the home
                    of the brave. It carries the shield of democracy and it
                    honors the sword of freedom.”

                               – President John F. Kennedy)

To deny Israel is to curse ourselves
For we are inheritors of the Covenant
That He should be our God, and we His people
He creates us, He calls us – this is so

He has given us prophecy and law
Cattle in the fields, fish in all the seas
And lovers, flowers, sunsets, songs, salvation
The Great Dance of Creation - and Himself

Let not the sinister whisperer divide us!
To accept Israel is to accept - everyone

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Fellowship & Fairydust (fellowshipandfairydust.com)
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                              The Grim Intensity of Mars

Tonight the grim intensity of Mars
Along the horizon is the war god’s warning
A pagan prophecy of blood among the stars
A judgement upon this planet of ghosts

Tonight the withering scorn of Jupiter
Withdrawing his light is a repudiation
Of Earth’s cultures of disassociation and death
Of powdered skulls for smoothing a footer pitch

While corpses influence corpses through blank blue screens
The last man dies with Karamazov in his hands

How Peaceful this Morning to Drive a Desk

How peaceful this morning to drive a desk
The culturally-despised desk, that cliché
The flat surface littered with papers and screens
And a telephone with buttons that light up

How lovely - fluorescents flickering over files
And not a yellow sun over shimmering muck
Lines for gas and water, rot and decay
And cast-off couches reeking in the heat

How peaceful - the ordinary all about
(Even though the men’s room is all wrecked out)

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Logosophiamag.c­om
Hellopoetry.com
Fellowshipandfairydust.com

                  ­       Appropriating Babushkas from the Orthodox

                        (upon the first Sunday home from the hospital)

A babushka badly in need of a hearing aid
Asked me if I would sub for the missing lector
I apologetically said I really didn’t feel up to it
And would she please ask somebody else.

I tracked her progress back to the narthex by sound:

“HE SAYS HE DON’T WANNA HE’S SICK!”  “HE SAYS HE DON’T WANNA HE’S SICK!” “HE SAYS HE DON’T WANNA HE’S SICK!” “HE SAYS HE DON’T WANNA HE’S SICK!” “HE SAYS HE DON’T WANNA HE’S SICK!”  “HE SAYS HE DON’T WANNA HE’S SICK!” “HE SAYS HE DON’T WANNA HE’S SICK!” “HE SAYS HE DON’T WANNA HE’S SICK!”

But it’s all good; God gives us babushkas
To show us that the Faith, like the babushkas

Will never go away

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

                         The Stopping Power of the American Incel

                         “I’m giving all my grandchildren AR rifles.”

                                          -my brother-in-law

And if my nieces and nephews fire their guns
To **** their classmates or some passers-by
Or maybe the neighbors’ little pre-school sons
They’ll still love the Second even as they fry

The killings in our streets we continue in jail:
Electrocution, drugs, shooting, or gassing
Or maybe by hanging – note how they choke and flail -
And the Ballcap Church will bless their passing

We’re such a shining city on our high hill
Compensating for our loser-ness with each patriotic ****

Happy Easter / Pascha to a Russian Orthodox Friend

What sort of man sits in the silent dark
And waits for a small candle to be lit
When he could reach over and flip a switch
For the miracle of electricity

Bravely to course through the building’s wired veins
The march of progress with a touch controlled
By the hand of humanity triumphant
Over Byzantine superstition. Tell us:

What hopeful sort of man waits for the dawn,
For Light to appear from a cold, sealed tomb?

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

                                       60 Keys to Abject Horror


                            The man that hath no music in himself
                            Plays the harpsichord instead

                                   -as Shakespeare did not say


Of all musical instruments the most abhorred
Is the banging, clanging harpsichord

Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                                            Reality Will See You Now

I am a student of medical waiting rooms
The same Motel 6 paintings and decor
Receptionists giggling behind rippled glass
About weekends and boyfriends and inadequate husbands

Patients waiting as patiently as Russians
Tattoos and ball-caps lined up in plastic-chairs
Clutching bills and lab reports in nervous hands
Or greasy year-old copies of Reader’s Digest

Or bending over their MePhones in a servile bow -
“Mr. Hall? The doctor will see you now…”

The Forces of Happiness

“There will be music, dancing, happiness…by order.”

-Town Crier in Dance of the Dead, an episode of The Prisoner

The Forces of Happiness are released
To worry out of their burrows those poor
Unfocused souls who mumble about their days
In happy, innocuous solitude

With books and cups of tea and scribbled lines
Of happy wonderings and teasing thoughts.
And such is not acceptable to those
Who suffer not any individuals –

To herd them into organized submission
The Forces of Happiness are released

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                  Kafka, You, and the Self-Service Checkout Kiosk

                            With thanks to Rowan Pelling


                  Those who have never suffered through Kafka
                  Should not employ the adjective “Kafkaesque” -
                  The landgraf would not approve


When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning
from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed
in his bed into a monstrous self-service checkout kiosk.

Someone must have traduced Joseph K.,
for without doing anything wrong
he was arrested in the checkout line
one fine morning

It was late in the evening when
the supermarket supervisor arrived.


Kafka, The Metamorphosis. Trans. Stanley Corngold. New York: Norton. 1972

Kafka, The Trial. Trans. Willa and Edwin Muir. New York: The Modern Library. 1956

Kafka, The Castle. Trans. Willa and Edwin Muir. New York: Schocken. 1982

The hell of self-service checkouts is becoming Kafkaesque (yahoo.com)

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

                             The Death of Our Old Hippie Truck Driver

                                      For Brian, of Happy Memory

                     For every star that falls to earth a new one glows.
                     For every dream that fades away a new one grows.

                                                 -Rod McKuen

Suddenly there was cancer eating away
At what was left of his star and his dreams
That second star to the right was suddenly closer
And we can’t know what that far shore is like

But he had often seen the rainbow’s end
Shining across the windshield of his rig
Over his mountains and his magic lands
Interstates according to Peter Max

For years he rolled to the beat of ‘68 -
No more runs, now; his logbook’s up to date

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

                                           Rubik’s Cubicle

When a problem is solved, another spins ‘round
When that problem is solved, two others spin back
When those problems are solved, chaos begins
Everything depends on everything else

When a date is set, another unsets
When that date is set, two others get lot
When those dates are found, chaos begins
Everyone depends on everyone else

A wise man learns that chaos begins
When the Rubik’s cube of life backspins

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

                     Pam from The Office Goes to War

A young woman drills with a wooden rifle
She looks like Pam Beesly from The Office
An old man checks his antique shotgun’s breech
He looks like Grandpa going out for rabbits

The Ukraine is preparing for war

In a bunker a young man cuddles a cat
He looks like he should be driving a truck
An old woman practices field medicine
She looks like she’s done this before

The Ukraine is preparing for war

They all may die under Russian tank treads
Their government will watch on television

(For that’s how our leaders prepare for war)

Sometimes in Korea, Sometimes Not

He wears clean overalls, a nice new shirt
A collection of small tools in his pockets
A cap that reads “U.S. Army Retired”
And for some reason his Sunday go-to-church shoes

He mumbles his Mac-Something breakfast meal
A presentation in cellophane and foam
Organic-free or gluten-full or something
And seems to visit with someone long gone

A middle-aged woman in a Daewoo
Arrives to help him up and take him home

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

                                      The Russia Project

I will give up my copy of The Brothers Karamazov
When they pry it from my cold, dead hands

One reads of emerging writers
But from what do they emerge?

Wombs?
Tombs?
Rooms?

Cells?
Wells?
Shells?

Sins?
Bins?­
Tins?

Canada?

So go ahead; emerge away
Then tell us what you have to say

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                         31 May 2024 – The Prophet-God Descends

A being descends a de-escalator of brass
As if he were beaming down from the Hale-Bopp
A prophet-god to a room thin with ghosts
Who in hollowness hang upon his vanities

He pauses

Then whines

Obscenities
Threats
Promises
Resentments
Anger

Flinging blame and incomplete sentences

Into a void

This is Texas

Where books are banned
And weapons are not
Where we pray for our land
And our children are shot

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


                “Choose You This Day Whom You Will Serve”


                    “…for whom war was a fresh terror and the corpses
                        of real people…”

            -Matti Friedman, Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai


A little child ripped from her dead mother’s arms
          Is not a petition for border adjustments
A grandfather murdered while waiting for the bus
          Is not a parliamentary point of order
Teenagers stripped, *****, beaten, tortured, and shot
          Are not cool chants in a university quad
A rotting fragment of a beheaded baby
          Is not someone’s tee-shirt slogan
An elderly woman still marked from Buchenwald
          Is a child of God, not a bargaining chip

No deflections
No whatabouts
No evasions
No excuses

No

Choose you this day whom you will serve

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

                        What Went Ye into the Casino to See?

                              Shootings at a Las Vegas Casino

                                                 -news item

What went ye into the casino to see -
A numbered mandala spinning truth on red
A James Bond manque in a cartoon tee
A tatted Sylvia Trench wheezing a joint?

What went ye into the casino to see -
A clapped-out Toyota cruising the drag
Mysterious encounters behind the Denny’s
Getting lucky in the Lucky 7 Motel?

Does a man learn at last what life really means
Choking in blood among the slot machines?


Cf. St. Matthew 11:7

It’s not enough that words are taken wrong
Misused and misplaced where they should not be
Cut up and pasted down as thought-traps set
To stop poor pilgrims on their search for truth

But even worse: we push ourselves aside
To follow ephemeral bellowings
In passive obedience to the noises
Of settled senescence posing as youth

It’s not enough that words are taken wrong
But even worse: we push ourselves aside

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com


                                           For Cate and Jack

                                           Or Jack and Cate?

                                                On Christmas


Certain joys about Christmas are always true
For among the season’s constant blessings
                        Are you!

“We are pregnant!” the husband happily cried
“No, we are not,” the tired wife knowingly sighed

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

                You Were in Bethlehem – Don’t You Remember?

                             Setting up the family Creche

When you were a little child you knelt before
The Infant Jesus there in Bethlehem
Among the animals you placed your toys:
Barbie and Buzz, and Woody the Cowboy too

Even the Wise Men smiled to hear you sing
To the Holy Family your baby songs
In cold Judaea in the long ago
The Christmas story is true, and you were there

And so forever

You are a Christmas child and kneel before
The Infant Jesus – here in Bethlehem

An Extraordinary Ordinary Life

            For Mrs. Tinney Davidson, The Waving Grandma
                               Comox, British Columbia

She lived in an ordinary house in an ordinary street
And every day she waved to children passing by
And every day the waved-at children waved back
Because a wave is a good beginning to the day

In the morning she waved the children along to school
And in the evening waved them back again home
And every day the waved-at children waved back
Just like the waves that hug a beach, with love

And then one day she went away, and waved -
And the waved-at children will wave back forever

Extraordinary!

(cf. Here and Now, CBC St. John’s, 26 April 2019)

To Propagandists of All Flavors in All Nations

Sometimes my work is joyful, sometimes sad
Sometimes my work is good, more often bad -
But never does it belong to you, comrade.

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


                    Whatever Happened to Clarence Eustace Scrubb?

          He liked books if they were books of information and had
          pictures of grain elevators or of fat foreign children doing
          exercises in model schools.

                             -C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader


He was so good at banning ideas that later
They made him a Texas school administrator


Keller ISD to remove challenged books | The Texas Tribune

Amelia Earhart has been found again
Steve Jobs is locked away in a hidden vault
There’s gold aboard Der Fuhrer’s secret train
Which is buried beneath an earthquake fault

Albino monks inspire Trump’s every plan
The Queen is one of The Lizard People
The Pope belongs to the Ku Klux ****
(His 666 is on every steeple)

Satan is aboard an unmarked U.N. jet -
It must be true; it’s on the GossipNet!

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

                        “Ladies…or Should I say Astronauts…”

                                         -as heard on the CBC

Shriek! Cackle! Giggle! Omigod! Ohmigoddess! Omigod! Omigod! I can’t believe what I’m seeing! Omigod! Omigoddess! Shriek! Cackle! Omigod! Omigod! Giggle! Omigod! I can’t believe what I’m seeing! Giggle! Omigod! Shriek! Cackle! Omigod! Omigod! That’s our pink moon! Omigod! I can’t believe what I’m seeing! Ohmigoddess! Giggle! Shriek! Cackle! Omigod! Omigod! Omigoddess! I can’t believe what I’m seeing! Shriek! Cackle! Omigodess! Omigod! Omigod! I can’t believe what I’m seeing! Shriek! Cackle! Giggle! Omigod! Omigod! Omigod! I can’t believe what I’m seeing! Omigod! Shriek! Cackle! Omigoddess! Omigod! Omigod! Giggle! Omigod! I can’t believe what I’m seeing! Giggle! Omigod! Shriek! Cackle! Omigod! Omigod! Omigod! I can’t believe what I’m seeing! Giggle! Shriek! Cackle! Omigod! Omigodess! Omigod! I can’t believe what I’m seeing! Shriek! Cackle! Omigod! Omigod! Omigoddess! I can’t believe what I’m seeing!

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Logosophiamag.c­om
Hellopoetry.com
Fellowshipandfairydust.com

                                                 Not Exactly Saint Mark

“Who do you say that I am?”

‘“Whom,’” replied the local schoolmaster.

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

                                       Neither a King nor a Boss

A gas station close by the overpass
A display case of shiny knives and knucks
One of the knives features a naked lady
Some of the knucks are labeled “KING” and “BOSS”

But would the object of a metallic punch
Have time to read either the “KING” or “BOSS”
Before he fell among his blood and pain?
A legless man in a wheelchair rolls by

To his blue tarp and sleeping bag close by
The gas station close by the overpass

Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                     From Shakespeare: You Will Not be Blamed

                                Cf. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 70

You are so beautiful; you are so good
Twin attributes given to you at birth
Sustained by you in dignity and grace
As you have grown into a woman’s estate

Be careful! You will be envied for those truths
Envied by some for your transient beauty
Envied by others for your transcendent good
Envied by the envious for their own failings

In the end your reputation cannot be harmed
For you are the queen of all hearts charmed

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Logosophiamag.c­om
Hellopoetry.com
Fellowshipandfairydust.com

         The Honorable Kevin McCarthy Recognizes Tucker Carlson

                                      And only Tucker Carlson

The First Amendment defends everyone’s views
And does not surrender the nation to Fox News

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim’s Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Fellowship & Fairydust (fellowshipandfairydust.com)
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                     The Cataracts of the Nile

Obscure and opaque
But surely there are in Egypt
Ophthalmologists

The duck and cover drill was never frightening
Not like arithmetic, or the teacher’s stare
For if the rockets fell, no more homework
Or switch-inducing notes to Mom and Dad

“Lawrence is a smart boy but needs to work harder.”
We crouched beside our desks and giggled
About old Khruschev bombing East Texas
Any American could whip three Commies

We had James Stewart and President Eisenhower

And so

The duck and cover drill was never frightening

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


  Tonight I Looked Up at the Sky and Named it Warren G. Harding

                                               Because I Can


     “All names will soon be restored to their proper owners. In the
                       meantime we will not dispute about noises.”

                -Aslan in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe


Denali, McKinley, Denali, McKinley again
The Gulf of Mexico is this week’s Gulf of America
Confederates in storage bewail their sin
Fort Beauregard is now good Fort Generica

Highways are named by passion and mood
Local streets for the glorious heroes of yore
But a new generation finds the old signs rude
And replaces them perhaps with a football score

Slow-fading names to cuss and discuss
But in the end what will God name
                                                                ­         each of us?

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

                              Dostoyevsky and Applesauce 2 / $5

                                        Literature in the Supermarket

The nice young man who bags my purchases -
He spoke to me of Notes from Underground
And who the unreliable narrator is
And how he anticipates the revolution

The pharmacist who jabbed me against the ‘flu –
He spoke to me of Robert E. Howard
And how Conan’s psychological issues
Anticipate the author’s death by suicide

A surprising conversation in a small-town grocery
But even more in a modern university

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                      Giv­ing People The Bird

                                An Empty Chick-fil-A Car
                      Idling in the Medical Clinic’s Red Zone

Blocking the patients-only zone is a bit absurd
Or maybe Chick-fil-A is simply giving us The Bird

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim’s Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Fellowship & Fairydust (fellowshipandfairydust.com)
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

               Carpenters, Electricians, Plumbers, and Pom-Poms

And sometimes I hear
Professional craftsmen gossiping
Like cheerleader sponsors

A Secret University

You registered for university
When in the womb you were beloved of God
Your classes then began when you were born
When you awoke, and saw your mother’s eyes

And in them all the possibilities
Of life, of golden life, given to you
Upon this planet with its flowered fields
Forests and rivers beneath its moon and sun

And all these tell you, in eternal Song1
That all the world is your university


1In The Kalevala, in Lewis’ Narnia, and in many faiths, God sings the world into being.

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                        Reader Responses in the U. K. Daily Mail

RepubliCraps. Demoncrats. Repugs. DemoCraps. MAGA. Magats. Maggots. Clown. Orange clown. Clowns. Clown show. Absolute clown show. Absolute ****** clown show. Diaper Joe. Dr. Potatohead. *****. Selected not elected. Deplorables. Trailer trash. Absolute trailer trash. Said no one ever. Oh wait. Lock her up. Lock him up. Throw away the key. Absolutely. Joebama. Drumpf. Dump. Woke. Wokista. Wokerati. Absolutely Woke. Biden’s America. Trump’s America. Mean tweets. No mean tweets. These teachers. These schools. These universities. TDS. Absolute TDS. Liberal idiots. Extremist idiots. Absolute idiots. ROFL. Grab some popcorn. …in 1, 2, 3…  Dumpster fire. Absolute dumpster fire. You can’t make this stuff up. Train wreck. Absolute train wreck. Car crash. Absolute car crash. Total car crash. The jokes write themselves. At its finest. Pure evil. Absolute pure evil. Cue crickets. Of biblical proportions. Of epic proportions. Of absolute epic biblical proportions. Rinse and repeat. Rules for thee but not for me. Two-tier justice system. Absolute two-tier justice system. You could look it up. Follow the science. Full stop. LOL. End of. Absolutely. Fact. FACT!!!!!

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim’s Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Fellowship & Fairydust (fellowshipandfairydust.com)
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                       What WE Did in the War

                               For all those Keyboard Commandos
                               Who Can Quote Every Line in Patton

You talk about what WE did in World War Two -
Well, I wasn’t there, and neither were you

Lawrence Hall, HSG

mhall46184@aol.comm

(from several years ago)

                                        Within the Octave of Christmas


                               For Eldon, 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 hops, 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.

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

                                   The Day Internet Explorer Died

Our gadgets from the store, all shiny and new
The subjects of our brags and anecdotes
Are soon held together with Scotch tape and glue
And covered with coffee stains and sticky-notes

Codings and software must also decay
Metaphorical patches fall apart
They too enjoy only a limited day
Thus the limits of electronic art

To our own end, yes, we eventually toddle -
To be replaced by the latest model!