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Lawrence Hall May 2021
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

              Graduation Speech Soup – Simply Stir and Serve

Keep the torch alive to pass to a new generation with the key that unlocks the road to the future follow your passion the unemployment will follow woo-hoo we’ve been through some amazing times together make a difference to thine own self be true woo-hoo commencement means a beginning not an ending woo-hoo as we go forth life is a journey not a destination we made it all the hard work we’ve put forth to this point in time these are the best time in our lives as one door closes another door opens because a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step to make the world a better place trust your instincts you don’t find education in books we are the future bright with promise some see the future and ask why but we see the future and ask why not Habakkuk 2:7 woo-hoo we did it I can’t believe we’re here believe in yourself live your dreams to be all that you can be as a famous man John Kennedy once said God has a plan for you woo-hoo we have the responsibility to build a new world if opportunity doesn’t know build a door don’t follow the path blaze a trail because there is no one like you because you are an individual just like those other hundred or so people your age and all dressed just alike because life is what happens while you’re making plans woo-hoo live, laugh, love you have to look through the rain to see the rainbow dance like nobody’s looking (even though they are, and they’re laughing at you) aim for the moon and if you miss you’ll hit the moon (or something) life is not waiting for the storm to pass it’s about dancing in the rain because you are a new generation called to miss 100% of the shots you don’t take because we were all one big family who have lived, laughed, and loved together hey and remember the time (name) barfed on the stairs we’ll all that that shared moment to remember together woo-hoo we can’t save all the starfish but I can make a difference for this one because as a great man Robert Frost said in “The Road Not Taken” we can make a difference for all the starfish in the sea of life woo-hoo today is the first day of your rest of your life oh, the places you’ll go like maybe eternal stasis in front of a MePhone I don’t know why they asked me to be the speaker shout-out to Mom wear sunscreen because your future’s so bright close your eyes and remember when hey, an air horn, that’s so cool, no one’s ever done that before woo-hoo I want to congratulate each and every one of you on your incredible talents and abilities as you begin your journey to a bright and shining future because we are the best class (name of school and a shout-out to the mascot) has ever graduated (since last year) woo-hoo a dream is a wish your heart makes and you can become anything you dream to be or wish to be or something #lifehack #hashtag now go forth and make your lives exceptional woo-hoo although on Monday morning we’ll wake up and realize we’re just more unemployed Americans.
One longs for a world free of speeches.
1.0k · Mar 2017
The Revolution is a Corpse
Lawrence Hall Mar 2017
The Revolution is a Corpse

The revolution is a stinking corpse
And spreading béarnaise sauce all over a corpse
While chanting “It’s alive!” doesn’t make it so
Because a revolution can never live

Artists are never revolutionaries
Because artists work up the good and true
From the foundation of creation
While revolutionaries obey diktats

Rearranging a corpse is never art
And revolution is always a corpse
Lawrence Hall May 2018
The Cardinal knows that he is a pretty bird
Splendidly attired in feathers bright and gay
He publishes loudly; he will be heard
Among the squawks of mockingbird and jay

He gobbles and scatters husks, rusks, and seeds
In self-indulgent abandonment
He ignores all others in his wants and needs
They’re secular birds; they can take a hint

The Cardinal certainly loves to be seen
At the public feeder in all his pride
Attentive to fashions, and always keen
For the Best Birds to be posed at his side

But then one day

A few remnant feathers, a ripped cardinal’s hat -
He seems to have forgotten the watchful cat
From *Paleo-Hippies at Work and Play*, 2014, available from amazon
Lawrence Hall Dec 2016
About Those Purple Socks
  
Graham Greene’s Monsignor Quixote
  
The world had no more use for any of them:
An old Communist, an old priest, an old car
All of them well into their horsemeat days
And so they fled, and crashed into the truth
  
On a chivalric quest for purple socks
Wandering on the road to Golgotha
Their Stations of the Cross a cinema,
A pair of Guardia, a brothel, wine
  
And so they fled, and fell into the Truth
There at the foot of the Altar of God
Lawrence Hall Nov 2018
For David Jones, 1895-1974
Poet, Artist
Pte., Royal Welch Fusiliers

One can go back to one's own home…
and everything is so changed that one is a stranger.

― Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear

I went away, a young and foolish lad
Imagining I would go home someday
Made manly in the war, someone to respect
Admired by all in the old, familiar scenes

There was only exile. Echoes and screams
Fumbling through the flashbacks for charger clips
And stepping carefully lest the lawn explode
In dreams lit only by parachute flares

While waiting for the order for volley fire
And is the safety on? Or am I off?
Lawrence Hall Oct 2018
-Ecclesiastes 1:2-11

That which is said to come already is
And was, and so will be again – the sun
Will rise tomorrow, perhaps not upon me
But still the sun will rise again tomorrow

And warm the waters in a little stream
That laughing play with fallen autumn leaves
And all of them swim past a rotting pier
Where little boys with their cane poles once fished

The river currents flow, and so do we
To find our sunlit dreams upon that sea
Your ‘umble scrivener’s site is:
Reactionarydrivel.blogspot.com.
It’s not at all reactionary, tho’ it might be drivel.
Lawrence Hall Oct 2018
The president wants us to come together –
One imagines a sea-to-shining sea
Patriotic ****** (with a touch of leather?)
And everyone moaning “MAGA!!!!” simultaneously
Lawrence Hall Nov 2018
“…you’ll love this riveting memoir.”

One longs to see a memoir riveting,
Setting in place with tongs the hot red steel,
Bucking the tail, and quickly pivoting
For another – a worker’s life is real
Your ‘umble scrivener’s site is:
Reactionarydrivel.blogspot.com.
It’s not at all reactionary, tho’ it might be drivel.

My vanity publications are available on amazon.com as bits of dead tree and on Kindle:  The Road to Magdalena, Paleo-Hippies at Work and Play, Lady with a Dead Turtle, Don’t Forget Your Shoes and Grapes, Coffee and a Dead Alligator to Go, and Dispatches from the Colonial Office.
Lawrence Hall Sep 2019
In the back of a county pickup truck
Odd jobs in lifting this and shifting that
And clearing the other – work gloves, chain saws
A rake, some shovels, water in the cooler

He wipes hot sweat with his zebra-stripe shirt:
“Better than the cells, Mr. H, much better
Sun and fresh air; it ain’t so bad, you know
A little hard work never hurt nobody

It was that old devil dope; I couldn’t say no…”

“Enough of that now, boys; we got to go.”
Your ‘umble scrivener’s site is: Reactionarydrivel.blogspot.com

It’s not at all reactionary, tho’ it might be drivel.

Lawrence Hall’s vanity publications are available on amazon.com as Kindle and on bits of dead tree:  THE ROAD TO MAGDALENA, PALEO-HIPPIES AT WORK AND PLAY, LADY WITH A DEAD TURTLE, DON’T FORGET YOUR SHOES AND GRAPES, COFFEE AND A DEAD ALLIGATOR TO GO, and DISPATCHES FROM THE COLONIAL OFFICE.
971 · Apr 2017
All Change at Zima Junction
Lawrence Hall Apr 2017
All Change at Zima Junction

For Yevgeny Yevtushenko, 1932-2017

Everyone changes trains at Zima Junction
Changes lives; nineteen becomes twenty-one
With hardly a pause for twenty and then
Everyone asks you questions you can’t answer

And then they say you’ve changed, and ignore you
The small-town brief-case politician still
Enthroned as if she were a committee
And asks you what are you doing back here

And then you go away, on a different train:
Everyone changes trains at Zima Junction

“I went, and I am still going.”1


1Yevtuskenko: Selected Poems. Penguin,1962
Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Lawrence Hall Apr 2019
Notre Dame is much more than a place of worship
iconic Notre Dame is much more than
a church icon Notre Dame is much more
than a place of Worship icon Notre Dame

is much more than a church iconic
Notre Dame is much more than a place of worship
iconic Notre Dame is much more than
a church icon Notre Dame is much more

than a place of Worship icon Notre Dame
is much more than a church iconic
Your ‘umble scrivener’s site is:
Reactionarydrivel.blogspot.com.
It’s not at all reactionary, tho’ it might be drivel.

Lawrence Hall’s vanity publications are available on amazon.com as Kindle and on bits of dead tree:  The Road to Magdalena, Paleo-Hippies at Work and Play, Lady with a Dead Turtle, Don’t Forget Your Shoes and Grapes, Coffee and a Dead Alligator to Go, and Dispatches from the Colonial Office.
Lawrence Hall Sep 2019
An American weather boy reports the storm
And all its tracks upon a glowing map
A hurricane by shape and scale and form
Roaring northeast through a low-pressure gap

There is nothing beyond holy New York City
Some unexplored land masses, it may be
Lost in the Atlantic (which is blue and pretty)
Where the hurricane will be harmless, you see

With a flip of his hand, they are dismissed:
Nova Scotia and Newfoundland do not exist
Your ‘umble scrivener’s site is: Reactionarydrivel.blogspot.com

It’s not at all reactionary, tho’ it might be drivel.

Lawrence Hall’s vanity publications are available on amazon.com as Kindle and on bits of dead tree:  THE ROAD TO MAGDALENA, PALEO-HIPPIES AT WORK AND PLAY, LADY WITH A DEAD TURTLE, DON’T FORGET YOUR SHOES AND GRAPES, COFFEE AND A DEAD ALLIGATOR TO GO, and DISPATCHES FROM THE COLONIAL OFFICE.
950 · Oct 2018
Father Why's Glob
Lawrence Hall Oct 2018
Father Why’s Glob

              And whan he rood, men myghte his brydel here
                    Gynglen in a whistlynge wynd als cleere
                    And eek as loude as dooth the chapel belle


                                                        -­Chaucer

A famous priest takes pictures of his meals
Writes detailed notes on how they were prepared
As he airplanes around the world attending meetings
To talk about people he doesn’t like

A famous priest takes pictures of more meals
Almost cellular closeups of bits of meat
While he is flying holy in first class
And praising his cabernet sauvignon

A famous priest promises prayers (and cookery tips)
If you will send him money for his many trips
Your ‘umble scrivener’s site is:
Reactionarydrivel.blogspot.com.
It’s not at all reactionary, tho’ it might be drivel.
949 · Sep 2021
Cameillia Sinensis Dancing
Lawrence Hall Sep 2021
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                           Camellia Sinensis Dancing

Anyone who bangs on about the nuances
And the complex properties of tea
Loose leaves, filtered water, thermometers
How a slurp is superior to a sip

The low-Prole vulgarity of teabags
Assessing the full body of the tea
Then teasing out the flavour of the tea
(Camellia Sinensis dancing a striptease?)

Is a barbarian.
                         Just pour me out
A good cuppa char from the old Brown Betty
Just a cuppa tea, please!
Lawrence Hall Jul 2018
A Straw Man Accessorized with Exclamation Marks from the Eighth Grade (Rainbow Brite™ © Glitter Optional)

I heard it, dude; it’s part of the nexus!
A floating island as big as Texas!
All made of straws, there in the Pacific!
It’s on the ‘Net, dude, it’s there, specific!

It’s a Russian plot, sponsored by Putin!
It’s on the ‘Net, dude, sure as shootin’!
Them plastic straws will soon bring down the grid!
They **** the whales; they even got a squid!

The science is settled; let’s make some laws:
The source of all evil is them plastic straws!!!!!!!
Your ‘umble scrivener’s site is:
Reactionarydrivel.blogspot.com.
It’s not at all reactionary, tho’ it might be drivel.
940 · Oct 2020
90,000 Screaming Fans
Lawrence Hall Oct 2020
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                     ­   90,000 Screaming Fans

                     There are those like Norfolk who follow me because I
                     wear the crown, there are those like Master Cromwell
                     who follow me because they are jackals with sharp
                     teeth and I'm their tiger, there's a mass that follows me
                     because it follows anything that moves. And then
                     there's you.

                  -Henry VII to Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons

Bahhhhhhhhh!  Yip! Yip! Yip! Oink! Squawk! Mooooooooooooooo! Squeak! Cluck! Bleat! Hee hawwwwwww! Screech! Whinnnnny!  Snort! Grunt! Oink! Neighhhhhh! Bahhhhhhhhh!  Yip! Oink! Squawk! Mooooooooooooooo! Squeak! Cluck! Bleat! Hee hawwwwwww! Screech! Whinnnnny!  Snort! Grunt! Oink! Neighhhhhh! Yike! Yike! Yike! Bahhhhhhhhh!  Yip! Oink! Squawk! Mooooooooooooooo! Squeak! Cluck! Bleat! Hee hawwwwwww! Screech! Whinnnnny!  Snort! Grunt! Oink! Neighhhhhh! Bahhhhhhhhh!  Yip! Yip! Yip! Oink! Squawk! Mooooooooooooooo! Squeak! Cluck! Bleat! Hee hawwwwwww! Screech! Whinnnnny!  Snort! Grunt! Oink! Neighhhhhh! Bahhhhhhhhh!  Yip! Oink! Squawk! Mooooooooooooooo! Squeak! Cluck! Bleat! Hee hawwwwwww! Screech! Whinnnnny!  Snort! Grunt! Oink! Neighhhhhh! Yike! Yike! Yike! Bahhhhhhhhh!  Yip! Oink! Squawk! Mooooooooooooooo! Squeak! Cluck! Bleat! Hee hawwwwwww! Screech! Whinnnnny!  Snort! Grunt! Oink! Neighhhhhh! Bahhhhhhhhh!  Yip! Yip! Yip! Oink! Squawk! Mooooooooooooooo!Squeak! Cluck! Bleat! Hee hawwwwwww! Screech! Whinnnnny!  Snort! Grunt! Oink! Neighhhhhh! Bahhhhhhhhh!  Yip! Oink! Squawk! Mooooooooooooooo! Squeak! Cluck! Bleat! Hee hawwwwwww! Screech! Whinnnnny!  Snort! Grunt! Oink! Neighhhhhh! Yike! Yike! Yike! Bahhhhhhhhh!  Yip! Oink! Squawk! Mooooooooooooooo! Squeak! Cluck! Bleat! Hee hawwwwwww! Screech! Whinnnnny!  Snort! Grunt! Oink! Neighhhhhh! Yip! Yip! Yip! Oink! Squawk! Mooooooooooooooo!Squeak! Cluck! Bleat! Hee hawwwwwww! Screech! Whinnnnny!  Snort! Grunt! Oink! Neighhhhhh! Bahhhhhhhhh!  Yip! Oink! Squawk! Mooooooooooooooo!Squeak! Cluck! Bleat! Hee hawwwwwww! Screech! Whinnnnny!  Snort! Grunt! Oink! Neighhhhhh! Yike! Yike! Yike! Bahhhhhhhhh!  Yip! Oink! Squawk! Mooooooooooooooo! Squeak! Cluck! Bleat! Hee hawwwwwww! Screech! Whinnnnny!  Snort! Grunt! Oink! Neighhhhhh!



https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-college-football-dan-mullen-gainesville-football-1­e21c3bd07b05e4ea0ecd02fa9923679
Lawrence Hall Nov 2016
The War Correspondent

A helicopter skeetered bravely in
And pitched and yawed against the enemy fire
That wasn’t there.  The manliest of men
Descended unto us in flawless attire

His tailored khaki suit was starched and pressed
Its creases as sharp as a Ka-bar knife
Never was a reporter more perfectly dressed
For getting the news while risking his life

The C.O. sped him past our positions
And hustled him into the T.O.C.1
To ensure each noun and preposition
Would be written for the greater good, you see

Much ink and Scotch were undoubtedly spilled
In air-conditioned comfort, no heat or mud;
With scripted heroics his notebook was filled
No need to stain his suit with his precious blood

After an hour he was hustled back
To Saigon for an evening reception
After he wrote of a great attack
And wired New York his immaculate deception

A helicopter skeetered bravely out
And yawed and pitched against a ******’s shot
That wasn’t there.  A great Communist rout?
There’s more than one kind of jungle rot


1Tactical Operations Center - command bunker, often air-conditioned.
928 · Dec 2016
ICU Waiting Room in Advent
Lawrence Hall Dec 2016
ICU Waiting Room in Advent

Artistic gilded deer repose in peace
Among the store-room-dusty plastic leaves
Of decorator-decorated wreaths;
From thence they gaze serenely down upon
Sneeze-spotted pics in People magazine
And empty coffee cups recyled from
Recycled natural fibers recycled
From green fair trade recycled soy inks.

No ikons grace this dying-place, no cross,
No crucifix to focus farewell prayers;
Christ’s people gather lovingly around,
Their baseball caps thrall-ringed about their heads
In devout remembrance of passing souls.
Their cell-phone aps pass through their vague, weak eyes
As once the ancient biddings and prayer-worn beads
Slipped gently through the lips and hands of men.
927 · Oct 2018
An Autumn Bee Ballet
Lawrence Hall Oct 2018
The garden out back needs mowing, but autumn bees
Good bees at work and play don’t see it that way
And spin about in the October breeze
Wind-spinning in the sun their bee ballet

The freshening winds have motivated them
To gather up and gather in the last
The last of summer goods from limb and stem -
Their easy harvests of spring have long since passed

They work, they know the winter winds will blow -
So I must find a different lawn to mow
Your ‘umble scrivener’s site is:
Reactionarydrivel.blogspot.com.
It’s not at all reactionary, tho’ it might be drivel.

My vanity publications are available on amazon.com as bits of dead tree and on Kindle:  The Road to Magdalena, Paleo-Hippies at Work and Play, Lady with a Dead Turtle, Don’t Forget Your Shoes and Grapes, Coffee and a Dead Alligator to Go, and Dispatches from the Colonial Office.
Lawrence Hall Apr 2019
Ive been to the dentist

She gave ma a happy pill ME a happy pill, not Ma a happy pill

Tree frogs are my favotire amphibians there so cute ya wanna buy them an ice cream but there aint no bug ice scream

Yes I’m fine than k you

Gosh this is still fun

And they gave me a new toothbrush although I use the super-golly-gee-****-quadro-toothbrush-thing-that-lights-up-and-s­tuff

Yes the pill is wearing off sure
wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Why do they all put their hands in my mouth at the same time

Lets see thats four hands

And then they yell at me to relax

But yeah I got a pill qnd I am sooooooooooooooooooo relaxed

My teeth are fine

My teeth are green no wait my teeth or clean because if they were green they wouldn’t be clean

Dr. Joyce is the best

There’s still something to be said for tree frogs

Yes I can walk to the car whoops

Yes I can opine the passenger door

Yes I can belt my seat fashion

Or somethingthis has been fun

Thank you yes six monyhsts…
Your ‘umble scrivener’s site is:
Reactionarydrivel.blogspot.com.
It’s not at all reactionary, tho’ it might be drivel.

Lawrence Hall’s vanity publications are available on amazon.com as Kindle and on bits of dead tree:  The Road to Magdalena, Paleo-Hippies at Work and Play, Lady with a Dead Turtle, Don’t Forget Your Shoes and Grapes, Coffee and a Dead Alligator to Go, and Dispatches from the Colonial Office.
Lawrence Hall Jul 2018
A white tee shirt with a pack of Camels
Tucked up ‘way cool in the left-side sleeve
And new blue jeans, the cuffs exactly right
And in my back pocket a happenin’ Ace comb

For keeping that duck tail so hot for the chicks
To swoon about, so High School Confidential
A cheap tin switchblade hidden carefully away
More Sharks than the Sharks, more Jets than the Jets

Even Kookier than Kookie, oh, my! -
While swaggering home from junior high
Your ‘umble scrivener’s site is:
Reactionarydrivel.blogspot.com.
It’s not at all reactionary, tho’ it might be drivel.
Lawrence Hall Aug 2018
The physician is a good man, wise and fair
But, ouch! - HIS FINGER DOES NOT BELONG THERE!
But, hey, ya gotta do it because life is objectively good and you want to be around for all of it.
Lawrence Hall Jun 2018
Socks to Relieve Pain Coflex® Interlaminar
“We’ll Try Not to Show That Ad Again”
Stabilization Menard’s Dedicated
“We’ll Try Not to Show That Ad Again”
To Service & Quality Leg Cramps at Night
“We’ll Try Not to Show That Ad Again”
Brian Tracy International Bank
“We’ll Try Not to Show That Ad Again”
Of America Merrill Edge Tyson
“We’ll Try Not to Show That Ad Again”
Keep it Real Keep it Tyson Is This Sequence
“We’ll Try Not to Show That Ad Again”
Correct? Luminosity Zenni Slide
“We’ll Try Not to Show That Ad Again”
Belts American Red Cross Let Palmolive
“We’ll Try Not to Show That Ad Again”
Handle the Mess Hole Leather Sandals Ad
“We’ll Try Not to Show That Ad Again”
By Revcontent Newchic AOL Computer
“We’ll Try Not to Show That Ad Again”
Checkup Try it Free Fisher Investment
“We’ll Try not to Show that Ad Again”
Socks to Relieve Pain Coflex® Interlaminar
“We’ll Try Not to Show That Ad Again”
Stabilization Menard’s Dedicated
“We’ll Try Not to Show That Ad Again”
To Service & Quality Leg Cramps at Night
“We’ll Try Not to Show That Ad Again”
Brian Tracy International Bank
“We’ll Try Not to Show That Ad Again”
Of America Merrill Edge Tyson
“We’ll Try Not to Show That Ad Again”
Keep it Real Keep it Tyson Is This Sequence
“We’ll Try Not to Show That Ad Again”
Correct? Luminosity Zenni Slide
“We’ll Try Not to Show That Ad Again”
Belts American Red Cross Let Palmolive
“We’ll Try Not to Show That Ad Again”
Handle the Mess Hole Leather Sandals Ad
“We’ll Try Not to Show That Ad Again”
By Revcontent Newchic AOL Computer
“We’ll Try Not to Show That Ad Again”
Checkup Try it Free Fisher Investment
“We’ll Try Not to Show That Ad Again”
Socks to Relieve Pain Coflex® Interlaminar
“We’ll Try Not to Show That Ad Again”
Stabilization Menard’s Dedicated
“We’ll Try Not to Show That Ad Again”
To Service & Quality Leg Cramps at Night
“We’ll Try Not to Show That Ad Again”
Brian Tracy International Bank
“We’ll Try Not to Show That Ad Again”
Of America Merrill Edge Tyson
“We’ll Try Not to Show That Ad Again”
Keep it Real Keep it Tyson Is This Sequence
“We’ll Try Not to Show That Ad Again”
Correct? Luminosity Zenni Slide
“We’ll Try Not to Show That Ad Again”
Belts American Red Cross Let Palmolive
“We’ll Try Not to Show That Ad Again”
Handle the Mess Hole Leather Sandals Ad
“We’ll Try Not to Show That Ad Again”
By Revcontent Newchic AOL Computer
“We’ll Try Not to Show That Ad Again”
Checkup Try it Free Fisher Investment


“We’ll Try Not to Show That Ad Again”
“We’ll Try Not to Show That Ad Again”
“We’ll Try Not to Show That Ad Again”
“We’ll Try Not to Show That Ad Again”
919 · Dec 2016
The Beatnik Cafe'
Lawrence Hall Dec 2016
The Beatnik Café’

Cigarettes, coffee, a ****** beret
Blue smoke and Blue Mountain, blue verse, blue rhyme --
O Come to the side-street beatnik café;
Here present-tense yourself; caffeine the time

Here order your Bacon very well Donne
And jam your java with croissants and Keats
Orate from Spenser; groove with Tennyson
Tap out a line of Seafarer-four beats

Tap out a manifesto; everyone does
Pulp-print Red rags yelp “Revolution Now!”
The typewriter is holy, and Up the Fuzz!
Bongo that Kerouac, and Howl, but how?

Bongo that beat, oh, yeah, it’s crazzzzy, man
Sheaffer that rhythm, cat; Parker that line
Ferlinghetti your truth to a yellow pad
Sharpen your verbs to a rebel design

Sharpen your verbs from a bottle of ink
Light up a Camel; blow intellectual smoke
Teach the ****** bourgeois how they should think
Grey-suited capitalists – what a joke!

L’Envoi – Time Slouches On

Tee-shirted capitalists joke in Mandarin
The latest chained coffee’s inside the mall
English and Apples are original sin
On glowing screens where the pale pixels crawl

And no one crawls through rhythm, rhyme, or verse,
Or bongos out an existential cry
For poetry is dead; the twitters terse
Reduce the ancient loves to I, me, my.
917 · Mar 2017
Re-Reading Tolkien for Lent
Lawrence Hall Mar 2017
Re-Reading Tolkien for Lent

Across the page, across the words, soft light
Soft morning light at play this quiet day
This stand-down day when duty does not call
Not call, and life is for a few hours free

Ink on a page, now forming into songs
Songs that were old when this green world was new
And fields of flowers were as fields of stars
Fields of Creation and eternal Hope

O happy fields forever, here, right here
Across the page, across the words, soft light
Lawrence Hall Apr 2019
-attributed to Stalin
           in a note forbidding the arrest of Boris Pasternak

Stalin and Caesar had no use for dreamers
Stern men of destiny prefer strong tools
To execute their leader’s will, and yet
They cry and beg when they are eventually shot

Cloud-dwellers camouflage themselves with words
And shift their sails but not their souls, and keep
Their little ships on course straight to the stars
Straight on until the dawn they help to light

Courage is in your dreams and words and works
May it please God that Stalin has no use

For you
Your ‘umble scrivener’s site is:
Reactionarydrivel.blogspot.com.
It’s not at all reactionary, tho’ it might be drivel.

Lawrence Hall’s vanity publications are available on amazon.com as Kindle and on bits of dead tree:  The Road to Magdalena, Paleo-Hippies at Work and Play, Lady with a Dead Turtle, Don’t Forget Your Shoes and Grapes, Coffee and a Dead Alligator to Go, and Dispatches from the Colonial Office.
Lawrence Hall Jul 2018
O Dear Heart...or pancreas...or some vital *****...

When I gaze into your ear canals
And cuddle you in my comforting feet
Oh, yeah, I wanna hold your earlobe
You make my sella turcica skip a beat

Your nostrils are so very soft to the touch
Your toenails are like silver-pale moonlight
Your elbows smell like roses in the spring
Your hair follicles are so sunrise bright

And when I meditate upon your liver
Cupid shoots every arrow from his quiver!
Your ‘umble scrivener’s site is:
Reactionarydrivel.blogspot.com.
It’s not at all reactionary, tho’ it might be drivel.
Lawrence Hall Sep 2022
Lawrence Hall 3d
A Poem is not a Helicopter
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                     ­    A Poem is not a Helicopter

                                                  For­­ Al Duquette

A helicopter is not a poem
A helicopter flies in three dimensions
If all of the systems are fitted just right
Otherwise, it does not fly at all

A poem is not a helicopter
A poem flies only metaphorically
If we rearrange the parts aesthetically
The poem might fly much better than before

One carries our friends wherever they want to go
The other carries our love to our friends




More exposition than I have ever written:

Al is my fellow volunteer in prison and was one of my mentors when I began. I am in awe of him because he flew helicopters with the Air Cavalry in Viet-Nam and then offshore with Petroleum Helicopters Incorporated. He is almost obsessively left-brained in all things and I am an old hippie so we are often on two different metaphorical channels.  After some mutual suspicion we came to the realization – because the prisoners pointed it out to us - that in working with a class together we communicate the same ideas in different ways, and so are more effective.

Al sees no point in poetry, although he appreciates the little poems I hand out to the lads as class openers. I think this is because they (the poems, not the prisoners) are short and simple, almost always rhyme, and are mostly Victorian parlour poems which contain a moral lesson and encouragement. This week, while waiting for the guards to bring us the fellows, Al said that prose is made of words and poetry is made of words and in both categories we choose the most effective words, and so what makes a difference. I replied that a poem is not a helicopter, that not all the bits have to fit together in only one way. Prose is indeed a matter of the right words in the right places but that a poem is a matter of even better words placed in even better places (This is not an original thought; I don’t remember where I learned it.). Al accepted my answer, but of course maybe he was merely being polite!

Written by
Lawrence Hall
Lawrence Hall May 2019
Knee surgery Buc-ee’s Alabama
Diarrhea Buc-ee’s Bastrop back surgery
Buc-ee’s Fort Worth foot surgery Buc-ee’s
New Braunfels abdominal surgery

Buc-ee’s Texas City divorce Buc-ee’s
Port Lavaca gastro-intestinal
Series Buc-ee’s Pearland fever and chills
Cardiac workup Buc-ee’s Lake Jackson

Blood pressure pills Buc-ee’s Madisonville
Bypass surgery Buc-ee’s Brazoria
Your ‘umble scrivener’s site is:
Reactionarydrivel.blogspot.com.
It’s not at all reactionary, tho’ it might be drivel.

Lawrence Hall’s vanity publications are available on amazon.com as Kindle and on bits of dead tree:  The Road to Magdalena, Paleo-Hippies at Work and Play, Lady with a Dead Turtle, Don’t Forget Your Shoes and Grapes, Coffee and a Dead Alligator to Go, and Dispatches from the Colonial Office.
Lawrence Hall May 2019
This is a re-post of "All Change at Zima Junction."  This morning I turned in my keys after some forty years of herding cattle (metaphorically), seventeen of them with this institution.  I am unemployed for the first time since I was five or so and was set to toddling out to the chicken yard every evening to gather the eggs in an old Easter basket.  My mother said that the rooster often chased me and made me cry, but I don’t remember that.

And now - what adventure does Aslan have next for me?

The first book I bought upon returning home from Viet-Nam was the Penguin Modern European Poets paperback edition of Yevtushenko: Selected Poems.  That 75-cent paperback from an airport bookstall in San Francisco is beside me on the desk as I write.

                                     All Change at Zima Junction

                            For Yevgeny Yevtushenko, 1932-2017

Everyone changes trains at Zima Junction
Changes lives; nineteen becomes twenty-one
With hardly a pause for twenty and then
Everyone asks you questions you can’t answer

And then they say you’ve changed, and ignore you
The small-town brief-case politician still
Enthroned as if he were a committee -
He asks you what you are doing back here

And then you go away, on a different train:
Everyone changes trains at Zima Junction

                           “I went, and I am still going.”1

1Yevtushenko: Selected Poems. Penguin,1962
Your ‘umble scrivener’s site is:
Reactionarydrivel.blogspot.com.
It’s not at all reactionary, tho’ it might be drivel.

Lawrence Hall’s vanity publications are available on amazon.com as Kindle and on bits of dead tree:  The Road to Magdalena, Paleo-Hippies at Work and Play, Lady with a Dead Turtle, Don’t Forget Your Shoes and Grapes, Coffee and a Dead Alligator to Go, and Dispatches from the Colonial Office.
Lawrence Hall Feb 2017
Camping on the Edge of Forever

For Michael Dean Marconette
of happy memory

Bold star, beyond a Sterno stove’s brief 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 pre-historic 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, dear, happy star, will still shine down
On dreaming youths, tonight and other nights,
Counting for us, for them, each millennium.
Lawrence Hall Apr 2017
The Impatience of the Nineteenth Century

The impatience of the nineteenth century
Left us the genocide of the twentieth
With all the progressive apparatus of death:
Infanticide, death camps, firing squads, gas

And now unto the twenty-first – smart bombs
Are flung by geosynchronous satellites
Deep, deep into the imperfect souls of men
Thus breaking bodies for the perfect state

In victory the dying last voice will croak
“At least we freed ourselves from those awful kings”
Lawrence Hall Mar 2017
Thin Green Beer and Plastic Chinese Leprechaun Day

Saint Patrick saw a slithery snake
He killed it with (a garden rake?)

Then made the others go away
Thus Ireland is snake-free today

He blessed the land, all glowing-green
The most beautiful island ever seen

The snakes were gone, and all their hissing
But now –
                  ‘tis Ireland’s faith that’s missing
871 · Jul 2017
Ode to the Trumpet
Lawrence Hall Jul 2017
Ode to the Trumpet

The trumpet is a gift of Greece and Rome
Blown straight within the palaces of kings
Then curved into a circle for the wars
And finally folded in upon itself

No one knows when in ******* a hero
Took up a trumpet bold as brass, and said
“Trumpet, I bless you now with Africa”
And made it sing the winds of the Sahel

Layers of nations, cultures, dreams, and art:
The trumpet sings from the musician’s heart
870 · Apr 2022
A Man with a Broom
Lawrence Hall Apr 2022
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                     ­     A Man with a Broom

Leaving his broom in the corridor
He came into class and sat for a while
He was worried about anger management
He had shot up a nightclub after all

That was after his brother was murdered there
He gets out in twelve days, and he is worried
He has passed over half of his life in prison
He hasn’t seen his son in over nine years

He said he has learned to place God first
Some of it might be true
Unreliable narrator
Lawrence Hall Dec 2016
Seventh Day in the Octave of Christmas 3

     “O moments big as years!”

     -John Keats, "Hyperion"

Does the year fail, or is it we who fail?
This Octave day opens in darkness cold
And on the radio the same dark news
That began this fading Gregorian year

But let us face this next turn of the time
With Aves on our lips and in our hearts
With the cold courage of Crusaders
And the cool kindness of missionaries

And may God grant that never again we ask:
Does the year fail, or is it we who fail?
850 · Mar 2019
The Flight of iMet-4 #21598
Lawrence Hall Mar 2019
(a little radiosonde launched by weather balloon from Texas A & M in Bryan-College Station)


There is perhaps a certain indignity
In grounding back on earth among some weeds
Your late balloon a fragment of itself
Your parachute all damp and limp and still

But, oh! what an adventure you have lived!
Scuffy the Tugboat might well envy you
Your day and night in scientific flight
With helium instead of pixie dust

Like Peter Pan you sailed along the wind
Straight on until morning, then home again
Your ‘umble scrivener’s site is:
Reactionarydrivel.blogspot.com.
It’s not at all reactionary, tho’ it might be drivel.

Lawrence Hall’s vanity publications are available on amazon.com as Kindle and on bits of dead tree:  The Road to Magdalena, Paleo-Hippies at Work and Play, Lady with a Dead Turtle, Don’t Forget Your Shoes and Grapes, Coffee and a Dead Alligator to Go, and Dispatches from the Colonial Office.
846 · Sep 2016
Ode to Barnes & Noble
Lawrence Hall Sep 2016
Ode to Barnes & Noble

Patrick Leigh Fermor never roamed these aisles
Sir John Betjeman never rhymed these aisles
Graham Greene never despaired of these aisles
And Rod McKuen was never here alone

And anyway the two or three feet of poetry
Are hidden far away in the back behind
The puzzles, records, comics, and plastic toys
And solitaries plugged into their machines

But on a winter weekday a writer’s retreat -
A yellow pad, coffee, and a window seat
Lawrence Hall May 2017
A Dairy Queen Waitress in Tuscany

Eat, drink, pray, love, hamburger, shake, and fries
Boyfriend, baby, trailer park, sad tired eyes
Creepy men, cranky boss, and ice-cream floats
A wheezing Honda with overdue notes

Cinder-blocks, fluorescents, grilled cheese to go
No child-support this month, another cup of joe
Ten-year-reunion, can’t go, how time flew
Two shifts that day, the trailer rent is due

Baby at Mama’s, boyfriend still in bed
He’ll look for work tomorrow, that’s what he said
“Order up!” the fry cook hollers, and she
Dreams of a someday-summer in Tuscany
Lawrence Hall Jan 2017
The Feast of the Epiphany This Year

If the Three Kings were to visit today
They’d need the proper paperwork
Passports and visas, and what is the  purpose
Of your visit? A check through INTERPOL

A cavity search by rubbery hands
An escort armed with bribes and Kalashnikovs
Through tourists armed with me-phones, selfie sticks
And cardboard chalices, following a Starbuck’s

Searching the East for a wondrous ATM
If the Three Kings were to visit today
Lawrence Hall Jun 10
Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                      Someday I Hope to Meet a Mango Tree

                             For Pradip Chattopadhyay

Someday I hope to meet a mango tree
And sit at its feet to learn wisdom from Buddha
And if Buddha is not there, then I’ll learn from him
That the absence of teaching is a teaching itself

Someday I hope to meet a mango tree
Where lovers stroll beneath its gentle shade
And if lovers are not there, then I’ll learn from them
That the absence of love presupposes love

Someday I hope to meet a mango tree
Maybe in Veluvana in holy India
But if I never make that pilgrimage I’ll learn
That the magic of the mango is real

Someday I hope to meet a mango tree
Where surely I will find both teaching and love


Pradip Chattopadhyay - Hello Poetry

Symbolism of Mango Grove at Veluvana in Buddhism - Silent Balance

Mangoes: The True Caribbean Currency (caribjournal.com)
Lawrence Hall Feb 2019
In 1945 The War was over
The survivors were trying to make life work
And occupation forces here and there were set
To guard the roads, the rails, the city streets

And so it was that Master Sergeant Hall -
Normandy, the Moselle, Belgium and the Bulge,
Munich, Dachau, Thuringen, and Zwickau -
Was sent to old Marseilles to be a cop

A watch commander, assigning patrols
And sending men to their various posts
Even to directing traffic in the streets
There was a complaint from a traffic hub:

The American soldier in charge there -
Sometimes he chose to block all traffic there
And swagger about and cuss ‘em out
Then laugh, and all at once turn ‘em loose again

And then one day there came an alarm:
Machine guns shooting at that intersection
A soldier from the colonies gone wild
And murdering people in the street

They sped to the scene, the scene of horror
And helped - but they could not find their soldier
Posted there at the beginning of the watch
Was he among the dead? The wounded? Where?

And they didn’t know until the end of the day
After the soldier returned, alive and well:
“When the shooting started, I ran down the street,
Found another spot, and directed traffic there.”
Note: As remembered, which makes this a secondary source, and adapted loosely to iambs.  The quote from the soldier on traffic control, whose name I don't remember, was something like, "Well, Sergeant, when all that shooting started I ran like H*** down the street a few blocks, found me another intersection, and started directing traffic there."


I do not know if this soldier was the one whom on another occasion my father found blocking all the traffic at an intersection (I infer that it was a hub and possibly a traffic roundabout, with five or more streets meeting), striding around cussing everyone, then standing off out of the way and blowing his whistle for ALL the traffic to resume, and laughing at the chaos.
Lawrence Hall Jun 2018
Alienation is the constant theme
A child for whom the family dinner table
Is the scene of nightly interrogations
Can never be at home outside himself

Alienation is the constant theme
When every word is dissected by others
For any taint of beauty, love, or truth
And any deviation from today

Alienation is the constant theme
When trust is but a morning-broken dream
Reactionarydrivel.blogspot.com – it’s not really reactionary, tho’ it might be drivel.
810 · Feb 2017
Greeting Card Verse
Lawrence Hall Feb 2017
Greeting Card Verse

There is nothing wrong with greeting card verse:
Noses are red, some types of whales are blue
Two woods diverged in a yellow road, so what
Is any of that to me or to you?

A man must find a verse that fits his needs -
Archly obscure thick homilies preening
To poly spec for the cause of the day
Couched in cool cant neither pretty nor true

Are but ISBN numbers on file

And

Sometimes ya want to smile, crocodile!
Lawrence Hall May 2018
We do not burn books in America
We just ignore them, for we light our nights
And burn away our individual souls
Upon an altar green, clean plastic grass

Come together as one unto the lights
The concept of the tablets now writ large
An electronic scoreboard – and if we’re good
We’ll see our snaggly grins all ten feet tall

Eighty-thousand dollars of education
Beaming civilization six nights each year
Reactionarydrivel.blogspot.com – it’s not really reactionary, tho’ it might be drivel.
807 · Jul 2017
A Carpenter's Hammer
Lawrence Hall Jul 2017
A Carpenter’s Hammer

A craftsman does not hammer with a hammer -
He wields it with surprising subtlety
As delicately as a scalpel poised
Or as an artist’s most elegant brush

A hammer is balanced to mind and hand
Its journey planned and scheduled with great care
To bring about something that was not before:
Through muscle and thought it falls, it dives, it drives

And when the hammer strikes the waiting nail
It sings to Creation a workman's hymn
Lawrence Hall Apr 2019
She will make it a perfect holiday

(“Don’t touch those cookies! They’re for later!”)

Just like the ones on H & G TV

(“Don’t touch Santa! I’ve got him where I want him!”)

With the perfect table and decorations

(“Who moved the Easter bunny, --- --- it!?”)

Exactly like the ones in the magazines

(“Just leave the tree alone; I’LL decorate it!”)

And smiling faces all around the house

(“I expect a little cooperation around here!”)

Perfectly wrapped presents with perfect bows

(“Turn the tree…not that way…LISTEN TO ME!”

Cute Easter baskets for each little child

(“Leave those chocolates alone! You’ll ruin your lunch!”)

Marshaled prettily for a photograph

(“Oh, ----! There’s a grass stain on your church dress!”

Meemaw and Pawpaw will be proud of them

(“---- it! I told you not to play outside in your church dress!”)

The children’s table is just like a picture

(“Not yet!  We haven’t even said the  ----ed grace!”)

A perfect holiday, or she’ll just die -
No matter how many children are made to cry
(No, no, just an unhappy house I visited years ago. I escaped as fast as I could.)
Lawrence Hall Jul 2021
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                               To Always be Splitting Infinitives

                              Those who neither know nor care
                        [about split infinitives]…are a happy folk…

                          -Fowler’s Modern English Usage, 1926

I seem to always be
Splitting infinitives
And between you and me
These are definitives
Or should that be spitting infinitives?
Lawrence Hall Apr 2019
The manic pixie dream girl of my youth
Curving and tight, scampering along the beach
Her wild black hair flying about as she danced
Teasing all the boys with her sunlit joys

I read to her Rod McKuen by candlelight
While Joni Mitchell on the turntable mused
We played and smoked, and drank good screwcap wine
And played some more, and then she went away

And now - an old lady in a funeral home pew
And I’m not so sure of myself anymore


(“Manic pixie dream girl” is a neologism attributed to film critic Nathan Rubin)
Your ‘umble scrivener’s site is:
Reactionarydrivel.blogspot.com.
It’s not at all reactionary, tho’ it might be drivel.

Lawrence Hall’s vanity publications are available on amazon.com as Kindle and on bits of dead tree:  The Road to Magdalena, Paleo-Hippies at Work and Play, Lady with a Dead Turtle, Don’t Forget Your Shoes and Grapes, Coffee and a Dead Alligator to Go, and Dispatches from the Colonial Office.
Lawrence Hall Feb 2018
Contents of that Secret F.B.I. Memo

Next week the world is going to end again
When the north pole and the south pole switch places
According to secret radio transmissions
Secretly beamed from the secret headquarters
Of the secret Club of Rome far beneath
The Vatican and secretly aligned
With the secret sword of the secret Knights
Templar with the secret star WD-40
By our secret Masters on the secret
Planet Xenophobe in secret accordance
With the ancient prophecy of Cranium
The Elder discovered in a Prince Albert can
By the Portuguese philosopher and
Explorer Almoso Nutellaeus
Who thus received the dark secrets of the
Atlantean sorcerers in a secret
Language which only he was able to translate
When the Moon God Myrtle of the Aqua Kirtle
Blessed his Radio Shack TRS-80
With a rare pixie dust which can only be
Found in a certain secret plain in the
Sahara Desert at the Winter Solstice
Marked by a Bionic Blood Altar cursed
By the Knights of Toledo in a strange
Ceremony which can only be witnessed
By the Initiates of the Order of
The Cumulonimble Secret Ferrets
Of the Discalced Colossus of Roads
Whose emblematic pilum can be discerned
By pouring lemon juice over the pictures
Of the Caesars in a sacred clearing
In the secret Wood of the Thirteen Oaks
And a Loblolly Pine made when The Primal
Pole-er Bear from Beyond Time set up
The North Pole and the South Pole, and gave the
North Pole Santa Claus and the South Pole Little America
Station, and this Manichaean duality
Has set the planet in opposition
To itself, resulting in the cancellation
Of Gilligan’s Island after only three seasons
Because Gilligan and The Skipper were close
To discovering the Pre-Raphaelite
Anaemic Amoebic Astrolabe in yet
Another papier mache cave infested
By toxic golden hamsters of existential doom
Guarding a time-and-space portal leading
Directly to Oak Island where Captain Kidd’s
Lost cuff links (the ones with little pictures
Of Elvis golfing with leprechauns) can
Be found, the cuff links that channel the energy
Between The North Pole and the South Pole enhanced
By the chakra of a Hoover vacuum cleaner
Once used by Winston Churchill’s housekeeper
During the Blitz before she married her second
Husband, Trevor, who was the Hereditary
Keeper of the Keys of the Guernsey Privy
And thus a carrier of fairy blood
As required by Ye Ancient Lawes of the Booke
Of…something-or-other…which was carved in runes
On Roman skulls just before the loss of
The Island of Anglesey to Governor
Suetonius who was told by The Voices
That the Druids invented rock ‘n’ roll and
Must be destroyed so that the harmonic
Harmony of the North Pole and the South Pole
Could be restored to their primordial
Nordic vanilla pudding.
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