Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

     A Sunday Morning Church Message: “Some Folks Need Killing”

             “…disciple-makers through the power of Jesus Christ!”

                                            -Lake Church

A lieutenant-governor strutting and yelling in church
Demanded the deaths of “some folks” unspecified
The faithful of Lake Church heard out his deadly cause
And then obediently applauded him -

The man who might someday order their executions

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com


                                      Asymm­etrical Peacefare


                                       The centre cannot hold

                              -W.B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”


But now there is no center to be held
Everywhere the ceremony of guilt backlights a cult
A cult of power where the powerful forgive each other
And where the powerless will never be forgiven

There is no center; only orbits in bellowing decay
Honors and offices pinned to hollow souls
A cult of power where the powerful discard each other
And where the powerless are still unforgiven

A bell, a knell, a slow-rolling toll, a shoal
Where an angel writes of us on a curious scroll

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                  A Synod on Synodality -
                                   What does that mean?


                    This Synod is intended as a Synodal Process. The aim of
                    this synodal process is not to provide a temporary or
                    one-time experience of synodality, but rather to provide
                    an opportunity for the entire People of God to discern
                    together how to move forward on the path towards
                    being a more synodal Church in the long-term.

                -https://www.synod.va/en/the-synod-on-synodality/what-
                 is-the-synod-about.htm


And let the people say: Huh?

Prelates and prince-prelates and princesses
Whose names are prefaced with gilded adjectives
Attend their meetings and cloud the ecclesiastical air
With catalogues of obscure polysyllables

But somewhere – somewhere in a little parish
Fading into a forest far from the highways
Or in an underfunded religious house
Along some decaying steel town’s crumbling streets
Poor brothers and sisters catch the morning bus
To nursing homes and migrant shelters and jails
To serve the drunks, the druggies, the ne’er-do-wells
The abandoned and lonely children of God

Because everywhere – the faithless and the faithful
Tangle with Satan in physical and emotional pain
In the ******, soul-shrieking hells of war
In petitioning faceless functionaries
For even a little help, a doctor’s appointment
A job, a meal, a bit of dignity
In the shadow of bishops flying first-class
And taking selfies in their playbox dressups

Prelates and prince-prelates and princesses
Exchange lecture notes and witty bon mots -
An outcast bypassed on the pavement dies
A knotted rosary tangled in her aged hands

Perhaps her last words were of synodality

A Take Away from the Take Away Steak Fingers

King Henry II: Forks?

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

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

Thomas Becket: Yes, but it's washable.

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

-Becket, 1964

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

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

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

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                            A Tattered ****

                                   Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 2

Scene i: a lawn chair beneath a shady oak

Okay, sure, sometimes I feel like a tattered ****
After my morning’s work, creaking into my chair
And reaching for my iced tea and a book
Sipping on both for a vision of youth

My Hercule Poirot body is made almost young again
By strolling through Arden with Rosalind and Orlando
(Only for a while; they would much rather be alone…)
And then the iced tea tells me of Ceylon

Okay, sure, sometimes I feel like a tattered ****
But sometimes - forever young

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

                       At Dawn: Unremembered Dreams

The Temple veil is torn
And I no longer see

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

                              A Texas Ranger on the Trail

                                 For Ranger Brandon Bess

His steely eyes stare into the microscope
Following a ****** track of DNA
Across the scrubby badlands of the lab
And into computer analysis

His gun hand targets matching saliva swabs
With a hair-trigger spectrophotometer
Double-loaded with HLA-DQalpha
Against Minifiler STR at high noon

Say, pardner –

If you commit a crime in Texas, then you had best
Beware the Ranger with a Teichman test

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

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             ­         Poet and poem form chaos into meaning

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                         Atheist Chaplains Forging Mixed Metaphors

         “Atheist chaplains are forging a new path in a changing world”

                                    -CNN 7 November 2024

One seldom thinks of chaplains at a forge
Work-weary, work-stained from hours of smoke and sweat
With mighty hammer strokes bending hot iron
To the will of the artisan in useful things

Some writers forge nothing but metaphors tired
From overuse, and mixed as verbal soup
In music, art, literature, and life paths can be

Cleared
Paved
Traveled
Surveyed
explored
Followed
Noted
Marke­d
Mapped
Found

But it is not in the nature of paths to be forged

Atheist chaplains and metaphor soup
Are nothing more than an ouroborosian loop

(Look upon this fresh metaphor and neologism
And despair)

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

                              A Theological Wristwatch

At bedtime my watch suggests to me
That I should meditate with gratitude
For someone who is important in my life
Who gives a deeper meaning to each day

And so I stare at the lava-lamp effect
On the face of my watch, as if it were
An artifact from McGoohan’s The Village
Wanting information, not meditation

And I am grateful; it’s just that the watch
Suggests only For What, and not To Whom

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                A Third Couplet for the Coup

The president’s son humiliated our representatives -
They're as useless as gas-station pregnancy preventatives

She was restless in Mass, a three-years’ child
And in her patient father’s loving arms

She wriggled
She squiggled
She giggled

And then she lay ‘way back and looked ‘way up

What went she into the desert to see -
A light fixture? An air-conditioning vent?

Oh, no

Her eyes were large
Her lips were still
Her breaths were soft

- she saw much more

She was happy in Mass, a three-years’ child
And from her father’s arms something she saw…

What?

Who?

She smiled



(And of course she may have been delighted with the vision of an air-conditioning vent after all; a small child’s learning curve is more open to joy than ours)

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

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

                                           A Tiny Tinsel Star

                                                 For Sarah

While cleaning house I found a tinsel star
A tiny tinsel star from long ago
When once upon a time it shone so far
Above a Christmas scene in cotton snow

Or maybe for a little child’s birthday
Among the paper napkins and candled cake:
“And now you ****! each wishing-flame away
But keep it a secret, that wish you make!”

And in this star her little friends’ sweet cheers
Still sound throughout the house after all these years

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

                                       At Noon, After Mowing

I sat in the shade and mended a hose
A water hose whose fittings had parted ways
And on the grass some mockingbirds and jays
Argued and shrilled – but why? Nobody knows

I cut away the plastic (hecho en China)
And fitted brass (hecho en Mexico)
For repairs that is the best way to go
To make a hose secure – what could be finer?

And what could be finer than to sit a while
In the dreaming shade? Yes, that’s my style!

A yawning dawning clinging to the coffee cup
Dishwasher safe for your happy little home
You press the button for the magic screen
And the in-box presents  - a toe fungus cure

Huh?

You opened the mail hoping for happiness
An existential why to the sleepless night
Matins and Lauds now electronical
And a note from a dear friend far away

But with your first sip of coffee, what did you see?
An ad for a toe fungus remedy!

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                            ­      At Rao’s Bakery -
                 Coffee, Croissants, Children, and the Constitution

At dawn - hot coffee and a fresh croissant
A family grouping at the table next
And a little child whispering to her mother
The Preamble to the Constitution

I turned and said, “Oh, I want to hear that again”
Proudly the little girl stood beside her mom
And in a strong, clear voice began: “We the People…”


We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.


I can’t do that anymore. Can you?

The child certainly earned an ‘A’ today
This coffee / croissant / American day

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                  A Treatise on the Burrowing Habits of Dachshunds


                                                   in memory of

                                     Astrid-the-Wonder-Dachshund

                six pounds of barking, yapping, demanding, and love


A dachshund will burrow under the garden fence
For every dachshund thinks she is a wolf
A fearsome apex predator with a squeaky toy -
This is in the nature of dachshunds

A dachshund will burrow into your tightly-closed hand
Nosing out the doggie treat you have hidden there
A fearsome apex predator and omnivore -
This is in the nature of dachshunds

A dachshund will burrow into your end-of-day lap
Watching both the television and the cats
A fearsome apex predator drooling on your book -
This is in the nature of dachshunds

A dachshund will burrow, borrow, beg, and bark
And in her foreshadowing of that better World to come
A dachshund will burrow deeply into your heart -
And love you forever

This is in the nature of dachshunds

And of you

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

                           A Tribute to Gussie Fink-Nottle

                From an idea suggested by W. K. Kortas

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

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

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

A Trochee Christmas and its Several Interchangeable Anapests
                    Brought to You in Some Desperation
                   By Your Local Chamber of Commerce
                        (Second Trailer Past the Stoplight)

Christmas in the Park
Christmas on the Main
Christmas on the Lake
Christmas on the Strand
Christmas on the Square
Christmas on the Farm
Christmas on the Beach
Christmas on the Mall
Christmas in the Mall
Christmas on the Block
Christmas on the Coast
Christmas on the Gulf
Christmas on the Hill
Christmas in the Keys
Christmas on the Quay
Christmas on the Quad
Christmas on the Range
Christmas on the Ranch
Christmas in the Vale
And this year, Christmas at the 'Gras!

But no Christmas without anapests, ‘kay?

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

                             At the Hissing Electric Eye Doors

An old man shuffles his walker to the doors
The sanitary wipes are to the left
A gum-chewer brushes by with a plastic sack
Ranks of shopping carts rust to the right

A child skips through; her mother yells, “Wait! Wait!”
A three-color circular blows by
An angry woman flings her cigarette down
Right there beneath the NO SMOKING sign

Another old man growls, “Son of a *!”
Because he’s pulled the cart with a wobbly wheel

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

                                                    Attitude Check

Climb down off your white horse
And sit in the shade of the trees
To drink from your canteen
A taste of humility

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                  At Yevna Something Happened

The Talmud is to this day the circulating heart's blood of the Jewish religion. Whatever laws, customs or ceremonies we observe-whether we are orthodox, conservative, reform or merely spasmodic sentimentalists - we follow the Talmud. It is our common law.

                                       -Herman Wouk

At Yevna something happened, something quite real
Though no one seems to know exactly how
Those who entered as priests arose as rabbis
Carrying Talmud out into the world

At Yevna something happened

Ben Zakkai and Gamaliel sit at your table
Your study table, a house of wisdom in Yevna
Where all may come to study Mishnah and Gemara
Where the lamp of peace is lit on Sabbath eve

At Yevna something happened

G-d sees to it that even a few holy books
The wisdom of the sages
The library of the ages
Are Yevna written into your modest home

At Yevna something happened



Note: The quote from Herman Wouk might not be exactly as he wrote in 1959; I was following an elusive and shape-shifting cut-and-paste text through a trackless forest of quotations.

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com


                                     August is a Yellow Flame


                          “That August was like a yellow flame”

                    Anna Ahkmatova, 1917 / Anno Domini MCMXXI /
                                       III. The Voice of Memory


This August is indeed like a yellow flame
Death writhes among brown-burnt withering leaves
The grass is as sere as Macbeth’s acrid soul
And garden hoses drip in futility

The sun-bleached visage of Ozymandias
Might frown upon this blighted desert wrack
For not unlike the Ancient Mariner’s ghostly crew
The usages of summer drop and decay

But look!

But look above the last barren clouds in the west -
A tiny sliver of the promising moon

August is not a Melodious Month

August is not a melodious month
Unlike September with its amphibrach
A rhythm of soothing rises and falls:
September morn and then September song

For August is a trochee all intemperate
A restive foot that wants to walk away
Impatient with discourse, laughter, and song
In its wearying heat and lassitude

August is a word alone, without a rhyme

And so

August is not a melodious time

A Boy and His Dinosaur

In another world, a silent world within,
The dominant species are dinosaurs.
Never having fallen, no evil obtains,
And beneficent reptiles live there as -

As innocently as butterflies.
In his quiet world of gentle reptilians
A little boy is never without a friend,
A Saurian with an unpronounceable name,

To share a cave, a thought, a book, a toy,
And so that world with a best-friend dinosaur
Is the child’s real world, the only one
Where he knows love.

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

                   Autumn: Do I Turn the Thermostat Forward?

The thermostat that I set for seventy
In the August heat was entirely too warm
And now in November it’s entirely too cold
Why can’t thermostats get the temperature right?

The clocks, hot or cold, have issues of their own
In August they chimed the sunrise at six
But now they chime it at seven-thirty
We can conclude that clocks are easily confused

The seasons don’t know if they are forward or back
And I’m unsure myself – alas and alack!

https://logosophiamag.com/2022/10/25/autumn-is-life-writing-its-autobiography/#respond



A selection of short poems published in LogoSophia.

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

                        Autumn is Life Writing its Autobiography

Autumn is not the end of summer, nor yet
Is autumn the beginning of winter; it is
Itself. Autumn is not between anything
Autumn is the culmination of seasons

The seed that slept beneath winter’s cold death
Arose in spring, a resurrection of itself
And grew its summer strength through work and sweat
And in September finished, and mopped its brow

Surveying all its cosmography
Autumn is life writing its biography

(pretend this is centered) Autumn Leaf

                 for a dear friend who died  in the night

O may her life close like a leaf that falls
And laughs in falling at its happy end
Air-dancing through a sky of Dresden blue
Sun-sliding sideways in a blithesome breeze

Soft-singing in a sweet sinopian sun
Who smiles grandfatherly on each blest leaf
Remembering its spring, and summer too
Pushed from the wood after the last fell frost

To grow from mother-tree and taste the air
In that Apollonian sun of youth
To work and play in Saturnian summer
And then to glow in ripe Pomona’s dusk

In celebration of all life, and then
At last to leap into eternity

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                             Autumn Jewish Space Leaves

This morning the sun rose at seven-fifteen
                    Jewish space lasers had something to do with it
The air outside was October-cool and still
                    I’m pretty sure that this was an IDF scheme

A leaf in silence fell to the still-green grass
            No doubt the Mossad planned it that way
Leaves didn’t fall when Trump was president
                    These Jews control all vegetation!

Another leaf floated into my coffee cup
             The mainstream media said nothing about this
Fox News was silenced for thirty seconds or so
                      There’s a They out there who don’t want us to know

I used to enjoy autumn mornings a lot
              But now I know that weather is a Jewish plot!

I.

How wonderful to sleep in a soft, warm bed
Beneath a roof against the blowing night
Of wind and rain rattling each window pane
As winter falls upon this weary world

The busy-ness of day is all complete
I wind the clock and so unwind myself
My little dog burrows toward my feet
Contented with her life, with warmth, with me

And now a few more pages to be read -
How wonderful to sleep in a soft, warm bed

V: Deo gratias


II.

But good enough to sleep in an old, worn bag
Beneath a tarp against the blowing night
Of wind and rain rattling the plastic *****
As winter falls upon the weary world

The emptiness of day is incomplete
And bigger guys stole my cheap Timex watch
Now slithering rats burrow toward my feet
And bite to see if they can feast on me

Another night to be drained and bled
I remember - long ago – sleeping in a bed

R: Your Deo gratias ain’t much help

I mean, like, veg, you couldn’t expect me to eat
A fellow vegetable, a kindred soul
One in spirit with me, with woody cells
Made in the image of the Great Carrot

The animals don’t feel pain like we do
They have no sense of being, they have no soul
And humans need to be farm-raised in pens
And really, veg, they’re happier that way

I’m studied in all such matters agrarian
And, yum! I love me a tasty vegetarian!

A Veteran of the Wars

This old warrior has many tales to tell:
He’s sailed among the distant Philippines
Built ships all over the world, repaired tanks
In Germany, was in the desert wars

He served with the Marines, and the Navy too
And can tell you everything about the Aegis -
And does –
                          but he was never in the service;
He’s a sacker at the supermarket

This poor old man; he never got it right
But God bless him – he had his own wars to fight

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

                                          A Village for Our Exile

Far is that City of God for which we hope
Here the cities of man in which we live
Glorious, but still only refugee camps:
Constantinople, Athens, London, Rome

Give us for our exile a village instead
A pub, a library, a shop, a little school
Cows and sheep grazing on the grass of the commons
A hay wain lumbering through the summer stream

Draught horses drinking from the little rill
In the ford below the slow-clacking mill

(Cf. John Constable, “The Hay Wain”)

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

                  A Violation of the First Law of Thermodynamics

A day so hot that ordinary tasks
Exhaust the body and the soul; to grasp
The handle of a water tap wearies the mind
To grasp a simple thought eludes one’s will

The day is in violation of childhood summers
When little bare feet scampered across the grass
Those days have in adulthood have been stolen
The victims lie abandoned in the dust

Who will lay these charges, and against whom?
And in what court should this strange case be placed?

A Visitor from Canada

Across the border she discreetly slipped
Not bothering the ICE with paperwork
They’ve got enough to do in their little booths:
“And is this visit for business or for pleasure?”

So here she is, on a bright five-pence piece
All elegant in profile, crowned and just,
Mistaken for a democratic dime
In a handful of republican change

What really is the reason for her visit?
To ‘mind us of our own nobility

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

              Avon Man and the Mystery of His First-Best Bed

                   I gyve unto my wief my second best bed…

          -Attributed to Shakespeare in his will. Or Churchill. Or
          Milton. Or Elvis. Or Some Famous Man. And Shakespeare
          was secretly a Catholic. (No, he wasn’t.) (Yes, he was.) (No, he
          wasn’t.) (Yes, he was; I read it on the InterGossip.)

That second-best bed doesn’t matter a pop
Those anyones whoever slept in it are deads
Memorialized as dashboard bobbleheads
At Ye Olde Anne Hathawaye gifte shoppe

Kinge Richarde nevere cryede, “mye kyngdome fore ye bedde!”
Yea, goode olde Sirre Erpinghame joked, “Now lye I like a kynge”
So what’s the deale withe the firste-beste bedde thynge?
Thatte seconde bedde is where the Widowe rested hir hedde

Ande thusse ye scholares maken withouten cessatione
Unsupportede argumentes and allegationes

I.

         “No doubt they’ll sing in tune after the Revolution.”

                      -Kamarovsky, Doctor Zhivago (film)

Everyone seems to clench his fist these days
In solidarity with ephemera
While setting fire to green recycling bins
Hurling someone else’s bicycle through a window

Armed with their undergraduate degrees
The comrades liberate a coffee shop
Wifi-ing the revolution of the day
Empowerment by beating love to death

Loudsplaining authentic victimization
Posing for selfies with a stolen ‘phone

II.

Their inhumanity seemed a marvel of class-consciousness, their barbarism a model of proletarian firmness…

                         -Doctor Zhivago, p. 349

Everyone seems to clutch his flag these days
In solidarity with a past that wasn’t
While setting fire to misspelled cardboard signs
Hurling someone else’s beer into a crowd

Armed with their lurid Confederate tats
The Something.Right liberate a dumpster
Bull-horning the counter-revolution
Empowerment by beating love to death

Bellowing their Reconquista of stench
Posing behind their cheap gas station shades

III.

“I used to admire your poetry...I shouldn't admire it now. I should find it absurdly personal. Don't you agree? Feelings, insights, affections... it's suddenly trivial now. You don't agree; you're wrong. The personal life is dead…”

            -Strelnikov to Yuri, Doctor Zhivago (film)

Some few embrace civilization these days
In solidarity with humanity
While lighting one small candle as a votive
Whispering an Ave into the Light

Armed with wonder through pen and flute and brush
Recusants choose the liberation given
In singing of the eternal verities
Self-empowerment happily denied

With love, with poetry, music, and art
Celebrating life on this summer day

Hey, TeleCheck:

                                              T
     ­                                         H
                      ­                         I
                                         te  S  le

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                   Awaiting Cataract Surgery

                       You can't get a cup of tea big enough
                       or a book long enough to suit me.

                      - attributed to C. S. Lewis and others

I will give up my books
When someone pries my cold, dead hands from them
Companions of my youth, tellers of truth
Next to my heart when the mortar rounds fell

But now I see the world
As through a dark lens darkly, well enough
For most common household purposes
But those dear words on any page – not so

I never thought I’d say
That I’m looking forward to surgery day!

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

              Awarded the Chair of Poetry at a Leafy Rural Tree

Among its ancient gifts are acorns and leaves
But the most generous stipend is peace
Oh, sure, we have our academic rivalries –
Just last night a raccoon occupied the chair

And the cardinals and jays squawk a bit
Mostly about seeds, seldom about verse
For arguing with Keats and Yevtushenko
Is my great pleasure and duty, not theirs

Who knew –

That an old steel chair dragged onto the lawn
Could be a center of civilization?

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                             A Wedding Dress at Goodwill

Long lost longings along a dusty rack
White for purity in her tender years
Backless for a slender, suntanned back
Now stained with disappointments and angry tears

Did she wear it happily that first night
Share champagne kisses passionate though shy
Then slip it off slowly for his delight?
A pause, a touch, an answering touch, a sigh…

Why did she bin it, happy memories and all
That day she received a telephone call?

Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                         A White Buffalo Along the Yellowstone

The alligator-boot boys will gather ‘round
Mahogany tables with sky-high views
And there intrigue how best to use this news
For the enrichment of all their plans and plots

The new-born calf could be sold for experiments
Or maybe enclosed behind a barbed-wire fence:
“COME SEE THE SACRED WHITE BUFFALO FOR ONLY
                    TEN DOLLARS
OR A HUNDRED DOLLARS PER CAR SELFIE PERMITS EXTRA!

But you and I pray that whatever gods we know
Will protect this blessing, this baby buffalo



Rare white bison calf reportedly born in Yellowstone National Park: "A blessing and warning" - CBS News

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

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                               Awkward Adolescent Verse

              Poetry…
              The authority of empires, driven mad,
              Threatened it so many times,
              But it was the rulers who perished

                     -Yevtushenko, “Poetry is a Great Power”

They stole his boots even before he died
And scavengers have eaten out his eyes
His flesh and blood commingle with the mud
His rotting hands still claw the earth, the pain

A dime-store notebook, shredded with his heart
Once pencilled with his awkward, juvenile lines
Of undeveloped images and clumsy rhymes
Which will not be shaped and sharpened in this world

Among young bodies rats squabble and hiss -
Someone will be given a peace prize for this

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

                    A Woman Hollering and a Train Passing By

Next to the post office sags a trailer house
Where a fat old woman in a onesie
Was grilling something in her littered yard
Maybe some hot dogs, or just some dogs

A cigarette bounced about on her lip
As she screamed at me for driving by her life
Possibly she thought I was after her beer cans
Or her virtue, or her front-porch couch

A Santa Fe freight blew by, obscuring her words
And I accelerated, escaping her sorrows

As one of the blue-jacketed workers
As a defiant student
As a child of poverty
Who never had a bicycle to ride to the Sorbonne

I repudiate your vivid red flags
And your graduate-school keyboard revolution
And your catalogue of cliches’ and cant
And your crawling housefly symbolism

As one of the blue-jacketet workers
As a defiant student
After an all-night shift in the plastics factory
I like my cuppa Earl Grey tea in my bleeding hands

Someday I’ll have a bourgeois balcony
And from it look down on your stereotypes

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

                   A Young Roman Responds to Saint Benedict

               “We are about to open a school for God’s service…”

                                           -Rule, St. Benedict

Okay, but what about your S.T.E.M. offerings?
Does your footer pitch have artificial turf?
The books are too heavy - I have a note
My feelings are covered by the ADA

Silence? But I gotta have my tunes, man!
“Correction of Youths?” My mummy will sue!
“Daily manual labor” – may I be excused?
“No talk after Compline” – But can I text?

*** *** nonononono ***, no?

Not for me, dude; and this I’ve got to say:
I know that your program’s famously prestigious
But I am, like, spiritual, not religious
And, hey, you know, you’re just not Harvard, okay?

The spring morning was chill when from its nest
A young wasp fell, helpless and young
Upon the ground, needing the warmth of the sun
To spread its tiny dragon’s wings into new life

A creature of God, needing only an hour
To gain its strength, and so to live the life
Destined for it, its appointed mission
In the unknowable Plan of Creation

It seemed to beg for mercy with each desperate breath
And so with great care I crushed it to death