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

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

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

         Edgar Allan Poe Takes a Selfie and I Take an Antihistamine

Quoth the critic:
                             No one’s ravin’ y’know
Something about a bird – maybe a crow?
Lenore married a physicist on the go
Plutonium shore, not Plutonian (oh!)

Quoth the critic:
No more her beau
She kept the cage, but gave the bird to Poe
Anyway, the scientist’s name is Moe
She says his nuclear fission makes her glow

Quoth the critic:
Let’s end this show
(Antihistamines – I shoulda said no)
(‘Choo!)

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

                   Edna St. Vincent Millay and Her Pickup Truck

                           Teaching Poetry to High School Boys

The fragility of teenaged boys is well known
Despite their tough hands stained with oil and grease
And their slouch and their ‘tude, wanting to be grown
Their loud voices disturbing the classroom’s peace

(Ooooh-RAH!)

And true enough they are rough-and-tumble souls
Who are seldom frightened away from any fray
But nothing blasts manly roles so full of holes
As a name like Edna St. Vincent Millay

(Shiver!)

In teaching boys poetry you’re just out of luck
Unless there’s a dog or a pickup truck

(Hey, Old Dude, is “deer stand” an iamb or a trochee?)

The Superintendent Speaks:

It’s for the children transparency
Because children are our most important
Resource we need to put this behind us
The children come first the healing process
Needs to begin the best interests of the children
Because we’re a team focus on the children
Distractions it’s all about the children
We need to move forward because we’re a family

He and his attorneys could not immediately
*Be reached for comment for the children

Someone once burned down the White House!
Someone who was wearing a red blouse
The British claim it loudly
But others more proudly:
“We Canadians burned down the White House!”

In 1812 Congress declared war on Britain, thinking that the several provincial Canadas of that time (Canada did not become a Dominion until 1 July 1867) would be easily conquered and absorbed.   During the campaigns United States forces burned York (now Toronto), the capital of Upper Canada, and in 1814 regular British forces in their turn burned much of Washington. Apparently there were no Canadian militia units involved in torching our capital. Canadians claim the honor anyway, and since they were part of the British Empire, one can with a grain of salt and a cup of Tim Horton’s coffee admit their claim.

God bless Canada.  Let’s drop the tariffs and the passport requirements, apologize nicely for ill manners shown to this nation’s best friend, shake hands all ‘round, and go catch a Toronto Blue Jays game.

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

                                  El Camino Real de los Tejas

A WPA highway crumbling in the sun
Oriented west where dreams disappear
Among the beer cans and the cinder blocks:
El Camino Real de los Tejas

Sharing a joint, throwing rocks at snakes
Where the Santa Fe tracks used to run
Now there’s not even a bus out of town:
El Camino Real de los Tejas

They don’t even know that they’re the sons of kings:
In exile along El Camino Real

The old order changeth, yielding place to new

-Tennyson, Idylls of the King

Like dinosaurs our institutions gasp
In spasms of existential death; they pass
At first unnoticed by the casual unobserver
Who trips over a covenant that isn’t there

If you vote they give you a sticker

The ephemeral Constitution changed
Like sweaty skivvies by each president
Law libraries catalogued for pulp
By obedient functionaries in tees

If you vote they give you a sticker

The faithful escorted out of the cathedral
By a bored security guard on overtime
The altar linens for sale at Goodwill
And the sanctuary repurposed on T.V.

If you vote they give you a sticker

Some of The Just Plain Folks cheer for the Reds
And the others cheer only for the Blues
As the reincarnation of Jack Chick
Blesses their four-wheelers and plastic caps

If you vote they give you a sticker

Election placards on abandoned buildings
Promise again prosperity for all
The **** lab cooks behind The Kute Kidz
Private Academy of the Dance and Math

If you vote they give you a sticker

An outreach of the Bright Light Free Will
Missionary Temple of the Lord Jesus Christ
Of the Lamb Sanctified 501C The Reverend Doctor Master Bishop Billy-Bob Hairdo PhD, DD a-brangin’ Messages and His Esteemed Lady Apostle Heather

If you vote they give you a sticker

And blessed be the Holy AR-15
God gave to His People to defend themselves
Here in the freest country in the world
Which you can find behind the barbed-wire fence

If you vote they give you a sticker

While fleets of luxury presidential jets
Arc high over our public housing projects
Reminding us of our prosperity
Here in the richest country in the world

If you vote they give you a sticker

And them Jews for Jesus I guess they’re all right
But them other Jews they just ain’t no good
Nor them Cath’lics nor them Mormons neither
And don’t you get me started on them Baptists

(We seem to have been otherwise engaged)

“The old order changeth, yielding place to new” –
(But neither cares at all for me or you)

But if you vote they give you a sticker

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

                        Election Day in Texas: Proposition 3

Pastor’s gotta have his collection coming in
No matter how many of the faithful must die
Vaccination-free for Jesus and America
It’s God’s will (so no one cares when the orphans cry)

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                 Election Night 2024: Dry Bones


                “All we are, basically, are monkeys with car keys”

    -Grandma Woody in Northern Exposure, “Animals R Us,” 1991


An early dusk falls under clouds from the Gulf
Yellow houselights wink on as daylight winks off
Supper in greasy bags from fast-fooderies
That everyone argues they can’t afford

Then like the lozenge in A Space Odyssey
A screen appears and dominates all
And family groupings center themselves around it
In excited cavortings before the images

Of brightly-colored cultic election scores
As fists swinging dry bones crush enemy skulls

Electromagnetic Lust

They wander about, each connected device
Talking to other connected devices
Looking into each electronic soul
In which no secret can ever reside

They speak of batteries and images
Of apps, restarts, resets, and memory
Measured by quantity of something-bytes
Each in electrical love with itself

They wander about, each connected device
Wishing to be free of its human host

Elegy for a Four-Cup Coffee Maker

Poor Mister Coffee – may God grant you rest
After long years of humble service to man
You never abandoned your duty station
Next to the cookies and the kitchen sink

You were the first to bless each day at dawn
Your little red sanctuary lamp aglow
As with electricity you commingled
Water and coffee into a sacrament

Fruit of the bean and work of human hands -
But now you are silent, to drip no more

Eligible for an upgrade...or an upchuck, or something...


Good comrades once were forced to stand in  lines
To register submission to The Cause
And beg for life while starving in the cold
Applauding all the while their misery

Good comrades still fall in obediently
To register submission to the ‘phone
And fight for selfie-space – oooh, look at me!
Applauding bars of connectivity

The irony of queueing before false shrines-
Good comrades once were forced to stand in lines

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Ella’s Unicorns

There is no reason why pale unicorns
Should not cavort in frosty fields at night
Or dragons play around the moonlit pond
Annoying the naughty naiads bathing there

For startime is the magic dreamy time
When flowers and leaves are given whispering speech
And laughing faeries flit from tree to tree
In games of hide-and-seek until the dawn

The world would be strange without unicorns
Cavorting in the frosty fields at night

Upon reading the poems of Anna Ahkmatova

…….. are most useful things; they hide
One’s thoughts from the …….. ………
Who search and sniff each line for any whiff
Of ………, ……….., or …..

Since …… …… in their arrogance,
…………. who forget their place
Will scribble heresies and call it art
But like to hide their plots in lots of dots

Say what you will (but you’d better not):
…….. are most useful things; they hide.

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

                        Ellis Island, Ellis Island, Ellis Island

Oh, don’t bother us with Ellis Island
Some of our DNA were fishing from the sand bar
When our other DNA came paddling up the creek
With flags and guns and swords and bibles and stuff

We were killing each other in the woods
Before you lot ever got off the boat
And landed on the wharves that we had built
(When we weren’t killing each other)

And still everything is a mess, that’s true -
But now that we’re all here, what will we do?

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

    Elon Musk Invites Us Down for Chips and Dip and Destruction

                They have pulled down Deep Heaven on their Heads

                             -C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength

He’s implanted a chip, says Mr. Musk
Into the brain (certainly not the hip)
Of some poor patient who’s now just a husk
A talking head, a thing, a radar blip

And what could go wrong with this poor android
A man now fitted with an electric brain
Adjusted and programmed and tweaked and toyed -
A failed experiment thrashing in pain?

And if he fails, this humanoid chip
Musk might use him for guacamole dip

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

Emmaus isn’t on the Map

The road from Emmaus is not in the book
Emmaus isn’t even on the map
Still, people walk to Emmaus every day
And then they go away to somewhere else

Because while everyone visits Emmaus
It’s only for supper and a new assignment
Although the directions seem somewhat vague
Those who have been there seem to know the way

The road to Emmaus is in the book
The road out of town is mapped in the heart

Encountering a Fawn on a Rainy Morning in August

                                 leaped
The mother deer                  the farmer’s new fence
With her accustomed elegance and grace
Her fawn, confused, abandoned in the field
Held still, and pondered a new mystery

For a motorist, the asphalt is The Way
Menaced by mysterious fields and woods
For a deer, its fields and woods are The Way
Menaced by mysterious dark asphalt

The baby deer then found an open gate
The motorist found his way to Wal-Mart

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

               Encounter with an Aging Hippie Benedictine Tertiary
                                    at the Church Door

The old man’s tee said QUESTION AUTHORITY
In the narthex, where we lay our scene
(Shakespeare lay his scene in Verona, but this was not Verona)
I joshed about deferring to seniority
For he was a tertiary Benedictine

He raised his quavery voice as best as he was able
To squeak that all teachings can and should lay
Upon some sort of philosophical table
And then he rattled his walker and clattered away

I do not know what any of this might mean –  
But I think I was dismissed as a Philistine

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                     End. Stops. Employed. As. Arguments.

Learn. To. Code. You. Had. One. Job. End. Of. Fact.
Decolonize. This. Place. Best. Job. Ever.
Burn. It. Down. Get. A. Job. Not. In. Our. Name.
Not. My. King. Not. My President. Spot. On.

Worst. Day. Ever. Votes. Have. Consequences.
What. Could. Go. Wrong. It. Begins. Heads. Will. Roll.
O. M. G. Let. It. Go. This. Isn’t. Over.
Come. And. Take. It. Not. Just. Shut. Up. Just. No.


Shut. It. Down. Let. It. Go. I. Have. No. Words.
This. Ends. Now. End. Of. Story. Grow. Up. Full. Stop.

English and Celtic Poets

A Sassenach assembles words and lines
In order, disciplined, like hammer-falls
Upon reluctant steel in armories
The beat and off-beat in formation set

A Celt sings challenges carelessly into the eagle-skies
To soar among the storms in sorrow and in joy
Laughing among full cups of heathery vowels
Claidheamh-mor swinging against blank verse in English helmets

An Englishman sends words to fight and work
A Celt persuades wild words to fight and dream

“...you don’t have to be indoctrinated by these loser teachers
that are trying to sell you on socialism from birth.”

- Donald Trump, Junior

Have at it, little prince - I was called worse
When I came home from Viet-Nam; I’m sure
Your father could tell you about the pain

And now

A usage lesson follows my poor verse:


The relative pronoun following “teachers” should be “who,” not “that.”




I am at your service, your highness.

Enough of gossamer!  Enough of it!
It’s just another word for spider ////!

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

                                           Enter a Password

Your password must consist of at least nine
letters and three numbers three of the letters
must be capitalized and two must be
underlined however while one of the
capital letters may be underlined
the other underlining or underlinings
must be small letters but none of the numbers
is to be underlined you must include
at least one specialty key but no more
than four and the password must not be entered
under a full moon or within three days
of Michaelmas either way we’re sorry
your time has expired please exit this window
and then re-submit but not the same password
you entered before

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

                           Enter Orlando – or you - with a Paper

                                           …these trees shall be my books
                    And in their barks my thoughts I’ll character

                                 -Orlando, As You Like It, III.ii.5-6

To write a poem and send it to the world
Is not unlike leaving it in a tree
For Rosalind, your Rosalind, to find
(Even at the risk of being scorned as an acorn)

Putting it out there can be dangerous
Art cannot be art unless it is shared
And Rosalind, your Rosalind, might not like it
(And then there’s that thing about a fallen acorn)

Oh, take the risk: for Rosalind, your Rosalind
Probably won’t conclude that you’re an acorn

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

                            Epiphany Moved and Improved

Whatever committee decides these things
Has chosen to shift ancient feasts about
For the convenience of the modern world
In scheduling meetings and interviews

Magi following a smart watch in the sky
The ostler wants the stable cleared by ten
King Herod tapping massacres on an app
Plough Monday must be reset to Tuesday next

Whatever committee decides these things
Is stricken deaf when the sacring bell rings

We were admiring the summer muscadines
I mentioned that my one experiment
In making wine resulted in only
A series of dramatic explosions

And he spake unto me:

Better that, far better, than to be Condemned
Grapes are for jelly, or you’ll be Condemned
Not for Strong Drink, no, or you’ll be Condemned
If you use grapes for wine you’ll be Condemned

He said on a hellishly hot summer day
Then he returned to baling my Catholic hay

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

                   Even So, Someone’s Got to Milk the Cows

           U.S. Covid-19 Cases Set to Triple Pre-Omicron Record

                          -Wall Street Journal, 10 January 2022

The pharmacies have no more Covid tests
The supermarkets no paper for the loo
The people feel that masks and jabs are jests
The government replays each Fauci-boo-boo

The Qanons tell us it’s just the ‘flu
The sheeple, they say, are easily led
Others that horse paste is the thing to do
The hospitals haven’t another bed

The cynics assure us we have nothing to dread
But some use their stimulus checks to bury their dead

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                Even the Oak Trees are Dying

              “Wildfire…evacuation of nearby residences under way”

                                               -news bulletin

Poor drought-dead leaves in mockery of autumn
Wind-rustle across the lawn as the dried husks they are
Rattling like withered exoskeletons along the dust
Or The Ancient Mariner’s dead sailors upon the deck

The exhausted earth is hot from a summer of drought
Cicadas have no hope in their poor songs
A drifting dragonfly wobbles in its flight
And the weather reports are but cruel teasings

The sour smoke of a month of forest fires
Chokes even the stars, who in despair do not appear

Changing the channels in the middle of the night
Mixing old plots into a new program
Ugatti sells tickets to an illegal fight
Another quarter for the juke box, Sam

Patrick McGoohan strides angrily into Rick’s
But finds that he has lost his credit card
Vultures, vultures everywhere, Number Six
Ilsa falls for Major Strasser quite hard

Rick’s Place is purchased by Raymond Massey
And Leonard Cohen in his famous blue coat
Emails of transit from Kate Beckinsale, so classy -
‘Tis she who leaves poor Rick that rain-stained note

And Captain Reynaud?

He ends his days pushing each shopping cart
In from the parking lot down at Wal-Mart

Everybody honors Th’ Workin’ Man
With songs about the dignity of work
Poems, impassioned speeches in Congress
The latest book about worker housing

But everybody ignores that working man
Who builds the stage on which the singer sings
The plumber who makes the artist’s royal flush
The electrician who wires the elections

Everybody honors Th’ Workin’ Man -
But nobody honors a working man

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

                               Everybody’s Subversive Now

Speaking truth to power my truth your truth
Interrogating the great reset iconic
The Davos crowd the world economic forum
Break the rules no wrong answers deep state disruptive
Buzzwords without borders globalist power
Synod on synodality
Social media toolkit inclusive
Sustainable neocolonial
Decolonise postcolonialism
Finding your voice authentic community

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

                           Everybody Writes a Poem About the Moon

Everybody writes about the moon
Often trying to force a balky rhyme
Along the continuum of spoon and croon
Which just won’t fill the bill, the quill, or the time

But the moon is there, whether we write or not
Silver and cool, beyond our scribbled praise
In contrast to the sun, golden and hot
Promoting himself through all of summer’s days

Everybody writes about the moon
Who in her being is all the rhyme we need

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

                Every Day is Poetry Day, But Sometimes…

I dunno; is life getting in the way?
Some days the gods, the fates, the little elves
Are fiercely determined to part you from your words
That you must not encounter books or thoughts

(Even the little notebook in your pocket)

But only the vacuum cleaner, the crescent wrench
The washing machine, the cows, the dogs, the lawn
The daily round of crises, duties, and chores -
And maybe only a few lines read at lunch

(Because you always have a book at hand)

A few lines scribbled at the end of the day
Well, they will have to do – whaddaya say?

(Busting a sweat makes you a better writer)

Well, okay, it’s out there in the back yard
Where on display you’ll see: old boonie hats
Uncool, but good when working in the heat
And cotton khakis from the discount store

Just washed, and drying in the summer sun
Admired by every Merry Little Breeze 1
Skivvies and socks sewn in Cambodia
And work shirts stitched together in Viet-Nam

Nothing by Versace or Calvin Klein
Just old clothes drying on the old clothes line


1 Thornton W. Burgess’ Mother West Wind stories

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

           Everyone is Now a Two-Dimensional Religious Image

News writers are dull, almost catatonic
Dispensing metaphors soporifically phonic
For in their world of the cliched and ironic
Every topic, every person is invariably

                                                     ­       Iconic

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                Everyone Tells the Story of Li Po and the Moon

Everyone tells the story of Li Po and the moon
Of how when he was drunk in a boat one night
He tried to embrace the reflection of the moon
Fell in and drowned, and wrote and drank no more

Everyone says the story is probably not true
But some tell it anyway – why is that?
Why must poor Li Po drown over and over
His life of art ended in a drunken lapse?

Because even if his moon river death were true
It would be a more dignified death than theirs

And that is why

Everyone tells the story of Li Po and the moon

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

        Everyone Writes a Drivelly Poem about the Winter Solstice
                                           And entitles it
                                         “Winter Solstice,”
                           And yet Somehow the World Goes On

The sun seems to stand still, and too, the world
An Ouroboros of lockdowns and masks
And the increasing divisions of partisans
In yet another republic devouring itself

There is an insubstantial Christmas truce
Undeclared, a catching of breath and will
In hopes that two-faced Janus will close his doors
Against the failings of the coming year

The sun seems to stand still, and too, the world
We also wait, and search the skies for a Star

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

             Everyone Writes a Poem about the Winter Solstice

The moon is falling away from the full
The axis of the earth will briefly pause
Planets and stars align as the Maker wills
And we wonder if we can sense our world

Our world as she shivers across the night
We must light a hilltop fire for her
So that she will spin the light back to us
While we search the heavens for that star

That star that led us to a stable long ago
And now bathes our souls with its silver glow

Although some of my universities
Were universities, I take your point
For you too are a university
I want to know your course of study, your life

Tell me about your university:
Your favorite poet, how you see the skies
Do you like trains? Which hand do you write with?
Which crayon-color did you use up first?

Tell me a story that you tell yourself
While I polish your eyeglasses just right

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                        Everyone Writes Haiku about the Moon

                               And that’s because we love her

The soft, swelling moon
It’s as if she’s giving birth
Giving us new life

In my religion we're taught that every living thing, every leaf, every bird, is only alive because it contains the secret word for life. That's the only difference between us and a lump of clay. A word. Words are life, Liesel.

- Max to Liesel in Markus Zusak’s *The Book Thief

We cannot walk with Dostoyevsky as
Guards drag him chained before a firing squad
Comfort Saint Joan against the English flames
Or pray with good Saint Thomas in his cell

We cannot slosh through sodden trenches in France
With Lieutenant Lewis on his birthday
Argue with Akhmatova at The Stray Dog
Or with Frankl at Auschwitz bury dead friends

Unless we read, and then through words we see
The morning sun upon Byzantium

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

                                   Every Poem is a Translation

Wordsworth considered his rainbow up on high
And what he saw and felt through it, he wrote -
Translating an arc of refracted light
Into a transcendent vision of life

But his considerations through paper and ink
Are but darkness and silence without readers
Because the rainbow needs our vision, our joy
Without which there is no rainbow at all

We open the book, the page, the words, the light
To find the rainbow that he wrote to us

“You Can Tell It’s Mattel It’s Swell" (tm) 1

          -A toymaker’s slogan applied to (That Rifle) in the 1960s

(That Rifle) often fires when it should not
Its chosen function is usually to jam
But, da®n, it’s black and **** and hot -
Blows off testosterone when it goes Bam-Bam

And when it discharges, so does its owner
A little bullet from a little spout                              
With his stud piece, no longer a loner -
True love from each basement dweller and lout

Maybe it makes guys feel all hunky-hunk -
Well, they are welcome to that piece of junk

1 Mattel has never had any connection with the manufacture of weapons

Like the little children that once we were
The midnight thunder has us burrowing
Down further into the primordial covers
For fear of the rain and cold outside

Our wool and cotton caves cocoon us from
The timbers creaking through the pounding wind
The raindrops at the window wanting in
But after dawn the morning the news reports

A homeless man dying a dumpster-death
Lost his last hope with his last lonely breath

for Crazy Diamond Kristy, who makes life fun...

One exclamation mark is right and proper
Add any more, and your thought comes a cropper!

:)

Cheers!

This is dedicated to whomever (“’whom,’ he said, for he had been to night school.”)  mentioned existential angst the other day. At first I misread “existential angst” as “existential ants,” and so for you and for all who suffer existential angst and existential ants:

                                                  Existential Ants

All creepy ants are existential ants
If ants across your old blue jeans advance
And bite into your tender skin by chance
You leap into an existential dance

And swear profane, wild, existential chants
Your good companions look at you askance
Each with a wondering existential glance
They seem to be in an existential trance

As you flail among the flowering plants
Because of those wicked existential ants!

Orderly rows of padded chairs among
Funeral home décor, fluorescent lights
HGTV eternally on TV
A really big and wide hi-def TV

On which attractive thirty-somethings yip
As they enter rooms: “OMYGOD! OMYGOD!”
What would they say if they encountered God –
OMYATTRACTIVELYFURNISHEDROOM!  
OMYATTRACTIVELYFURNISHEDROOM!

­And how many people with eye problems
Drive themselves to the ophthalmologist?

And did I spell “ophthalmologist” right?

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

                   Existentialism and Schrodinger’s Eyeglasses


                “…books and music and circling philosophies”

                                       -Mary Oliver, “Answers”


Not even the Pascaline could sort things out -
The whirlings and circlings of discrete stimuli
As when you are commanded, judged, rebuked
Rewarded, shamed, and praised, all at the same time

Where are the little wheels that could line them out
In order mechanical and neatly filed
Then catalogued by order of the mind
Ready for good service to God and man?

Not even the Pascaline could sort things out –
And has anyone seen my glasses about?