For John Keats

Wanderer by moonlight, you never knew
That mellow autumn of elusive fame
Which you well-earned in your suffering youth
Through the fatal cough as you labored in haste

In haste to set in jeweled, sunlit lines
Each joyful day’s delight in nature and man
Before they faded into that long night -
You never knew what treasures you left to us

Then may your desperate pilgrimage to Rome
Lead you at last to more glorious Stairs

Wanderer by moonlight, you never knew
That mellow autumn of elusive fame
Which you well-earned in your suffering youth
As you laboured in haste through hastening death
 
In haste to set in jeweled, sunlit lines
Each joyful day’s delight in nature and man
Before they faded into that long night -
You never knew what treasures you left to us
 
Then may your desperate pilgrimage to Rome
Lead you at last to more glorious Stairs

Former People

For W. K. Kortas

We Former People have no reputation
So we are free to starve to death in peace
Or if we are unsightly in the street
Free rides to The Palace of Workers’ Justice

We might be beaten, we might be given a meal
Before we’re freed to a courtyard echoing
With the rattle of mop buckets and screams
And stood in liberating rows and shot

In glorious sacrifice to the Cause
Of progress and equality for all

Former People

For W. K. Kortas

We Former People have no reputation
So we are free to starve to death in peace
Or if we are unsightly in the street
Free rides to The Palace of Workers’ Justice

We might be beaten, we might be given a meal
Before we’re freed to a courtyard echoing
With the rattle of mop buckets and screams
And stood in liberating rows and shot

In glorious sacrifice to the Cause
Of progress and equality for all

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

Former President Trump Splits Two Infinitives and Botches a Number of Subject, Verb, and Adjective Constructs While Proposing the Arming of Teachers

    “...it's time to finally allow highly trained teachers to safely and
     discreetly concealed carry, let them concealed carry.”

                      -Former President Donald J. Trump
                    to the National Rifle ***., 27 May 2022

All teachers trample the Constitution
All teachers promote contempt for the Flag
All teachers should be in an institution
All teachers are weird (and that one’s a fxg)
All teachers despise the military
All teachers should be slowly microwaved
All teachers hate meat; they’re vegetary
All teachers hate Jesus; they can’t be saved
All teachers are evil; the children are harmed:

And thus, they say, all teachers should be armed

Previously published as “Texas’ Proposed Concealed Carry Law” in Dispatches from the Colonial Office, 2018, available from amazon.com.

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

        Forming a Committee Around a Car That Wouldn’t Start

The engine wouldn’t turn over; the electrics were dead
We stood around the open hood, each scratching his head

1st Member:

“It appears to me it’s the dead battery
There’s no indication of a charge, you see”

2nd Member:

“I’m a college graduate, so I am smarter
Obviously the problem is with the starter”

3rd Member:

“There’s a smell in the engine, something tannic
And I should know; I’m a certified mechanic”

4th Member:

“I’m a knight of the road; I drive a freighter
Just let me at that broken alternator”


But none of our skilled efforts came to pass
Because no one had bothered to check

                                                                                                        the gas

Mr. Big Businessman...

                       There wiste no wight that he was in dette

                          -Chaucer, General Prologue, line 279

If this were fifty years ago he’d sport
A cheap brown suit and a loud, too-wide tie
But now he wears knee-pants and cartoon tees
And fashion shoes that look like cancerous growths

And speaks like Chaucer’s merchant of his gigs
Contacts and contracts and deals to be made
Important ‘phone calls that must be taken now
In a voice of in-crowd guffawery

But when he clicks off his shiny MePhone
He asks for gas money to get him home

For Ngo Dinh Diem

No flame eternal burns over your lost grave
Unknown beneath an hourly parking lot
Or maybe out back among the garbage cans
No guards of honor pace in mirrored boots

Forth and back in mummery choreographed
Along a field of honor’s concrete walk
No busloads of tourists leave gift-shop wreaths
No bands or speeches mark your martyrdom

Nor would you need them
Nor would you want them

For your small flame is on an Altar set

For our Mothers on Christmas Eve

             For Katherine Mattie Bevil Blanchette Hall, 1922 – 2010
                                         and all our mothers

Beyond all other nights, on this strange Night,
A strangers’ Star, a silent, seeking Star,
Helps set the wreckage of our souls aright:
It leads us to a stable door ajar                                                          

And we are not alone in peeking in:
An ox, an ***, a lamb, some shepherds, too -
Bright Star without; a brighter Light within
We children see the Truth those Wise Men knew

For we are children there in Bethlehem
Soft-shivering in that winter long ago
We watch and listen there, in star-light dim,
In cold Judea, in a soft, soft snow

For our Mothers on Christmas Eve

Beyond all other nights, on this strange Night,
A strangers’ Star, a silent, seeking Star,
Helps set the wreckage of our souls aright:
It leads us to a stable door ajar                                                          

And we are not alone in peeking in:
An ox, an ***, a lamb, some shepherds, too -
Bright Star without; a brighter Light within
We children see the Truth three Wise Men knew

For we are children there in Bethlehem
Soft-shivering in that winter long ago
We watch and listen there, in star-light dim,
In cold Judea, in a soft, soft snow

The Stable and the Star, yes, we believe:
Our mothers sing us there each Christmas Eve

(ca 2015)

Lawrence Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com


                                For our Mothers on Christmas Eve

Beyond all other nights, on this strange Night,
A strangers’ Star, a silent, seeking Star,
Helps set the wreckage of our souls aright:
It leads us to a stable door ajar                                                        

And we are not alone in peeking in:
An ox, an ***, a lamb, some shepherds, too -
Bright Star without; a brighter Light within
We children see the Truth three Wise Men knew

For we are children there in Bethlehem
Soft-shivering in that winter long ago
We watch and listen there, in star-light dim,
In cold Judea, in a soft, soft snow

The Stable and the Star, yes, we believe:
Our mothers sing us there each Christmas Eve

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

                              Select All Images with Traffic Lights

When the ink on his Gospel had barely dried
Saint Matthew was interrupted by angelic sights
And then to him a Voice from Heaven cried:
“Select all images with traffic lights!”

Old William Shakespeare was a poetic bloke
Who wrote his metered verse within the lines
But his editor demanded, with a voice that broke:
“Select all images with highway signs!”

So if, dear reader, you wish to have your say -
Forget it; you won’t pass the test anyway

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

                                  Whe­n a Man is Old

                           For Presidents and Others:
                     A Meditation on Aging Gracefully

Now when a man is young, he gives his strength
In service to his nation and the Faith
In war and peace, and at his family hearth
In work, and in his humble place at Mass

But when a man his old, he then should choose
To ‘change his work for a good walking stick
And sit outside the Blue Boar Inn with pipe
And glass and friends and happy memories

There is honor in manly endeavors
And honor in finally letting them go

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

                              For Protestors in All Causes

Please –

Stop pumping your fisties up in the air
I’m tired of seeing your old armpit hair!

Oh, yes, you believe in this week’s cause
But that grotesque growth would give a lawnmower pause

And one more trifling thing (so please take note):
You shout and clench your fist, but do you vote?

Something About Life

                                      “Live.  Just live.”

                               -Yuri in Doctor Zhivago

The plane lifted, and the cheering was wild
And then pretty quickly the pilot said
“We are now clear of Vietnamese
Territorial waters.”  There was joy,
Even wilder cheering for most, and quiet
Joy for a few.  For me, Karamazov
To hand, peace, and infinite gratitude.
“I’m alive,” I said to myself and to God,
“Alive.  I will live, after all.”  To read, to write,
Simply to live.  Not for revolution,
Whose smoke poisons the air, not for the war,
Not to withdraw into that crippling self-pity
Which is the most evil lotus of all,
But to live.  To read, to write.
                                            But death comes,
Then up the Vam Co Tay, or now in bed,
Or bleeding in a frozen February ditch;
Death comes, scorning our frail, feeble, failing flesh,
But silent then at the edge of the grave,
For all graves will be empty, not in the end,
But in the very beginning of all.

For Rod McKuen

The gentle singer of our youth has died
The poet of empty Sunday afternoons
And solitary strolls through Balboa Park
Among lovers and Frisbee-chasing dogs

Of laughing with shipmates while cleaning rifles
Because we knew more than the armorer
About dreaming away from learning war
About pretty girls laughing in the sun

And a chansonnier in sweater, sneaks, and jeans:
The gentle singer of our youth has died

From 2015 - for Rod McKuen

The gentle singer of our youth has died
The poet of empty Sunday afternoons
And solitary strolls through Balboa Park
Among lovers and Frisbee-chasing dogs

Of laughing with shipmates while cleaning rifles
Because we knew more than the armorer
About dreaming away from learning war
About pretty girls laughing in the sun

And a chansonnier in sweater, sneaks, and jeans:
The gentle singer of our youth has died

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                             (From The Saint Tibbs’ Day Songbook)

                          Last Christmas I Gave You my Pancreas

I thought there was an idea here
But maybe not
Just a few questions, ma’am
About the guy who received your heart and gave it away
Did he drop it off at a re-sale shop?

Giving a body part at Christmas is sing-able
           Because
“Last Septuagesima Sunday I gave you my heart”
Is not something you can dance to easily
Especially if you have no cardio-pulmonary functions

I thought there was an idea here
Maybe it’s those Nyquil dreams again…

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

                               For the 20th of January
                                      1961 and 2021


                 The deed of gift was many deeds of war

                                         -Robert Frost

Miz Hawkins brought a television to school
So we could watch the inauguration
Of a president “born in this century”
But he seemed really old to us anyway

God looked like President Eisenhower
And God was surely a Methodist
President Kennedy was a Cath’lic
(In their basements they hid shortwaves and guns)

Shortwaves tuned to the Vatican and that ol’ Pope
So could a Cath’lic be a good American?
But the nation was young, and so were we
And America was God’s best creation

And because America was the Leader of the World
And we had whipped the Nazis and the **** [sic]
All by ourselves, and invented the Bomb
We were the blessing of democracy over all

Robert Frost spoke grand words in the January frost
I was hoping for his “Stopping by Woods”
Because I had memorized that in school
But he gave us something else, “The Gift Outright”

And then with frosted breath the President
Asked us what we could do for our country
Our country later asked us about Viet-Nam
But for now Miz Hawkins shushed all us deeds of gift

The nation was young that day, and so were we –

And everything seems so much older now
Our long ago optimism a deed of gift
To angry old men whose voices rattle

Rattle from behind armored glass and barbed wire
Barbed wire left over from DaNang and Saigon
And a thousand abandoned desert posts
Each a gift outright to Ozymandias

Who late bestrode the littered Capitol steps
His wrinkled lips loud-yelping in command
Over our increasingly antique land
“Made it, Ma! Top of the World!”

The happy crowds of ’61 are sand
There are no crowds in ’21, only silence
Behind ranks of soldiers (properly vetted)
Standing in empty streets, waiting for a Traveller

References:

Robert Frost, “The Gift Outright”
Shelley, “Ozymandias”
Warner Brothers, White Heat (film), 1949

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

                 For the Cranky Old Man Who Complains
                About Girls Wearing Short Skirts in Church

If it were a crime to be young and pretty
The kids could be up for the death penalty

If it were a crime to be young and pretty
The case against you would be adjourned sine die

For the Faithful Departed

Do we all holy rites.
Let there be sung Non nobis and Te Deum

-Henry V, 4.viii.115-116

Workmen approved indeed1, from far away
Like Abraham, exiled from the fields of home
But leaving here in their adopted land
Their blessings always, through family and faith

And so we ask Our Lady in several voices -
     Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe
     Notre-Dame de LaSalette
     Our Lady of the Americas -

To welcome Luis and Oscar to God’s Home,
That promised Place of refreshment, light, and peace2


1 2 Timothy 2:15
2 from several Catholic prayers for the departed






Of your kindness pray for the repose
of the souls of Luis Castro and Oscar Rivera

September Twilight

The gasping summer heat withdraws at dusk
The hot winds still themselves, and now defer
To autumn’s promise and an easy truce
Sol slips behind the trees; the empty sky

Takes little note and fades among the stars
The summer grass is tired, but, bravely green,
Hosts cricket games for pouncing cats and dogs
Points cheered by choirs of cicadas and frogs

This is the thinking time.  The book’s at rest
Unread, face down upon a lichened bench
While votive fire glows in its copper bowl
And dryads whisper in the gathering dusk

Ancestors seem to gather round, to mark
The changing seasons on their holy earth
And tho’ their tread no longer makes a sound
Their merry tales more remembered than heard

Their happy presence in the first-star-hour
Reminds us that whatever-was remains
And will remain until the calling of time

I was just passing through
You didn’t know me; I didn’t know you
But I should have known you’d steal from me
When you told me to Have a Blessed Day

You never came back with the change
And that is sad. We have come to accept the lies
Of praychurs, presidents, and prime ministers
But one expects better of Sonic waitresses

And  you told me to Have a Blessed Day

So you’re 40 cents to the bad, that’s true
But I’ve got the dollar I was going to tip you

And, hey, y’all have a blessed day, y’hear?


(May God bless her for really-real; generational poverty sees things differently, and, anyway, she may have learned it from the 501C3 preacher-man.)

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

        For the Sullen Old Grump Waving a “REPUBLIC NOW” Sign

A republic

Guillotines, cronies, self-mutilations
Tossers rioting with glowing smart-phones
Books and art banned according to The People’s will
Rolex evangelists commanding through fear NOW

A republic

Oligarchs who never busted a sweat
Except on the golf course or while working a tan
Illiterate graspers in tailored suits
Protecting us from thinking for ourselves NOW

A republic

Purging all beauty and leaving us only
A desolation of gossips and their grievances NOW

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

                  For Training Purposes this Life May be Monitored

An examination of conscience is good
Thinking about things at the end of each day
Hail Marys mixed in with exasperation
Rough words that should never have been spoken

Reading casual cruelties on the InterGossip
Whatever God’s plan might be, that wasn’t it
Gratitude for work, gratitude for meals
Gratitude for peace at the end of the day

And as for the occasional bitter cup
Your Mother taught you right: offer it up

Time stops. The sweep hand seconds that no-motion
It fluttered in warning for several days
You were warned, and now you are out of time
That thing on your wrist is now but a weight

Oh, what is the nature of time? one asks
Oh, where is there a fresh 370?
The watch-opener reposes patiently
The tiny screwdrivers wait silently

Because without a 370 battery

(Which you can’t find in this town)

A watch is only useless tattery

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com


                                           For Cate and Jack

                                           Or Jack and Cate?

                                                On Christmas


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

For us there is no Stray Dog Cabaret -
Our art burns at the end of a welding rod
And in the muscled turning of a wrench
In heat and sweat against a frozen bolt

Old work trucks parked in an oyster shell lot
Eaten with rust from the chemical air
And past the gates, cracking units, and tanks
A plywood paradise with ice-cold beer

Some of us work the night shift to pay our way
Through college, where we learn that we are

                                                             privileged

Scrambled Eggs in Rainwater

Field Medical Service School

Shivering in the rain, up in the hills
Of Sunny Southern California
Kerosene cookers and their gust-blown smoke
Squid-wet Corpsmen in flying wet slickers

Mess kits held out to sullen, cursing cooks
Slam-slopping glops of sausages and eggs
Cold coffee in aluminum canteen cups
No cover, no shelter for floating food

Or for sergeants bellowing in the dark –
And we laughed through it all, for we were young

No One Ever Said the War was Over

No one ever said the war was over
They were honest in that one thing, at least
Since that which never began cannot end
Not for those in a war that never was
Some made fortunes, some got a bus ride home
Some shook it off, and made it out okay
And some stare vacantly in lonely rooms
Red, yellow, green – what did they ever mean?
“Thank you for your service” – what does that
mean?
No one ever said the war was over

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.

Pupils Fixed and Dilated

He was not permitted to die in peace
The only mercy granted was release
From fear, and mortars falling from the sky
There was no possibility of saying goodbye
And the river water stank, as did the night
His end was as flickering as the light
Pale gaspings, a fluttering pulse, dead sweat
D5W, battle dressings, and yet
The only mercy was in his release
He was not permitted to die in peace

Saint Matthew chapter 6, verses 1 through 4
That’s in the Bible too – don’t be a bore

“Found a Dead Body This Mornin’ Early”

Rainy and cold. Breakfast at the café
Early. Warm inside. Windows all steamy
Still dark. That first cup of thank-God coffee
Sausages, eggs, and wheat toast on the way

An old friend walks in. Hangs up his wet coat
“Coffee, please.  Pancakes.”
               “Are you off to work?
How about that early project?”
                “Naw, I’m done

Think I’ll go home and hit the recliner;
Found a dead body this mornin’ early”

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
13 August 2024

                                             Four Fresh Limes

When my neighbor left four fresh limes at my door
The universe did not hold its breath

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

                      Four Out of Nine Muses Recommend Poetry

Four out of nine Muses recommend poetry
More doctors recommended Camel cigarettes
But we are not speaking of burning poetry
Except by tyrants, who are frightened of words

Kalliope, Cleo, Erato, and Euterpe
Have split the poetry racket among themselves
The other Muses have business of their own
Worthy enough in their own arts, we’re sure

But oh, our four Muses, our Muses four -
We sing for you along your Ionian shore

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                 Four Shirtless Boys on a Mountain in California

                            Sergeant Schneider’s Prophecy

There we are in a fading color photograph
Posing atop a mountain peak in Big Bear
Immensely proud in our Edmund Hillary moment
Though most every casual hiker has been there

On Monday morning we were back in Camp Del Mar
Navy Corpsmen standing formation in Marine green
“Split off into groups of four,” Sergeant Schneider barked
“Look at the other three. Within a year
                    One of you will be dead.”

Half of Mike’s brain was blown in Viet-Nam
The other Mike died in Minnesota last year
                     I don’t know what happened to Bill

Foxy John’s:
Beer, Wine, Good Food, Low Prices

Between class and the night shift, Foxy John’s:
Books and ideas, an old Sheaffer pen
Notes scribbled on a yellow pad, a pipe
Of Holland House, coffee, another cup
The old MG stands loyally outside
The San Diego night smells of the sea
Damp and cool out beyond the fluorescents
And at dawn, between the night shift and class
More coffee, more tobacco, weary eyes
Ill-focused on Henry at Canossa
And the ocean tides and the morning fogs,
Turning the seasons, mark shifts and studies.

How curious never to meet ol’ John
And so to learn just why he is foxy

How we Teach our Children Hymns and Carols

“We have seen His star in the east at a 20% discount”

Joy to the world at Canadian Tire
And free shipping until sing of Mary
Amazon roasting on an open fire
And no payments until January

O holy night down at the shopping mall
Adeste fidelis in a traffic jam
I saw three ships in large, medium, and small
O Christmas tree buy a Pajamagram

A new Rolex watch on this silent night -
But park with your packages out of sight

Fragments in a Fragmented Season

Neither a cyber-warrior nor a cyber-worrier be

But is this flower a patriotic flower?

The nation that never had much use for me
Except to send me to an undeclared war
Is suddenly broken

Was I playing with the puppies when the revolution began
And so didn’t notice?

“Take It Down!” someone scrawled on a statue in New Orleans
Dear New Orleans: Saint Joan of Arc was never a Confederate

Dear Canada: Do you really want to be a republic?

The vice-president takes shelter within his armored hair, and is silent

The Real Knees of Irving, Texas

Think about a Wal-Mart employee taking a knee during the morning Wal-Mart chant

It’s the Russians, no doubt

Chess ratings are up

Everything’s an Orwellian Two-Minutes’ Hate now.  Even the hours and seconds are outraged

“Your attitude’s been noticed, comrade.”  - House Warden to Yuri in Doctor Zhivago

Maybe the Republic will be in better shape next season.

Free Shipping with Orders over Fifty Dollars

Free shipping with orders over fifty dollars
Let’s see – add Colin Dexter, John Updike
And a few pounds of Graham Greene, perhaps
John Steinbeck, Rex Stout, and Ford Madox Ford

Packed in foam peanuts with T. S. Eliot
The Little Office of the Blessed ****** Mary
Olivia Manning, Henrietta’s War
“Leaf by ******” for a few ounces more

Tolkien and Lewis, those Oxford scholars -
Free shipping with orders over fifty dollars

For the CBC Anchormen’s Quintet

Take the keys (of C and G), call a cab
Take the ‘phone from the moaning baritone
Bury their sheet music beneath a slab
And chase from the bass the inverted cone

Hot coffee to purge demons a capella
With fervent prayers to our merciful Lord
Please save each and every harmonic fella
And free them from the ringing chord

Oh, call a priest, call a mom, call a cop
Because friends don’t let friends sing barbershop!

Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                   A Harvester of Praise

                              Cf. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 69

You taught us
Put not your trust in oozy flatterers
Who tell you only what you want to hear
And nothing about what you need to know
Adorning yourself with your own press releases

And as you taught us
Your thoughts, your words, your speech were ever strong
You stood upon the lessons you had learned
With wisdom and kindness you taught hard truth
And with truth found beauty in everything

But then you stopped
You were an artist and scholar in your younger days
But now you are only a harvester of praise

Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                   From Shakespeare: Bare Ruined Arguments

                               Cf. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73

In near-winter’s cold, lonely emptiness
As manifested by the utilitarianism
The industrial Mordor bleakness of
A cafeteria for adjunct instructors:

V. Obviously, the bare ruined choirs are an allusion to the dissolution of the monasteries.

R. It’s not obvious at all! It’s a may be, not a must be!

V. It is obvious; the Shakespeare family were secret Catholics!

R. We don’t know that! And even if so, you can’t just say that everything is secret Catholic stuff! The sweet birds really could be just sweet birds gone for the winter, not Benedictines martyred in the Dissolution! A cigar is just a cigar, right?

V. But Shakespeare is not as shallow as some critics I could name; his language is rich and layered. He enriches the language with his depths of meanings, and religious persecution has the side effect of taking ordinary nouns and comforting the reader who would still miss the ancient usages of the monastic Daily Office.

R. Edmondson and Wells say the reference is to choir boys, so there’s a possibility!

V. Yes, but Edmonson and Wells are published by the Cambridge University Press (Harrumph!).

R. And just what’s wrong with the Cambridge University Press?

Voice Off: If you two are done we need to clear this table; people are waiting, you know.

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                     From Shakespeare: Happily Lacking in Originality

                                    Cf. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 76

A new sort of sunrise cannot be invented
Our loving moon is the same year after year
Summer lawns for barefootin’ are old news
Happy yellow bathtub ducks splash forever

And so my love for you cannot be renewed
Because it has no expiration date
My iambs and occasional rhymes are always fresh
From singing joyfully of ever-new you

A new sort of sunrise cannot be invented -
Except when you say “Good morning!” each day

Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

    From Shakespeare: In Which Will Feels Very Sorry for Himself

                               Cf. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 72

Roses are red
Violets are blue
I am dead
My poetry stinks
And so do you

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                            From Shakespeare: It’s Complicated

                                  Cf. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 78

Oh, yes, you have long been a muse to me:
Erato, certainly, a goddess in jeans and sneaks
Euterpe when you sing along to the radio
But maybe now a sad Melpomene

Oh, yes, you have long been a muse to me
To my poor eyes to scan and deeply see
And then translate your joy into iambic lines
In gratitude, in hope, in forever words

Oh, yes, you have long been a muse to me
But now to others – and are we not to be?

Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                            From Shakespeare: Mourn for Me

                                  Cf. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 71

In the event I hope you’ll mourn for me
And remember those cups of coffee at the Greasy Spoon
Our walks across the fields where rabbits played
Our magic moonlit kisses on frosty nights

In the event I hope you’ll pray for me
Light votive candles and whisper gentle prayers
Slip beads through your fingers with Aves on your lips
Sing Masses of remembrance on our festal days

In the event I know you’ll come to me
Because we were, we are, and we will be

Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                         From Shakespeare: My Spirit is Thine

                              Cf. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 74

                      No kinsman could offer comfort there,
                      To a soul left drowning in desolation.

                      -“The Seafarer,” trans. Burton Raffel

When we die, our little things disappear:
Hairbrushes and pocketknives, fountain pens
Car keys, spare change, books, clothes, unopened mail
A souvenir coffee cup from Canada

An old uniform, a pistol from the war
A clock, a crucifix, Topsider shoes
Family pictures, a graduation ring
A magnifying glass, a radio

Bits and bobs, all sorts of trivial stuff
And a poem for you – it’s not enough

Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                 From Shakespeare: You are Golden

      Cf. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 75, Robert Frost, and S. E. Hinton

To say that you are my dear golden girl
Would be a tired cliché and would be wrong
You are yourself, neither golden nor mine
I cannot grasp you, but I honor you

To say that you are my dear golden girl
Would be an exercise in futility
A metrical line in ten syllables
Wholly inadequate for any purpose

To say that you were my dear golden girl -
          Perhaps it was so in some other world