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

         Leaving the Party Early for Some Fresh Air and a Smoke

Our host was oozy one moment, threatening the next
The drinks were watery, the hors d’oeuvres nothing more
Than pigs in blankets of cruelties and cliches
Among guests likely to call them horse doovers

Through the bottom of my glass I could see
Only a few weak industrial fizzings
Recirculating from Tammany Hall until now
Pasting new labels over unoriginal sins

Unoriginal sins to file and shelve -
I left the Party in 2012

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

                                   Left in a Package Locker

“Left in a package locker” – that probably means
That someone left it at the post office in town
Because the private deliveries sometimes say
They can’t find our house, except when they do

It worked out well enough for Paddington Bear
But our depot was torn down years ago
And freight trains thunder by without a stop
Without regard for packages or bears

And so

We’ll drive to town next week to see if there
Is waiting for us, properly tagged, a little bear

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                               Lemons and the Divine Ekonomia

My neighbor has a lemon tree
He gives me lemons
And I too have a lemon tree
I give him lemons

This is not economy
This is Ekonomia

It is divine

Imagine slaves buying their chains
Proudly bragging about their chains
Prettily decorating their chains
Gloriously celebrating their chains
And accessorizing their chains

Waiting patiently in long queues
All lined up by ones and by twos
Uniform in their chemical shoes
Beast-marked with their camp tattoos
Obedient to the latest news

Desperate for the latest ‘phone
Desperate never to be alone
Desperate for approval shown
Desperate for a cool ring tone
Desperate not to be unknown

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                    Lent is Not About Giving Up Things Lent is Not About
                    Giving Up Things Lent is Not About Giving Up Things
                    Lent is Not About Giving Up Things

All of my life I have been told
That Lent is not about giving up things
So was there a time when anyone
was told otherwise?

Kensington Avenue

With Leonard gone, who can wear a fedora?

A pilgrimage away from Kensington
Lovers and mountains and islands and words
Questions flung far into the universe
Returned as Alleluias angelic

Or as Comments Constant in lonely rooms
Where Marianne in memories spoke to him
Sometimes upon a wire from otherness
Finishing words about the avenue

Now home from mountains and islands and song -
Perhaps one answer was here all along

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                        American Children Begging in the Streets

                     (Let’s all feel good about child endangerment)

Children with plastic buckets run up to the cars
Hopelessly trapped by the traffic lights
They bang on the windows, they dash across lanes
Life-lessons in begging instead of work:


IT’S FOR THE MISSIONS
HELP US GO TO DISTRICT PLAYOFFS
IT’S FOR THE MISSIONS
PLEASE SEND OUR TEAM TO STATE
IT’S FOR THE MISSIONS
HELP SEND OUR BAND TO DISNEY WORLD
IT’S FOR THE MISSIONS
IT’S FOR THE CHILDREN
IT’S FOR THE MISSIONS
SEND OUR CHEERLEADERS TO CAMP
IT’S FOR THE MISSIONS
SUPPORT OUR SOFTBALL TEAM GO ANGELS
IT’S FOR THE MISSIONS
SUPPORT OUR MISSIONS FOR JESUS
IT’S FOR THE MISSIONS
HELP SPONSOR OUR DANCE TEAM
IT’S FOR THE MISSIONS
SUPPORT OUR SUNDAY SCHOOL CLASS
IT’S FOR THE MISSIONS
HELP US BUY NEW SOCCER UNIFORMS
IT’S FOR THE MISSIONS
HELP SUPPORT OUR MISSION TRIP TO COLORADO
IT’S FOR THE MISSIONS
SUPPORT OUR SAFE GRADUATION


Adults in charge of these dear little souls:
Don’t send them into danger with begging bowls

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                Let’s go for Coffee -- Grab Your Flak Jacket

Some give their sons semi-automatics and hate
Instead of family and purpose and love
Instead of guided study and structured faith
Instead of fishing poles and summer afternoons

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                Let’s Have a Little Less Holiness, Please

Insurrectionists…wrote “In God We Trust” on a set of gallows erected at the Capitol…

I Have Seen Christian Nationalism Up Close. It Terrifies Me | TIME

An AR and a Bible and a wheezecake pose
Promoting murders in the Name of God
Our god is a god of vengeance and love
Let us shoot straight, hold hands, and share Jesus

An AR and a Bible and a noose
These glories are anointed by God’s love
Them Jews crucified Jesus, you know
Does this bandana make my brain look fat?

An AR and a Bible and camouflage -
Lock and load for the empty words barrage!

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                        Let’s Meet Again at the Robin Hood Oak

                                                        1.

­In my boyhood, to the Robin Hood oak
I tip-toed in those hot summer afternoons
With my three sharp arrows and my little bow
Craftily eluding the sheriff’s men

I softly whistled and waited, and then anon
From out of the sun-shimmering heat
From out of the merry magical greenwood
An answering whistle sighed through the air

Great skill at making a bow or a plan -
I was a favorite among Robin’s band

                                                         2.

In my old age, to the Robin Hood oak
I slowly walked in lonely afteryears
Carelessly, for I was a baron now
With my ownership and my walking stick

I whistled and waited, and waited more
From out of the sun-shimmering heat
From out of the merry magical greenwood
There was only a silence, a silence sad

Little boys grow up, and then must disappear -
And that’s okay; the magic is forever here

Let There be Barbies

          Let the children have their night of fun and laughter.
          Let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play.

                   -Churchill, Christmas Eve radio address, 1941

Some young mothers ban Barbies and Santa Claus
And all such trinkets and dolls and mummeries
Sacrificing childhood to fashionable gossip -
In obedience to the Holy Internet

A toy Cochise must never ride again
Or little plastic soldiers defend their forts
Or Maid Marian roam with Robin Hood –
Barbie must never be dressed for success

Little children can now sit on the floor
On Christmas morn to play with ideologies

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

                           Let Us Celebrate No Tyrants Day


                           “We have no king but Caesar!”

               -A long-ago mob as written in St. John 19:15


Even the King of Kings is under the Law
And too, since Magna Carta, our earthly King -
From the people and their voices he can only draw
Such powers as their assemblies vote to bring

But may God protect us from a Common Man
Slithering to supremacy through serpentine speech
Emboldened by the power of cabal, club, and clan
Mobs chanting for their master, a soul-******* leech

God gives us His grace in a King and Queen
Republics give us the guillotine

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

                               Liberation Begins with our Minds

At lunch today, or during a coffee break
We could switch the break room radio on
To the voices of someone else’s America
Demagogues yelling at us what to think

Or we could open that ancient paperback
Held together with tape and rubber bands
And continue Saint Augustine’s Confessions
Which we began in our younger, happier days

Eternal words, and not some Leader’s noise
Because you and I are not trapped in time

The typewriter misses one of its keys
Every word is an orphan, and the lines
Wither away in an unfurnished room
Above a garage infested with ghosts

          Life is an unreliable narrator

The phone that isn’t connected doesn’t ring
While past-due notices fight among themselves
And on the hot plate macaroni boils
Sometimes you can see islands in the steam

          Life is an unreliable narrator

You’ve got a gift; that’s what everyone said

But

Your worn-thin sleeping bag is still your bed

          Life is an unreliable narrator

A proper English Communist, I say,
Should drink only that tea called Comrade Grey

Lighting a Candle before Mass

We light a candle for

       All good people
       All bad people
       And all good causes

Because

        All people are good
        All people are bad
        And we’re working on the causes

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

                 Like Candles When They Quietly Go Out

             He mourns the sons of princes, sown in the dust

                                          -The Seafarer

When we were young
A friend once showed me a passage in a book
In which the monks of a certain cloistered order
Were often blessed with wonderfully peaceful deaths
Like candles when they quietly go out

Domine exaudi orationem meam

Now we are old
Our books require a rather larger print
Our foolish dreams were put by long ago
And the works of our youth are memories
Like candles when they quietly go out

Domine exaudi orationem meam

And we are candles
Still giving out a little bit of light
Anticipating with hope the morning Sun

Domine exaudi orationem meam

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                           Like Children Dancing

Like children dancing, leaves form up in rows
Then skitter across each corner and street
As shoals in rolling ranks overflowing other ranks
Or little tornadoes laughing through circles and swirls

Like children celebrating their youth and strength
Leaves tumble and run before the shifting wind
‘Way up into the air and back to earth
In happy games of catch-me-if-you-can

Like children in the afternoon, just out of school
Autumn leaves joyfully mock every rule

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                         ­         Endsville

All in all, at the end of the day, and in conclusion, when the curvy lady sings, when the truth be told, when all is said and done, when the chickens come home to roost, when all the evidence is in, in sum, in short, in brief, the bottom line is, we can only conclude, to conclude, in the end, so as I said before, to sum up, and as Churchill / Gandhi / Harry Potter once said, therefore, all things considered, most importantly, taking the facts into account, to wrap things up, on the whole, and most importantly, and finally…

(I was going somewhere with this…)

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

                                       Like Love Withdrawn

After months of dreary drought and heat
Light raindrops fall upon the withered world
A few, a very few, and then they stop
Like love withdrawn upon waking from a dream

At dusk the paving into dryness steams
Only the hot and heavy air is wet
And smells of disappointment, dark and sour
Like love withdrawn upon waking from a dream

The westering sun shines briefly, and then is gone
Like love withdrawn upon waking from a dream

No picturesque ruins will remain for us
To wander through with our sketchbooks and pens
For drawing pictures or writing blank verse
About bare ruin’d 2 air-conditioning ducts

The baptismal font will be repurposed
As a bird-bath (with a plastic Saint Elvis)
And the stained-glass windows will be sold off
As fashionable bathroom accessories

The crucifix of deplorable design 3
Will be stored in the back of someone’s garage
Until the girls carry it off to the woods
And laughingly use it for target practice

A rubbly field will serve as a soccer pitch
Until seventy years 4 have passed away


1  Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey”
2  Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73
3  Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited
4  Daniel 9:1-2

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

                              Lines for Marina Tsvetaeva

        “Her poetry is…passion, pain, metaphor, and music.”

                                 - Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Her words soar over utilitarians
Past pale, pedantic propagandists who
Would wrench all poetry into a cause
As if verse were but a commodity

Her picture on a Penguin paperback
Embraces the viewer, stares back, dares back
Her eyes defiant, her arms folded in hope
Armored in her famous clunky jewelry

She bleeds onto the page, into the soul
Her words, suspended in truth against the age

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

          Lines Written Upon the Occasion of the Confiscation of the
          Former President’s Several Passports, Which May or May Not
          Have Happened

A flight risk? No, not that wretched has-been –
No civilized nation would allow him in!

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

             Lingering Death by Medical Office Telephone Tree

“The marshal’s been shot! Somebody get Doc!”

“Hello. You have reached Polysyllabic Medical Associates
Our hours are (mumble, mumble, mumble)
Our fax number is (mumble, mumble, mumble)
We are located up the stairs on Front Street
Next to the Long Branch Therapeutic Outreach Centre
And boutique, Florals by Miss Kitty
All patients and visitors are required to wear masks
If this is a medical emergency
Hang up and telegraph 911 from the depot
If you need a refill, contact your pharmacist
If you are a doctor, dial 1
If you know your party’s extension, dial it now

(Beep)
That number is not recognized; please try again
(Beep)
That number is not recognized; please try again
(Beep)
That number is not recognized; please try again
(Beep)

If this is for an appointment, dial 4

(Beep)
That number is not recognized; please try again
(Beep)
That number is not recognized; please try again
(Beep)
That number is not recognized; please try again
(Beep)

If you would like to speak with a nurse, dial 5

(Beep)
That number is not recognized; please try again
(Beep)
That number is not recognized; please try again
(Beep)
That number is not recognized; please try again
(Beep)”

“Somebody, go get the undertaker.”

“Hello. You have reached The Garden of Memories
Formerly known as Boot Hill
Our hours are (mumble, mumble, mumble)…”

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                             Li Po Writes to us from his Mountain

                                      Li Po, “Ancient Air,” p. 84
                    A Book of Luminous Things, ed. Czeslaw Milosz

We read of the poets of China
In the days of the Golden Tang
In the time of The Gathering of Kings
When The Silk Road carried dreams

Government officials were the poets
And poets were the government officials
Who knew The Five Classics by heart
And wrote of China in Tang quatrains

They were writing to the Emperor
And now they are writing to us

With its four-beat
Putt-putt, putt-putt
Continental rhythm
Putt-putt, putt-putt
It plows and putts
Putt-putt, putt-putt
It pulls and putts
Putt-putt, putt-putt
It plants and putts
Putt-putt, putt-putt
It digs and putts
Putt-putt, putt-putt
It mows and putts
Putt-putt, putt-putt
It rakes and putts
Putt-putt, putt-putt
It bales and putts
Putt-putt, putt-putt
A little oil, a little gas
Putt-putt, putt-putt
A sweet machine
Putt-putt, putt-putt
Upon the grass
Putt-putt, putt-putt
When all is done
Putt-putt, putt-putt
And all is said
Putt-putt, putt-putt
There’s nothing like
Putt-putt, putt-putt
Massey-Ferguson red
Putt-putt, putt-putt!

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                An Afternoon LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER Walk
             Along Beer Can Road and County Dump Extension

Dewberries LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER sassafras seedlings LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER Virginia creeper LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER pine cones LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER crumbling oak leaves from last summer  LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER winds sighing in the pine tops LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER a little plum tree LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER Canada goldenrod LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER poplar LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER swamp oak LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER mourning doves LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER slanting evening sunlight LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER Chickasaw plum LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER nightshade LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER red spider lilies LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER a skink bluebonnets LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER clouds in the west LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER spiderwort LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER a long eared rabbit loping across the road LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER sorrel LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER a feather from a bluebird LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER waving field grasses LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER the neighbor’s cows browsing in peace LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER a crane flying up from a pond LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER crows fussing at me from the woods LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER…

Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                    Little Children are Much Like Dachshund Puppies

With wildly scattered toys the lawn is messed -
Children came to visit – O how we are blessed!

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

                             Little Corpses Everywhere

            Woman kept child’s corpse in a plastic storage tote

                                               -CNN

Little corpses decaying in storage totes
Little corpses by the hundreds in unmarked graves
Little corpses by the abortuary thousands
In bags neatly labeled “Medical Waste”

Little corpses with shrivelled ****-tainted lungs
Little corpses dropped discreetly in the creek
Little corpses all chopped and dropped and flushed
So that graduation night won’t be ruined

Little corpses in factories, mere skin and bones
Their agonies haunting our new smart phones

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                               Little Papal Flags at the Eucharist

Little cardboard boxes at the ends of the pews
Held little Papal flags in white and gold
For the faithful disabled, an usher explained
To request a eucharistic minister going their way

How useful in several ways is this little toy:
I’d wave it in defiance of the House of Savoy

Little Plastic Army Men in Action on a Snow Day

If I were a boy

I’d range my toy soldiers before the fire
Vast armies of plastic in green and grey
With the cannon blasting the enemy -
A glorious victory again today!

If I were a boy

I’d eat my morning cereal with Robin Hood
Propped up in his Whitman book before me
Its pages open to an England where
Every day is summer, green upon the lea

If I were a boy

My mother would remind me, to my sorrow
That I have a ‘rithmetic test tomorrow

No one ever figured out how Schlomo
Got off the ship with a life jacket
 
But there he was on the pier among the crowd
Sitting sadly on his little brown suitcase
 
And wearing a life jacket from the ship
With "Orinoco" stenciled across it
 
A sailor in a white uniform wanted it
But Schlomo would not take it off
 
A policeman in a blue uniform wanted it
But Schlomo would not take it off
 
Schlomo's father told him he wanted it
But Schlomo would not take it off
 
And on the bus ride through the city
Schlomo would not let go of it
 
And for weeks Schlomo wore his life jacket
 
In the park
In the dark
 
In his schule
In his school
 
Until one day in the park on the river's bank
He took it off
He threw it in
It promptly sank
 
Then he said to himself, our little Schlomo,
"I knew somehow - it was time to let go."

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

                                             Little Thoughts of God

          We are not some casual and meaningless product of
          evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of
          us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.

                                     -Papa Benedict, 24 April 2005


Our children play with little toy trucks and trains
Comb Barbie’s hair and then arrange Ken’s tie
They get fussed at for pulling the puppy’s tail
They cuddle up with kittens and Winnie-the-Pooh

Our children create worlds with construction paper
Discover Narnia in a new box of crayons
They get fussed at for writing on the wall
They squirm in church; they tickle Daddy’s beard

Our children love their chapter books (and us!)
“Is this a picture of a pirate ship?”
They get fussed at for asking soooooo many questions
“Daddy, will you read us a story now?”

Dear Lord –

Let our children grow up and make us proud

Dear Lord –

Let our children grow up

Liturgical Dance*

The liturgy has always served as dance
Timed to the *courteis of the universe  
Choreographed with planets, moons, and stars
To celebrate and sing and taste the Truth

Thus every gesture, every careful step
Leaps wildly across the sacred arc of time
And circling ‘round, and ‘round again all meet
In elevation silent within a Cup

But pause and kneel now at the sacring bell:  
The liturgy has always been a dance

Lives Float Away

            “Leaves fall, and flowers die, lives float away”
                                 -Louis L’Amour

How easy for us to say that he shouldn’t have done it
And left behind the ending of his life
Sorrows found and written up as part
Of a gently worded police report

For we didn’t know that the sunlit days
We shared were to him a greyscape of despair
That he was shadowed and haunted by fears
And we were shadowed through our ignorance

How easy for us to say that he shouldn’t have done it
How easy to make excuses for ourselves

Llano Estacado

Escarpments and grasses forever and ever
Alive beneath the grey forever-sky,
Creation tumbling ancient elements
Into horizons upon more horizons,
Deep silences, from when there were no worlds,
Seldom interrupted, even by the nations.
The dawn wind sings a circle of low stones
A palace long before Coyote came,
The evening wind sighs through a picture rock
A language that was old when the moon was new.
A little crucifix bought in a shop
Near a wharf in Spain, and blessed by a priest
In haste for breakfast after early Mass
Lies near a fragment of a horseman’s boot
Above an arrowhead knapped from traded flint
Below a broken blade from a pocket knife
And a doll’s head torn by a very bad boy
Along a railway that follows buffalo
Not far from the historical marker
Where a pizza box leans against a fence.
But here on the Llano Estacado
Escarpments and grasses forever and ever

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

                    ****** Sunbathing in the Garden of Literature

In the end everyone having been abusive
And babbling endlessly about it all
Dies

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

                                      Looking Back on the Day

Looking back on the day – did I give thanks?
I lazed over my coffee and the morning news
Noted the crows and the morning’s light frost
But that’s not good enough

I washed the dishes and a load of clothes
Looked into a novel and a poetry book
Sorted laundry and fed the squirrels and birds
And that’s not good enough

One give thanks for another day of life
By making that day what it should be

He was looking for something in a burning street
Among blown wreckage and necrotic smoke
Among the drifting ashes and debris
Alone among grey-morning-crumbling stones

He later could not remember much of it
Among the empty greyness - were there dead?
Among the silences where screams had flown
Alone among accusers who weren’t there

“Don’t look for it. Go into solitude.
Don’t look for it. It will be found for you.”

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                         ­    Look in Thy Glass

                                       Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 3

I look into the mirror and ask, “Who is that old man?”
They said I favored my mother when I was young
Red hair and freckles, and an impish grin
But later they said I had to become a man

She had her April, and then so did I
And there are Aprils enough for everyone
They are not my Aprils, but they will do
Every April reflects our youth back to us

I look into the mirror and ask, “Who is that old man?”
I miss my mother

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

                                                Loose Vowels

A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y – why?
(Asking for a dipthong)

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

                                           Love Against Chaos

Chaos - when a child doesn’t have a bed for sleep
Good meals for nourishment, peace every day
Books of her very own to read and keep
Parents and friends, a few toys for play -

But when you make a child safe and warm for the night
And give her breakfast at the family table
Daily lessons for instruction and delight
A few easy chores, as far as she is able

And all in a home ruled with blessings and love
You give that child a happy life
And you give Chaos a shove

We will not turn on the radio today
We will repudiate its veto over us
We will silence its news and its noise
We will not wait upon its appointed hours

We will sit in the windowlight and read
Maybe the Great Books, or maybe the funnies
-The funnies!
Let’s read the funnies to each other, and laugh
About Charlie Brown and his kite-eating tree

And joyfully fling the funnies and ourselves
Upon the sunbeams, all over the floor

Love and the Sunday Funnies

We will not turn on the radio today
We will repudiate its veto over us
We will silence its news and its noise
We will not wait upon its appointed hours

We will sit in the windowlight and read
Maybe the Great Books, or maybe the funnies
-The funnies!
Let’s read the funnies to each other, and laugh
About Charlie Brown and his kite-eating tree

And joyfully fling the funnies and ourselves
Upon the sunbeams, all over the floor

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

             Loved Expressed Through Committee Assignments

Do people really love each other today
Or do they negotiate partnering
As if falling in love, or out again
Requires codicils and signatures

Is a rumpled sheet evidence of passion
Or that the party of the second part
Neglected to observe the laundry schedule
Worked out in the last committee meeting

No

There is love
When one hand shyly reaches out to another

Love in the Corner Booth

Somewhere along US 96

His ducktail haircut from 1957
Fading to white, her voice without makeup
Sharing scripture verses and something about
Her latest operation and her miseries

Outside along the row of pickup trucks
A green-haired waitress smokes a cigarette
The fuzz of her Harley-Davidson coat
Pressed flat for love against the window glass

They’ve got a sale on tires down at Wal-Mart
Along the four-lane Christmas passes by

She gently takes the proffered nibbly bite
Between her toothful jaws, my little ally
This is our bedtime custom every night
That’s why my dog is fat - and so am I!

Lunch at the Cleverly Named It’s-Not-Really-a-Fish-Camp

A Penance in Two Parts

1.

Waitress-Speak

Or

What is the Correct Response When Someone Says “Thank You?”


No problem no problem sorry ‘bout that
no problem no problem sorry ‘bout that
your order should be here shortly no problem
no problem sorry ‘bout that no problem
no problem sorry ‘bout that your order
should be here shortly no problem no problem
sorry ‘bout that no problem no problem
sorry ‘bout that your order should be here
shortly no problem no problem sorry ‘bout that
no problem no problem sorry ‘bout that
your order should be here shortly no problem
no problem sorry ‘bout that no problem
no problem sorry ‘bout that your order should

Note: Read “no problem” as unselfconscious valley-speak with a nasal twang


2.

Sister-in-Law-Speak

So me and her tried this new place my grandson
said *! so I said *! back and then we
all just laugheddddddddddd oh man this is soooooooo good then
I said I was tired of her * and me and her found this sale and then my
husband said * So me and her tried this
new place my grandson said *! So I said
! back and then we all just laugheddddddddddd oh man
this is soooooooo good then I said I was tired
of her * and me and her found this sale
and then my husband said * So me and
her tried this new place my grandson said !
So I said *! back and then we all just
laugheddddddddddd oh man this is soooooooo good then I said

Note: just one margarita but a whole bunch of cackling. Loud cackling.

One reads that the dear departed was very
Holy; indeed, he was God’s emissary
Instant sainthood in the mortuary
(One longs to read an honest obituary)

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

                           Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaask!

Three years ago I strolled into my fav café
The room grew quiet, and then a chorus did say:
Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaask!

In guilt and shame I put the forgotten object on
My sin of omission had been masked upon:
Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaask!

Two years ago I walked into that place
My now-remembered mask upon my face
Sneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeer!

For politics had changed within a year
We don’t want no ****** masks in here
Sneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeer!

This year between the mandates and the bans
Is it still okay if I wash my hands?