Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                 “No Threat to the Community”


                                       “…an isolated Incident “

                              -Orange (Texas) Police Department

The neighbors are in shock; news cameras peek and see -
But let the children play outside; oh, don’t be shy
Because there is “no threat to the community”
(Four dead in a house, and no one knows why)


[Police in Orange investigating deaths of four people in home | KFDM]

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

                                         The Stray ‘Possum Café


          The only comparisons in Western literature might be with the
          Romantics or the Beat Generation, but the Russian Silver Age
          poets outdazzled them in glamour and intrigue.

                                       -Darran Anderson


We lay our scene not in Saint Petersburg
Where Anna Ahkmatova flirted and rhymed
With Gumilyov, Mandelstam, and Tsvetaeva
Among champagne, cigarettes, tears, and pearls

In the old and storied Stray Dog Café  
But in a field on a December night
Where two opossums meet in quest of love
And wrangle in the leaves of intimacy

Poor strays making…art…without any fear
Of execution by the Kremlin Mountaineer




Saint Petersburg’s Stray Dog Café was a matrix for art, music, dance, and poetry from imperial Russia to the Soviet horror, and thence into the world.  It almost serves as a sort of hinge between the 19th century and the 20th. Please read Darran Anderson’s professional and thus accessible article in City Journal:
Anna Akhmatova’s Bravery.

I am having fun with intruding ‘possums among the Silver Age poets, but as for them, yes, they are essential. Their brilliance still shines for us and influences what we write even if we are unaware of them – and for that most of them were murdered by the mad tyranny of Communism.

Every farm boy knows that the first day of summer
Is that morning, that happy, glorious morning
In May when writing topic sentences
And solving for X are but fading ghosts

He’s up at dawn without being called even once
And pulling on his jeans and and boots and tee
He greets his fishing rod upon the rack
And Grandpa’s tackle box, which was left to him

Because

After breakfast and getting up the cows
For milking, he is the king of all his world

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

                        Not Quite as Gregor Mendel Observed

Our cars are layered in pollen dust
That each old oak by nature yields
Especially on the poor windshields
Well-fertilized, and as nature must

By early summer –

Young windshields scampering across the fields

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

                          Notre Dame de Discount Store

                "It gets you out of your solitary conceit"

                              -C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock

The tin-barn brick-veneer design is weak
Much like a Wal-Mart or a Dollar Store
The dropped ceiling is high-school ticky-tack
And the poor pews are discount-warehouse veneer

No one is silent before Mass anymore
Grown men wear shorts and sneaks and cartoon tees
The woman in the pew in front of me
Is tattooed up and down her pimply back

(My opinion was not required)

But surely God is speaking to each of us,
Asking us why we have come to this place

Not-So-Wildflowers

Wildflowers are not really wild, you know
They are not forward like catalogue blooms
Demanding the best seats in the garden
And the most delicate of drinks and soils

Wildflowers smile softly, sweetly at the sun  
Shy fairy-folk of forest, field, and fen
Dancing through the warm mid-year months and then
Withdrawing quietly at summer’s end

Like children yawning, and wanting their beds -
Wildflowers are not really wild, you know

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

                              Not the Throne He Had Anticipated

Callow and young, a man begins his life
Thinking great thoughts of empires and of kings
Of how in a few years he will awe the world
With the achievements of his mind and strength

The books he will write must astound the age
His businesses will corner out Wall Street
His ships will sail the seas to India
His planes will fly tourists around the world -

But many years later

He writes a doubtful check upon his bank
At the hardware store for a toilet tank

Not the Most Boring American Legion Meeting Ever

The coffee was good, the stories were old
Of days when we mumbling men were bold
And young and trim, slender of waist
Leaping to our duties all in haste

And now we sit in the parish hall
Our waists are large, our muscles small
But “with advantages”1 we dare think back
To when the word was not “reflect,” but “Attack!”

The coffee is good, even when we are old
And our memories warm, tho’ the nights are cold


1*Henry V

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

                      Not This Cardinal, Not This Snow

Men have written of cardinals before
(Both ecclesiastical and avian)
And men have written of fresh snow before
But not this cardinal and not this snow

And so we visit Plato’s obscure cave
To cast our vision around the shadowing flames
Plato will not tell us what we must think
And so we think out all things for ourselves

Men have written of cardinals before -
But not this cardinal, and not this snow


In this context “men” is inclusive. Honi soit qui mal y pense, as Fat Henry said.

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

                                    Not Waiting for Godot

We pass much of our lives in waiting for things

Airplanes
Love
Christmas
Jobs
Answers
Mail
Spectrum Cable
You

Mostly, though, we wait for packages from Amazon
Maybe this time there will be happiness

An American weather boy reports the storm
And all its tracks upon a glowing map
A hurricane by shape and scale and form
Roaring northeast through a low-pressure gap

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

With a flip of his hand, they are dismissed:
Nova Scotia and Newfoundland do not exist

Lawrence Hall

          No Way, Shape, or Bombshell, Actually

No way, shape, and form literally dropped
A bombshell to the next level, with no
Ifs, ands, or buts defining a generation
While living in the shadows of America

Where the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree
Going viral in trending a hashtag
Through user-generated content link-bait
Engaging the meme traffic actually

Cloudwising virtual reality
Thinking outside the box form shape way no

(And let the people say “icon”)

Now, children, march away 1 through Hamelin town
Obedient to the gauleiter’s wish
You must admire the emperor’s new gown
Shoal mindlessly ashore like grunion fish

And most obey, and upspeak programmed lines
Assembly-line rebels, they look alike
They wear their masters’ thrall-rings ‘round their minds
And call their servitude a climate strike

But who is strong? I really want to know
That one reflective child who just says

                         No.

Now That We All Know What a Plinth Is…

What will we establish upon our bare, ruined plinths
Where late the stern-visaged generals stood? 1
Guitarists, perhaps, or free-verse poets
Or refugees from Harvard’s sophomore class

We could ***** erections to erections
As advertised on the family radio
With brazen legends reading “Hey-Hey! **-**”
Honoring the noble eloquence of our age

Or, with roses for remembrance, leave them bare
Amid shrill protestations of despair


1 Cf. Sonnet 73, Shakespeare

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

               “Now, therefore, write for yourselves this song.”


          -Deuteronomy 31:19 per Talmud at My Jewish Learning
           <community@mail.myjewishlearning.com>


                       “Nunc itaque scribite vobis canticum istud.”

                                             -Douay-Rheims


What song will you write for the people of God?
Something from the Prophets or the Laws
A hymn for Mary, dancing in the spring
Or maybe praise for patient and protective Joseph

What song will you write for your own true love?
Gentle rhyming for the music of her gentle laugh
Iambics and meters her intellect to please
Birdsong sweet to limn her holiness

What song will you write for the world God made?
Matins for mist and mountain and flowered glade

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

                        “Now This Ain’t No S---”

The old chief took a slug of coffee and said,
“What’s the difference between a fairy story
And a war story?
One of ‘em begins with ‘Once upon a time’
And the other with ‘Now this ain’t no s----'"

And it is so.

A Harvey Refugee Reports:

When she with cats, papers, a change of clothes
And her old college bag to hold them all
Was one refugee among others in a dump truck
A Houston Airport Authority dump truck

Dieseling through rain and water and fear
With muck and mud sloshing across their feet
A woman next to her then laughed and said,
“Now we’re the people they take pictures of”

But there was no Capa to frame the scenes
Only oh-my-Godders with MePhone screens

The American Legion meets in the parish hall
Third Tuesday every month (missed you last time)
Old men in funny hats saluting the flag
And then again re-living AIT

Their perimeter shrinks as children rehearse
Their songs and dances for tomorrow night
In honor of Nuestra Senora -
With Juan Diego’s tilma She blesses the Americas

In a classroom across the way the AA
Are fighting their dragons as manfully
As good Saint George, and so in very truth
They are fighting dragons for all of us

This is Our Lady’s cocina, open to all:
Everybody meets in the parish hall

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

                                 Oath Peepers Security Cameras

The security cameras around the house aren’t much
The cheapest available on Yarmuk.com
They take dim pictures of the UPS guy
And fuzzy grey shots of ‘possums at night

A problem is that they think they’re Army cameras
That the batteries they took never expire
That the science of optics has been betrayed
And that light is whatever they want it to be

Along the windowsills they belch and *art:
“Tina Modotti is a traitor to art!”

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                              Obituary Pending

Obituary pending, says the funeral home site
Which is pretty much true for all of us
But a cousin and an aunt will collaborate
And cobble together some filler words:

He never met a stranger his smile lit up the room he’d give you the shirt off his back he was an icon in the community he will be missed when they made him they broke the mold he saw only the best in others he’s now on the deer stand with Jesus if you needed him he was there he followed his own path and blazed his own trail there’ll never be another like him he’s in a better place now he was sharing Jesus with me just last week his word was his bond when he said something you could take it to the bank he was one of a kind he left the world a better place

And the congregation will discreetly check their watches
Praying that Sister Busy doesn’t ask for friends
To stand in turn and share a memory of Paw
(But, please, no quotes from all the police reports)

You can’t be serious all of the time
Because there are bellowing tyrants around
Who bully and demand, who preach and screech
Whose arguments are threats and censorship

Recusancy is their worst enemy
A casual indifference to their demands
A refusal to wear their branded livery
And clenching one’s fist around only

A brush
A pen
A wrench
A book
A thought
A hope

If all you do is to react, they win -
You can’t be serious all of the time

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

                                         Ode on a Coffee Urn

                             If Keats Took His Morning Coffee
                         at Hub City Diner in Lafayette, Louisiana

Thou stainless steel bride of the day’s pale dawn
Thou foster-child of all our morning hopes
Patient historian who writes upon
The pages of our lives optimistic tropes:

What die-cut label hangs about thy shape
Of morning blends or sometimes darker roasts
From Jamaica’s Blue Mountain, or some further scape
Perhaps above Colombia’s green coasts

What men or gods are these who at Hub City can say
“What wonderful coffee for beginning the day!”

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                          Ode on a Dark and Silent Electric Meter

                                For a Secretive Power Company

The Power is Out
That is all ye know
And all ye need to know

(as Keats did not say)

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

                                   Ode on a Flintstones Tumbler

                        John Keats helped with this but refused
                        to take any credit. He must be modest

Thou still unmoving car of wood and stone
Forever carrying the Flintstones and the Rubbles
Off to the movies – Rock Hudson to be shown?
And a childhood half-hour of comic troubles

Heard yabba-dabbas are sweet, but those unheard
We’ll have to speak ourselves over milk and cereal
Wilma, of course, always has the last word
But we’ll contribute to the writers’ material

Fred’s feet are truth, not beauty, - but off they go
Taking us with them – so on with the show!

Ode to Barnes & Noble

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

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

But on a winter weekday a writer’s retreat -
A yellow pad, coffee, and a window seat

Ode to the Trumpet

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

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

Layers of nations, cultures, dreams, and art:
The trumpet sings from the musician’s heart

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

                       Of Course I Didn’t Worship at The Super Bowl

As a man who had better tend to his soul
Of course I didn’t worship at the Super Bowl

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

                                                       Offenders

                                   to St. Jude – a petition for prisoners

In the system they’re called offenders
No one knows why; the offenses are over
Concrete dorms, three-high bunks, white uniforms
And overhead the sting of fluorescents

I’m not going all Pollyanna here
All of them know the poisonous passions of ****
The stench of blood, the sting of fluorescents
In fearing eyes in a gas station at night

The stench of cells, the sting of fluorescents
In glaring eyes in the booking area at night
Humiliations, transports, stripped and searched
Form a straight line with hands behind your backs

But still, a man’s a man

The difference between a man inside the wire
And a man outside the wire
Is often only that one man is inside the wire
And the other man is outside the wire

“For all have sinned…”

Christmas is coming

Will there be a letter from home?

St. Jude, help all of us to be better men

In spite of ourselves

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

                                     ­    Offering it Up at 0200

Offering up the surging pain - but to whom?
There doesn’t seem to be Anyone there
The hissing CPAP doesn’t want to talk
Outside the window there is no good-night moon

One could allude to the clock ticking in the night-time
But there is no clock ticking in the night-time
Because there are no clocks to tick anymore
Only computers manacled to our wrists

Two-o’clock-in-the-morning courage?
Just now there seems to be no Purpose in it

Upon Reading Literary Reviews

Off the beaten path – is that part of the trail
That was blazed after the door to the future
Was unlocked with the key of somethingness
As an imaginative entrée, hmmmmmmm?

How dangerous it now must be to walk
Beneath that stress-fractured ceiling of glass
Paving the way that was blazed and unlocked
With the key to the future where dreams live

The oppressed voiceless up in champagne class
In resistance to the something-archy

And let The People yawn “iconic”

For three Voices

First Voice:

What is an ilk?

Second Voice:

Well, they got ‘em up in Montana, you know,
And Canada, and them countries like that
And they got horns and stuff; you can hunt ‘em
They make good eatin’, or that’s what they say

Third Voice:

Naw, man, ilks is what attaches to boats
That’s why you got to scrape the hulls each year
They’re kinda like sea urchins or barnacles
They make good eatin’, or that’s what they say

First Voice:

I read about ilks in the op-eds each day -
They make good eatin’, or that’s what they say

Oh, Let You Not Show me a Cute Picture…

Oh, let me show you this cute picture
I found on the internet; it’s right here
Oh, wait, it was right here; let me find it
You’re going to like it, just the thing you like

Here it is - no, wait, that’s not it; now where
Is it; let me just scroll down here - no, wait,
Maybe I should just scroll the other way
I know you’re going to like this, really

I know you’re in a hurry but this is cute
Now isn’t this just the funniest thing…?

No?

“Oh, Look, the Humans Have Returned”

In spring our little hummingbirds return
And geese begin to vee their way back north
The front-yard squirrel continues to fatten himself
Upon the cardinal-contested seeds

Aggressive mockingbirds dive-bomb the cats
Pale butterflies dance lightly in the sun -
But none of these can be the same who met
Us on an autumn day in the long ago

Someday others will live here, and the birds
Will say “Oh, look, the humans have returned.”

Oh, yes, there are dragons, and pixies too
Dragons at dusk at the far end of the lane
And pixies at noon, among the orchard trees
Where the early apples ripen and swell

All through the drowsy, dreamy, bees-y hours
While Fair Folk frolic unseen by the old
Whom Hypnos has given a lesser gift
Thus we are free to dance among the leaves

Oh, yes, there are dragons, and pixies too
Elusive and teasing - but look for them

Articles on how to write always feature
Pictures of old Underwoods, and maybe
A cup of pencils to the side, and some flowers
In a vase, wilting symbolically

One longs to sees images of an Apple II
Or maybe a TI994A
A battered Radio Shack TRS80
Cursors flickering in defiance

A Magnavox Videowriter, loading slow -
The 80s had their Nobel dreams too, you know

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

                            Okay, So It’s the End of the World

                “What do ties matter, Jeeves, at a time like this?”
                “There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter.”

                                             -P. G. Wodehouse

Okay, so what if this is the end of our world
Windblown sands where Ozymandias once ruled
Or dying like Charn in The Magician’s Nephew
Pale and sere under a fading red sun

Let us not meet it pajama’d on a couch
Videogaming upon a telescreen
And suddenly marveling that the power has failed
As a moving hand writes across the skies

If the world is going to end today
Let us dress properly for the occasion

A young mother cradles her broken child
Amid the fragments of her world, her soul.
Blood drips.  Rain-sodden insulation drips.
Stillness between storms.  The trees are all gone.
A dark Sargasso Sea of shattered wood,
Bricks, clothes, books, toys, rags, glass, papers, bodies.
In the gasping heat the rot begins now.
No houses.  No lights.  A helicopter
Floating valley boys with plastic boxes
Taking cruel pictures and O-My-Godding
For the telescreen (between soda ads).
And in fortresses of personal affronts

(Safely far away)

Keyboard commandos leap into inaction:

People who choose to live there deserve it.
We told you that global warming is true.
We didn’t have these things ‘til they kicked Jesus
Out of these here schools. And paddling, by God.
It’s Obama’s fault.  Or is it George Bush?
It’s the Republicans. Public schools. Gaia.
British Petroleum.  Coal.  SUVs.
Suburbs.  Not reading the Bible.  Comets.
You’re stupid. Well eff you back.  Eff you more.

While in the second lowering line of storms
A young mother cradles her broken child.

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                  Old and Unselected Poems

Why do publishers entitle volumes of verse
                                   New and Selected Poems?
Is it the editors’ lack of imagination?
Or is it some sort of secular rubric
An inky “We’ve always done it that way?”

When you finish writing a poem it is new
It didn’t exist before you, and now it does
And someone who reads your poem has selected it
It wasn’t selected until someone picked it up

Every poem is forever new and selected
And to the joy of your friends, so are you

Old and Unselected Poems

Pale, penciled scribblings, old bits, old notes
Forgotten drafts in old books shelved away
And lines painfully worked out during lectures
About Napoleon’s painful hemorrhoids

And the declensions of those Latin nouns
Which with their verbs Omnis Gallia divisit
Or something like that, forgotten long ago -
But not
              her hair
                             her voice
                                              her smile
                                                           ­    her eyes

Others cannot write to her happy theme -
She writes herself as iambs in a dream

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

                                               Clinic Waiting Room

Voices:

Morbidly obese old codger wearing a Confederate-flag face mask
Old codger with a My Pillow moustache
Old codger wearing a camouflage baseball cap
Old codgeress #1
Old codgeress #2

Auctor:

Old codger (me)

I been here since 1020 the longer we wait
the more money they get they’re just in it
for the money what’s your Medicare supplemental?
America ain’t what it used to be
there ain’t no doubt about that I done had
the covid and the shots these people
been in and out and I’m still here
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE thank you I SAID
‘THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE!’ Yeah he’s kind of
hard of hearing THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE!!!!
Yeah okay HOO-RAH! yeah HOO-RAH! you was
a Marine too? 29 Palms it raining there too?
my (something) levels was up my m.o.s.
kept me out of Viet-Nam I was in Parris Island
thank you for your service I blame George Bush
George Soros and these here public schools...

Lawrence Hall 1d
Old Codger Wearing a Confederate Face Mask
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                     ­          Clinic Waiting Room

Voices:

Morbidly obese old codger wearing a Confederate-flag face mask
Old codger with a My Pillow moustache
Old codger wearing a camouflage baseball cap
Old codgeress #1
Old codgeress #2

Auctor:

Old codger (me)

I been here since 1020 the longer we wait
the more money they get they’re just in it
for the money what’s your Medicare supplemental?
America ain’t what it used to be
there ain’t no doubt about that I done had
the covid and the shots these people
been in and out and I’m still here
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE thank you I SAID
‘THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE!’ Yeah he’s kind of
hard of hearing THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE!!!!
Yeah okay HOO-RAH! yeah HOO-RAH! you was
a Marine too? 29 Palms it raining there too?
my (something) levels was up my m.o.s.
kept me out of Viet-Nam I was in Parris Island
thank you for your service I blame George Bush
George Soros and these here public schools...

Old Communist Movie Director

From the Criterion Collection

The object now of film-school interviews
His gravelling, decades-gone voice echoing
Into a recorder his decades-gone news
How wonderful he was, and all-knowing
About Thuh Fascists, Thuh Workers, and Thuh Jews
Hugging his resentments, and loudly crowing
About the Blacklist through his smokes and *****
How bravely he defied the Rightists, going
In exile to England on a luxury cruise.

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

                          With Connections He Could Have Been
                              a Member of the President's Cabinet

“No.”
My first, my only word to him was “no”
He had shuffled to the table, shaking and shuffling
Aquiver with the sickening spasms of drugs
He turned, he slammed a table, he shuffled away

“No.”
The waitress watched at the window ‘til he was gone
“He used to come in and ask for breakfast,” she said.
“We gave him breakfast for cleaning the parking lot
But then he started stealing stuff from the back”

“No.”
He might have been Jesus. But I don’t think so
More men walk the roads. The waitress sports tattoos

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                               Old Hippies can be Dangerous

                            (I groove to Rod McKuen myself)

Old hippies can be dangerous, he sez
They’re ready to strike a light, a fire, a pose
If you swing to the right of Joan Baez
Or anywhere left of the Country Joes

They weep nostalgic tears about mary jane
And rattle on about tokes and scores and hits
Waving their walkers to Jefferson Airplane
While shuffling slowly in their tie-dyed outfits

Old hippies can be dangerous – with every breath
They’ll bore you first to tears, and then to death

Young Karamazov – once upon a time
Strolled dreaming through the happy hopes of youth
And surely wondered about spring and love
Wrote clumsy verse, perhaps, for a pretty girl

Then fell unfortunately into fashion:
The acquisition of proud vanities
Through the disposition of dreams and souls
Until he was only an old man who

Sat brooding through the bitter schemes of age
Old Karamazov – lost upon a time

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Fellowship & Fairydust (fellowshipandfairydust.com)
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

           ­                 Old Men in Chambray Shirts

                  Meditation on a theme of Tod Mixson

We don’t see khakis, Bull Durham, or farmers’ hats
Or muscled arms that toss square bales of hay
Two strokes hammering a ten-penny through two-by-fours
One stroke of an axe splintering lightered pine

A hand-rolled smoke dangling from sun-blistered lips
An old boot heavy on a rattlesnake’s head
An old stock knife to cut that b/////d apart
And old, unwritten yarns from the long ago

For now old men wear shorts and slogan tees
A flock of gabbing fools with knobby knees

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                   Old Mr. ‘Possum and the Moon

Old Mr. ‘Possum is a garbageman
Who quietly works his appointed nightly rounds
Unappreciated as he tidies this
And cleans up that, all without any fuss

The other animals don’t seem to like him much
For his wobbling, waddling walk, his untidiness
His pointy nose, his all-draggledy tail
And his awkward shape like a loaf of oaf

But when he lifts his eyes to the queen of the skies
He knows that to her he is a knight in disguise

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

         The© Happy™ Home© Akku-Rite™ OTC Covid-1 Test©

The picture on the box features a couple
Cuddling cutely in domestic bliss
As they poke the swabs way up each other’s nose
(Oh, don’t be scandalized; they’re married, of course!)

These and other fine products are distributed by
Consolidated HelthKare Medical, Inc.
Makers of the Kut-Kut© Home Vasectomy Kit
And
Ol’ Doc Zeke’s™ Happy Mule© Diarrhea Remedy™

Ol’ Doc Zeke’s™ Happy Mule© Diarrhea Remedy™
Is not approved for use in humans (wink, wink)

“YEAH!...YEAH!...I’M AT TH’ BARNES AND NOBLE…YEAH?...
I SAID I’M AT TH’ BARNES AND NOBLE!!!!...YEAH!…
THE SHADES!…YEAH, THE SHADES!…I MEASURED THE SHADES!…
YEAH!...OH, YEAH, HE’S A DARLING!...I SAID HE’S A DARLING!!!...

YEAH!...A DARLING!...SO LEVERAGE THE PRICE!...YEAH!...
LEVERAGE THE PRICE THEY AIN’T GOT NOTHIN’ YOU DON’T
SO YEAH LEVERAGE THE PRICE!...SO THEN SHE SAID
THAT HE SAID THAT SHE SAID!...I SAID THAT SHE SAID

THAT SHE SAID THAT...I’M AT BARNES AND NOBLE!..
YEAH!...BARNES AND NOBLE…SO LIKE I SAID THAT...!!!