Old Pompeo Had Some Spies, C.I., C.I., A!

Mike Pompeo had some spies
C.I., C.I., A!
Among these spies he had some sneaks
C.I., C.I., A!
With a wiretap here
And a wiretap there
Here a tap, there a tap
Everywhere a wiretap
Mike Pompeo had some spies
C.I., C.I., A!

Mike Pompeo had some spies
C.I., C.I., A!
Among these spies some Russians lurked
C.I., C.I., A!
With a lurk-lurk here
And a lurk-lurk there
Here a lurk, there a lurk
Everywhere a lurk-lurk
Mike Pompeo had some spies
C.I., C.I., A!

Mike Pompeo had some spies
C.I., C.I., A!
And with these spies came WikiLeaks
C.I., C.I., A!
With a leak-leak here
And a leak-leak there
Here a leak, there a leak
Everywhere a leak-leak
Mike Pompeo had some spies
C.I., C.I., A!

Mike Pompeo had some spies
C.I., C.I., A!
And then there was the President
C.I., C.I., A!
With a tweet-tweet here
And a tweet-tweet there
Here a tweet, there a tweet
Every day a tweet-tweet
Mike Pompeo had some spies
C.I., C.I., A!

Mike Pompeo had some headaches
C.I., C.I., A!
Among these headaches was Congress
C.I., C.I., A!
With questions here
And doubtings there
Here a quiz, there a doubt
Everybody run about
Mike Pompeo had some headaches
C.I.,
                  C.I.,
                           Aaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                            O Little Front Line of Bethlehem

Stopped and questioned multiple checkpoints
A search of their persons and their vehicle
And a stern warning from the local patrol:
“You are not permitted to draw on public funds”

The Holy Family arrives at last at a no-tell inn
“I need to see two forms of identification
And a major credit card from any on this list
Fresh linens are extra; the ice machine is broken”

Surly men in grubby camouflage smoke cigarettes
Occasional gunfire lights up the noisy night

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

             ***! It’s the Most Agonizing Awful Pain Ever!!!!!!!!!

                                        (Have you got an aspirin?)

Unless it involves writhing on the floor
(Or another appropriate surface)
Feeding the ducks, explosions behind the eyes
Flailing at the end of a cosmic centrifuge

Shrieking in pain hearing a butterfly
Floating around some twenty miles away
Grasping at bottles of futile agony pills
And begging for a merciful end to life

Unless it’s all of these, and sometimes more -

It’s not a migraine

On an Inscription from Katya to Gary
in a Pushkin Anthology Found in a Used-Book Sale

Whatever happened to Katya and Gary?
Their names appear in an anthology
Of Pushkin in a nifty Everyman
Astray on a table of orphaned books

One hopes they read those sweet words each to each
Over Blue Mountain in a coffee shop
Forgetting to feed the parking meter
While planning lives of meaning, deep and rich

Or is each but a memory to the other -
Whatever happened to Katya and Gary?

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                      On Being a Still Life Today

No outside duties have called me away today
And so I have become a still life entitled “Ennui”
Or perhaps “Weltschmerz with a Pet Dog”
Two dogs, actually, and they have napped the hours

The rain has fallen day after day after day
A parallel to the Ancient Mariner’s sun
Tree frogs cling to the algae-green window panes
As if they too have lost interest in life

Even so

With my little world all rainy and grey
I am happy to be a still life today

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

                            On Divine Mercy Sunday

                    Above all, don’t lie to yourself.

             -Father Zossima in The Brothers Karamazov

On Palm Sunday a shortage of palms
On Divine Mercy a shortage of mercy
An onion, a candle, a moment, a prayer -
We’d better give something of ourselves away

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

  One Does Not Pre-Imagine Pre-Edward R. Murrow Pre-Babbling

                         A Lesson in Clear Writing for Journalists

Hunker down, swath of destruction, hunker down, write your Social Security number on your arm, hunker down, eerie, hunker down, monster, hunker down, time ticking down / away, hunker down, pre-positioned, hunker down, pre-planned, hunker down, pre-need (and maybe even pre-hunker down), hunker down, pre-deployed, hunker down, spooky (and possibly pre-spooky), hunker down, snapped like matchsticks (“Daddy, what’s a matchstick?”), hunker down, doomed paradise, hunker down, paradise lost, hunker down, lost paradise, hunker down, apocalypse, hunker down, biblical, hunker down, storm of the century (again?), hunker down, doomed, hunker down, doomed, hunker down, pummeled, hunker down, pummeled, hunker down, pummeled, hunker down, power lines brightly bursting, hunker down, eerie calm, hunker down, eerie quiet, hunker down, birds chirping, hunker down, unexpected sparks, hunker down, hazards are unfolding, hunker down, street lamps waver, hunker down, one-two punch, hunker down, what we know, hunker down, hunker down, hunker down

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

          One Judge, Two Sheriff’s Deputies, and Five Police Officers
                                 Take on a 98-Year-Old Woman

                                         “Try that in a small town”

The 11th of August was neither the beginning nor the end
Of sheltering the Constitution from thugs
Some in judicial robes, some in dark uniforms
When Joan Meyer stood
                    between them and us

A newsroom pillaged by judicial fiat
Private homes looted by armed bully-boys
Ordered by a heartless magistrate
When Joan Meyer stood
                    between them and us

When Joan Meyer died
                    between them and us

Raid on Kansas newspaper is an intolerable overreach by police | Editorial (yahoo.com)

“You are your own god – and are surprised when
                  you find that the wolf pack is hunting you across
                  the desolate ice fields of winter.”

                               ― Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings

Crazy old men bellowing at each other
Crazy old women shrieking at us all:
The Spiritus Mundi is hard at play
Among the wreckage of civilization

The stripping of the altars 1 is complete
Holy innocence is a toilet joke
And the literature of millennia
Now serves as cleaning rags for The Machine

An executioner, while waiting for you
Pauses to admire his latest tattoo



1 cf. Eamon Duffy

“One of the Only”

Why do men write of “one of the only”
Since one is only, and only is one
A singular figure, alone and lonely
“One of the only?” Oh, let it be done
                 With.

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

                             One of the Pizza Cantos

                              “Obey Me and Be Free!”

                    -Free for All, episode 2 of The Prisoner

Cue the queue for Q, Ezras by the pound
A crown of horns in pantos by the fright
Mutually assured denunciations
Keyboarding demon vaccines with a little blue light

There’s cycle paths behind the juke machine
It’s Deep Steak stuff, yeah, it ain’t on the news
And them albino monks hid all our votes
Let’s blame the teachers, reporters, and Jews

Now take your selfie for the F.B.I.
And when those Commies catch you, don’t you cry

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

               One Shouldn’t Complain – But I’m Going to Complain


           It will not bother me in the hour of death to reflect that I have
           been “had for a sucker”…but it would be a torment to know
           that (I) had refused even one person in need.

                               -C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady


Do you sometimes feel that you are on call
Twenty-five hours a day, on days you don’t even have
For all the needs and moods and whims and wants
Of clingy people who disapprove of you anyway?

When you come in from work, someone needs a ride
When you wake up at dawn, someone’s battery is dead
Someone needs a ten – could you make it a twenty?
And say, could you take my kid to school today?

For you The Golden Rule is a golden letter -
Still, everyone agrees, you could have helped them better

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

One Supposes That a Red Wheel Adds a Festive Touch to a Barrow


Anyone who takes that

Red wheel

Barrow

Seriously

Need not be taken seriously

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

                  Online Certificate Program in Novel Writing

            “…that led me to answer an advertisement in
            the Sunday Times and take a job…with a
            correspondence school…”

             -Elizabeth Bishop, “The U. S. A. School of Writing”

And a certificate!

The ad presented as a joke, only it wasn’t:
(Famous Name Brand School)’s Continuing Studies Program
Will make you a Hemingway for eighty dollars
And there is a student testimonial

And a certificate!

Embrace the tools solidify develop
Accomplished authors craft tutorials
Dedicated dynamic cohort peers
Passionate instructors prestigious fellows

And a certificate!

Achieve the goal for which you have been aiming!
(And a certificate, suitable for framing)

Only eighty dollars

      “The U. S. A. School of Writing had been raided
       by the police shortly after I left…”

                                      -Elizabeth Bishop

“Every herd is a refuge for giftlessness…Only the solitary seek  
       the truth, and they break with all those who don't love it
       sufficiently.”

                          ― Boris Pasternak,  Doctor Zhivago


You cannot write with your fist clenched in hate
You cannot sing with a conscripted voice
You cannot dance if you are made to march
You cannot love if your heart is not free

You cannot think if they slogan your mind
You cannot play if they deny your joy
You cannot dream if they program your spirit
You cannot pray if they poison your soul

You are an artist, a seeker of truth:
And no one should finish this line for you

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

                                 On my 74th Birthday

                  The eternal magic of eternal things
                  sends the dreamer out into the world

                          -Rod McKuen, “January 2”

I didn’t mean to be 74
That wasn’t part of my master plan
To be young forever, cooler each year
But suddenly I’ve become invisible

Once upon a time and long ago
I drove my old MG to California
A sleeping bag, a few books, a few poems
A portable typewriter, some portable dreams

I remember breaking down in Tucson
But best of all, I remember the dreams

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                 On Reading a Poem by Du Mu

Everything is far away
China is ever so far away
The dynasties are far away
A golden dragon might fly us there

The moon is across the river
The blue-black river in the mist
A fishing boat is tied to the gate
The water-gate of our inn

What do they mean, the moon and boat?
Maybe the moon and the boat mean nothing
They simply are; they are themselves
Or perhaps we mean the moon and boat

Because of Du Mu and his words
The moon and the boat are forever
The blue-black river is forever
In reading of them so are we



“A Night at the Inn While Travelling”
Three Hundred Tang Poems
Translated by Peter Harris
London: Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets, 2009

On Reading Crime and Punishment

Old Moby **** is a right good whale
He really knows how to end a tale
                                           With his tail!
When tedious men give the reader fits
Moby splashes, and dashes ‘em to bits.
But in Saint Petersburg – or Petrograd –
Rodian keeps talking, and that’s too bad,
All about his woes, and his sinful fall;
Alas!  There is no whale to end it all.


(Postscript – I finally finished C & P.  As always with Dostoyevsky, the journey ended in hope)

Love lost along abandoned railway lines,
Grave-cold, grave-still, grave-dark beneath dead snow,
A thousand miles of ashes, corpses, ghosts -
Sacrarium of a martyred civilization.

A silent wolf pads west across the ice,
The rotting remnant of a young man’s arm,
Slung casually between its pale pink jaws -
A cufflink clings to a bit of ragged cloth.

Above the wolf, the ice, the arm, the link
A dead star hangs, dead in a moonless sky,
It gives no light, there is no life; a mist
Arises from the clotted, haunted earth.

For generations the seasons are lies,
Since neither love nor life is free to sing
The eternal hymns of long-forbidden spring -
And yet beneath the lies the old world gasps

The old world gasps in sudden ecstasy
A whispered resurrection of the truth
As tender stems ascend and push the stones
Aside, away into irrelevance.

And now the sunflowers laugh with the sun
Like merry young lads in their happy youth
Coaxing an ox-team into the fields,
Showing off their muscles to merry young girls.

The men of steel are only stains of rust,
Discoloring the seams of broken drains,
As useless as the rotted bits of brass
Turned up sometimes by Uncle Sasha’s plow.

For this is Holy Russia, eternally young;
Over those wide lands her church domes bless the sky,
While Ruslan and Ludmilla bless the earth
With the songs of lovers in God’s ever-spring

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

                     On Reading Kaminsky’s Deaf Republic

Kaminsky takes our neat constructions and breaks
Them back into their atoms, primordial chaos
So that we are reminded that before Creation
There were all those silences laying around

Atoms reminded                  chaos bits that takes before

                              before before         breaks

our and

n
e
a
t
primordial around are we Kaminsky constructions          into back atoms them lying Creation those silences reminded so were there

A poet organizes sounds into meanings
Kaminsky reminds us to pay closer attention
                                          to the silences

On Reading Yet Another Essay on the Death of Reading

Yet another essay beginning with “I”
Sophomore thesis: no one reads anymore
The power of books, the great ideas
The shared experience, the care of souls

The temptations of social media
(Really? No one ever said that before)
Escape, new points of view, humanity
Foundations of faith (but never the roofs)

If reading is dead -

If reading is dead, then who reads those essays,
Those many essays on the death of reading?

In the midst of a world of light and love, of song and feast and dance, he could find nothing more interesting to think of than his own prestige.

                        -C. S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost

Just look into the mirror, and there you are
Could lose a little weight, but there you are
You comb your hair, you brush your teeth, and then
You should always remember to make a face

And laugh

For you are not a sloganed comrade-hat
Nor yet a shadow in a marching mob
A noise, a post, a bumper-stickered oaf
An obedient tool being pushed about

Because

You are not a tagged and labeled identity
But a true child of God: brave, loving, and free

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

      On Teaching Jean Anouilh’s Becket to High School Seniors

Beginning with the film

1st student young person on the roll sheet: “Is that th' pope?”
2nd student young person on the roll sheet: “I’d like to shoot that old pope.”

We have a lot of work ahead of us

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

                                              On the Consumption of Art

An artist writes about the consumption of art
As if a painting, a poem, a video
A statue in the lobby of the medical center
Were a tin of meatballs and spaghetti

But we do not consume a work of art
Sometimes we almost seem to marry it
Joining art in a sacrament of love
Beyond the velvet ropes of ownership

That which can be possessed can be consumed
But neither art nor love is a commodity

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                On the Day Papa Benedict Died

This day a year ago Papa Benedict died
I heard it in a post-anaesthetic mist
Was there a TV in ICU? A radio?
Did someone say it? I don’t remember now

I knew only that Papa Benedict had died
That I was alive, and didn’t know why
Little toy cowboys rode across my mind
But in my lungs the air was sweet and cold

Papa Benedict had something to do with it
And Saint Elizabeth of Thuringen

And I am thankful

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                  On the Events of 13 July 2024

                                                  …that we but teach
****** instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague th’ inventor. This even-handed justice
Commends th’ ingredience of our poisoned chalice
To our own lips.

                                    -Macbeth I.vii.8-12

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

                                    On the Eve of Advent

On the eve of Advent Jupiter ascends
As is his custom at dusk this time of year
Then Mars and the company of Orion
And all the dutiful stars awake, arise

To mark the passing of Ordinary Time
And arc into the west and disappear
Late leaves rustle unseen in the deepening dark
We whisper our Compline prayers along with them

And in the absence of light await the Light
Which will appear in the most unlikely places

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

        On the Happy Occasion of Completing a Wordle in Two Lines

                            (Scribbled with a little help from Shelley)

Look upon my Verbs, ye Mighty, and despair!
No more lines remain. Round the decay
Of my online Competition, of vocabulary bare
The lone and level squares stretch far away

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

On the Occasion of Being Scanned by an Electro-Mechanical Device

The room is softly lit, like a Star Trek Set
Mostly pale, indirect blues, occasional pinks
A large circle, like a mechanical god
Appears to be a portal spinning through time

DO NOT LOOK INTO THE RED LIGHT

The machine slides me into itself
And commands me in a soothing plastic voice
“Take a deep breath and hold it.”
[Pause]

DO NOT LOOK INTO THE RED LIGHT

“Breathe normally.”
[Pause]
“Take a deep breath and hold it.”
[Pause]

“Breath normally.”

DO NOT LOOK INTO THE RED LIGHT

But breathe

Breathe

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

                                  On the Opening of Words

I love to open words, and so do you:
Old words growled by our fathers in the fens
Smooth words polished on the tables of the Law
Neologisms laughed into being over beer

Words cadenced on the ****** fields of Mars
Words whispered on the perfumed pillows of Venus
Words prayed around the Altar of our God
Words breathed in pain on the last day of all

I love to open words, and so do you
Our words, our holy words, both old and new

Our leaders’ reputations decay in the corners
Of their star-spangled offices, curling up
Like fallen leaves wind-blown against a fence
Then writhing in the *******-fires of history

Their bubble reputations in their own mouths 1
Ephemeral as the grey and ashy smoke
Adrift among the vaporous lies that once  
Scented the sewage of their resumes’

Our leaders call us comrades, shipmates, brothers -
From their forward positions on the 501C

1 Shakespeare, “The Ages of Man”

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                               On This Feast of St. Stephen

If Good King Wenceslaus looked down today
He might well ask in irony if we
Have adequate food for these Twelve Days
With our leftover hams and yams and rolls

Coffee and tea, chocolates from Italy
Bread loaves so ****** they incense the air
Potatoes and puddings and plates of cheese –
Our cry is, “I couldn’t eat another bite!”

So are the gifts we left on the Jesse Tree
For some poor man are all that they might be?

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

                                Oppos­ite the House of Sculptures

“…unchanging, shrill, crazy exclamations and demands, which became progressively more impractical, meaningless, and unfulfillable…”

                  -Doctor Zhivago, Part Two, Chapter 13,
                        “Opposite the House of Sculptures”

O strong man, strong man, Supremo Alpha-******
Please be our Putin, ******, or Mussolini

O strong man, strong man; tell us what to think
Pour us some Jim Jones; we’ll take a real deep drink

O strong man, strong man; tell us what to do
We’ll happily go to prison just for you

O strong man, strong man; clench your mighty fist
You put for us the “GO” in your “jingoist”

O strong man, strong man, you are our latest god
Please break us to obedience with your mighty rod

O strong man, strong man, you are our highest law
Whatever dribbles from your mouth we hear in awe

O strong man, strong man, we are your little elves
We promise to stow our history upon the shelves
And never, ever again think for ourselves

For Yue **** Yidhna
And All Who Brew Morning Poetry  for the World

You are neither barista nor priestess
Even though perhaps a little bit of both
You do not serve either McDonald or Tim
But rather the supplicants who approach

Who plead with you to offer them the Cup
Of transient peace and hope in this sad world
A layered paper chalice wherein is borne
Colombian savour, healing and warm

And it is from your hands that they receive
A special blessing, and strength for their day

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                            Orgiastic Screaming from Below

           Those who called for Nonsense will find that it comes

                         -C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength

We have seen Milton’s Pandaemonium
Choreographed on a wide palantir
Fallen angels praising the Great Fallen One
In a High Council of electrified lies

Great thunderings of fire and rolling smoke
Issuing from a shiny plastic throne of power
The Great Fallen One framed in Elvis lights
On the floor the lesser ones screaming in ecstasy

The Great Fallen One has a plan for us
After all the balloons, too, have fallen

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

      O Ring Out Christmas Safety Cautions and Trigger Warnings

We must not overeat at Christmas dinner
We must not pass the doggie a poisonous treat
We must not speak aloud of loser or winner
We must not undercook the veg or meat

We must not argue during the second course
We must not provoke any bitterness or tears
We must not mention our cousin’s divorce
We must not let Momma drink too many beers

We must not drop our guard on Christmas Day -
For it’s all about family (that’s what some say)

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

                                “Or Just Sit in the Car and Die”

                                 (overheard among the books)

Call Mom
Call Josh
Call an ambulance
Or just sit in the car and die

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

                                      Our Antikythera Mechanisms

Chariots of the odds and ends of life
Wooden boxes of bronze mechanisms
By which we navigate the memories
Of all the golden islands of our youth

The hidden anchorages of lost love
And barefoot beaches of youth’s innocence
Beneath bright sunlit hills of wild must grapes
That taste of our desires in dreaming hours

All lost, alas, fallen into the sea
The sea of remembrance, eternally

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

     Our Capitol Police – Keeping America Safe from 87-Year-Olds

                       No Unmarked Cars for Senior Citizens

At least when our police ‘cuff an elderly man
They stuff him into a well-marked van


14 June 20245 - our Stasi handcuffed an 87-year-old veteran today:

https://x.com/CarolinaLumetta/status/1933669206114898254/video/3

a HOME credible THE BISHOP accusation ADMINISTRATION is PARISHES one MINISTRIES that, SCHOOLS after RESOURCES review SAFE ENVIRONMENT of EMPLOYEES reasonably CAREERS available, CONTACT US relevant MAKE A GIFT information BISHOP’S FAITH APPEAL in LOVE AND JUSTICE consultation AFRICAN AMERICAN MINISTRY with CATHOLIC CHARITIES the PLANNED GIVING Diocesan CHANCELLOR Review OFFICE OF CONSTRUCTION Board HISPANIC MINISTRY or CAMPUS MINISTRY other CRIMINAL JUSTICE MINISTRY professionals, STEWARDSHIP AND COMMUNICATIONS there YOUTH MINISTRY is FINANCIAL SERVICES reason MODERATOR OF THE CURIA to MAKE A GIFT TO THE CAPITAL CAMPAIGN believe SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY is FAMILY LIFE MINISTRY true VOCATIONS

The soup today is not what it could be;
We’d better search out the old recipe


Explanatory Note:

I fear the poem as written fails, which is my fault (perhaps I have lapsed into fuzziness from reading  Leonard Cohen), so here is a bit of exposition:

The words in small print are a quote from the Bishops of Texas (long may they wave), generated by some in-house scrivener, about what constitutes a "credible accusation."  "Credible accusation" is not a title in civil, criminal, or canon law, and it appears to be some sort of Article 58 (cf. Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago), a means whereby anyone is guilty because he has been accused.  It stinks.

Also stinky is the behavior of some few priests and religious.

Anyway, I pulled the quote from a diocesan web site, and scattered among it in LARGE TYPE categories from that site.  I stirred 'em all up in a soup because the matter of paedophilia and the bishops' responses seem to be a soup, making it difficult for a "good simpleton" (cf A Canticle for Leibowitz) like me to understand.

May God have mercy on us all.

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                Our Children Will Ask Us What We Did in 2024


                                            Thus was th’ applause they meant,
                           Turned to exploding hiss, triumph to shame
                           Cast on themselves from thir own mouths.

                                   Milton, Paradise Lost, X.545-547


Have we not learned?

The Zeppelinfield, the Kroll Opera House
The Great Hall of 10,000 People
The Hippodrome, the Piazza Venetia
Red Square, and the Quicken Loans Arena

Weak beings subsumed within one commanding Will
Adoring with glistening eyes and beating hearts
A strident oligarchy of destiny
Chanting obscurities and pumping fists

But when the chanting stops and foul diktats roll –
Will you - will I? - be a defiant soul?

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                            ­    Our Dear Leader

Democracy is dead, a memory, a husk
Selected, not elected: President Musk

Someday our mouldering bones will grace the walls
Of a museum’s scientific display
And little Martians will play through the halls
Ignoring us on their school’s field-trip day

Our zygomatic bones in exasperation
Attempt to roll (but, sure, cannot) because
We are extinct, a disappeared nation
Your skull and mine won’t even have jaws

And so the Beothuk on the opposite shelf

Will ask

“Well, European, are you finally over yourself?”

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

         Our Dreams are Lost Somewhere along the Supply Chain

I needed a dream but I wasn’t given one
So I had to construct it for myself
It wasn’t very good. Dreams should be left
To the professionals, but where are they?

Our fathers told of hard times on the farm
Of walking barefoot down the road to school
And walking home again to get the cows back up
From woods and fields to the old dairy barn

And joining the Army at seventeen
Sleeping later in boot camp than on the farm
Coming home from the war to look for a job
Thirty years at the sawmill – then laid off

And in his turn a New Man proudly says:

I scored real high on Minecraft on my ‘phone
While standing in line for my free school supplies

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

                         Our Fearless Leaders / Have Got / The Shot

But as for us, well, we have not

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

              Our First-Person-Plural God-Emperor Bible Salesman
                                       Orders a War for Us


                   “Hell hath no fury like a non-combatant”

        -many attributions; dates to at least the American Civil War


The imperial We have / has spoken:
First His parade, and now our young people’s war
And what do His commands betoken?
Maybe for Him a shiny Silver Star

For sending our young to die in glorious battle
Across the screen and over the top
Waving His joystick like a baby’s rattle
With diet soda by way of an air drop

He’ll order our children to face the foe
But be assured – no Trump will ever go

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

                         Our Former President Loves Us All

The People grant him power; he grasps for more
He asks them for their votes and for their deaths
His eunuchs tell us that it was just a joke
Like Two Corinthians walking into a bar

But when the folding chairs are folded away
And that one night of transient glory is over
The caucus captains and their caps depart
Cheap souvenirs tatted in white and gold

They stumble home through limousine fumes and ice:
“For a moment I was Somebody – it was nice”

Our Lady of Walsingham

O how beautiful is Our Lady Queen!
Queen of our hearts and hopes, to her we pray,
Sweet Empress over forest, down, and dene ,    
And happy Sunrise over the pilgrim’s way

O let us crown Our Queen with leaf and flower
Gathered this morning in the dawnlit dew
For we in this island are Her true dower
Pledging our faith with thorn and rose and yew

She gives us Her feast day, cool and quiet and green -
O how beautiful is Our Lady Queen!

O how beautiful is Our Lady Queen!
Queen of our hearts and hopes, and of the May
Sweet Empress over forest, down, and dene,      
And happy Sunrise over the pilgrim’s way

O let us crown Our Queen with leaf and flower
Gathered this morning in the dawnlit dew
For we in this Island are Her true dower
Pledging our faith with thorn and rose and yew

She gives us Her feast day, cool and quiet and green -
O how beautiful is Our Lady Queen!