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!

Ouroboros

Writhing about in man’s mythologies
Is a completeness, itself to affirm
Scriven in the ancient cosmologies:
The self-ordained perfection of The Worm

The Samsara of the self-seeking soul
And a self-admiring self-causation
Itself entire, a universal whole
Devouring its tail in auto-phagation

But metamorphoses have come to pass:
The endless worm’s head is now up its own (self)

“...Poisoned Chalice”

              -Macbeth I.vii.10-12

We commend each other with curses exchanged
Between a cop and a hard place in space
Red MAGA caps against ****** berets
All of these accessories China-made

Our battleground an asphalt parking lot
Our forward first-aid post a coffee shop
Where Communists glare over their nitros cold
And Fascists froth their frappuccinos hot

We commend each other with a chalice defiled
Over the broken body of a Child

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

                                 Our ***** Minister for Culture

Our Leader, our dear, dear Leader, is a real pizz-***
He censors our movies and reopens Alcatraz

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

                                    O­ur Satellites will Fall

Our satellites will all fall to the earth
Orbits and ideologies decay
What are all these toys and noisy launchings worth
When all to gravity can only give way

Even sparrows must fall, to God’s dismay
And we and all our vanities must die
How will we answer on our final day
For our machines and machinations that lie

And when the last has fallen from the sky
Will anyone be alive to wonder why?

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

                         Our Vines Have Tender Marsupials

In summer the ‘possums come seeking my garden
In grey winter they come seeking dog food
Tonight they cling high up in the bare vines
Hiding from the dachshunds snuffling below

All the animals’ eyes stare back at the flashlight
Unsure of their duties in the misty rain
Whether to climb, to move, to bark, to hiss
And so we all pause to ponder the mysteries

Fear, hunger, confusion, artificial light –
Pretty much metaphors for the covid time

(The title is a play on Our Vines Have Tender Grapes, MGM, 1945)

Out of Focus at the End of Time

At the end of time, when reality
Is ripped and flung aside as the flimsy
Tissue of ephemera that it always was
As the deep oceans tremble fearfully

As the skies, and the universe itself
Thunder in the agonies of their deaths
And poor mankind is faced in fear at last
With that true Vision all unknowable

The last sound in this created world will be
The rattle of collapsing selfie sticks

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                       Out-Outpatient Surgery

A little happy pill along the way
A fuzzy memory of the waiting room
A bright fluorescent-lit consulting room
A slippery fake-leather patient chair

The nurse and I spoke of children and dogs
(Dang! That needle hurt!)
And about the rain outside this winter day
(Dang! That needle hurt even more!)

And the doctor spoke (of what?) (of what?)
Soothingly through the sounds of cutting flesh
Soothingly through the smells of burning flesh
And lengths of suture flying before my eyes

At home I took a happy codeine pill
While Randolph Scott rode across the TV
Nurses and doctors make you all better
Life is good

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


                                 Out Where the West Begins

                                 In the Drugstore Parking Lot

An old man creaks his body out of the pickup
With boots on the ground he's got his swagger back
He taps a Marlboro out of a cardboard box
And lights it with a manly Zippo (clink)

He’s practiced his technique since ‘66
A ‘way-cool curl of silver-white cowboy smoke
Rising up above the pickup cab and into the West
Along with a phlegm-rich boots-and-saddles cough

His wife’s inside the store, a-getting’ his pills
He can’t quite manage that distance himself

‘Way back when he was so ////’ cool, you know?

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

                                                    Overserved

                                            New Year’s Eve 2021

Oh, TV guy, we most clearly observed
That in your speech you swiveled and swerved
But in the dawn’s clear light you’re now unnerved
An apology, yes, that’s well deserved
But please don’t tell us you were overserved

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                        ­      Ozymandias ‘N’ Things

I met a UPS driver from an antique land
Who said – “Down the road two shopping malls
Decay along the road, on either hand
Broken doors lead into empty, echoing halls

The blown-out signs are ghostly anymore
Their electric lights are dead; the letters decay
Around the logo of each long-dead store
And in their emptiness they seem to say:

Look upon my works, ye mighty –

Sears, Radio Shack, Montgomery Ward, Mr. Pickwick, Circuit City, Bonwit Teller, Gimbel’s, Brooks Brothers, Woolworth’s, Marshall Field’s, Kresge’s, Blockbuster, Border’s, CompUSA, Sharper Image, Tower Records, Toys R Us, B. Dalton, Levitz, Waldenbooks, Thom McAn, Linens N Things, KB toys, Mervyn’s, Lord & Taylor, Joske’s

- and despair”

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

                                                  Painter’s Cough

He tossed his cigarette and introduced himself
And coughed
A weary old man with a weary beard
He coughed
And came inside to check the painting prep
He coughed
And was not happy with the previous work
He wheezed

He began bringing in his equipment and paint
He coughed
He gazed around the rooms disapprovingly
He coughed
He sanded and he sanded and he sanded
He coughed
He sanded and sanded all morning long
He wheezed

He croaked, “Oh, man, this dust’s getting’ to me”
He coughed
So he went outside for a cigarette
(Presumably he coughed)
His methy helper finally showed up
He coughed too
They griped about the poor preparatory work
One wheezed, one coughed

Neither wore a respirator or mask
They coughed
And talked about a nephew in jail again
They coughed
The helper offered me some backstrap at lunch
He coughed
And was surprised when I said, “No, thanks”
He wheezed

The contractor went away for a while
The painters coughed
And spent more time outside with their cigarettes
Presumably they coughed
The plastic dust sheets were silent and still
And never coughed
The painters took more frequent breaks and smoked
And probably coughed

And so the weary day wore itself out
The painters packed their equipment and their coughs
And promised to return tomorrow and finish
And clear away the piles of dust and debris
And maybe they will

Cough

Paleo-Hippies at Work and Play

Having withdrawn from the existential struggle,
Surrendering their arms and protest signs,
They muster in Denny’s for the Senior Special
Uniformed in knee-pants and baseball caps
And Chinese tees that read “World’s Greatest Grandpa,”
Hearing aids and trifocs at parade rest,
And quadrupedal aluminum sticks
Raging against the oxygen machine.
Not trusting anyone over ninety,
They rattle their coffee cups and dentures
Instead of suspicious Nixonians,
And demand pensions, not revolution.
They mourn classmates dead, not The Grateful Dead.
They do not burn their Medicare cards
Tho’ once they illuminated the world
With their flaming conscription notices.
They no longer read McKuen or Tolkien
Or groove to the Mamas and the Papas;
Their beads and flowers are forever filed
In books of antique curiosities
Beside a butterfly collection shelved
In an adjunct of the Smithsonian
Where manifestos go to be eaten
By busy mice and slow-pulsing fungi.
As darkness falls they make the Wheel, not peace -
They did not change the world, not at all, but
The world changed anyway, and without them,
And in the end they love neither Jesus
Nor Siddhartha, but only cable t.v.

Paleo-Hippies at Work and Play

Having withdrawn from the existential struggle,
Surrendering their arms and protest signs,
They muster in Denny’s for the Senior Special
Uniformed in knee-pants and baseball caps
And Chinese tees that read “World’s Greatest Grandpa,”
Hearing aids and trifocs at parade rest,
And quadrupedal aluminum sticks
Raging against the oxygen machine.
Not trusting anyone over ninety,
They rattle their coffee cups and dentures
Instead of suspicious Nixonians,
And demand pensions, not revolution.
They mourn classmates dead, not The Grateful Dead.
They do not burn their Medicare cards
Tho’ once they illuminated the world
With their flaming conscription notices.
They no longer read McKuen or Tolkien
Or groove to the Mamas and the Papas;
Their beads and flowers are forever filed
In books of antique curiosities
Beside a butterfly collection shelved
In an adjunct of the Smithsonian
Where manifestos go to be eaten
By busy mice and slow-pulsing fungi.
As darkness falls they make the Wheel, not peace -
They did not change the world, not at all, but
The world changed anyway, and without them,
And in the end they love neither Jesus
Nor Siddhartha, but only cable t.v.

Paleo-Hippies at Work and Play

Having withdrawn from the existential struggle,
Surrendering their arms and protest signs,
They muster in Denny’s for the Senior Special
Uniformed in knee-pants and baseball caps
And Chinese tees that read “World’s Greatest Grandpa,”
Hearing aids and trifocals at parade rest,
And quadrupedal aluminum sticks
Raging against the oxygen machine.
Not trusting anyone over ninety,
They rattle their coffee cups and dentures
Instead of suspicious Nixonians,
And demand pensions, not revolution.
They mourn classmates dead, not The Grateful Dead.
They do not burn their Medicare cards
Tho’ once they illuminated the world
With their flaming conscription notices.
They no longer read McKuen or Tolkien
Or groove to ‘way-cool Peter, Paul, and Mary;
Their beads and flowers are forever filed
In books of antique curiosities
Beside a butterfly collection shelved
In an adjunct of the Smithsonian
Where manifestos go to be eaten
By busy mice and slow-pulsing fungi.
As darkness falls they make the Wheel, not love

They did not change the world, not at all, but
The world changed anyway, and without them,
And in the end they love neither Jesus
Nor Siddhartha, but only cable t.v.

Paleo-Yuppies at Work and Play

Fading slowly from the existential struggle,
Waving their MePhones about in protest,
They swarm to Starbuck’s for adjective coffees,
Uniformed in knee-pants and bulbous sneaks
And Chinese soccer tops with little checkmarks,
Their graduate degrees at parade rest,
And in confusion, suddenly-stalled careers
Raging against the thirty-something machine.
Not trusting anyone under forty,
They rustle their foam cups and resumes’
Instead of suspicious Democrats,
And demand promotions and Perrier.
They mourn pinstripes and leather briefcases,
And the old floppy disc of yesteryear,
And fumble their PowerPoint Presentations
Tho’ once they illuminated the world
With colored markers on glossy whiteboard.
They no longer play games on a Commodore
Or rock to neo-Carib fusion jazz;
Their Rush is Right baseball caps are now filed
In trays of antique curiosities
Beside the moldering hippie stuff shelved
In an adjunct of the Smithsonian
Where curricula vitae go to be eaten
By a computer virus named Vlad.
Now, as the sun sets on Ferris Bueller’s day
They count and verify their MeBook friends -
They did not change the world, not at all, but
The world changed anyway, and without them,
And in the end they love neither Jesus
Nor The Force; like Eve, they bow to an Apple.

Paleo-Yuppies at Work and Play

Fading slowly from the existential struggle,
Waving their MePhones about in protest,
They swarm to Starbuck’s for adjective coffees,
Uniformed in knee-pants and bulbous sneaks
And Chinese soccer tops with little checkmarks,
Their graduate degrees at parade rest,
And in confusion, suddenly-stalled careers
Raging against the thirty-something machine.
Not trusting anyone under forty,
They rustle their foam cups and resumes’
Instead of suspicious Democrats,
And demand promotions and Perrier.
They mourn pinstripes and leather briefcases,
And the old floppy disc of yesteryear,
And fumble their PowerPoint Presentations
Tho’ once they illuminated the world
With colored markers on glossy whiteboard.
They no longer play games on a Commodore
Or rock to neo-Carib fusion jazz;
Their Rush is Right baseball caps are now filed
In trays of antique curiosities
Beside the moldering hippie stuff shelved
In an adjunct of the Smithsonian
Where curricula vitae go to be eaten
By a computer virus named Vlad.
Now, as the sun sets on Ferris Bueller’s day
They count and verify their MeBook friends -
They did not change the world, not at all, but
The world changed anyway, and without them,
And in the end they love neither Jesus
Nor The Force; like Eve, they bow to an Apple.

Paleo-Yuppies at Work and Place

Fading slowly from the existential struggle,
Waving their MePhones about in protest,
They swarm to Starbuck’s for adjective coffees,
Uniformed in knee-pants and bulbous sneaks
And Chinese soccer tops with little checkmarks,
Their graduate degrees at parade rest,
And in confusion, suddenly-stalled careers
Raging against the thirty-something machine.
Not trusting anyone under forty,
They rustle their foam cups and resumes’
Instead of suspicious Democrats,
And demand promotions and Perrier.
They mourn pinstripes and leather briefcases,
And the old floppy disc of yesteryear,
And fumble their PowerPoint Presentations
Tho’ once they illuminated the world
With colored markers on glossy whiteboard.
They no longer play games on a Commodore
Or rock to neo-Carib fusion jazz;
Their Rush is Right baseball caps are now filed
In trays of antique curiosities
Beside the moldering hippie stuff shelved
In an adjunct of the Smithsonian
Where curricula vitae go to be eaten
By a computer virus named Vlad.
Now, as the sun sets on Ferris Bueller’s day,
They count and verify their MeBook friends –

They did not change the world, not at all, but
The world changed anyway, and without them,
And in the end they love neither Jesus
Nor The Force; like Eve, they bow to an Apple.

Palm Sunday in Egypt
9 April 2017

Revelation 20:4

Poor bleeding Egypt, Mother of martyrs
Whose sands receive the gift of sacred blood
Almost without an end: the Apostle Mark,
Saint Katherine, and even on this day:

A child in the narthex scampering about
Although his mother told him to behave
A man waiting for a friend, passers-by
Someone hoping that the sermon is short

O may they now with Christ enter into
Golden Jerusalem, now and forever

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

                  Palm Sunday Processional and a Volkswagen

We’re along the four-lane, no village street
And so in the parking lot with our palms we meet
We begin our hymn at a Fiat, mama mia!
And step off from alongside my brother’s new Kia

I suppose we could sing, “O Cadillac, My Destiny”
While waving our fronds over a wingless Mercury
Watch your step; there’s a Honda Accord
Oh, look; I found a penny – praise the Lord!

We have only the four-lane, no village street
But at the church door we have Jesus to greet

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

                               Palm Sunday Well-Sanitized

There is social distancing in Jerusalem
Mostly among Romans and Greeks and Jews
Who don’t much like each other anyway -
How is this day different from all other days? 1

This year there is no parking-lot procession
That’s good; the timing of the hymn in front
Never matches the timing ‘way in back
And the mail-order palms are sanitized

What hosannas this season, you may well ask:
Wave the virus and proclaim, “Wear your mask!”


1 Cf. The Seder


(This is only a bit of wry humor; good hygiene is always a matter of caritas in protecting others as well as one’s self.)

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

                   Palm Sunday without Air-Raid Warnings

Palm Sunday is easy for the rest of us
A procession with palms from the parking lot
Praising God through an asphalt Jerusalem
A Subaru on His right hand, a Dodge on His left

Palm Sunday is easy for the rest of us
The front of the procession out of tune with the back
Or is it the other way around? Someone’s MePhone
Beeping during the Elevation - Catholics, eh

Palm Sunday is easy for the rest us -
No burning streets, no screaming wounded, no death

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

                     Pam from The Office Goes to War

A young woman drills with a wooden rifle
She looks like Pam Beesly from The Office
An old man checks his antique shotgun’s breech
He looks like Grandpa going out for rabbits

The Ukraine is preparing for war

In a bunker a young man cuddles a cat
He looks like he should be driving a truck
An old woman practices field medicine
She looks like she’s done this before

The Ukraine is preparing for war

They all may die under Russian tank treads
Their government will watch on television

(For that’s how our leaders prepare for war)

There are no days free of panic attacks -
A fierce determination to recusancy
Is no defense against the men of peace
Clenching their fists and screaming out their love

There are no nights free of panic attacks -
A fierce determination to needful sleep
Is no defense against unhappy dreams
Judicial accusations of the memory

But even panic is no defense against
One’s fierce determination to write the truth

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

                              Paper Sacks I have Known - 1

When I was a lad I was a sack boy at Mixson’s
I stacked and sacked coffee and corn and beans
To carry out to cars along the street
In a little town that no longer exists

Sacks in three sizes were my tools of trade:
The little ones for Papa’s cigarettes
The mediums for tonight’s milk and bread
The big ‘uns for the Saturday in-towns

Mixson’s is closed, as is my little town
And paper sacks, too, just cannot be found

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

     Parish Consolidations and Rumors of Parish Consolidations

                 “I'm a beast, I am, and a Badger what's more.
                                We don't change. We hold on.
                              I say great good will come of it.”

                    -Trufflehunter in C. S. Lewis’ Prince Caspian

I don’t suppose Saint Peter sent surveys
Or that Saint Paul politely polled the people
But that’s how bishops do such things these days
With an access code on the InterThing

502 Bad Gateway

Rumor Control and Gossip Central say
That our parish is for the chopping block
     (maybe re-purposed as a shopping block)
Worse things have happened; we’ve been pilgrims before
So as the Lord leads us, we will follow Him

Again

The Altar, Sacrifice, and Word are Truth
And where we are sent to serve, there we will serve

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

                                     Parlements of Foules

The Parlement of Foules of whom old Chaucer wrote
Meet yearly on the Feast of Valentine
In Venus’ temple to negotiate
The noble rites of love and life and youth

The Parliament of Birds on my front lawn
In their several sub-species negotiate
Their seeds and crusts with outraged squawks and shrieks
But in the end manage to satisfy all

Good Parliaments of Birds are of order and rules
But humans elect poor Parliaments of Fools

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                   A Parliamentary Validation of Guy Fawkes

The death-penalty ban has been reversed
But will members of Parliament want to go first?

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

                         “Parole,” He Replied, “I’m Afraid of Parole.”

                                    What are you most afraid of?

“Parole,” he said, and the others agreed
“I don’t like it in here; I don’t have any choices
But no one expects anything much of me
I can’t make any choices, so I can’t fail

“But out there – there – I have to make choices
I have to live up to my kid’s expectations
I have to live like a man, show some initiative
Get up and go to work without being told

“Most of all, I’m afraid of letting my kid down
I might fail him, like I did before

And that’s the scariest thing of all”

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

                                        Participation Ribbons

John Wayne as Steve Williams: “How'd you do last season?”
Charles Coburn as Father Malone: “We showed up for every game.”
Steve Williams: “I'd say that was raw courage.”

                               -Trouble Along the Way (1953)

I’ve heard of participation ribbons
But I’ve never seen one. Do they exist?
People seem to disapprove of them
But participation means showing up

There are those who wake up every morning
Feed the kids breakfast, fire up an old car
Make the school run, and then are off to work
At the cafe’, the store, or the auto shop

That’s participation, all right, and courage
A ribbon? Most folks deserve a medal

Snakes fighting in a rutted logging trail
A chicken snake against a rattlesnake
Whipping the dust with their reptilian lust
For death among the ridings of despair

The rattlesnake is an endangered species
The chicken snake is okay with that, and strikes
The thrashers poise and pounce, loathsome and foul
Until the chicken snake slowly takes the rattler

Through peristalsis down into its maw

with the rattlesnake

Writhing desperately for a forced recount

Happy Easter / Pascha to a Russian Orthodox Friend

What sort of man sits in the silent dark
And waits for a small candle to be lit
When he could reach over and flip a switch
For the miracle of electricity

Bravely to course through the building’s wired veins
The march of progress with a touch controlled
By the hand of humanity triumphant
Over Byzantine superstition. Tell us:

What hopeful sort of man waits for the dawn,
For Light to appear from a cold, sealed tomb?

Paterfamilias

For Eldon Edge

An empty chair beside the fireplace waits,
And lamplight falls upon an open book,
Pen, pocketknife, keys for the pasture gates,
Dad’s barn coat hanging from its accustomed hook.

But he will not return; his duties now
Transcend the mists of the pale world we know,
And you in grief must carry on, somehow;
Your duty is here, for God will have it so

The good man takes that chair reluctantly;
It is a throne of sorts, and one imposed,
Not taken as a prize, triumphantly,
But in love’s service, and in love disposed.

An empty chair beside the fireplace waits
For you, whom doleful duty consecrates.

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

                                       Patient Intake: Mis’ries

When I was a young LVN I didn’t understand
Mis’ries as a complaint or a diagnosis
From Viet-Nam I well knew GSW
Pneumothorax, traumatic amputation

But in the civilian ER I met old people
And when I asked what was wrong they said
Mis’ries, you know; I got me my mis’ries
Doctor Junior, he’ll know what I mean

It isn’t in the texts, but now that I’m old
I know about all about th’ mis’ries myself

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

                          Paying the Electric Bill to a Tattooed Arm

In the August-hot, exhaust-fumed drive-through
Summer-sun glare against the window glass
Armored against robbers and customers
Who might want to steal electricity in person

Through the glass one can see a slender arm
And a shift in the light shows it to be
All splotchy in decaying reds, greens, and blues
Seemingly covered in a foul tropical blight

The window slides open to a beautiful smile
The corpse-like arm pushes out
          God
          Beauty
              A receipt

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

                    Penguin-Random House Sends me a Survey
                    and Then Rules Me Unqualified to Respond

Survey Completed - Thank You / We're sorry.
You do not meet the qualifications
for this survey. We sincerely thank you
and appreciate your time and participation

You will be redirected in 3 seconds;
please click here to continue now.

Poor sailors and poor students parse the past
Between the paper covers of poor Penguins
Poor crumbling pages and crumbling civilizations
Held together with rubber bands and Scotch tape

And when in middle age The City of God
At last succumbs to the barbarians of time
A fresh one is built up in Oxford blue
By Vivian Ridler, who saved for us the words

And yet - the arguments of several Romes
Were somehow fresher at $3.75

Today is also Valentine’s, and so
For the schoolchildren little candy hearts
As we remember from our happy youth
Teenagers like them still, and so they should

Now lessons follow: the four elements
Of Anglo-Saxon poetry, history
Chemistry, a turn in the auto shop:
Yeats’ happy “ceremonies of innocence”

And in the afternoon, Mass, and ashes,
And the cleaners tidy up candy wrappers

                             Instead of corpses

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


People are Dying by the Thousands – Let’s All Go Buy Slogan Tees

                                       XL, L, M, S, and Petite
                      Guaranteed Ethically-Sourced Materials

                    Domestic carnage now filled all the year
                    With Feast-days; the old Man from the chimney nook,
                    The Maiden from the ***** of her Love,
                    The Mother from the Cradle of her Babe,
                    The Warrior from the Field – all perish’d, all

       -Wordsworth, The Prelude, 1805-1806, Book X, 356-360

We busy ourselves in our accustomed ways:
Dishes to wash, the still-green lawn to be mowed
The vacuum cleaner to annoy the household pup
A book, a chair, a reverie, a glass of tea

But then

The evening news is a call to our conscience
With offerings in two senses only
Tastefully muted sounds and filtered visuals
Across a couch with a motorized recline mode

Dead bodies fuzzed out on the evening news
And peace-loving intellectuals chanting
                                                       “Gas the Jews!”

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

               People Who are Late for Mass Apologize to Me

                       “I pray you, remember the porter”

                                      -Macbeth II.iii.23-24

Like Macbeth’s poor porter I am a doorman too
An ‘umble man with a minimal set of skills
“’Tis my limited service” happily to meet
And greet the faithful while opening the door

When the server rings the bell, latecomers rush
Some glance at me guiltily and apologize
For being late to the divine liturgy –
Am I an attendance officer for God?

After the Order of the Porter I am a doorman
And will judge the timeliness of no man!

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1d
Negotiating Toilet Paper - 2nd attempt at posting
Lawrence Hall 2d
Negotiating Toilet Paper
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

                                    N­­egotiating Toilet Paper

The escort carried three rolls of toilet paper
As she walked me to the classroom area
One each for Dorm A, Dorm B, and the guards
Some fellows walked casually along the path

“And you guys know how to walk single-file”

“Yes, ma’am”

“Yes, ma’am”

“Sure thing, ma’am”

And thus in silence they formed that single-file

“One roll of toilet paper per prisoner per week
Sometimes it’s just not enough,” she said
“We had a meeting on it; I told the guys
Sometimes administration just doesn’t get it”

Dignity, like treaties, can be broken
In many ways

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

                                Peter­ Pan in Bowring Park

                 For Dan, who knows something of magic

                        “Do you want an adventure now,
                      or would like to have your tea first?”

                                          -Peter Pan

Sweet little bunnies browse and squirrels climb
And tiny mice and fairies give delight
To all the little ones of Newfoundland
Who visit Peter Pan in Bowring Park

He plays his pipes for them, and they can hear
The joyful music of his magic world
Where they may celebrate their pixie-dreams
At this bright second star from Kensington

And sing in peace their happy morning hymn
For darling little Betty, who waits for them


...the history behind Bowring Park's Peter Pan statue? — Historic Sites Association of Newfoundland & Labrador

Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                   Petite Bourgeois, Personal, and Self-Indulgent

                        I used to admire your poetry. I shouldn't admire
                        it now. I should find it absurdly personal. Don't you
                        agree? Feelings, insights, affections...it's suddenly
                        trivial now.

                   -Strelnikov to Yuri in Doctor Zhivago (film)

In the evenings I sit on my summer lawn
Slouched in an old, much-painted metal chair
That symbol of petite-bourgeois respectability
With a little table for my drink, my pipe, my book

(The cat pads by on errands of his own)

At dusk a friend or two might amble along
And join me for a glass, a smoke, a talk
We casually swat at mosquitoes and rumors
And argue about Doctor Zhivago and Lonesome Dove

(A fast-diving mockingbird mocks the cat)

In a fallen world of chaos and suffering
With fear of revolution in the air
Is it right to indulge ourselves with such trifles
As sitting and talking with old friends in the twilight?

Oh, yes

(The cat and the mockingbird continue their game)

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

                                     ­     Physician and Poet

                                          For Allan Pulliam
                                           Texas A & M ‘21

          I used to admire your poetry…I shouldn't admire it now. I
          should find it absurdly personal. Don't you agree? Feelings,
          insights, affections...it's suddenly trivial now. You don't agree;
          you're wrong. The personal life is dead in Russia. History has
          killed it.

                                     -Strelnikov in Doctor Zhivago

Don’t write to be approved by masters who
Wear Rolexes in the Name of the People
Don’t write to be approved by masters at all
But be your own authority and see

Your work, your words are nobler than manifestos
The latest noisy Guelphs and Ghibellines
All Power to the Constituent Assembly
One folk, one nation, one waffle with syrup

Write freedom through verses, and disobey
Anyone who wants to take your voice away

Picket Fences at Camp Tien Sha

There were picket fences at Camp Tien Sha
And a sign that read “Welcome to Viet-Nam”
And nobody ever asked why that should be
Both the fences and – just why were we there?

Picket fences – so could it be that bad?
Concrete transient barracks built by the French
Hot, foul, dark, and dank – it could be that bad
Mortars in the night – Welcome to Viet-Nam

Waiting for orders – did they forget us?
There were picket fences at Camp Tien Sha

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

                             Picking up a Box at the Nursing Home

In a cardboard box: a Rosary, glasses
A change of clothes, a pair of shoes, some socks
The miscellaneous bits and bobs of life
At the end of it

The nurses’ aide says she will pray for him
And probably she will; she seems nice
And truly everyone has been nice but now
It’s time to go

Some of the staff are on a cigarette break
On picnic benches out front – life goes on

A new calendar is a map of time
Showing you spaces in which you might live
And setting off the seasons and solemnities
The penances and feasts in order just

Beneath pictures of cafes’ in Water Street
Arctic-wind hiking trails in Ikkarumiklua
A pint of Quidi Vidi in The Gut
And Peter Pan’s statue in Bowring Park

Or maybe

Our Lady of Walsingham
Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe
Notre Dame de La Salette

Or some puppies and kittens

               And may you find your heart’s desires this year

Pilgrimage Along the A1

From Peterborough drops a road
Across the Fens, into the past
(Where wary wraiths still wear the woad);
It comes to Chesterton at last.

And we will walk along that track,
Or hop a bus, perhaps; you know
How hard it is to sling a pack
When one is sixty-old, and slow.

That mapped blue line across our land
Follows along a Roman way
Where Hereward the Wake made stand
In mists where secret islands lay.

In Chesterton a Norman tower
Beside Saint Michael’s guards the fields;
Though clockless, still it counts slow hours
And centuries hidden long, and sealed.

And there before a looted tomb,
Long bare of candles, flowers, and prayers,
We will in our poor Latin resume
Aves for old de Beauville’s cares.

Pilgrimage Along The A1

For all DeBeauvilles, Beauvilles, Bevilles, and Bevils Everywhere

From Peterborough drops a road
Across the Fens, into the past
(Where wary wraiths still wear the woad);
It comes to Chesterton at last.

And we will walk along that track,
Or hop a bus, perhaps; you know
How hard it is to sling a pack
When one is sixty-old, and slow.

That mapped blue line across our land
Follows along a Roman way
Where Hereward the Wake made stand
In mists where secret islands lay.

In Chesterton a Norman tower
Beside Saint Michael’s guards the fields;
Though clockless, still it counts slow hours
And centuries long hidden and sealed.

And there before a looted tomb,
Long bare of candles, flowers, and prayers,
We will in our poor Latin resume
Aves for old de Beauville’s cares.