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

                                                Shrifts, All Sizes

One hears of someone getting a short shrift, of course
But where does he get a shrift? At Amazon?
And are there any long shrifts available,
Fashioned in Sri Lanka or Honduras?

I have never felt the need for a shrift
Pajamas are just fine for me, thank you
But if I had one it would need to be
A long shrift, please, since I am rather tall

On the subject of shrifts

I don’t mean to be a bother or a bore
But can I buy one cheap at the local shrift store?

A woman. A knife. A very sharp knife.
She has waited for this hour, this moment
Her eyes – they gleam with passion dark upon
A figure recumbent upon a slab

She is not alone; she is being watched
But no one will dare cry for her to stop
They have all made their agreement, their bond
And now the woman lifts the knife…she strikes…!

She has cut the heart from an artichoke
And the studio audience applauds

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

                                     ­        Shouting Out Disease

                                     “I want no more thinking!”

                                     -Henry II to his barons in Becket

Soap for washing hands is not Republican
Eyeglasses never claim to be Democrat
Toothbrushes cannot be Communist plots
Antibiotics are not **** schemes

A pressure bandage has no Socialist leanings
Shampoo is not an expression of Fascism
Antihistamines never speak of the Falange
And nose drops never sing “The East is Red”

But when the topic of the Covid comes up
The flags are unfurled and the chanting begins

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                  Show Me Who You Read

Show me who you read

You love Thoreau’s hut on Walden Pond
You fly with Wendy and Peter to Neverland
You pet Mary Oliver’s marvelous dogs
And tell Yevtushenko not to be so full of himself

Show me who you read

You stand at an angle with Cavafy
You ask Frankl how he found meaning after all
You gaze into Tolkien’s palantir
And at bedtime say good night to the moon

Show me who you read

But I already know

You read by the light of a dreaming star
And everyone loves the starlight you are

Signor Bialetti Brews the Coffee now


Grazie, grazie, Signor Bialetti
Natty with your moustache and pork-pie hat
Charming man, your aluminum design
And Italian elegance grace my stove

If Don Camillo were to visit now
And bring along his ****** pal Peppone
They would still argue faith and politics
Just as they do in Emelia-Romagna

But here, over biscotti and expresso -
Grazie, grazie, Signor Bialetti!

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

                      Signs not Found in High School Locker Rooms

There is no I in eye.

You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take except in the “Hi, Bob!” thing, in which case maybe you should.

When the going gets tough, the tough think of logical alternatives.

We’re Number Ten!

Through these doors walk unhappy kids whose parents are re-living their youthful disappointments through their children.

That which does not **** you lowers your resistance to disease.

Pain is just weakness traveling to a lifetime of bone and joint clinic visits.

Shoot for the moon – if you miss you’ll fall screaming to your death.

Starving children working in contract sweat shops to make licensed team gear aren’t interested in your motivation.

And let’s be real – failure is always an option.

Simon and Schuster assure me that I
Will be consumed by J. R. Ward’s new book
But I am neither steak nor apple pie
And probably would be difficult to cook

“…you’ll love this riveting memoir.”

One longs to see a memoir riveting,
Setting in place with tongs the hot red steel,
Bucking the tail, and quickly pivoting
For another – a worker’s life is real

“Catherine Coulter and J.T. Ellison’s explosive Brit
in the FBI thriller The Sixth Day is now in paperback!”

One wouldn’t like to see an exploding Brit
Who would ruin one’s tweed country suit
Splattering English gore all over it –
That exploding galloping major brute!

But

Before the man went CRACK!
How did they ever fit
That pyrotechnic Brit
into a paperback?

The cold told a tale to me
the rain suggested poems
                                     another tale the winds brought
                                     the sea’s billows drove;
                                     the birds added words
                                     the treetops phrases

                        -The Kalevala, I, “In the Beginning” 1

We’re born to light and water and earth and air
Yet most of my life I cared little for verse,
But somehow words have become wonderful,
Even beloved because poetry -

- Poetry takes the chaos (or apparent chaos?)
Of life, and gently sings it into meaning
Through line, stanza, meter, and metaphor,
Shapes it, loves it, and makes it beautiful.

Poetry is like baptism, perhaps,
Or painting, sculpting, drawing, making music,
Or digging and setting a post-hole just right,
Helping set one’s perceptions of reality just right

And it is beautiful




1 The Kalevala. Elias Lonnrot. Trans. Keith Bosley. An Oxford World’s Classics Paperback.  OUP. New York. 1989.

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

        Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Moderated Commentator

How comforting to know that at the end of this plod
Despite each fault and flaw and fall and fail
We will be judged by our loving God
And not by the readers of the Daily Mail

(Cf. “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” Jonathan Edwards)

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

Situational Poverty

V: We was poor but we didn’t know it
R:                                 Oh, yes, we did

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

                     Six Months of Heat and Slanting Yellow Light

Six months of heat and slanting yellow light
And heat and damp and slanting yellow light
And heat and rot and slanting yellow light
And heat and pain and slanting yellow light
And heat and pain and burning yellow light
And heat and pain and sour yellow light

Summer

Sixth Mass Extinction

Earth's sixth mass extinction event under way, scientists warn

-The Guardian

The headmaster has shaved his head egg-smooth
Shifted his hair to the point of his chin
And his sunshades to the top of his scalp
His petrol-station SAS sunshades

He often boasts he doesn’t even own a tie
And hasn’t read a book since Upper-Sixth
Something transgender post-colonial
About Guevara (who is on his tee)

Not a form master, but a master of forms
A way-cool disciple of Ofsted norms


Variant for the American Market

Sixth Mass Extinction

Earth's sixth mass extinction event under way, scientists warn

-The Guardian


Like, you know, the principal shaves his head

Like, absolutely, ***

Got him a goatee, like, actually

Cheap gas-station Official USA Navy Seals™® shades, mannnnnnnnnnnnnnn

Not cool, ***, actually

I had to help him with the big words in Goodnight, Moon

Absolutely, like

Yosemite Sam™® on his faunky ol’ tee

His office has, like, stuffed fish and, like, football pictures, like, and his Dallas Cowboys™® baseball cap, like, actually

Sleep Study

Do I have to buy the book? The SparkNotes?
Will this material be testable?
But all I have to do is go to sleep
In a lovely bed in a lovely room

To sleep, adorned with little EKG pads
And little wires a-running here and there
Like the wiring harness of a Packard
In need of a tuneup since ‘48

I cast aside a novel about spies
And in a bit begin to study sleep

          Number Six: "How did I sleep?"

          Number Two: "Sound as a bell. Have a nice day."

                                       -*The Prisoner

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

                                  Slo­gging Through the Cantos

A feral howl of sustained malevolence
The souring stench of anti-Semitism
Random ideograms scattered about
Appropriating a touch of Chinese cool

Defining tainted chic at Rapallo
Free verse scattered like post-war hopes shattered -
And did he take a splash of Mussolini
With his death-in-the-afternoon denials?

How awkward for those whose poetic sage
Was but a mad relic of a tattered age

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                                Smart*ss Watch

It clings to my wrist like a faithless friend
Good fun to pal around when we met
But getting just a little tiresome with time
Unreliable in his many promises

He fails to make the appointments that we set
Or note the weather or mark activities
I dunno; maybe he’s making time with that Timex
My long-time steady who could sure tick my tock

Sweet face, delicate hands - she’d been around, but
Maybe I was wrong – I think I’ll dial her

Two snakes in battle on a summer day
Writhing and twisting on a sandy road
Grappling desperately like taxing authorities
Fighting over a poor worker’s paycheck

Or like fierce coffee-break theologians
In anger ripping a scripture apart
Each clutching a ****** fragment to himself
But careful not to upset the 501C

And in the end, one snake swallows the other
Keeping him closer than a beloved brother

Our merry springtime is a glorious feast
Of joyful sights and scents and happy sounds,
Of breezes turning warmly from the east
Of bustling bees winging their flowery rounds

Above, around, and through a world of green
In dreams of life that move the seasons along
Where each day’s sunrise halos a Creation scene
And every blossom is its own soft song

But the sweetest sound echoing through the glades
Is a snake being shredded by the lawnmower’s blades

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                 Because Men Who Betray Women are so Amusing

                  Bang-Bang Baldwin and the Too-Cool Audience

A man shoots a woman
For which another woman takes the fall
And Saturday Night Live
Is okay with it all

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

                      Snow Clouds for Children on a January Dawn

There could be snow later, and that would be nice
Children can grow up here and never see snow
Today they might go out and play in it
While we old folks tut-tut, “You’ll catch your death…”

But they are asleep, the snow is asleep
Only the rain is awake, drip, drip, drip
Making last summer’s leaves speak one last time
As they crumble into their winter sleep

There could be snow later, and that would be nice
For the children: a happy new year twice

Snowlight

White snowlight, glowlight, brightening the woods
By praying down the sky to float among
The dark and creaking pillars of ancient oaks
Whose trunks and limbs are black with clinging ice

Drear, mouldering autumn leaves now lie at rest
Beneath soft-shoaling ripples of rare snow
Pale, iridescent light dances between
The clouds and the ground, and then back again

Shadowless colorings, pearlings, and frosts
At play with miracles in January.

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

                   Social Distancing is a Gilligan’s Island Re-run

Because the CV has cancelled new shows
And yet another Monday night football game
Life is a Gilligan’s Island re-run
Until for non-payment the service is stopped

For we are all on an island of isolation
Even if the Professor builds us a TV
Of palm leaves, cowrie shells, and Ginger’s pins
While Mary Anne crochets a mask for her navel

Maybe a ship will rescue us today
But will it take us back to where we were?

Socially Engaged Poetry

As an effective tool for advocacy
Creating partnerships and sharing skills
A voice to the voiceless, Split this Cliché
Empowerment to the empowermentless
Through bleats of provocation and witness
Copyrighted and stereotyped
In a World That is Forever 1968
Exploring and celebrating the many ways
We can score yet another guilt-grant
Asserting the centrality of the 501C3
Through bearing witness to diversity
As long as it behaves itself and thinks like us
Accessible and yet authentic
A n d l i k e d o s t u f f w i t h s p a c e l i k e u no

cause       spaces

                                 are authentic, and,
   like  


                 stuff
Poetry as a living, breathing art form
If you listen, you can hear its respirations
Gasping in the long, dark night of group-think
Obedient to a mission statement
And the careful construction of resumes
Committee integrate complexity
Formula dampens the authentic voice
Perform this vital work imagining
Personal and social responsibility
Revolutionary transformation
Write and perform this vital work support
Of human social justice experience
Grounded in holistic spirituality
Flouting the patriarchal something-ness
An act that requires community
If you love freedom, you dare not disobey
And let all the people say “Cogent!”

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

                                       Social Security Online

We have suspended electronic access
to your personal information we tried
three times to match the information you provided
with our records but were unable
to do so you may electronic information
again after 24 hours please verify
your personal information again
before trying to use this suspension
will not affect any Social Security benefits
you receive for further assistance please contact
EXIT My Social Security Request
a replacement social security card
we’re sorry we cannot accept online requests
at this time please try again later
you may begin a replacement social security
card request using another online social
may also contact your local office
for other replacement card options DONE

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

                Socrates on the Courthouse Lawn in Liberty, Texas

                         “Strong minds discuss ideas,
                          average minds discuss events,
                          weak minds discuss people.”

                     -attributed to Socrates, but no one knows

Imagine if you will old Socrates
On an old wooden bench on the courthouse lawn
Playing checkers with all the other old men
On an old picnic table throughout the day

He lifts his old straw hat in the leafy shade
With his old bandana he wipes his old bald head
And sagely asks the old questions of us
And through his dialectic dismantles old cant

And that must be why, as the ages pass
They’ve made for him a monument here in the grass



(While passing through Liberty, Texas I saw on the courthouse lawn a marble slab engraved only with “Socrates”.)

Liberty County Courthouse - TexasCourtHouses.com
Liberty, Texas, Bed & Breakfast Hotels (usatoday.com)
Socrates (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

With thanks to everyone who gives us
Young Sheldon and The Big Bang Theory

Soft doxie
Warm doxie
Little ball  of fur
Happy doxie
Sleepy doxie
yap, yap, yap!  YAP! YAP! YAP! Yap! Yap! Yap! YAP! YAP! YAP! Yap! Yap! Yap! YAP! YAP! YAP! Yap! Yap! Yap! YAP! YAP! YAP! Yap! Yap! Yap! Bark! YAP! YAP! YAP! Yap! Yap! Yap! Woof! YAP! YAP! YAP! Yap! Yap! Yap! Grrrrrrr!  YAP! YAP! YAP! Yap! Yap! Yap !YAP! YAP! YAP! Yap! Yap! Yap!

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

                               Soft, Skin-Sensitive Vegan Leather

Is vegan leather
(The grim question must be asked)
Made from real vegans?

“…schools, as soft targets, need to be fortified”
-the sheriff of Broward County

Perhaps we are Essenes in the desert
Or Sicarii fortifying Masada
A civilization fragmented, lost
Confused and lost, withering, withdrawing

We are in any event determined
To save something against the future time
Anything – so that men may pray again -
A rosary, an anthology of Keats

Deep in the dust deep in a cave upon a hill
While in the plain below dark armies drill

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

                      Soldiers Dicing for Jesus’ Garments

1st Soldier: “Let’s roll the dice for Jesus’ coat and hat.”
2nd Soldier: “We don’t need dice; there’s an app for that.”

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

           Soldiers Sleeping Beneath a Bust of Father Abraham

In the Capitol exhausted soldiers sleep
Beneath a bust of Abraham Lincoln
And a sign that reads: “Cameras and related gear
Not authorized in this area.”

After days of transports and formations
Of stringing wire and policing the area
Of orders and marches and lines for the head
And maintenance of all weapons and gear

They sprawl just any whichaway on a floor
To be mocked with sneaky MePhone photographs
“Is that all our overpaid soldiers do? Sleep?”
And stepped around by those whom they protect

Insolent civilians might not give a ****
But our soldiers are blessed by Father Abraham

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

                                   My Soul-Quest for My Meaning

V:

My parents don’t understand me; I’m special
So sensitive, an artist of the mind
So delicate, a bearer of all sorrows
So fragile, unsuited to physical work

They tell me to get off my (self) and find a job

R:

Your parents understand you perfectly

Some prophets spoke before the thrones of kings
And others at the gates of Jerusalem
One stood upon a rock and split the sea
And others heard God in the soft, soft wind

A prophet of our time at a table stood
Before a cafeteria table draped in cloth
Fronted a trinity of microphones
And split complacency that rainy day

Umbrellas were dripping, the sky was low
A prophet spoke to us, and we did not know

Porching on a Saturday in October

But where are the little children? Well, here,
But they are tall, lanky teenagers now
With car keys and cutoffs and muscle shirts
Whispering, giggling, heavy-lifting

(Stop tormenting your sister!)

Dad wants the outdoor grill moved? Sure – watch this!
Pans and food from the kitchen to the grill
And back again? We’re well on top of it
Something from town? We’re on our way right now

(Stop hitting your brother!)

Children, like spring, must grow into summer
And their springs and summers are forever our joys

(And never stop loving each other.)

Lawrence Hall 2d
Someday a New King Arthur - as published in fellowshipandfairydust.com

https://fellowshipandfairydust.com/2022/09/20/someday-a-new-arthur/

https://fellowshipandfairydust.com/2022/09/20/someday-a-new-arthur/

Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                      Someday I Hope to Meet a Mango Tree

                             For Pradip Chattopadhyay

Someday I hope to meet a mango tree
And sit at its feet to learn wisdom from Buddha
And if Buddha is not there, then I’ll learn from him
That the absence of teaching is a teaching itself

Someday I hope to meet a mango tree
Where lovers stroll beneath its gentle shade
And if lovers are not there, then I’ll learn from them
That the absence of love presupposes love

Someday I hope to meet a mango tree
Maybe in Veluvana in holy India
But if I never make that pilgrimage I’ll learn
That the magic of the mango is real

Someday I hope to meet a mango tree
Where surely I will find both teaching and love


Pradip Chattopadhyay - Hello Poetry

Symbolism of Mango Grove at Veluvana in Buddhism - Silent Balance

Mangoes: The True Caribbean Currency (caribjournal.com)

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

                               Some Nights Around 0400

Some nights around 0400
The silence calls you up for a dreamless dream
About your future and about your past
About that somenight when your dreams are done

The dancing figures of the flickering past
Figure across the pages of the night
Some as happy memories
Some in sorrowful rebuke

Your scope of activity is limited now
But what will you do in the morning?

The Cardinal knows that he is a pretty bird
Splendidly attired in feathers bright and gay
He publishes loudly; he will be heard
Among the squawks of mockingbird and jay

He gobbles and scatters husks, rusks, and seeds
In self-indulgent abandonment
He ignores all others in his wants and needs
They’re secular birds; they can take a hint

The Cardinal certainly loves to be seen
At the public feeder in all his pride
Attentive to fashions, and always keen
For the Best Birds to be posed at his side

But then one day

A few remnant feathers, a ripped cardinal’s hat -
He seems to have forgotten the watchful cat

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

                              Why I Wear a Boonie Hat

Mostly to try to avoid speeding tickets
And maybe someone will say, “Thank you for your service”
And pay for my coffee in gratitude
But they just stop at “Thank you for your service”

Sometimes I meet some other old man
And we ask each other where we were
Memories – some of them surprisingly good
Others dark enough
                                      And we were so young

My boonie hat keeps the sun off my head
And the fluorescents in the Social Security office
It makes me look like John Wayne in The Geriatric Berets
Not really. Maybe a different angle…how’s that?

And young women come up to me to say
That their grandfathers were in Viet-Nam

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

         Someone’s Beating on the Door of the Gospel Radio Station

I switched on the scanner when the weather turned foul
Hailstones and lightning, and clouds in rotation
Through the static came a voice in a cop-speak growl:
“Someone’s beating on the door of the gospel radio station”

I tuned then to Jesus on the radio dial
Wondering what drama I might happen to hear
I listened to the three-chord commandos awhile
But never learned the cause of the caller’s fear

Maybe for the music, or from fear of damnation -
Someone wanted in at the gospel station

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

                            Some People Are Not in Prison

“What are we here for? We are not alive though we are living
and we are not in our graves though we are dead.”

                  ― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The House of the Dead

The difference between people in prison
And people who are not in prison
Is that some people are in prison
And some people are not

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

                                     Some Poor Rhymes for Easter


            “There is a time for penance and a time for partridge.”

                                        -Saint Teresa of Avila


Processions and prayers among the cloisters
Weary pilgrims in their thread-bare habits
The faithful beading Aves and Pater Nosters -
Still,
There is much to be said for chocolate rabbits!

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

                        Some Say This is the End of the Era of Trump

Some say this is the end of the era of Trump
Some with glee
Some in mourning

Some say this is the beginning of the era of Biden
Some with glee
Some in mourning

But I say that this is your era
As it always was
And always will be

And you realize that this is your era
Sometimes with glee
Sometimes in mourning

You need no leader, no master, no whip
Obey yourself
And lead yourself

You wear no one else’s name
For you have yours
And you are free

You are not defined by an era
Define yourself
And honor yourself

Make the picture of your hero
A self-portrait

Sometimes with glee
Sometimes in mourning

But always you

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                            Something That Will Stick to Your Ribs

When I was a boy I was told to eat balanced meals
“Something that’ll stick to your ribs,” they said
But I didn’t want anything sticking to my ribs
I still don’t

Sometimes in Korea, Sometimes Not

He wears clean overalls, a nice new shirt
A collection of small tools in his pockets
A cap that reads “U.S. Army Retired”
And for some reason his Sunday go-to-church shoes

He mumbles his Mac-Something breakfast meal
A presentation in cellophane and foam
Organic-free or gluten-full or something
And seems to visit with someone long gone

A middle-aged woman in a Daewoo
Arrives to help him up and take him home

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                         Sometimes There are no Smaller Words


                                “It was all sea and islands now”

                       -C. S. Lewis on the death of his mother


In the end there was peace
The oxygen bubbled beyond him now
Past his greying skin and out into room

His earliest memory was set in his father’s store
Playing in front while young men dressed much alike
Carried supplies out to a waiting truck
They tousled his hair and said words he didn’t understand
Someone told him they were German prisoners of war
And what they said was, “what a nice little boy”

And his last memory – I hope it was of Father Michael
With an Orthodox blessing for the journey to come
Or Max and Dawn and Lori, for the journey that was

Once upon a time, and many times
We smoked our pipes on summer lawns
Or with our feet to a winter fire
And spoke of Lewis, Tolkien, and Milton

Whenever I lent him a book he returned it to me
With minuscule notes
Sometimes of great wisdom
Sometimes of wonderful wit

And I have the books and the notes

Whenever he spoke of a topic in Orthodoxy
In exasperation I asked him to use smaller words
Because I barely graduated from high school
And once he said, “Sometimes there are no smaller words”

The words keep getting smaller and smaller
But in the end there is peace


“Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and make perpetual Light to shine upon him.”

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

            Somewhere in New Mexico I tipped a Waitress 25%

        NOT I - NOT ANYONE else, can travel that road for
        you.   You must travel it for yourself.

                                         -Walt Whitman

On a cool autumn morning in New Mexico
A greasy spoon along the interstate
Walt Whitman and I enjoyed breakfast together
Bacon and eggs, hash browns, coffee and toast

And it was very good – no heaves of gas
But Whitman found an errand in some other soul
And sang a different self to California
McKuen rode with me the rest of the way

Breakfast was ninety-five cents; I added a quarter
The waitress was happy, and so were we all

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                            Somewhere in Syria There is a You

Somewhere in Syria there is a you
Pondering all the existential questions:
What is the meaning of life? Is God real?
Can you get to your job without getting shot?

Your notebooks were hidden from the old regime
Your notebooks are now hidden from the new
Is there enough food for today, for tomorrow -
Rough men with guns are beating on your door

Somewhere in Syria there is a you
In the next few seconds – what will you do?

Some Year’s Day

What century is it outside?

-Boris Pasternak

It’s a fair question: what century is this?
There was fog in the morning, this first day
Of the new year, and later overcast
There was nothing new in any of that

The fat grey squirrel raided the bird-seed at dawn
Which is why he is fat, and dampness dripped
From the roof eaves onto the long-dead leaves
There was nothing new in that, either

The first cup of coffee, the same old news -
It’s a fair question, it is: what century?