Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                            ­     Our Lubyanka

Metropolitan Detention Center
All those fuzzy harmless syllables
Grey concrete walls but no clock at the top
Windowless facings along city sidewalks

Our federal marias are white, not black
Because we are not Communists, oh, no
People go in; they don’t always come out
They say that from the basement you can see Florence

You might be transferred there, but mind the steps
Smile at the cameras that have been switched off

At dawn
               thunder rises and lightning falls
A black spot in middle of a road
Closer and closer – a wobbling black spot
A bicyclist unaware of the gods

Slow-pedaling through a nowhere of despair
A corpse, fragments of skin still on its bones
It turns and grins, a crewman on that ship
And in its veins that rotting albatross

At dawn
              grimacing through rotting-teeth breath
A wereling wobbling in existential death

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

                                A Metternichian State of Repose
                                in a Concert of Leaves and Light

Up before dawn and out among the quiet
Concelebrating with God the leafy light
That falls as blessing upon the lawn’s soft turns
From grey to gold to green to springing life

And then from meditation to liturgy
The Opus Dei of Saturday mornings
With rake and shovel and fire against the litter
That shoals into corners and along the fence

The feeblest remembrance of God’s mighty hand
Shaping chaos into order and meaning

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

                   A Middle-Aged Sack Boy Yelling into Space
                      While Carelessly Loading the Groceries

“MAN, THIS WEEKEND I’M GONNA:

“CENTRAL PROCESSING UNIT! TLB AMPLITUDE MULTI-MEDIA CONTENT! STREAM VAC STREAM PROFILE VISUAL DISPLAY UNIT SONIC VIBRATIONS IoT KERNEL ZETTABYTE! YOWEE! T-POS VM VE VPN HE DON’T KNOW RAM FROM ROM HA! HA! OS GL LOAD BALANCE LOGIC CATE BIT RATE ALAC ADC AIN’T GOT NO CHI FI IN MY SYSTEMS, DUDE! NT DAC MMORP G FLAC WAV MQA OGG MP3 AAC MQA PHASEY-DAISY DRIVIN’ ME CRAZY! PCM SHE BRAIN-TICKLES ME! OPEN BETA GAIN DRIVER SO SHE’S GOT THIS KID BY HER FIRST MARRIAGE TERMSYNC LOGIN BUT I’M DOWN WITH THAT SHE WRITES MY GRAPHICS CARD IF Y’ KNOW WHAT I MEAN HEH! HEH! AFB METAGAME CHEESE KONAMI CODE LEVEL! GAME MECHANIC BUFFED NERFED LFG LFM GAMERTAG!!!! XBOX CYBERFI SMOKE ME SOME PANAMA RED ELECTRON KOMMANDO! NEUTRON NUGGET PROTON PROTEAN A PRIEST A RABBI AND A WITCH-GODDESS TRANSPORT INTO A NEUTRON BAR SLIDERULERS OF THE UNIVERSE DON’T BOGART THAT BIOME AND THEN I GOT ME A WEEK’S VACATION COMING…!”

(Don’t forget the dog food)

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

                      A Midnight Appointment of Shame

                 “Where greed is an ape and pride is an ***”

                 -Chesterton, The Ballad of the White Horse

You poor man –

You are not the first to use Truth as a *****
With which to dig for yourself mouth-honors and wealth
A tyrant piped, and now you dance for him
His toy, his poppet, his puppet, his pet

You poor man –

Who pottage-messed stout honesty for toys
To descend in a brazen elevator
To an evil that didn’t even have to try
For you were so eager to go to it

You poor man –

You poor, poor man: the **** will not crow for you -
You have betrayed only your wretched self


https:///www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/President Donald J. Trump Announces Intent to Appoint the Following Individuals to Key Administration Posts | The White House-120320/

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

             The Fairies Themselves Now Dance Sweet Summer In

                         My work is loving the world.
                         Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird

                                      -Mary Oliver, “Messenger”

Everything is sacramental this week:

The Strawberry Moon in the fullness of being
Midsummer magic by day and by night
The English quarter day, the Feast of St. John
And holy bonfires in honor of light

Good honeybees take Communion at every flower
Soft breezes sing hymns among the ripening corn
The woods and fields are baptized in happiness
The sun and moon bless maidens and swains

We need no clocks or calendars to tell us when –
The fairies themselves now dance sweet summer in

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

         A Mildly Amusing Repudiation of the Concept of Entropy


                         For poetry too is a little incarnation.

                     -C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms


All that ever was, that is, that ever will be -
All is from God, and will return to God
As elegant iambic pentameter

(Okay, maybe tetrameter)

A dipthong  - this is not a foolish man
Inappropriately dressed for sea or sand
Nor yet a verbal dipping, nor a thong
Nor yet a tropic river that flows along

A dipthong is two vowels in harmony
One with another dancing gracefully
Without a consonant to interrupt
Through a harsh, hinging sound that’s too abrupt

The poorly called but sweetly sounded dipthong
Is just another name for a little song

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

                                     A Moment Between Worlds

When I step outside to visit the stars
To gaze upon Venus and Jupiter
Who ask no questions, who make no demands
I hope to celebrate the universe in some small way

But maybe not

Coyote-wolf-dog thingies keen in the woods
And autumn cold comes creeping across the fields
There is no Grendel out there in the mist
That is, I don’t think there is, but maybe…

But maybe what?

They remind me that I am but a visitor
And that it’s time for me to go inside

Whether I am on the right side of history
Is a fantasy and an irrelevancy -
History had better be on the right side of me

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

                                     ­ No Straight Lines in Nature

That commonplace of art instruction is true:
From the rainbow to the tomato worm
And in the rhythms of our chambered hearts
Creation curves itself around our lives

A straight line is of the imagination
Repudiated even by that famous crow
Who flies as he will and not according
To the abstracts of mathematicians

Nothing in nature chooses graphed confines -
Of course the man-made coffin – that features straight lines

A Morning Dialogue with One’s Self

I.
(As both the alarm clock and the smart phone make unpleasant noises)

Today is the first day of the rest of…
Put a sock in it, all right? It’s too early
For optimism. Two feet to the floor
Yes, two feet, same number as last night

II.
(The bed does not care whether it is made up)

Not making the bed. Those two feet forward
North to the kitchen and the coffee ***
Switch on. Window humidity-streaked
Cats posing prettily in the dawn-light

III.
(The coffee machine gurgles happily)

A fresh new day, and with it new adventures
Still not making up that bed.  Don’t gotta.

A Morning Meeting with God’s Anointed One
and His Team Fist-Pumping Woo-Hoo

He pads his expenses and prays over us
About a great evil spreading its claws
We too must pray to drive out the darkness
Because dissent is sent by Satan, amen

But be ye positive, not negative
Hold hands and be one united company
Be anointed in Jesus, just like the boss
Who feels his critics should be jailed, amen

Think less, work more, do not presume to judge;
Now go ye forth and peddle that discount sludge!

Amen

V: “There was this police chief and the cartels
beheaded his wife so it was vengeance
ride time and then they raided this house with
armored personnel carriers and 7.63

machine guns and stuff and BOOM! and there was
heads in the walls ‘cause they’d hid the bodies
in the walls man it was gross and then they
sneaked up on the super-secret cartel

bunkers and silently killed all the guards…”
R: “Well, I guess I got to get to work now…”

An Abandoned School

Young dreams, now scattered fragments on the floor:
A little handle into a corner flung
The disc of sizes never again to fit
A number two pencil into place for a trim
Nor will the made-in-Chicago hopper
Ever again save for the classroom prankster
Sweet-smelling slitherings of cedar shavings
To fling about while Teacher’s at the board.

A new Ticonderoga ****** into
The spinning Scylla and Charybdis blades
Was tested by steel, the dross savaged away,
By turning the handle and grinding away,
And from this grim ordeal emerged The Point,
The perfect point, the adventurous lead…
It’s not really lead, stupid, it’s graphite;
That’s what Teacher said.  Don’t you know anything?

Girls are stupid.  They play with dolls and stuff.
I’ve got a real cap pistol.  I’ll draw it.
You want to see? Look! No, wait, that’s not right;
It’s better this way…Ma’am?  Uh…integers?
Arithmetic is stupid.  Science is fun.
I’ve got most of the Audubon bird stamps
And I liked it when we cut up the frogs
Old people are so mean. I’ll never be old.

A leaking pipe drips the minutes away
Outside a broken window summer sings
Its songs of freedom as it always has
The desks are gone, the electricity is off
The air smells of education and decay
The classroom now is littered with the past:
A broken crayon, a construction-paper heart,
A silence longing for children’s voices.

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                            An Accident in the Scriptorium

One of the monks fainted, and bruised his head;
“This copier is broken,” Brother Armarian said

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

                               An Active School Meeting in Progress

                              (A motion to adjourn is always in order)

This morning I drove by my old school
A staff meeting was being committed inside
Perpetrating crimes against intelligence
“HELLO MY NAME IS”
                              10,000 years of civilization?

Doughnuts and foam cups of coffee

“IT’S A GREAT DAY TO BE A WILDCAT!”
Or a lion, a tiger, a platypus
The new superintendent loves Jesus
His family, children, and America

Doughnuts and foam cups of coffee

He introduces the motivational speaker
Who loves Jesus, his family, children
America, and unsourced parables
“MAKE THIS THE BEST YEAR EVER! HOO-AH!”

Doughnuts and foam cups of coffee

The coaches sit in the back reading the sports pages
And Campbell’s Texas Football – a point of privilege
English teachers count split infinitives in the program
“LET’S ALL HOLD HANDS AND SING OUR ALMA MATTER [sic]!”

Doughnuts and foam cups of coffee

Generally speaking I’m against the death penalty
I’d make an exception for motivational speakers

It’s for the children

A selection from:

https://logosophiamag.com/2022/09/27/an-active-school-meeting-in-progress/

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

                                   For the Good of the Republic

                               To the Caesars and their Generals
        (But not to the Senate; they have made themselves irrelevant)

Illustris:

You have medals and money and country estates
Book deals and bank accounts and pleasure gardens
You can retire in soft luxury now -
Your military contractors have seen to that

The Rubicon is ruby with your soldiers’ blood
And the Tiber is stopped with the loyal dead
Who fell upon your sword-sharp signatures -
And now you conspire against each other

You have done enough; go home to your musicians
Your receptions, your hunting parties, your…wives
You could pray for the dead
But you won’t

Still,

If you love your nation you will not meet
At the Milvian Bridge

Dark Advent is a silent waiting time
When autumn chills into pale, year-end days
And joy seems smothered by hard-frosting rime:
Cold is the debt that spring to winter pays

The seasons link to seasons in a chain,
The chain of being that links, also, our souls,
Seasons and souls, not always without pain:
Summer’s wild lightning falls and thunder rolls.

Linked to us too, rose by mystical rose,
This holy Advent is Our Lady’s Grace
To us who wait in exile sad; she knows
Where souls and seasons sing, the Night, the Place.

Seasons and souls, linked to days dreary-dim:
Follow them with roses to Bethlehem

An Advent Valentine

For, of course, happy Valentine Marie

And now comes Valentine, an autumn gift;
Vertumnus and Pomona thus withdraw
In recognition of the seasonal shift,
Saluting, they, this Advent child in awe.

The pagan year recesses to its close;
The Christian year commences with a child
Born as the second candle softly glows
(Saint Nicholas is happily beguiled).

Her family journeys to Bethlehem,
A little family in a Star-lit night,
And Simeon, perhaps, joins in their hymn,
As they present their love to living Light:

Rare gifts for the Christ Child ‘midst sheep and kine,
And not among the least, His Valentine.

An After-Market Warranty for my Catholic Space Laser

             “...tremulous little people of dim intellect and hyperactive
               imagination...need that Wondrous Explanation that will
               quiet all their fears, thrill them with villains to revile, and
               never tax their feeble powers of intellection.”

                        -John D. MacDonald, Reading for Survival

The Great Texas Emu Bubble, crop circles
Power crystals, cryptocurrency
Jewish space lasers, messages from Q
Lizard people abducted by aliens

Enron, obey the science, the settled science
Chloroquine, tulips, herd immunity
Your Norton has expired, buy magic beans
Invoice #666 needs to be paid today

Your uncle in Nigeria is in lots of trouble
And don’t forget the South Sea Bubble

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

                An Aging Hunter-Gatherer on Morning Patrol

Up before dawn for coffee with Venus
Cool and dry, a San Diego dawn
Medicines for the creaky old dog
Medicines for the creaky old me

Early to town for a Connie-cut
At girly Designs Et Cetera
North of town past the traffic light
The school board, taxes, marriages, and deaths

A cruise by the Sonic for cholesterol
Home to think about mowing the yard

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                     An All-You-Can-Eat Buffet of Summer Bugs

                      A middle-of-the-night half-awake moment

(He was small in the spring)

When a tree frog moves up in the world
He becomes a fashionable window frog
No longer the pain of a rough tree bark life
But rather the pane of easy living

(He grew larger during the summer)

My bedroom window is his buffet
An all-he-can-eat buffet of bugs
Delicious summer bugs shared around
With an uncommon house gecko of style

(He’s really big now)

I look out at a hungry tree frog, you see
But now – is he looking hungrily in at me?

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

                  ­        An Amazon Driver with Skull Earrings

No, of course he’s not an Amazon; he’s a man
Navigating a big ol’ delivery truck through life
Ferrying to addresses this side of the Styx
Brown pasteboard boxes and white plastic envelopes

I wanted to ask him about his goal in life
But he was in a hurry to turn around
And continue his rowing, so I thanked him
And he thanked me, and I don’t know his dream

A man with skull earrings and muscled arms -
I hope he’s steering toward a happier shore

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

           An American Legion Meeting

O let us sit, our coffee cups to hand
And discharge half-remembered boot camp yarns
As ragged volleys of camaraderie
Blasted through well-defended hearing aids

O let us not raise funds for this or that
Through weekend fish-fries in a parking lot
Or catalogue good deeds inflicted on

Those

For whom our kindness is a border breached

O let us sit, our coffee cups to hand
And remember again the Vam Co Tay

An Angelina College Christmas

The hallways of our little school echo
God’s holy silence on this Christmas Eve
The only light’s the Star of long ago;
It shines this night for us, whose hearts believe

For we are all now at the Manger met
Before the Altar of eternal Light
So many different disciplines, and yet
We share one calling on this rarest night

We bring our gifts to Mary’s fair-born Child:
A pen, a broom, a book, a welding rod,
A wrench, some chalk, some papers neatly filed –
Our daily labors offered up to God

But silence now: offices, classrooms, gym,
As silent as the streets of Bethlehem.

Leaves fallen are summer’s tabernacle
Upon earth as altar, bearing life within
And life without: children, a protesting squirrel
And that storied grasshopper, unprepared

Neither blanket nor carpet, but a studio
Of life, in which cellular structure frames
The secrets of green chloroplastic life
And graphs the sweet, wind-chorused songs of summer

They fall asleep for a time, to awaken in spring:
Leaves fallen are summer’s tabernacle

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

                                     An Anteroom to Eternity?

                         (Nigdaw in Essex said it much better)

Waiting in the E.R.
More waiting in the E.R.
     The pain is back
Waiting in a corridor as people walk by
     and look at you
Waiting in another corridor, gasping hello to
     a curious, wide-eyed child
Someone gives you an injection
Waiting in yet another corridor
Pushed into a room
     "Oh, wait, it's not ready..."
Pushed back into a corridor
Wait…
The hours...the hours...


Note: my experience with health care professionals, from the nice young man who brings the meal trays to the great physicians, is uniformly wonderful and I am most grateful to them. The – THE – problem is the corporatism that now rules even nominally religious hospitals with the clawing, grasping hands and narrow minds of Scrooges. Administrators and stockholders will cut work hours and understaff units if only a poor dollar, rather than a poor human, is saved.

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                An Apology to Brazos Bookstore
                                        on Banned Books Week

               Oh, our descendants will burn with bitter shame
               to remember, when punishing vile acts,
               that most peculiar time, when
               plain honesty was labeled 'courage’

           -Yevtushenko, “Conversation with an American Writer”

Dear Brazos Bookstore:

Several years ago I wrote you a polite note
Suggesting that you were a bit hyperbolic
On the touchy subject of banning books
“This is America,” I said; “it doesn’t happen here”

I was wrong
I apologize

And you are brave

Cordially,

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

                                     An Appeal to Our Ancestors

When this is over

                    …slumped in their seats fidgeting nervously, they no
                    longer resembled the arrogant leaders of old. They
                    seemed to be a drab assortment of mediocrities. It
                    seemed difficult to grasp that such men, when last you
                    had seen them, had wielded such monstrous power, that
                    such as they could conquer a great nation…

                         -Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third *****

When this is over

Teach us democracy, the dignity of work
Help us restore the sacred arts we banned
The books we burned, the images we forbade
The poetry we purged, the plays we feared to stage

When this is over

Free us from militias in our streets
The Black Marias, the concentration camps
The Reichskirche imposed by our government
The censorship to which we weakly submit

When this is over

Free us from our fears, share with us your strength
That we will never empower tyrants again

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

                             An Armada of Black Escalades

              …detailed lists of disloyal government officials

             -Inside Trump '25: A radical plan for Trump’s
                              second term (axios.com)

A shadow government just like
The new government just like
The previous government -
And just whose names are inscribed on Schedule F?

Those black Escalades

Armored Mariahs carrying functionaries
And their lists to secret meetings in the night
The Party faithful planning a new Lubyanka
And cultural suicide through electronic noise

Those black Escalades

The escort has a warrant for your obedience
You can see Siberia from the passenger seat

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

                  An Artless Meditation on the Joyful Mysteries

I. The Annunciation

May we all hear the Angel’s silver voice
In spite of ourselves

II. The Visitation

May we all help each other along the way
In spite of ourselves

III. The Nativity

May we all wait in the cold outside the Stable
In spite of ourselves

IV. The Presentation

May we all be presented in the Temple some day
In spite of ourselves

V. The Finding of the Child in the Temple

May we all be found in the Temple some day
In spite of ourselves

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

                                  An Asymptomatic Sinner

I burned a television set today
Which was a rewarding experience
A bonfire of the vanities indeed
Burn, you 140 channels, burn!

I am in quarantine, ‘though symptom-free
And there was an old television around
And so I burned it. And I’m glad, ha-ha!
Tomorrow I will rake the ashes for its guts

While in quarantine, waiting for my test -
A burning television is a merry jest!

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

         A Nation of Couch Cabbages Blames the Chinese Communists

A question may be brought about ownership
And the turgid content of the daily trawl
But even before the question of censorship
                    One must ask
Why are adults on TikTok at all?

The garden out back needs mowing, but autumn bees
Good bees at work and play don’t see it that way
And spin about in the October breeze
Wind-spinning in the sun their bee ballet

The freshening winds have motivated them
To gather up and gather in the last
The last of summer goods from limb and stem -
Their easy harvests of spring have long since passed

They work, they know the winter winds will blow -
So I must find a different lawn to mow

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                                An Autumn Flight

A leaf fell, a leaf
A life of summer in flight
In bright golden flight

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

                             Ancient Pistol Takes the Salute

Tanks grinding the streets all mucky and muddy
Sturdy old Hueys and Cobras flying high
And our leader’s Viet-Nam Army buddies
Saluting him proudly while marching by

Why should I do that? I can hear all right
And I can’t see behind my ears anyway
I never use my ears for work or play -
I’ll just give them a washrag-wash tonight

Why is that old woman talkin’ at me
I wasn’t botherin’ that bossy old cow
Ain’t none of her busy beeswax anyhow -
I wish all them women would let me be

Old women asked if I washed behind my ears -
So long ago –
                          I kinda miss the nosy old dears

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

                       And He Liked Really Cool Cars

                                 For George Ebarb

                                Of happy memory

                  Who served God, his family, prisoners,
                  And all who were blessed in knowing him
                  With unfailing love and generosity

                 (And he liked really cool cars!)

A convention is to say that when we die
God will not ask us about the cars we drove
But we may hope and pray that in George’s case
A happy exception was made for him

And Just How Did the Cow Eat the Cabbage?

The question was answered in a cafe at noon:
The cow ate the cabbage with an ordinary spoon


Thank you for your kind attention.

-Ecclesiastes 1:2-11

That which is said to come already is
And was, and so will be again – the sun
Will rise tomorrow, perhaps not upon me
But still the sun will rise again tomorrow

And warm the waters in a little stream
That laughing play with fallen autumn leaves
And all of them swim past a rotting pier
Where little boys with their cane poles once fished

The river currents flow, and so do we
To find our sunlit dreams upon that sea

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                      The Percolation of Our Beautiful Green Earth

Like MeeMaw’s aluminum coffee ***
The earth percolates through all the seasons
Of rain and drought and freeze, of dust and mud
The ground we work gives up its annual troves

The tiller’s tines turn up old pocketknives
Old nails, old screws, old bits of window glass
An unfired flash cube from a party long ago
Gardening is also archaeology

I excavate from the machine while sitting in the shade
Decades-old fence wire wrapped around the blade

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…!

Maps help us navigate the land
Charts help us navigate the sea
All of them, when drawn out by hand
Are works of art, as you well see

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

                               “And the Moonbeams Kiss the Sea”


               For A.V on the Happy Occasion of Her Graduation


I hope and believe that at Harvard still
In the springtime of their golden youth
Lovers sit upon the lawn’s green morning grass
Before class
                           and read Shelley to each other

Lawrence Hall 1d
"And the Moonbeams Kiss the Sea"
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                               “And the Moonbeams Kiss the Sea”


               For A.V on the Happy Occasion of Her Graduation


I hope and believe that at Harvard still
In the springtime of their golden youth
Lovers sit upon the lawn’s green morning grass
Before class
                           and read Shelley to each other

A corporal on his embarkation leave
Encounters a girl: “Tell me, what’s your name?”
She smiles and replies on that summer eve
“Tell me no lies and I’ll tell you the same.”

          The congressman’s son is on the rowing team

They stroll along a San Diego pier
Where the old museum ships lie in repose
She has a coffee; he orders a beer
From a vendor he buys her a pretty rose

          The President’s son is a UPenn man

They flirt over an order of burgers and fries
A soldier-boy so handsome and so young -
The women of the plains will gouge out his eyes
The lads from the hills will cut out his tongue

          And the senator’s boy is a Harvard man

“And When Night Comes…”

They twist her witness with bent arguments
Scholarly papers, harsh editorials
Like smoke and ashes obscuring the heavens
Telling her in retrospect who she is


But in her end, and in her beginning
She left all quarrels on the altar of man
And gave herself on the Altar of God
Because her only crime was loving Him

      and us

Those who emend her – again they martyr her:
They do not know what else to do with her

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

              And Why is There a Police Car in Your Driveway?

                             Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 28

The days are a mess and so are the nights
Each day is burdened with labors unrelenting
Toils industrial and toils emotional
Everyone seems to want a bite of you

At night the stresses follow you to bed:
The boss’s write-ups seem to poison the pillows
The unpaid bills, the clapped-out car, the fears
The children’s report cards, the broken washer

You give life your all – you work, you struggle, you strive -
And why is there a cop car in the drive?

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


                                           And Your Word Is…?


                                          “The word is given!”

                  -John Derek as Joshua in The Ten Commandments


When all have gone to bed

You slip quietly into your room
And sit at a table bare of everything
Except for a solitary candle
A pen, a sheet of paper, a bottle of ink

You then write down your day, your acta diurnalis
Every action and thought, every glance and breath
Every hope, every failure, every fear
Every little victory savoured with delight

In only one word, a word, a glowing word –
What is that Word?