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Lawrence Hall Feb 2021
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                   A Saint Valentine’s Day Gift for my Daughter
                                Who Lives Far Away

Sunday Morning
Via electrical mail

Dear Child,

An agent of the federal government
May or may not deliver a package to you
Tomorrow, or not just one but maybe two
Or maybe one package at one time and

Maybe the second package at another
Or maybe there is only one package
Or maybe two, or, like Schrodinger's Cat
You may consider that there is a package

In your mailbox and be content with that
As a perception of reality

Love,


Your Old Dad
A poem is itself.
Lawrence Hall Feb 2021
I re-post this most every year on Super Servile Sunday:

                                          Super Servile Sunday

O sink not down to that corrosive couch,
Docile before the Orwellian screen
That regulates the lives of the servile,
Dictating dress and drink, demeanor, dreams

Declare your independence from the sludge
Of vague obedientiaries who fling
Away their empty lives in submission
To harsh, diagonal inches of rule

Poor weaklings chanting tainted tribal songs
In chorus hamsterable, huddled, heaped
While costumed in their masters’ liveries
And feeling little while thinking even less

The very model of the State’s non-men
Predictable and dull, submissive ghosts
Crowded, herded through cosmic cattle chutes
Reflected in dim, noisy nothingness.

But you…

But you, O you, be not of them, but be
A wanderer in the moonlight, one known
To God and to His holy solitude.
A poem is itself.
Lawrence Hall Feb 2021
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                  Ano­ther Day of Rioting

There they go again, screaming at each other
In a land of plenty, but all wanting more
Through posturing, threatening, bullying
And blaming each other for the wreckage

There they go again, screaming at each other
Bluejays and cardinals are the noisiest of all
And squirrels muscling in on the action
Crows criticizng from branches up high

There they go again, screaming each other
Around their seed-feeder beneath their oak
A poem is itself.
Lawrence Hall Feb 2021
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                      Prayer Group in a Cinder-Block Room

A Prisoner's Voice:

We’re all here for all sorts of different crimes
I made it for about three years last time
Built my business back up, rented a house
Married my baby-momma and started being a dad

And I was feeling good about everything
My old customers came back and trusted me
I was sure grateful to them; went back to church
My wife and kids and mom were proud of me

I got cocky; I thought I had it all whipped
I’m back in this white suit for another ten
A poem is itself.
Lawrence Hall Feb 2021
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

  “San Francisco Sues its Own School District to Reopen Classes”

                                            -Associated­ Press

Student Voices:

“I need help in understanding Don Quixote”
“Karamazov for me,” replies her friend
“For Christmas I received the Q edition
of The Oxford Book of English Verse,” says another

(And the Board exclaims, “The Q edition!? Eeeeeeek!”)

“I’m prepping Latin with our parish priest”
“Well, I’m tackling The Faerie Queene this year”
“I’m writing our class play in iambic hexameter”
“I wish I could read Pushkin in the original Russian”

(And the Board asks, “Pushkin? What’s their team like this season?”)

Student Chorus:

“We’ve got to study harder, everyone agrees
Lest we be as dense as our school’s trustees”
A poem is itself.
Lawrence Hall Feb 2021
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                             If Your Life Were a Time Capsule

If your life were a time capsule of sorts
In what cornerstone would you brick in in
Against a mysterious opening day
When someone in the future would open you up

What would be found in the shell you left behind?
Shifting memories of moments of ecstasies
And mournful ghosts of sorrows best suppressed
And careful lists of long discarded dreams

If your life were a time capsule of sorts
What would you choose of you as a temporal deposit?
A poem is itself.
Lawrence Hall Jan 2021
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                   A Young Roman Responds to Saint Benedict

               “We are about to open a school for God’s service…”

                                           -Rule, St. Benedict

Okay, but what about your S.T.E.M. offerings?
Does your footer pitch have artificial turf?
The books are too heavy - I have a note
My feelings are covered by the ADA

Silence? But I gotta have my tunes, man!
“Correction of Youths?” My mummy will sue!
“Daily manual labor” – may I be excused?
“No talk after Compline” – But can I text?

*** *** nonononono ***, no?

Not for me, dude; and this I’ve got to say:
I know that your program’s famously prestigious
But I am, like, spiritual, not religious
And, hey, you know, you’re just not Harvard, okay?
A poem is itself.
Lawrence Hall Jan 2021
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                         Sensuous Sophia the *** Robot

I guess that’s okay, the wise man mutters,
But is she any good at cleaning gutters?

or

             Sensuous Sven the *** Robot

I guess that’s okay, the wise woman mutters,
But is he any good at cleaning gutters?
Doggerel is itself.
Lawrence Hall Jan 2021
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                  A Child of God and of Long Summer Afternoons

Do you remember lying on a grassy bank
On a summer afternoon, holding very still
Watching the minnows only inches from your eyes?
And do you remember the earthy smell

Of the amber-colored water?

How many moments in your adult life
Have been as good as that?
A poem is itself.
Lawrence Hall Jan 2021
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                    Where Do I Apply to be Corrupted?

BOOK: KGB began grooming 'young and vain'
        Donald Trump 40 years ago by saving him
        from financial ruin...

                                    -U. K. Daily Mail


This rumor has irrupted

Life is interrupted

Outrage has erupted

But I want to know

Where can I go

To be corrupted?
Doggerel is itself.
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