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

                                    Well, Hey, Prison, Right?

                     When, with the chalice in his hands, the priest
                     came to the words ‘…receive me, O Lord, even
                     as the robber’, nearly all the convicts fell kneeling
                     to the ground with a jangling of fetters…

                           -Dostoyevsky, The House of the Dead

The first-period were really bad today
But, hey, prison, right?
The second-period were really good today
And, hey, prison, right?

After class a man arrived solo for Mass
And knelt before the Altar that isn’t there
The chaplains asked him if had been to supper
“No, but I’m not going to miss Mass.”

The man would not leave for his supper
Until the chaplains promised him again
That Mass would not begin without him
And it was so
                                     And that, too, is prison

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

                                Charm­ing Murderers

I have met murderers of wit and charm
And saints who were crude and ****** and coarse
I feared the saints would do me greater harm -
I don’t know what any of this means, of course

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