Read Shakespeare and Milton and all of the rest
Keats, Coleridge and Wordsworth are some of the best
Read Ted Hughes and Sylvia, Motion, Duffy
They say what I want to say better than me

Read Homer and Ovid, Basho and Su ****
Chaucer and Boccaccio they've stood the test
Read Donne, Spenser, Marlowe, Jonson and Raleigh
Read Shakespeare and Milton and all of the rest

Read Swift, Pope, Blake, Tennyson, and Rossetti
The two Barrett Brownings are of interest
For feelings romantic as true as can be
Keats, Coleridge and Wordsworth are some of the best

Read Larkin and Betjeman if you're depressed
Read Wendy Cope to enjoy all of life's zest
Yes please don't think I despise modernity
Read Ted Hughes and Sylvia, Motion, Duffy

And how about all those I haven't addressed
Yeats, Auden, Joyce, Longfellow, Poe and Shelley
And all of the others I'm bound to have missed
They say what I want to say better than me

But what of the poet, with poets obessed?
In prose I am prolix, in speech stuttery:
So where will you find my emotions expressed?
On MySpace, on Twitter, read my poetry
It says what I want to say

I have finally found you
In St. Enodoc Church;
Home is where your heart rests
Not your place of birth.
Summoned by the three o’clock bell
A pilgrim across the eleventh fairway,
Towards a crooked spire that protrudes
Like a drowning swimmer,
Signalling to be rescued from the dunes.


As I enter through the gate
Your headstone greets me with a shout;
A marvel of the stonemason’s art
Explosive script from marbles cold darkness,
Radiates your humour and warmth.
I am not humbled, sad nor afraid
This place is fitting to rest your phrase;
Looking down at where you lie
I try to imagine that lived-in face.


Archibald lies at your head
Old and trusted, faithful ted;
So much heard, but nothing said
All through the years of pressured steps,
To follow where your father led;
But you had other plans and instead
Were drawn to words with rhythmic thread,
That made you Poet Lauriat, a knight
Who finally has found some peace.

She’s so clinical I’m so cynical, it’s so typical
We’re both to blame.
She likes talking when I like walking
She puts the pressure on I watch a day move on
I’m so in love with her she likes to have me there
It’s so typical she’s so cynical we’re both to blame.

I split my mind in two
She knows just what to do
I like to wonder why she doesn’t have to try
I make a move today she did it yesterday.
She’s vegetarian and I’ll eat anything.
She’s so critical; I’m so cynical it’s so typical
We’re both to blame.

She likes Betjeman   I read Spiderman
She needs food for thought, I need alcohol
She wants to meet the stars; I’d like to own a bar
She’s so Liberal I’m so malleable it’s so typical we’re both to blame.

I’m so typical it’s so pitiful, she’s so - unexpected.

Ode to Barnes & Noble

Patrick Leigh Fermor never roamed these aisles
Sir John Betjeman never rhymed these aisles
Graham Greene never despaired of these aisles
And Rod McKuen was never here alone

And anyway the two or three feet of poetry
Are hidden far away in the back behind
The puzzles, records, comics, and plastic toys
And solitaries plugged into their machines

But on a winter weekday a writer’s retreat -
A yellow pad, coffee, and a window seat

In the world cannot erase
the tedium of an english
seaside suburb where
old colonials retire

Cricket and warm beer
the elongated death of
the english gentleman

John Arlott describes
scattring pigeons as the
ball rolls idly by

A gentle ****** of teacups
(bone china) and
Betjeman on the wireless
1,000 years of Malmesbury town

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

                          The Cruise of HMS Disreputable

                                                                        For myself,
                    I knew as soon as I could read and write
                   That I must be a poet.

                                        -Sir John Betjeman

I left Mesquite and broken promises
In the after-market rear-view mirror
Bolted to the wing of my third-hand MG
And rattled along that magic road to the west

Sleeping bag, Olivetti portable
Dostoyevsky, Yevtushenko, some clothes
An honorable discharge from a dishonorable war
A few undistinguished undergraduate credits

And now…

I have left behind my Nobel acceptance speech
Because the journey will have to be enough