Lawrence Hall   Poems  

4d
All Students are Safe and Accounted For
Lawrence Hall
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https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                          All Students are Safe and Accounted For

School administration says:

We take any and all threats made regarding our campuses
and students very seriously as the safety
and security of everyone in our buildings
is a number one priority the safety and security
of our staff and students is a top priority
for the District as such ////
takes any and all threats made regarding
our campuses seriously and responds
as if the threat is real ///// and // High Schools
are currently sheltering in place due to information
received via phone involving a threat
the // ISD police department
along with other local agencies
are currently assessing the situation
and additional information will be forthcoming
We ask that visitors avoid coming
to the campus, as no one will be allowed
in or out of the buildings we want to assure
you that all students are safe and accounted for
we will advise when an all-clear is given
for each campus thank you for your patience
and understanding…

The district attorney says:

I’m sick of this…no sympathetic juries
scared, frustrated, and angry we will hunt you down

Kurt Vonnegut says:

So it goes

A selection from:

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

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                     ­    The Hunting Camp

                            He yaf nat of that text a pulled hen,
                            That seith that hunters ben nat hooly men

                                          -Chaucer, Prologue, 177-178

Friday evening

The merry fellowship of the hunting camp
In the golden time is one of autumn’s joys
Unpacking by the light of a kerosene lamp
Where men for a weekend are once again boys

Saturday morning, I

Up before dawn, already the coffee’s made
The ground seems harder than it did last year
Is that poison ivy where my head was laid?
Pour me a cuppa that caffeinated cheer!

Saturday morning, II

With my ancient Enfield I walk the trails
I really don’t want to see Bambi today
Along the creek as the mist unveils
Folk memories and idylls are my only prey

Saturday afternoon

I rest in the shade of the forest eaves
Quite at peace, here where I want to be
The smoke from my pipe drifts through the leaves
I hope the First Peoples’ spirits will sit with me

Saturday night

No one got a deer today – that’s good hearing
I think we were all okay with that
Cards and jokes and talk in our little clearing
The occasional flythrough by a Mexican bat

Sunday morning

As it was in the beginning of boyhood
As it is now that we are old men
Our world must end, but for others great good
In the sacred woods of the Lord - amen

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                            Port aux Basques in September

                    “Only a fish storm, no threat to anyone…”

                          - a weather guy south of the 49th

To our weather guy there is nothing north of Maine
He has never seen Port aux Basques
With summer snow still bright along the hills
Above ***-holey Canada 1 (mind the moose)

(“Only a fish storm, no threat to anyone…”)

He has never heard of Cape Ray or the Newfie Bullet
Or seen the little fishing boats tacking in at dawn
Or the astrolabe that says to the voyager
“Now here at last is your dear New-Found Land”

(“Only a fish storm, no threat to anyone…”)

He will never mourn the wreckage and loss
Because for him there is nothing north of Maine

(“Only a fish storm, no threat to anyone…”)

Town of Channel-Port aux Basques | Canada's Ferry Gateway to Newfoundland

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                     ­   Interrogating the Text

She says she wants to interrogate the text –
Is she the literary Gestapo, then?

As published in Fellowship and Fairydust:


https://fellowshipandfairydust.com/2022/09/11/word-sung-as-light/

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

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

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                          All Students are Safe and Accounted For

School administration says:

We take any and all threats made regarding our campuses
and students very seriously as the safety
and security of everyone in our buildings
is a number one priority the safety and security
of our staff and students is a top priority
for the District as such ////
takes any and all threats made regarding
our campuses seriously and responds
as if the threat is real ///// and // High Schools
are currently sheltering in place due to information
received via phone involving a threat
the // ISD police department
along with other local agencies
are currently assessing the situation
and additional information will be forthcoming
We ask that visitors avoid coming
to the campus, as no one will be allowed
in or out of the buildings we want to assure
you that all students are safe and accounted for
we will advise when an all-clear is given
for each campus thank you for your patience
and understanding…

The district attorney says:

I’m sick of this…no sympathetic juries
scared, frustrated, and angry we will hunt you down

Kurt Vonnegut says:

So it goes

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                     ­ You Must Tell the Bees

The royal beekeeper…has informed the hives kept in the grounds of Buckingham Palace and Clarence House of the Queen’s death.

                                         -U. K. Daily Mail

But of course someone must tell the bees
Those wing’ed messengers among the realms
Who pass along the news of marryings and buryings
According to their proper place in the order of being

(or of bee-ing)

But of course someone must tell the bees
For their own health and ours they mourn the loss
Of master and mistress, and then welcome the new
With blessings of health and honey and blooms

But of course someone must tell the bees -
And they want to hear these things from you, if you please!

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

https://logosophiamag.com/2022/09/20/curious-events/

Lawrence Hall 3d
A Poem is not a Helicopter
Lawrence Hall
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https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                     ­    A Poem is not a Helicopter

                                                  For­­ Al Duquette

A helicopter is not a poem
A helicopter flies in three dimensions
If all of the systems are fitted just right
Otherwise, it does not fly at all

A poem is not a helicopter
A poem flies only metaphorically
If we rearrange the parts aesthetically
The poem might fly much better than before

One carries our friends wherever they want to go
The other carries our love to our friends




More exposition than I have ever written:

Al is my fellow volunteer in prison and was one of my mentors when I began. I am in awe of him because he flew helicopters with the Air Cavalry in Viet-Nam and then offshore with Petroleum Helicopters Incorporated. He is almost obsessively left-brained in all things and I am an old hippie so we are often on two different metaphorical channels.  After some mutual suspicion we came to the realization – because the prisoners pointed it out to us - that in working with a class together we communicate the same ideas in different ways, and so are more effective.

Al sees no point in poetry, although he appreciates the little poems I hand out to the lads as class openers. I think this is because they (the poems, not the prisoners) are short and simple, almost always rhyme, and are mostly Victorian parlour poems which contain a moral lesson and encouragement. This week, while waiting for the guards to bring us the fellows, Al said that prose is made of words and poetry is made of words and in both categories we choose the most effective words, and so what makes a difference. I replied that a poem is not a helicopter, that not all the bits have to fit together in only one way. Prose is indeed a matter of the right words in the right places but that a poem is a matter of even better words placed in even better places (This is not an original thought; I don’t remember where I learned it.). Al accepted my answer, but of course maybe he was merely being polite!

Written by
Lawrence Hall

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

                                                     “You Did It!”

                                    As Colonel Pickering might say

On occasion my wristwatch reads, “You did it!”
At first I appreciated the congratulations
Though I wasn’t sure of the diddly-did I did
Until I sinked or synched the watch to something else

Whereupon I learned that my watch was praising me
For somehow managing to stand on my feet  -
High praise for a drunk or an invalid (may I say so?)
But since so little praise comes to me, I accept it

I imagine standing before the King of Sweden
Who awards me the Nobel for standing at all

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]  
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
[email protected]  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                     ­    A Poem is not a Helicopter

                                                  For­ Al Duquette

A helicopter is not a poem
A helicopter flies in three dimensions
If all of the systems are fitted just right
Otherwise, it does not fly at all

A poem is not a helicopter
A poem flies only metaphorically
If we rearrange the parts aesthetically
The poem might fly much better than before

One carries our friends wherever they want to go
The other carries our love to our friends

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                           We Need You. All of Us: We Need You

There are many around you who need you
And there are some whom you have never met
Who also need you; they just don’t know it yet
But someday they will know –
                                               and you will too

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                The Trump Minutes’ Hate

                   “A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness…”

                                               -Orwell, 1984

In an ordinary conversation among men
Let someone mention the name of that man
And all his servile obedientiaries
Will ‘change good fellowship for slogans and sneers

Bitter, with neither dialectic nor discourse
Nor sources beyond the Q and other old men
They then attack even those who agree with them
For under the Red Flag there is no trust

Each chants with each as comrade and brother
But in truth they don’t even like each other

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                      Half-Awake in Moonlight

No one is fully awake in this strange moonlight
The magic won’t work if we think of it
Pirate ships can’t fly if there’s logic about
And lovers would never touch hands

For lovers and pirates are always stealing something
Kisses and treasures and sometimes hearts
And we have all been lovers and pirates at times
And even now when moonlight magics our dreams

And we are richer than a treasure’s worth
When our silver kisses flutter over the earth

https://logosophiamag.com/2022/09/13/the-passing-of-the-queen/

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

        For the Sullen Old Grump Waving a “REPUBLIC NOW” Sign

A republic

Guillotines, cronies, self-mutilations
Tossers rioting with glowing smart-phones
Books and art banned according to The People’s will
Rolex evangelists commanding through fear NOW

A republic

Oligarchs who never busted a sweat
Except on the golf course or while working a tan
Illiterate graspers in tailored suits
Protecting us from thinking for ourselves NOW

A republic

Purging all beauty and leaving us only
A desolation of gossips and their grievances NOW

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

                            A Question about the Monarchy

The question is not
Whether the monarchy is relevant to modern times
But whether modern times are relevant to the monarchy

Lawrence Hall
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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 19h
The Passing of the Queen
Lawrence Hall
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https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                   The Passing of The Queen

                                       Regina Dei Gratia

Few constants obtain in our shifting world
And even those few constants must leave us at last
Even as the mists of September obscure
The golden days of a summer now past

It is not only the Queen who has passed today
But rather the passing of something in us
Who stand to our duty as she led us to do
Each of us made better because she served

God save the Queen

God save the King

“Monarchy can easily be ‘debunked’, but watch the faces, mark well the accents of the debunkers. These are the men whose taproot in Eden has been cut -- whom no rumor of the polyphony, the dance, can reach – men to whom pebbles laid in a row are more beautiful than an arch. Yet even if they desire mere equality they cannot reach it. Where men are forbidden to honor a king they honor millionaires, athletes, or film-stars instead -- even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like ****** nature, will be served -- deny it food and it will gobble poison.”


Quote by C.S. Lewis: “Monarchy can easily be "debunked", but watch th...” (goodreads.com)

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                   The Passing of The Queen

                                       Regina Dei Gratia

Few constants obtain in our shifting world
And even those constants must leave us at last
Even as the mists of September obscure
The golden days of a summer now past

It is not only the Queen who has passed today
But rather the passing of something in us
Who stand to our duty as she led us to do
Each of us made better because she served

God save the Queen

God save the King

“Monarchy can easily be ‘debunked’, but watch the faces, mark well the accents of the debunkers. These are the men whose taproot in Eden has been cut -- whom no rumor of the polyphony, the dance, can reach – men to whom pebbles laid in a row are more beautiful than an arch. Yet even if they desire mere equality they cannot reach it. Where men are forbidden to honor a king they honor millionaires, athletes, or film-stars instead -- even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like ****** nature, will be served -- deny it food and it will gobble poison.”


Quote by C.S. Lewis: “Monarchy can easily be "debunked", but watch th...” (goodreads.com)

A Full Moon Every Night
Lawrence Hall
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https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                   A Full Moon Every Night

I’d like a full moon every night. But why?
The cycles, the dance of the solar calendar
The dance of the shadowing lunar calendar
The stern regulae of the liturgical calendar

All swing in orbits through the universe
Orbits that vary wildly yet keep returning
Returning to each other in sacred waves
That in their seasons send the moon to us

But I’d like a full moon every night anyway
And why?

Because she’s pretty

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

      A Note about Greeting Even the Most Beneficent Reptiles

I speak to them softly
But the tree frogs look at me
Disapprovingly

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                   A Full Moon Every Night

I’d like a full moon every night. But why?
The cycles, the dance of the solar calendar
The dance of the shadowing lunar calendar
The stern regulae of the liturgical calendar

All swing in orbits through the universe
Orbits that vary wildly yet keep returning
Returning to each other in sacred waves
That in their seasons send the moon to us

But I’d like a full moon every night anyway
And why?

Because she’s pretty

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

      A Note about Greeting Even the Most Beneficent Reptiles

I speak to them softly
But the tree frogs look at me
Disapprovingly

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                     ­     Mysteries for the Day

Mysteries for the day
A pebble and a pine cone
They are enough

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

                             The Water at Camp Lejeune

And the water in Viet-Nam, chlorinated muck
Flavored with Agent Orange and other guck
Was good enough for us – that’s our tough luck

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

                              Comrade­s Who Checklist Poets

                      A Poet’s Autobiography is his Poetry

                                       -Yevtushenko

A poem is itself

So I’m not going to play any victim cards
I’m not even seated in their game
Ticking self-pity boxes is their game
Not mine

A poem is itself

I am not anyone’s propagandist
All are free to read a poem or not
Like it or not for its artistry and craft
(Or lack thereof)
But I won’t be a confessional professional

A poem is itself

A worthy editor is a pearl beyond price
But a literary commissar is nekul'turnyy

For a poem is itself

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

      Self-Government in the United States with Tats and Extra Fries

                              “Here, sir, The People rule.”

                                 -Numerous attributions

I blame the Russians. And people who read books.
And that ******* in these here schools
The Navy SEALS is actually Lizard People
I only know what Q told me, okay?

I seen them suitcases of electoral votes
For the junior high cheerleading squad
It was stolen, I tell ya! Sarah Palin rocks!
It’s all in the Bible, you ******-freak

Secret U.N. observers occupy our town
And that is why the InterGossip’s down

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

                               Cockroaches and Cold-Callers

We honor life as part of God’s creation
Its good is an objective reality
Cruelty to animals is an abomination
(Though a cockroach we flush with fiendish glee)

                    “Hi, this is Heather; we’re taking a survey…”

There are variations on this Leaden Rule
For if you haven’t sent a cockroach down the loo
(This practice should be taught in every school)
An telephone cold-caller will certainly do

                    “Good morning! We’re giving away free siding…”

Thus you may WOOOOSH! a swindler or a roach
Completely free of any self-reproach

                    “This isn’t a sales call; we only want to ask…”

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

                               The Brilliance of Propaganda

   “Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under it”

                                           -Lady Macbeth

We have seen vituperation beautifully expressed
In the most elegant meter and rhyme
Wild shriekings crafted with an artist’s skill
And as neatly packaged as a letter-bomb

https://logosophiamag.com/2022/08/29/light-raindrops-upon-the-withered-world/

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

                                   An Extended Metaphysical Warranty

You buy something and the man behind the counter
Asks you if you want to pay extra for a warranty
And when you ask why, doesn’t the gadget work
He’s grumpily ready for you to move on

Most things in life don’t have extended warranties:
Love, Hershey bars, tree frogs on the window screen
The John Wayne movie machine that broke long ago
But memories of MeeMaw are always fresh

You live through pain, and He who is beyond the stars
Gives it meaning – that’s the warranty

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

               Trust the Official Texas State God – That’s an Order

Some say
“All of us worship the same god, you know”
But what makes them think that this is so?





Is ‘In God We Trust’ an assertion of Christian nationalism or of American history in public schools? – Baptist News Global

Texas schools hanging 'In God We Trust' signs after new state law requiring donated signs be posted | Fox News

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

                                     ­         Thoreau-ly August

“The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation,”
Protested Thoreau in hopeless exasperation.
One would not enter into disputation
With a famous writer of great reputation

But

Alas that here our lives are rank perspiration!

- From The Road to Magdalena, 2012
(Available on amazon)

Dear Anonymous Google Accuser:

Thank you for your note, the contents of which sound much like the block warden’s caution (“Your attitude is noticed, comrade.”) to Yuri in the film version of Doctor Zhivago.

I have re-read the column, which I wrote nine years ago, and find nothing offensive in it (although it is rather puerile), nor do you detail exactly what is offensive in it and why I should be sanctioned. You are being Kafka-esque, and I say this as someone who has read Kafka: you do not tell me what offense I have purportedly committed nor do you face me with an accuser. You do not even face me with you, for you do not give your name. You employ the passive voice in referring to an “Adult Content policy” and to “Community Guidelines,” which sound like something from an episode of Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner: “The Committee won’t like this, Number Six.”

Google (and one could find “google” offensive, with its history of mocking someone’s physical characteristics) is a private company, and so is free to publish or not publish, as is only right.  And I am free to pity Google for moral, ethical, and literary cowardice.

But you say that I am insensitive.

I was raised in situational poverty, barely graduated from high school, and spent 18 months in Viet-Nam. Upon returning to the USA (with life-long skin cancer which the DVA denies) I worked straight nights (double shifts on weekends) as an ambulance driver and later an LVN to put myself through university. I taught for almost forty years in public school, community college, and university as an adjunct instructor of no status whatsoever. In retirement I volunteered with our local school’s reading program until the Covid ended that, and I still volunteer with the lads at the local prison. I volunteer in community cleanup after our hurricanes (tho’ I’m getting a little old for that). I’ve worked hard all my life, paid my taxes, paid off my house at age 70, receive only half of my Social Security because of some vague law, and never gamed the system. Indeed, I would say that the system has gamed me.

But you say that I am insensitive.

In Viet-Nam, by the way, I was not the shooter; I was the shootee. I served as a Navy Corpsman in the ICU at the Station Hospital in DaNang, in the outpatient clinic at Camp Tien Sha in DaNang, and finally at Moc Hoa on the Cambodian border. Several hundred people, mostly young Americans, but also ARVN, VC, NVA, Vietnamese civilians, and Cambodian civilians survived because I was there for them.

But you say than I am insensitive.

And was all of this so that some frightened committee of anonymous inquisitors staring at an Orwellian telescreen or a Mordor-ish Palantir could find an innocuous scribble insensitive?

Pffffft.

Sincerely,

Lawrence Hall

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

                                     ­          Pontifex Minimus

I met a man who once lived under a bridge
He said that was when he was happiest
But he found Jesus and civilization
So they put him in prison
He likes having a bed and three meals each day
But he misses his bridge

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

                    A Woman Hollering and a Train Passing By

Next to the post office sags a trailer house
Where a fat old woman in a onesie
Was grilling something in her littered yard
Maybe some hot dogs, or just some dogs

A cigarette bounced about on her lip
As she screamed at me for driving by her life
Possibly she thought I was after her beer cans
Or her virtue, or her front-porch couch

A Santa Fe freight blew by, obscuring her words
And I accelerated, escaping her sorrows

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

                         The Prince-Poet-Cat of Gatineau, Quebec

                                For Pushkin, of Happy Memory
                        And His House Pets Abbie and Alexander

In an ice-cream summer in the long ago
I met a marvelous cat in Gatineau

Pushkin by name, a fastidious Russian
His shiny fur coat never needed brushin’

He purred in an elegant iambic tetrameter
Precisely in its orderly parameter

A cat, of course, needn’t meter his speech
For a cat is a poem whose motions teach:

Running
Leaping
Sleeping
Purring
pouncing
Growling
Yowlin­g
Howling
Twitching
Lurking
Sneaking
Posing
Dreaming
Snuggling

W­hile in all things giving his children delight

In an ice-cream summer in the long ago
I met a marvelous cat in Gatineau

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

                  If We Change Channels All the Pain Will Go Away

Captors are shooting trembling prisoners of war
We can watch them writhing as they die
Screaming silently into our telescreens
American Idol is on 282

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

                       Are We but Obscure Lines in Ezekiel?

Maybe we are doing time along the Chebar
But we are not in Babylonian captivity
Only in the captivity of our choices:
We fouled our own endeavors, our own lives

We banned and burned our books, our music, our art
Upon the orders of megaphone fuhrers
Sacrificing Truth on their altars of fear
We abandoned duty and found ourselves alone

Dry bones, dry bones in a desert of despair
But, shush – what is that Sound from over there…?

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


                    Whatever Happened to Clarence Eustace Scrubb?

          He liked books if they were books of information and had
          pictures of grain elevators or of fat foreign children doing
          exercises in model schools.

                             -C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader


He was so good at banning ideas that later
They made him a Texas school administrator


Keller ISD to remove challenged books | The Texas Tribune

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

                            Strippers­ Bid to Unionize in Los Angeles

                                                     -news item

To what enormity is this action owed –
Could there be an issue with the strict dress code?

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                               Veterans’ Cremation Benefits

                                    -Ad on the InterGossip

AMTRACS with gas tanks beneath the floor
White phosphorus grenades gone bad, gone wrong
The Parrot’s Beak burning throughout the night
******, burning flesh, screams, horror, death

A burnt man flailing about in agony
And where the hell is that dust-off now?
Copper sulphate, Sulfamylon, Kerlix, Telfa pads
We know about cremation well enough

But now tell us about our benefits

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                           A Librarian is Your Fairy Godmother

                                             For Miss Kelly,
                                    Who Captured the Castle

A librarian is your fairy godmother
Who blesses her children with the gift of books
Her magic wand is a date-due stamp
Which just for you she will then ignore

She lives with brave Cassie in Mississippi
And in the greenwood with bold Robin Hood
On Wildcat Island, in Narnia and Middle-Earth -
She sails you there on bean-bag pirate ships

And if you’re nice to others (so please don’t tickle)
There might be a gift of watermelon pickle!