Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

Boeing, Studebaker, John Deere, and my Tupperware™ Coffee Cup


           “The days are gone…
           When wonderful things were worked among them”

                            -The Seafarer, trans. Burton Raffel


My Tupperware coffee cup is as a chalice
With which I salute the beginning of each day
Cool, colorful, comforting craftsmanship
An honest, utilitarian work of art

We are told such things will be no more
“Made in USA” is “Factorum Romae”
Younger nations will find us camping among the ruins
Of works and arts we no longer comprehend

A colonial soldier might note that once we were a great people
His colonel will reply, “Tosh! They’re simple savages.”

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                                                Smart*ss Watch

It clings to my wrist like a faithless friend
Good fun to pal around when we met
But getting just a little tiresome with time
Unreliable in his many promises

He fails to make the appointments that we set
Or note the weather or mark activities
I dunno; maybe he’s making time with that Timex
My long-time steady who could sure tick my tock

Sweet face, delicate hands - she’d been around, but
Maybe I was wrong – I think I’ll dial her

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                                 On Reading a Poem by Du Mu

Everything is far away
China is ever so far away
The dynasties are far away
A golden dragon might fly us there

The moon is across the river
The blue-black river in the mist
A fishing boat is tied to the gate
The water-gate of our inn

What do they mean, the moon and boat?
Maybe the moon and the boat mean nothing
They simply are; they are themselves
Or perhaps we mean the moon and boat

Because of Du Mu and his words
The moon and the boat are forever
The blue-black river is forever
In reading of them so are we



“A Night at the Inn While Travelling”
Three Hundred Tang Poems
Translated by Peter Harris
London: Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets, 2009

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                          Such Men Will Someday Live in Palaces

                                         Cf. Saint Matthew 11

                                                       For

                                            El Senor Bueno

                                                The Artist

                                 The Dangerous Intellectual

                                           The Philosopher


I am only a visitor here, unqualified to speak
Of the incessant sufferings of men of God
Who may not go beyond the compassing wire
To see a reed shaken with the wind

For they sometimes are wind-struck reeds themselves
Planted for a time in this desert of penance
But they are men, and do not easily shake -
When the bitter wind blows they stand up straight

They do not raise their fists against the wind
But rather their hearts in manly strength and faith

Such men will someday live in palaces

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                                                    Hobbit Day

                                                   22 September

I read that today is Hobbit Day
On the autumn equinox every year
I was both delighted and surprised
Even though in our shared adventures, dear friends,

Every day is Hobbit Day

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                                        My Grandfather’s Hayfield

From my own fields I can hear the band
The high school marching band, oom-pah, oom-pah
From several miles away, with merry songs
and merry cheers around the homecoming bonfire

That was my grandfather’s hayfield in my youth
Before the town and school replaced the past
The shaking baling machine compressing grass
Where the team captain now gives his whup ‘em speech

I found a terrapin where the cheerleaders dance
From my own fields I can see my youth

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                                            ­      At Rao’s Bakery -
                 Coffee, Croissants, Children, and the Constitution

At dawn - hot coffee and a fresh croissant
A family grouping at the table next
And a little child whispering to her mother
The Preamble to the Constitution

I turned and said, “Oh, I want to hear that again”
Proudly the little girl stood beside her mom
And in a strong, clear voice began: “We the People…”


We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.


I can’t do that anymore. Can you?

The child certainly earned an ‘A’ today
This coffee / croissant / American day

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                       A Road Crew Singing “Red, Red Wine”

On a road cratered with holes and emptied dreams

A road crew of only two riding with the fill
In the bed of a county pickup truck
Patching potholes in the late summer heat
Singing “Red, Red Wine” over and over

“Red, Red, Wine”

One takes off his sweat-soaked striped shirt
A voice from the cab tells him to put it back on
They stop and take shovels and out they leap
To shovel with the shovels fill into holes

“Red, Red Wine”

They sing those three words over and over
The only words of that song they know

“Red, Red Wine.”

On a road cratered with holes and emptied dreams

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                     If Mr. Vance Says You Ate Someone’s Pet Cat
                     Then Obviously You Ate Someone’s Pet Cat


                 “Show me the man and I will show you the crime.”

  -many attributions, usually to Lavrentia Beria, sometimes to Stalin


      "In Springfield, they're eating the dogs…They're eating the cats.
       They're eating the pets of the people that live there.”

        -Presidential candidate Donald Trump, 10 September 2024


             "If I have to create stories so that the American media
              actually pays attention to the suffering of the American
              people, then that's what I'm going to do."

               -Vice presidential candidate J. D. Vance on CNN,
                                Sunday, 15 September 2024


Little children in school are threatened with bombs

Because someone said that someone said
That someone ate someone else’s pet cat

Patients in hospitals are threatened with bombs

Because someone said that someone said
That someone ate someone else’s pet cat

City office workers are threatened with bombs

Because someone said that someone said
That someone ate someone else’s pet cat

A Lutheran university is threatened with bombs

Because someone said that someone said
That someone ate someone else’s pet cat

A few Proud Boys [sic] stumble around in the street

Because two Heroic Men of Destiny said
That someone ate someone else’s pet cat

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                      I Want to Know What You Want to Know

What the Big Corporations Don’t Want You to Know

Big pharma
Big tech
Big medicine
Big tobacco

The adverts say that Big Whatever don’t want us to know
Whatever it is they don’t want us to know
All major and minor credit cards looted

But I don’t know what I want to know
You too?
We could take a walk this autumn day
And compare our notes with falling leaves
And with each other about what we don’t know
And maybe learn from a shy touch of hands
And from the gentle breeze whispering to us

I don’t know what Big Anything doesn’t want us to know
But I want to know what you want to know

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                                      Runes Recently Discovered

We have mysterious runic messages still
Appearing this morning – there, on the road – see them?
Some say these irregular scrawls mark utilities
But you know, there are Wee Folk in these woods

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                   I’m Proud of My Childless Cat Lady Daughter

Some call her a childless cat lady
At work the staff call her “Doctor”

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                         The Secret Service Whisking Away

The Secret Service are often said
To whisk their suspects away

The Secret Service are sometimes said
To whisk a president away

Do they use those little brooms?

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

              The Terrifying Creepy Chilling Iconic ******’s Lair

Some call it the ******’s lair, some the ******’s nest
Some call it a creepy lair
Some surely call it chilling and iconic
Because to InterGossip posters everything
Is chilling, iconic, jaw-dropping, and a bombshell

It’s just a sad, sagging old chain-link fence
With some sad old man’s wannabe G.I. ****
Army wannabe soldier-toys hanging from it
The Kalashjackov was real enough
The poor fool’s mind, not so much

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                         We Don’t Understand, But We Hope

We don’t understand it, but we hope in it
The change from that which is to that which isn’t
Or is the change back again and no change at all
Which maybe means the blood and pain remain

We recline in a rented banquet room
We follow in fear along a narrow street
We watch in horror upon a death-haunted hill
We are called to an empty tomb which isn’t empty

We are called to a dented Cup which also isn’t empty
(Maybe $200 at the church supply store)
Cradling a Mystery from before time
A plate of bread that looks like bread but isn’t

The Altar is where the arc of history bends

Mystery

Who among the servers did the dishes
And did she accidentally drop a Cup?

(That part is probably not important)

Lawrence Hall, HSG
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                          I Had a Flat Tire Along the Silk Road

A bandit-princess stole my trail-lost heart
To play with carelessly one idle day
She teased me a road sketched on her magic chart
But I had a flat tire along the way

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                                       The White Lady of the Well

She visits at dusk
She’s watching you;
                                      turn around -
She’s just over there

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                 We Have all Written Poems about September


         (Not applicable on that half the planet where September
                                          is a springtime month)

                              (Certain taxes and fees might apply)

                                   (Offer void where prohibited)

                                      (Some assembly required)


Everyone writes poetry about September
The cooling of the summer-sun-beaten earth
A few more hummingbirds with maps of Mexico
A first leaf skittering across the grassy lane

The sky looks a little different somehow
A fresh breeze rises with the gentle dawn
Sitting outside at dusk is comfortable now
Notebook and pen are easier to the hand

Everyone writes poetry about September
As every worker and dreamer ought to do

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]


            Tropes, Dopes, Middle-Earth, and Culture Worriers

          I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of
          Aryan extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware
          none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or
          any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are
          enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I
          regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people.

      -Tolkien, from a letter rebuking a German publisher, 1938


One does not imagine Tolkien schlubbing about
In a garish cartoon tee and baggy shorts
A Glock strapped to his 50-inch waist
Shopping the dollar store in a Trumpy cap

One does not imagine Lewis following QAnon
Encouraging Peter to take an AR to Latin class
Or quartering the Cross of good Saint George
With a *******’s spidering wheel of shame

Not all evil comes from outside the Shire –
Sometimes evil is our own internal desire



On the time J.R.R. Tolkien refused to work with ****-leaning publishers. ‹ Literary Hub (lithub.com)

Why does Lord of the Rings appeal to the radical right? – The Irish Times

Behind the Catholic Right’s Celebrity-Conversion Industrial Complex | Vanity Fair

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                                   For English Pick Up the Anglophone

For English pick up the Anglophone
For French the Francophone
For others in Canada the Allophone
(“‘Allo! ‘Allo!”)
For Mandarin or Cantonese the Sinophone
For Portugal the Lusophone
In Deutschland perhaps the Deutschesphone
(or perhaps not)
And in Russia the Russophone

Please phone in, everyone

Because isn’t it wonderful -
So many phones, and each with a direct line to God

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                             Li Po Writes to us from his Mountain

                                      Li Po, “Ancient Air,” p. 84
                    A Book of Luminous Things, ed. Czeslaw Milosz

We read of the poets of China
In the days of the Golden Tang
In the time of The Gathering of Kings
When The Silk Road carried dreams

Government officials were the poets
And poets were the government officials
Who knew The Five Classics by heart
And wrote of China in Tang quatrains

They were writing to the Emperor
And now they are writing to us

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                                For ******-Dog of Happy Memory

                                    and for his pet human Max

          The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have in this
          selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that
          never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is his dog.

                                     -George Graham Vest

His fuzzy little bed is empty today
His dinner is untasted, his water bowl full
Awaiting his ungentlemanly slurps
And his favorite toy seems lonely and lost

He will not claim space on my pillow tonight
Nor chase dream rabbits while cuddling with me
Nor lick my nose to wake me up at…
(Geez, ******, do you know what time it is!)
Leaping and barking to be allowed outside

He will not bound into the kitchen at dawn
Happily barking his joy unto God
Circling and snuffling for his breakfast treat
A bit of bacon or egg from a loving hand

Because his brave little soul has flown
To wait for me at the foot of that glorious Throne

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                           God in the Hands of Angry Sinners

                            As Jonathan Edwards did not say

How do they find so much hatred in their Book?

Why do they bind their scriptures and themselves
In anger, duct tape, and camouflage
Why do they raise high the AR and their fists
Instead of salvation and the Holy Cross?

Where do they find so much hatred in their Book?

Why have they abandoned the altars of Truth
For the flagpole idolatry of the pagan state
In coven-circles facing each other and a pole
Like Canaanites and their wooden Asherim?

Why do they find so much hatred in their Book?

If they would look beyond their perimeter wire
They would see
                                A Maiden dancing
                                                                     In Galilee

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                               Draft Beer, Not Students

                                A slogan from the 1960s

In illo tempore:

A young man swaggers across the ‘versity quad
Smoking a Marlboro or affecting a pipe
‘Way cool in his sports coat and turtleneck
Shakespeare or physics held loosely in his hand

A young woman passes through the ‘versity quad
Smoking a Parliament or checking her mirror
‘Way cool in her pencil skirt and layered look
Shakespeare or physics held closely to her heart

Sed in tempore nostro:

Pronouns galumph across the ‘versity squad
One fist raised in hate, the other clutching a glowing box

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

              Barefootin’ Among Watermelons on a Summer Afternoon

                    For J. W., His Dad, and His Uncle Brandon

J. W. is blessed with family and purpose and love
Guided study and chores and structured faith
Happy barefootin’ days among the watermelons
A fishing pole and buzzing-bee summer afternoons

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                    Columbia University’s Judenfrei Dream


         It was surprising to see how many of the university faculties
         knuckled under to the Nazification of higher learning…

             -Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third *****, p. 251


As a poor kid from rural Texas
I would never have been admitted to Columbia
And now I would not permit Columbia
To be admitted to me

(not that either of us ever asked the other)

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]


                       The Rabbit Held Very, Very Still

                             Dedicated to Elmer Fudd

The rabbit held still
The rabbit held very still
Caught raiding my garden

(No rabbits were harmed in the making of these scribbles. I distracted Luna-Dog and Astrid-the-Wonder-Dachshund to another part of the yard.)

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

       That Which Does not Exist Will End in the Next Half Hour

The MePhone beeps and then reports
That the rain that isn’t falling
Will stop in the next half hour -
This may be a metaphor for life

And if not life, then ten to twenty
If the presiding judge is lenient

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                                             You are not a Banana

                                  Sticker Not, Lest Ye be Stickered

A banana bears a sticker to say it is a banana
(The banana, that is, not the paper sticker)
Even though a banana is obviously a banana
(It has a yellow skin and some squashy stuff inside)

If we take the banana sticker from the banana
And stick the ticker to a tomato
The tomato is not then a banana
However much someone claims it so

Sticking sticky stickers to humans is also wrong
A man is himself; a woman is herself
If we stick a sticky sticker to a human
As a joke, well, that’s just a bit of fun

But if as a judgement then we are false witnesses

Stickers, nothing but stickers, excuses
Failures of intellect, truth, and caritas
Stickers are two-dimensional; they have no depth
Stickers are useless even on bananas

We are brothers and sisters, not bananas

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]


                                           ­  Cigarettes and Despair


You’ve been to junior high; you know the drill
When childhood fragments into hormones and emotions
And nobody told you it was coming
The fear, the wild uncertainty, the loss

You’re expected at funerals and weddings
(Shhhhhhhhh! They do what!? I don’t believe it! Why!?)
You’re too old to play with toys anymore
Too young for Jack Daniels and midnight rides

You steal a couple of Daddy’s cigarettes
And smoke behind the smokehouse, in despair

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                                       Seekers after Eternal Truth


             “Things are hopeless, hopeless! But they’re not serious.”

                          -Finian McLonergan in Finian’s Rainbow


We are all seekers of eternal truth
Searching the holy texts for messages
Asking the stars to say more to us
Questioning the smile of Our Lady Moon

We want to know existential reality
The universe and our places in it
We ask the elders, we ask the winds
We ask the winds from North, South, East, and West

We all look for Narnia behind wardrobe doors
(We also do laundry, windows, and floors)

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                        Feeding the Squirrels and Birds at Dawn

A squirrel sits upon a little mound of corn
And faces the east with its nimble forepaws
Clasped gently together as if in prayer

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

              To God, Who Still Gives Joy to Our Youth


                       Introibo ad altare Dei

                      Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutam meum


Missals calendaring the liturgical year
Mantillas in reverent rows marked out by children
Children as rosary beads sorting out the Aves
And men in this-is-choking-me suits and ties

Candles in colored glass in reverent rows
Decades of prayers, centuries incensed with prayers
Corinthian columns in reverent rows of awe
Or perhaps the humble Doric, upholding Heaven

Fiddleback chasubles in liturgical colors
Sequenced by seasons in prismatic reverent rows
Sewn long ago by loving reverent hands
Each stitch enriched with a Latin prayer

Fidgety altar boys in their Sunday shoes
The processional cross their grandfathers knew
Nonnas, Nanas, MeeMaws in reverent rows
The occasional bead-bang of a rosary against a pew

The occasional knee-pinch to a squirming child
Latin responses in sequenced reverent rows
Latin, which later we were told we didn’t understand
Quia putabant nos stulti essemus

And on the Altar the eternal Sacrifice
Which no tyranny can ever take away

*Sed fuit, est, erit

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                            The Grave Robber of Fifth Avenue

Unferth postures upon the ashes of warriors
The warriors he has despised all his wretched life
Because he is unworthy to be one of them
Warring with only his mouth and never a spear

He mocks their wounds, their missing limbs, their graves
He steals their widows and orphans for himself
As ornaments to his manic caperings
While arrogating honors he could never win

But when the Dragon comes…

But when the Dragon comes, lashing its tail
Unferth will be ghosted away as a howling wail

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                         A Prayer While Driving Past a School

Dear Lord, we pray -

For all the children at their studies today
Give blessings upon them in every way

For all the teachers at their work today
Give blessings upon them in every way

For all the cooks and cleaners today
Give blessings upon them in every way

For all the bus drivers and mechanics today
Give blessings upon them in every way

For all the administrators today
And their nicely decorated offices
And their luxury executive desks
And their golly-super-gee-**** computers that work
And their shiny new MePhones
And their expense accounts
And their district credit cards
And their mileage allowance
And their impressive leather appointment books
And their out-of-town trips to conferences
And their leisurely lunches out
And their air-conditioning that works
And their beauty-shop visits during the day
And their layers of protective secretaries
And their relatives on the payroll

Bless their hearts

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                         J. Alfred Prufrock and the Giant Peach

“Do I dare to eat a peach?” He asked

“Yes, yes. just eat the stupid peach and stop
Banging on about it,” I replied

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

             If a Book Could Take Just One Human to a Desert Island

Who would it take?

You?

Me?

Dostoyevsky?

A librarian?

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                  Kafka, You, and the Self-Service Checkout Kiosk

                            With thanks to Rowan Pelling


                  Those who have never suffered through Kafka
                  Should not employ the adjective “Kafkaesque” -
                  The landgraf would not approve


When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning
from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed
in his bed into a monstrous self-service checkout kiosk.

Someone must have traduced Joseph K.,
for without doing anything wrong
he was arrested in the checkout line
one fine morning

It was late in the evening when
the supermarket supervisor arrived.


Kafka, The Metamorphosis. Trans. Stanley Corngold. New York: Norton. 1972

Kafka, The Trial. Trans. Willa and Edwin Muir. New York: The Modern Library. 1956

Kafka, The Castle. Trans. Willa and Edwin Muir. New York: Schocken. 1982

The hell of self-service checkouts is becoming Kafkaesque (yahoo.com)

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                        Upon Re-Reading William L. Shirer's
                         The Rise and Fall of the Third *****

           Perhaps one day America will go fascist democratically,
           by popular vote.

      -William L. Shirer, New York Times, 29 December 1969

We do not live Samsara, for Samsara has meaning
So this is not Samsara; this is a cascade of deaths
We live in linear time – or maybe we don’t -
And the gods of hate sneak in ahead of us

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                                  Before Me Sits Young Pablo Neruda

                    On the paperback cover of Residence on Earth

Before me sits pensive Pablo Neruda
His young face resting upon his slender hand
He looks a little to the left of the photographer’s eye
He appears to be thinking great thoughts

Or he might be thinking

Why am I posing like a high school senior?


Residence on Earth, introduction by Jim Harrison
New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                    Assembling a Metal Lawn Chair with Great Care
                                   (and a Ball-Peen Hammer)

A friend gave me a lawn chair in tangerine
Bright tangerine, with instructions in English
Which I followed most assiduously
Which parts of the chair most surely did not

The instructions did not mention a ball-Peen hammer
With brutality and words which must not be spoken
(Think of Vulcan and his mighty strokes)
I finally assembled the chair to my satisfaction

And then I sat down

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                Our Children Will Ask Us What We Did in 2024


                                            Thus was th’ applause they meant,
                           Turned to exploding hiss, triumph to shame
                           Cast on themselves from thir own mouths.

                                   Milton, Paradise Lost, X.545-547


Have we not learned?

The Zeppelinfield, the Kroll Opera House
The Great Hall of 10,000 People
The Hippodrome, the Piazza Venetia
Red Square, and the Quicken Loans Arena

Weak beings subsumed within one commanding Will
Adoring with glistening eyes and beating hearts
A strident oligarchy of destiny
Chanting obscurities and pumping fists

But when the chanting stops and foul diktats roll –
Will you - will I? - be a defiant soul?

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                                 Dancing Among the Apple Trees

She danced through the orchard in the long ago
Barefoot among sweet summer’s apple trees
And she was the sweetest apple of all
A taste of Creation hymned with the lingering bees

The orchard is mostly gone

                                                                   Her dancing is forever

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                              Blue Moon and a Spooky Old Tree

To watch the moonrise is almost liturgical
Her bright silver light behind the far-off pines
Rising and glowing and larger and larger
Silent and silver, lifting above the woods

I set a camera to watch Moon through the night
Electronics see the night and light differently
The old apple tree appears white and skeletal
And ghosts pretending to be insects flit about

Moon and trees and ghosts when left alone
Make merry mischief knowing that I am gone

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                 The Gravitas of Our Vice-Presidential Candidates

               In the end it was the worst speaker of the lot who received
               the most applause. People made no effort to follow him and
               merely roared approval at his every word…

                                       Doctor Zhivago, p. 36

Like high school boys behind the old school gym
In micturic dispute about distance and size
Two men exchange puerile scurrilities
A pair of puffed-up *****-mouthed posers

They know all about army guns ‘n’ stuff
Each hero manque’ stuffier than the other
About their ranks and tanks and thousand-yard-stares
And whose AR is the bigger one

Like high school boys behind the old school gym –
And why must we the people put up with them?

"There is an error," a message said. HP wouldn't accept this.

Try:

https://dispatchesforthecolonialoffice.blogspot.com/?zx=791c4035bc496f75

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                            The Moon is Upon Her Throne Tonight

The moon is dressed in her shining best tonight
With silvering joy and lunar happiness
Flying and flowing, flung from her starry wand
Flying and falling upon her glowing-night realm

We loyal subjects peek from our windows to see
An argent pageant royal of beauty and truth
Even in summer the lawn is a frosty field
For her monthly dance, by her command

The Lady of the Moon is our Summer Queen
As she will be, and is, and ever has been

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                                  We Know Where the Holy Grail Is


           “They all say they’ve got the Holy Grail. So who’s right?”

                      The Holy Grail: Many places say they have it.
                       So who’s right? | CNN


We know where the Holy Grail is
Each Sunday we see it on the Altar
As a cup, indifferent in its origins
In the catalogue of a church supply

A rabbi, a carpenter, and God
Walk into a rented room
And a Passover Kiddush cup is blessed
With the Viaticum, for all of us

A Passover seder is neither first nor last
It is forever – and here is the Cup

Lawrence Hall, HSG
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                            Where do Sunflowers go in August?


                 May our love for the Sun, the will of God, be as strong
                 as the sunflower’s…

                                     -attributed to St. John of Tobolsk


With the mower I took the sunflowers down
The withered remnants, stalks and heads and seeds
Those few remaining seeds rejected by the birds
For reasons of their own

With the mower I circled ‘round and round
Building a thickish thatch as a sort of nest
For seeds in anticipation of autumn
The seasons know their own

With the mower I saw high summer gone
I mowed – or had I mown?

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

     Comparing Our Secret Service with Barney Fife is Inappropriate

                            Because we love and respect Deputy Fife

In art, incompetence can have a certain charm
But in stupid men with guns the charm is lacking
Our agents can’t even keep themselves from harm
Their greatest skills are in shacking and slacking

Colombian girlies and slanting roofs
Unman the best of them; they lose their guns
They lose laptops, but never their 90-proof
And break into private property for poopy runs

To them a President entrusts his life –
He’d surely be safer with Deputy Fife