“…or if we must be wakeful, cheerful…”
-from St. Thomas More’s evening prayer in A Man for all Seasons

Soft, healing sleep now rolls away, away
One’s senses flicker unreliably
The electronic weather panel glows
The CPAP whispers a leaking-air hissssssss

Awake. And why? The day was cruel enough
And now the night reproaches with things done
And things not done, all mixed in raw reproach
Life-choices laughing, mocking, taunting

Perhaps sleepless Macbeth can tell us why
With mirth displaced, all through these haunted hours

A line cook at Denny’s (must have own pans)
Is an artist, accomplished in assemblage
Compositions of eggs (rather like Cezanne’s)
Toast, bacon, waffles for his decoupage

His gesso is the window layered in steam
Built of reflections and condensation
Hinting at the flowing Interstate stream
Beyond the No Smoking pumping station

The line cook has indeed his pans and plans -
Art, as the muse of cookery commands

On the Vigil of the Nativity

In a Capuchin friary, on a wall
In faded letters from the long ago
A simple sign asks the casual visitor

                      “Why Are You Here?”

And that’s a fair question; it always is
If I am in one place, I am not in another;
Unless someone has forced me otherwise
I have made a choice to be where I am

So why do I kneel here (and half asleep)
In a Stable, among cattle and sheep?

15th Sunday in Ordinary Time

We are scattered, like the Tribes of Israel
Sown not in rejection but as word and work
Planted everywhere, and commanded to grow
In the rich earth of divine Creation

There is no veto in birds, rocks, or thorns
Let them instead serve in their own poor ways
As dutiful as humans, maybe more so
Unfallen either as seed or as beings

To tend and guard the ancient unities
That grow forever in Jerusalem

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

          18 October 2023 - When Missiles Fall Upon Our Vanities

When missiles fall upon our vanities
And children die among our smoking ruins
Will we dare plead our weak excuses to God:
“This isn’t what we meant…”

Lawrence Hall HSG
[email protected]

                             1957: The Year We All Became Soviets

                 “…we’re going to get science applied to social problems
                  and backed by the whole force of the state…”

              Mark Studdock in C. S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength

Soviet Science launched a beeping toy into space
In the name of Progress; a mass-murderer ordered it so
And a month later Science launched and killed sweet Laika
Abandoned in orbit to die alone

Brave America suffered the Aunt Pittypat vapours:
We too must launch our slide-rules into space
And set our children to study Sovietism
Send civilization into orbit to die alone

Dogs and apes and men have flamed out in crashes
And Alexandria again is but pale ashes

For both the Jews require signs, and the Greeks seek after wisdom#

-Douay-Rheims

Having barely graduated from school
Being fitted with wisdom just won’t happen
But a sign would be nice, a miracle
Just a small one, to make sense of all this

I wouldn’t know a Q source from shoe polish
But don’t patronize me with bumper stickers,
Reimagine Truth as paradigm shifts,
Or shout out with a Sola Scriptura

I am already my own stumbling block
And my own foolishness (complete with notes)

20 September 1870

Like vultures hovering over the faithful dead
The rank red rags of base repression hung
Upon the blast-breeched walls of captive Rome;
The smoke of conquest fouled the ancient streets
While mocking conquerors marched their betters
At the point of enlightened bayonets
To the scientific future, murdering those
Who bore themselves with quiet dignity.

False, sinister Savoy sneered in disdain
At ancient truths, this costumed reprobate
Who played at soldier once the firing ceased,
And claimed Saint Peter’s patrimony on
The corpses of the merely useful who
With today’s slogans fresh upon their lips
At dawn advanced upon the remnant walls
So thinly held by the last legionaries

And thus befeathered fat Vittorio
Was given his victory by better men
On both sides there, their corpses looted by
The pallid inheritors of Progress.
The son of a Sardinian spurred his horse
Along the streets to take enforced salutes,
And to the Quirinal by a passage broad,
And finally to the Ardeatine Caves.

Like vultures hovering over the faithful dead
The rank red rags of base repression hung
Upon the blast-breeched walls of captive Rome;
The smoke of conquest fouled the ancient streets
While mocking conquerors marched their betters
At the point of enlightened bayonets
To the scientific future, murdering those
Who bore themselves with quiet dignity

False, sinister Savoy sneered in disdain
At ancient truths, this costumed reprobate
Who played at soldier once the firing ceased
And claimed Saint Peter’s patrimony on
The corpses of the merely useful who
With this day’s slogans fresh upon their lips
At dawn advanced upon the remnant walls
So thinly held by so the last faithful few

And thus befeathered fat Vittorio
Was given his victory by better men
On both sides there, their corpses looted by
The pallid inheritors of Progress
The son of a Sardinian spurred his horse
Along the streets of now obedient Rome
And to the Quirinal by a passage broad
And finally to the Ardeatine Caves

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                                    Twent­y Three But Not Me

I am told I have 26 new kin
How sad that I will never get to meet them
23andMe has tossed me into the bin
Access has been blocked through someone’s whim:

My information is open for hackers to see
But it’s certainly not open for me!

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                                                     30 September 2023

                                             “Make it so, Number One”

                                     -Star Trek: The New Generation (often)

Up at 0630 with coffee and Tuxedo-Cat
In the west-fading light of the still-full moon
To watch and hear and feel and touch and taste
The waning of night, the beginning of day

The air was cool, the grass was damp, the birds –
The birds were LOUD, fussing from tree to tree
An old lawn chair, layers of paint over rust
Was our captaincy over possibilities

“Is all well, Number One?” I asked the cat
He blinked his eyes that the world was ready to sail

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

                                     31 December 2020 –
                            Time Out for a Penalty Flag

             The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
             And God fulfills himself in many ways

                     -Tennyson, “The Passing of Arthur”

Change does not lie in calendars or dates
But in the seasonal turnings of the year
And in the ordered ways of God with us
Compassing us truly in spite of ourselves

Years are but our usages and measurings
Tools lent us for a time for learning Creation
For balancing the better against the good
And the transcendent against the transient

Life is not lived in calendars or dates
But beyond all time, and only in Truth

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                         31 May 2024 – The Prophet-God Descends

A being descends a de-escalator of brass
As if he were beaming down from the Hale-Bopp
A prophet-god to a room thin with ghosts
Who in hollowness hang upon his vanities

He pauses

Then whines

Obscenities
Threats
Promises
Resentments
Anger

Flinging blame and incomplete sentences

Into a void

4,000 More Light Casualties

A group of journalists arrived from Moscow and were told that the Afghan National Army…had taken the ridge. (They) were posing for victory photographs while our soldiers lay in the morgue.

-Svetlana Alexeivich, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War

A touchy old man who never went to war
Now poses with his decorative generals  
In their tailored Ken-and-Barbie battle dress
All prepped for combat in the officers’ clubs

New president, same as old presidents
And generals, awarding each other medals
And promotions for their golden resumes’
For sending not-their-children off to die

While they prosper on defense industry bids,
Afghanistan is the graveyard of our kids

(Shhhhhhhhhh…Don’t disturb Congress; they’re all asleep.)

A group of journalists arrived from Moscow and were told that the Afghan National Army…had taken the ridge. (They) were posing for victory photographs while our soldiers lay in the morgue.

-Svetlana Alexeivich, *Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War

A touchy old man who never went to war
Now poses with his decorative generals  
In their tailored Ken-and-Barbie battle dress
All prepped for combat in the officers’ club

New president, same as old presidents
And generals, awarding each other medals
And promotions for their golden resumes’
For sending not-their-children off to die

While they prosper on defense industry bids,
Afghanistan is the graveyard of our kids

*Shhhhhhhhhh…Don’t disturb Congress;
they’re fast asleep.

The Impatience of the Nineteenth Century

The impatience of the nineteenth century
Left us the genocide of the twentieth
With all the progressive apparatus of death:
Infanticide, death camps, firing squads, gas

And now unto the twenty-first – smart bombs
Are flung by geosynchronous satellites
Deep, deep into the imperfect souls of men
Thus breaking bodies for the perfect state

In victory the dying last voice will croak
“At least we freed ourselves from those awful kings”

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

                      So was I Born to Wear a Slogan Tee?

So was I born to wear a slogan tee
Or an influencer’s autographed g-strings?
Is this why the Lord God created me -
To be a follower, a buyer of things?

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

                                           Rubik’s Cubicle

When a problem is solved, another spins ‘round
When that problem is solved, two others spin back
When those problems are solved, chaos begins
Everything depends on everything else

When a date is set, another unsets
When that date is set, two others get lot
When those dates are found, chaos begins
Everyone depends on everyone else

A wise man learns that chaos begins
When the Rubik’s cube of life backspins

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

      6 January 2021: To Ask to be Exempt Would be Unreasonable


        “Death . . . comes for us all, my lords. Yes, even for Kings he
          comes…”

             -St. Thomas More in Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons


A slip of paper which I have since misplaced:

“SARS coronavirus 2 RNS
Detected”
Detected
DETECTED
Me? But I’m special (my mother always said so)

“If you have a question regarding your…”
Well, no, I guess not. Time to pause and think
To ask to be exempt would be unreasonable
But will my corpse be stored in a ****** truck?

To ask to be exempt would be unreasonable
And so
What must I do in service to God and man?



I wrote these clumsy lines in January after my daughter recovered from the CV; she almost died of it. My pharmacist was diagnosed at about the same time as I was, 6 January, and died within two weeks. My wife was quite ill for a week but recovered. Some fifteen of my friends and acquaintances died from it this year. One friend died in a three-hospital shuffle, and because of the paperwork his body was not released to his family for months.

Vaccines, as you will remember, were available to Congress in December of 2020 but not to most citizens until March of 2021 (AOC gets coronavirus vaccine on social media, as Congress begins to receive Pfizer injections | Fox News), and  (The Distribution Timeline for the COVID-19 Vaccine | coronavirus (utah.gov)).

My symptoms were only something like a prolonged bad cold, an undeserved mercy.

The CV is real.

May our new year be free from it.

Must Anne Frank be murdered again and again? I cannot write anything meaningful today; I can only sputter in anger and futility.

                    “A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, weeping,
                     and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children,
                     refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”

                                       -St. Matthew 2:18

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

                                     ­   90,000 Screaming Fans

                     There are those like Norfolk who follow me because I
                     wear the crown, there are those like Master Cromwell
                     who follow me because they are jackals with sharp
                     teeth and I'm their tiger, there's a mass that follows me
                     because it follows anything that moves. And then
                     there's you.

                  -Henry VII to Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons

Bahhhhhhhhh!  Yip! Yip! Yip! Oink! Squawk! Mooooooooooooooo! Squeak! Cluck! Bleat! Hee hawwwwwww! Screech! Whinnnnny!  Snort! Grunt! Oink! Neighhhhhh! Bahhhhhhhhh!  Yip! Oink! Squawk! Mooooooooooooooo! Squeak! Cluck! Bleat! Hee hawwwwwww! Screech! Whinnnnny!  Snort! Grunt! Oink! Neighhhhhh! Yike! Yike! Yike! Bahhhhhhhhh!  Yip! Oink! Squawk! Mooooooooooooooo! Squeak! Cluck! Bleat! Hee hawwwwwww! Screech! Whinnnnny!  Snort! Grunt! Oink! Neighhhhhh! Bahhhhhhhhh!  Yip! Yip! Yip! Oink! Squawk! Mooooooooooooooo! Squeak! Cluck! Bleat! Hee hawwwwwww! Screech! Whinnnnny!  Snort! Grunt! Oink! Neighhhhhh! Bahhhhhhhhh!  Yip! Oink! Squawk! Mooooooooooooooo! Squeak! Cluck! Bleat! Hee hawwwwwww! Screech! Whinnnnny!  Snort! Grunt! Oink! Neighhhhhh! Yike! Yike! Yike! Bahhhhhhhhh!  Yip! Oink! Squawk! Mooooooooooooooo! Squeak! Cluck! Bleat! Hee hawwwwwww! Screech! Whinnnnny!  Snort! Grunt! Oink! Neighhhhhh! Bahhhhhhhhh!  Yip! Yip! Yip! Oink! Squawk! Mooooooooooooooo!Squeak! Cluck! Bleat! Hee hawwwwwww! Screech! Whinnnnny!  Snort! Grunt! Oink! Neighhhhhh! Bahhhhhhhhh!  Yip! Oink! Squawk! Mooooooooooooooo! Squeak! Cluck! Bleat! Hee hawwwwwww! Screech! Whinnnnny!  Snort! Grunt! Oink! Neighhhhhh! Yike! Yike! Yike! Bahhhhhhhhh!  Yip! Oink! Squawk! Mooooooooooooooo! Squeak! Cluck! Bleat! Hee hawwwwwww! Screech! Whinnnnny!  Snort! Grunt! Oink! Neighhhhhh! Yip! Yip! Yip! Oink! Squawk! Mooooooooooooooo!Squeak! Cluck! Bleat! Hee hawwwwwww! Screech! Whinnnnny!  Snort! Grunt! Oink! Neighhhhhh! Bahhhhhhhhh!  Yip! Oink! Squawk! Mooooooooooooooo!Squeak! Cluck! Bleat! Hee hawwwwwww! Screech! Whinnnnny!  Snort! Grunt! Oink! Neighhhhhh! Yike! Yike! Yike! Bahhhhhhhhh!  Yip! Oink! Squawk! Mooooooooooooooo! Squeak! Cluck! Bleat! Hee hawwwwwww! Screech! Whinnnnny!  Snort! Grunt! Oink! Neighhhhhh!



https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-college-football-dan-mullen-gainesville-football-1­e21c3bd07b05e4ea0ecd02fa9923679

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                                     93 Million Dreams Away

                                          For Thomas Futrell
                              Will and Kelly’s Little Sunbeam

The sun plays peek-a-boo among the leaves
One last game before children must go to bed
And then our lady moon comes in and weaves
Such happy dreams for each little sleepyhead!

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

                     A Cloud of Unknowing in Ordinary Time

Sometimes life doesn’t make any sense
You’d think that hurting like an adolescent
Would end with adolescence
But it doesn’t

Maybe we can find some good in the hurt
That when we hurt we’re carrying someone else’s hurt
It sounds awfully thin
Maybe it’s enough

A Bag of Cabbage Chips

Unlike me, many of you have accepted the situation of your imprisonment, and will die here like rotten cabbages.

-#6 in Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner

A voice:
                   Be still, and know that I am Chip
Be still, because this might sting a little
There, now, wasn’t that easy?  Here’s a tissue
Who’s a good boy, then! Here’s your free tee-shirt  

Now that you are one with the ‘way cool kids
You can use your implanted chip to buy
A cup of coffee – or maybe a bag of chips
Log into a computer, and open doors

The one small thing you cannot buy or see
Is the return of your own human dignity

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                      A Ballerina Arrested for High Treason

                           Let them dance in praise of His name

                                                 -Psalm 150

A ballerina was arrested for high treason

And no wonder – dance is a beautiful thing
Whether the thunderous tread of a country line
Or the ethereal flights of Russian ballet
Dance is a joy, and so must be suppressed

A ballerina was arrested for high treason

A dancer moves to mysteries of her own
On an imperial stage in Saint Petersburg
Or barefoot in a meadow among butterflies
Dance is a joy, and must be controlled

A ballerina was arrested for high treason

In the street or in a moonlit fairies’ ring
Such wild wonder – dance is a dangerous thing!

A ballerina was arrested for high treason

Majestic in their yellow-painted shields
Imperious trumping traffic lights command
Through glares of green and red, and garish orange
Obedience in all the traffic below

How sad - there is no traffic to command
Though once there was, before the lordly lights
Were lifted up:  a little town was here
With pharmacies, feed stores, hardware, and cafes

And a movin’-picture show.  All gone now.  
And then the state put up the traffic lights

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                                        A­ Bee Upon my Knee

                                  A Rhyme for Brave Children
                                     From a Whiny Grownup

A bee upon my knee
It hurt’ed me
It stung me with a sting
And died, poor thing

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

                              Abject Horror in the Microwave

There are few crimes more likely to drive a man
A man, a sensitive man, a thinking man
To existential despair
Than the foul stench of cooking broccoli

Lawrence Hall, HSG

[email protected]

(from several years ago)

                                        Within the Octave of Christmas


                               For Eldon, Patron of Christmas Bonfires

The wan, weak winter sun has long since set
And on the edge of stars a merry fire
Sends sparks to play among the tinseled frost
That decorates the fields for Christmas-time.

Within this holy octave, happy men
Concelebrate with hops, cigars, and jokes,
This liturgy of needful merriment

Because

The Holy Child is safe in Mary’s arms,
Saint Joseph leans upon his staff and smiles,
The shepherds now have gone to watch their sheep,
And all are safe from Herod for a time.

Our Christmas duty now is to delight
In Him who gives us joy this happy night.

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                      All of Us Look for Magic in Our Books

All of us look for magic in our books
A sale-table paperback during a coffee break
Is a voyage beyond the vending machines
A light at dawn on the first day in Eden

But we must bring our magic to the magic
Or good King Arthur will not come again
The Shire will remain befouled and desolate
And morning will not bring us noble knights

For we must bring our magic to the magic
Which will not happen if we don’t believe

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

            A Book of Numbers with a Picture of a Naked Man

Once everyone owned a book of numbers
No, not the one in the Bible; that’s still in use
But a book of telephone numbers, four digits each
Although you knew your friends’ numbers anyway

On the cover stood a winged Mercury
A handsome man wearing a funny hat
And nothing else, but no one mentioned it
Too much else going on through the party line

A picture of a handsome naked man -
Really, you’d think someone would have noticed

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

                                  A Bouncing Baby Hyphen

Tiffany-Cherise Snark-Ponsonby (Tiffy)
And Terence-Rock Smith-Hoogerwerf (Rocky)
Married and hyphenated their hyphens
And made sweet hyphen in hymeneal bliss

And as these things happen, their hyphen was blessed
The old women of the parish counted the hyphens
To see if nine or fewer hyphens had passed
When Tiffy-Rocky were blessed with a beautiful hyphen

At the baptism they sprinkled in some apostrophes
For their daughter, Su’mm’er-D’awn-A’pril-Bre’eze

(Who was born in February)

A Bourgeois Committee Admiring Itself

A Cautionary Tale for Secessionists

The way of republics is to fall apart
Because without history, Altar, and Throne
A government is but a little boy’s blocks
Kicked over and aside upon a mood

A culture is poetry, and melodies that live
And flow with the waters, stories of kings,
Farmers and workers proud upon the land
Their heads bowed nobly when the Angelus rings

These truths make a people royal, not subject to
A bourgeois committee admiring itself

Dear Somebody,

Being added to a collection is an honor; however, although I am not, not, not prissy, I do not want to be associated with a site whose title contains obscenities.  You are free to employ puerile language, and I am free not to do so.  Please delete my poem.

About Those Purple Socks
  
Graham Greene’s Monsignor Quixote
  
The world had no more use for any of them:
An old Communist, an old priest, an old car
All of them well into their horsemeat days
And so they fled, and crashed into the truth
  
On a chivalric quest for purple socks
Wandering on the road to Golgotha
Their Stations of the Cross a cinema,
A pair of Guardia, a brothel, wine
  
And so they fled, and fell into the Truth
There at the foot of the Altar of God

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

              About That Beautiful Lady Sipping a Cup of Earl Grey

You’ve noticed her, I see – just a word of advice:
I was chatting with her over cups of tea
I mentioned that Earl Grey also tasted nice over ice -
There was ice indeed as she turned away from me

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

                   About that Bicycle Leaning Against a Sunlit Wall

About that bicycle leaning against a wall
All artsy and stuff in the slanting sun
“Take my clear photograph!” it seems to call -
Nah, put away your Leica - it’s been done

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

                             I Met a Girl in Newfoundland

She was seated behind the courtesy desk
At the Costco in Saint John’s
All bundled up and shivering
On a drizzly morning in July

“Oh, it’s not that cold,” I laughed
“I’ve never been warm in my life,” she replied
“I’ve never been off this island
And I’ve never been warm in my life”

After a pause, I slunk away
To ponder my coldness that summer day

I. From a Vietnamese / Cambodian / Egyptian / Israeli / Lebanese /
Sudanese / Syrian / Afghan Child’s Garden of Verses

Flare light
Flare bright
First flare I see tonight
I wish I may
I wish I might
Not be blown to death tonight

II. From an American Man’s Twooter of Self-Pity

Subtle beep
Subtle beep
‘wakening me from my sleep -
Oh, no! I’m going to die!
Not meeeeeee! Don’t wanna fry!
It’s all about ME – boo-hoo!
Poor ME! Poor ME! I’m gonna SUE!

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                            About That Reed Shaken with the Wind


                       What went ye out into the wilderness to see?
                                      A reed shaken with the wind?

                                      -Saint Matthew 11:8


A swaying riverside reed is a marvelous thing
In its proper service to our gracious Lord
A stalk of grass honoring its Creator
In quiet, unassuming dignity

Symbolisms are laid upon the reed
In power-point sermons and learned texts
But first of all it is but a nice little reed
Joining its labors with those of the whispering wind

Until Our Lord Himself calls upon that reed
Even as He calls upon us for some small deed

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]

502 Bad Gateway
____________
nginx/1.1.19

Dear Friends,

This has been fun, but with the late changes I can make nothing of the HelloPoetry site.  If I can manage to submit this, please know that you can continue to read my scribblings on my own poorly-accomplished – but functional – site, Reactionary Drivel at reactionarydrivel.blogspot.com.  It’s not really reactionary, tho’ it’s often drivel!  And if you will send me the name of your site, I will follow you there.

Cheers,

Lawrence


Good-bye, Poetry?

Oh, Eliot, what has happened to your wonderful site
Your gift of poetry to a suffering world?
Did some Morlock in an unhappy hour
Break into spring to make it winter again?

Who has torn and scattered the pages
And thus obscured the words so carefully shaped
By the fugitive keepers of dreams
Who seek for them again in the wilderness?

There once was a workshop for poor scribblers –
A studio of dreams – may it be restored!



Well Done, Thou Good and Faithful Cat

for Calvin

Yes, surely there will be another cat
But not this Cat, not this Big Orange Dust-Mop
Lounging “with abs of steel and *** appeal”
At his window, hungry for hummingbirds

Or lurking there behind that door to swat
His Sarah, who served as his household staff,
For failing to render due obeisance
To him, the superior MagnifiCat

Dear Calvin –

For now, farewell, until that better World,
O happy, leaping, loving childhood friend

Gossamer is that
Substance which is excreted
From a spider’s *ss.

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

                                Abraham Lincoln and Macbeth

                           After life’s fitful fever, he sleeps well

                                              -Macbeth III.ii.23

To imagine a modern president
Having a favorite Shakespearean play
Is not to imagine a president at all

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

                 A Brief and Self-Indulgent Morning Offering

Dear Lord,

Thank you for this day
I ask you that I may
Pray it
Play it
And
Work it
Most to your pleasure
To the pleasure of those whom I love
To the pleasure of everyone I meet today
Rather more for me that you did yesterday
(but we’ll say nothing more about that)
And nothing for Satan
‘Cause he’s an ***

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                                    A Brief Christmas Truce

An evening of coffee and little gifts exchanged
The tension in the air suggests a ceasefire
A ceasefire called moments before we arrived
Everyone commanded to hold their positions

A wounded husband bleeds out near the eggnog
His wife sharpens her bayonet by the creche
Eager for the bugle to sound once again
For an advance all along the battle line

A child stares sullenly into his video game
It is the only Christmas peace he’s going to get

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                           A brief Discourse on Forbidden Love

Our culture again is oppressively hag-ridden:
All love in our time is sternly forbidden

You don’t have to stand up, but I wish you would -
Standing up for the flag is standing up
For each other, me for you, you for me
But if you don’t, forgive me anyway

You don’t have to stand up, but I wish you would -
Because some fifty years ago That Man’s
Heel spurs kept him from crawling through the mud
With me; he’s not much of a stand-up guy

You don’t have to stand up either, but if you do –
I would be humbly honored to stand with you

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

                                   Absent Friends and Failing Light

We all have lists of absent friends
Who were with us one week and Covid the next
With unfinished stories and little jokes
We meant to tell each other the next time we met

The very picture of health, we say to ourselves
Shooting a few hoops (“Yeah, I still got it!”)
Washing the pickup, coffee after Mass
Merriment – but then a note – in failing light

Life is shadowy, seen through a dark, dark lens
We all have lists of absent friends

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                 A Buddhist and a Methodist Walk into a Bore


                     “…whose faith is known to You alone”


After Mass

I met a man who was desperately afraid
That God might err and welcome into His peace
A Buddhist (unless he repented and said the magic words)
Or even worse than that, a Methodist!

I met a man who was angry and bitter
That the priest spoke kindly of other faiths
In quoting Saint Paul and the canon of the Mass
But this unhappy man knew better than they

I met a man who felt he was God’s boss
And thus rebuked Our Lord upon the Cross

A Burner on the Bridge

A burner on the bridge.  A human burns,
Trapped in technology and beer and fire
We hear the cold dispatch, the desperate call
To go, to see, to mend, if possible
We drive.  The flashers, blue and red, rotate
In the startled faces of those we pass
At speed, Hail Mary speed, surreal speed
Time, motion, space, and light obscure the night

In a pattern tail lights wink dim, then bright
Stalled traffic makes a long glowworm in reds
Boats, trailers, trucks, tankers, Volkswagens, Fords,
People in shorts drift around, slug Cokes, laugh
Unshaven men smoke cigarettes and swear
Blue-haired killers in Chrysler New Yorkers
Blink blankly through bifocals in the glare
Of flashers and flashlights, flares and taillights.
A burner on the bridge.  A Human burns.

We drive slowly through the curious crowds
Who mill about and stare and point and laugh
They consider a charred corpse fair reward
For being delayed on their trip home from the lake
When they ‘rive home they’ll hoist stories and yip:
“I was there; I seen it, man; it was gross!”
But some already are anxious to go
They honk, and pop a top, and cuss the cops.
A burner on the bridge.  A human burns.

Below the bridge, old, silent water lurks
Oozing warmly, fetidly, in its drift
Slithering blackly in the warm spring night
A silent observer of fire and death
A carrier of beer cans and debris,
Radiator coolant, plastic, and blood
Concrete pylons pounded into the mud
Where once were trees.  And now the water sees
A burner on the bridge.  A human burns.

The bridge is an altar.  The wreckages
Are vessels sacred to our gods, the dead
Are sacrifices to our gods, an incense of death
Our offering is broken flesh, and blood:
“The is my body, burnt on this spring night;
This is my blood, shed on the center stripe.
A burner on the bridge.  A human burns.

A shapeless hat among the smoking ash,
Old clothes, a shoe, cans of beer, fishing lures:
The sad trifles and trinkets of the dead
Now, firemen in their yellow rubber suits
Climb slowly through the tortured, broken steels
And gently stow a man into a bag
Ashes and smoke, green radiator fluid
The old river flows, wherever it goes.
A burner on the bridge.  A human burned.

Hours later: coffee at the Dairy Queen
High school baseball players yelp cheerfully as
They wreck fast cars in a video game.
Under the fluorescents, the flashers seem
Still to turn, endlessly turn, in the night
Hamburgers, possibly char-broiled, are gulped
Sloppily, laughingly, as cleated feet
And deep-fried breath cheer a video death.
A burner on the bridge.  A human burned.

A burner on the bridge.  A human burned.