Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                                   Did You Enjoy Your Christmas?


                                               Christmas Night


That merry little Christmas that they sing about –
Did you open your gifts around a tree
Tinsel and ornaments and a brilliant star
Pajamas and cocoa and merriment

Did you enjoy a dinner with someone special
Or with happy children and a few friends
Then coffee and cake and quiet memories
Everyone free from telescreens and devices

And now with a fire and soft candlelight
Is this another gentle silent night?

I hope it is so, dear friend

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                             Did You Grow Up in a Palace Too?

                               In Memory of the Palace Theatre

If you were fortunate you grew up in a palace
A Technicolor palace where Robin Hood
Saved England for only twenty-five cents
And the royal feast was popcorn and RC Cola

If you were fortunate you grew up in a palace
Which was so big that the Comanche Nation
Could encircle both a fort and a wagon train
And a candy bar was chuck-wagon stew

If you were fortunate you grew up in a palace
And softly, sweetly found another’s hand
As the cowboys and Indians rode away in peace -
There was a newer magic for you to discover

If you were fortunate you grew up in a palace
In the summertime of your happy youth

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                 Don't Forget the Jewish Space and Weather Lasers

After watching a Trump rally on the telescreen
I read a bit in The Rise and Fall of the Third *****
And ghostly echoes heard, of slogans and chants
From screen and book and my father’s narratives

The generations who raised us – they left us hope

And you and I – what will we leave to our children?

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]
Dispatches for the Colonial Office


                                           Died While Trying

                                  (prompted by an idea by Nagi)


                     “Every day you play with the light of the universe”

                                                 -Neruda

          
The glory of killing an old man already dying
Is heralded by the clinking of colorful medals
As a president is helped into his Mercedes
By white-gloved lieutenants wearing golden aiguilettes

The old man dying in his bed was a challenge to evil
Through the love-letters of freedom he wrote to the world
Ambassadors of hope that could not be recalled
Just as a subtle injection cannot be withdrawn

A flowering of ideas in verses freely exchanged
Crushed beneath boots polished by frightened houseboys

Sunflowers do not bend toward the Sun; they genuflect
Which is exactly right for morning prayers
They have waited in place throughout the night
For His morning, and true enough, He comes

And through the day His liturgies of Light
Illuminating the letters and margins of life
With all the ornaments of Creation
Delight each flower in its work and play

Ordering all endeavors to great effect -
Sunflowers do not bend toward the Sun; they genuflect

Did Mitya escape to America?
He might have changed his name to Bob or Al
Married Myrtle in the Methodist Church -
Myrtle, nee’ Agrafena Alexandrovna –

And worked the candy counter at Woolworth’s
Riding the trolley downtown every day
While saving up for a new Model T
In obedience to his New World staretz

Horatio Alger hissing behind a tree:
Was Mitya sentenced to America?

Disaster Preparedness Checklist**

Double-A batteries, a map out of town
A tank full of gas, a mind full of plans
A flashlight, toilet paper, a radio
A can opener and cans to go, go, go

Leather gloves and duct tape, whistles
Waterproof matches, and match-proof water
Blankies and ponchos and a change of clothes
A medical kit and a pocket knife

But

No one ever lists a box of cigars,
And a Wodehouse for reading by lamplight

The universe spirals through its starlit dance
Creation spins around, in, and down
Eternity circles the paten and cup

Miraculum

Eternity circles the paten and cup
Around and out and up, Creation spins
Through its starlit dance the universe spirals

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

                                     ­ Disney’s Macbeth

                     Upon the release of Joel Coen’s version

I want to see Macbeth in Technicolor
Almost Disney-ish, in cheery pastels,
With bright-lit halls and sunny fields of flowers
And maybe Annette as Lady Macbeth

And let Macbeth be a comely youth
With muscular hands that wield both sword and pen
An honest merry face that smiles with ease
Sweet words and penitent Aves on his lips

The world is well-lit ever since the ark -
It is the human heart that lurks in the dark

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

                                     ­ Disney’s Macbeth

                     Upon the release of Joel Coen’s version

I want to see Macbeth in Technicolor
Almost Disney-ish, in cheery pastels,
With bright-lit halls and sunny fields of flowers
And maybe Annette as Lady Macbeth

And let Macbeth be a comely youth
With muscular hands that wield both sword and pen
An honest merry face that smiles with ease
Sweet words and penitent Aves on his lips

The world is well-lit ever since the ark -
It is the human heart that lurks in the dark




Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are young - why does no one work with that?
#macbeth

Sometimes they are all Up the Down Staircase:
Please use the computer we never gave you
Respond to the directive we never sent
And send again the grades you sent last month

You have thirty students in your night class
The adjunct next to you has only six
Well, no, you don’t get any more pay than him
          I mean “than he”
We’re miffed that you even asked about that

Your roof is leaking only because it’s raining
And you’re overdue for your pervert training

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                                        Disturbances in Church

The more I am disturbed by liturgical novelties
The less I am disturbed by God

The less I am disturbed by liturgical novelties
The more I am disturbed by God

All of which is logical, not odd

Knee surgery Buc-ee’s Alabama
Diarrhea Buc-ee’s Bastrop back surgery
Buc-ee’s Fort Worth foot surgery Buc-ee’s
New Braunfels abdominal surgery

Buc-ee’s Texas City divorce Buc-ee’s
Port Lavaca gastro-intestinal
Series Buc-ee’s Pearland fever and chills
Cardiac workup Buc-ee’s Lake Jackson

Blood pressure pills Buc-ee’s Madisonville
Bypass surgery Buc-ee’s Brazoria

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

Except for the title none of this is mine; the direct quotation following is from Shakespeare:

                                              Jill Macbeth

…Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood,
Stop up th’ access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
Th’ effect and it! Come to my woman’s *******,
And take my milk for gall, your murd’ring ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature’s mischief! Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark
To cry, “Hold, hold!”

                                         -Macbeth I.v.41-62

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Macbeth, by William Shakespeare

Doctor Ponsonby’s Patented Empowering Electrical Rosary

This ilke Monk leet olde thynges pace,
And heeld after the newe world the space.

Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

How out of date are simple wooden beads
An upgrade is what the Rosary needs!

Something to give your meditations spice
Connected to your electronic device

Beamed back and forth to The Cloud, you see
With mega-mega gigs of memory

Doctor Ponsonby’s Patented Empowering
Electrical Rosary is just the thing!

The Ave Maria is so out of date
It’s Ave ME now, ‘cause we’re all so great!

Make your prayers less about God, more about you
Signal yourself through sacred Tooth of Blue

A camera hidden in the crucifix
Enables you to take your selfie-flicks

The Pater beads count each joggery mile
Or kilometres if those are your style

The Ave beads are recycled with care
To save the forests, the rivers, and air


Designed in Germany, made in China
High-definition beads; there’s nothing finer

Buy the first (as advertised on tv)
And we’ll send you a second all for free

Remember: for weddings, funerals, and daily devotions
Let RAM and ROM go through all the motions

Doctor Ponsonby’s Patented Empowering
Electrical Rosary – O make it sing!

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                                            ­  Do Dogs Have Souls?


                                     “Behold, I make all things new.”

                                                  Revelati­ons 21:3-5


Do dogs have souls?
But how can one look into those big brown eyes
And not know the answer

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                  Do Dreams Fade Away at Dawn? Or Do We?

Do dreams beyond the dreamer dream
The imagined lands from deepest night
In which we live and seem to love -
Do they exist at morning’s light?

This began as a criticism of overproduced, hammy, yowly, look-at-me, as-arranged-by-a-junior-high-assistant-band-director interpretations of the National Anthem.  It deteriorated. I blame the Russians.

Does Anyone Sing the National Anthem These Days?

Because Francis Scott Key was all about Who-Whoa-Whoa and Yay-Yay-Yay

A minute or so of recorded music
Over-produced in that insta-emo style
Then followed by “Whoa whoa yay oh yay whoa
Whoa yay yay yay whoa oh yay whoa whoa whoa

Whoa yay oh yay whoa whoa yay yay yay whoa
Oh yay whoa whoa whoa whoa yay oh yah
Yay whoa whoa yay yay yay whoa oh yay whoa
Whoa whoa whoa yay oh yay whoa whoa yay yay

Yay whoa oh yay whoa whoa whoa yay yay
It’s all about me-me-me-me-me-meeeeeeeeeeemeeeeeeeeeeeemeeeeeeee!”

Followed by –

Baseball: “Play ball!”

Racetrack: “Gentlemen, start your engines!”

Rodeo: “Gentlemen, start your cattle!”

The federal government’s Outer Continental Shelf Oil & Gas Lease Sales
Close: “Ladies and gentlemen, let’s open your sealed bids!”

School: “Teachers, start your sophomores.”

Austin, Texas City Council: “And now, Comrade Muffin Snort-Ponsonby,
BA, MA, MEd, Chair Emerita of the Travis County Sensitivity League, will
chant her original composition, “Spiritual Wind-Song Ode to Comrade
Stalin.”

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

                        Does Cambridge Have a Comma Too?

Oh, Oxford Comma, let all hail to thee
You sorter-out of tidy sequencings
Who suffer not confusion in categories
And marshal your strong words in battle lines

Oh, Cambridge, poor Cambridge, you have not
A comma of your own; your sequencings
Were lost among the fens in Hereward’s days -
You might want to go a-fishing for them

Oh, sure, Cambridge,

You have your arts and poetry and drama
But only Oxford boasts her very own comma

A sunrise has no trigger warning, no:
The dawn is not that misty night which was;
A sinister click, and the radio speaks
Tidings of discomfort and joylessness

          Someone must be made to suffer for this1

There is no trigger warning from the clock
Announcing brutally the need to rise
As from the dead, and dress for this day’s work
Which lacks all hope of glamour and success

          Someone must be made to suffer for this

Life is not fitted with warnings, and so
One’s discomfort is the fault of others

           Someone must be made to suffer for this


1“Someone must be made to suffer for this” is a mimeme from Frederick William Rolfe’s Hadrian VII.

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Logosophiamag.c­om
Hellopoetry.com
Fellowshipandfairydust.com

                                    Does the Moon Write Back?

Sometimes I wonder: does the moon ever write
A poem about me or you?

Does the Point Vanish? Or do We?

In poetry there is no vanishing point
No lines converging in flat distances
Upon a gessoed plane of pleynt and paint
Skillfully rendered for the imagination

In poetry lines flow as languid streams
Or sometimes storm the soul as wilding floods
For seldom do they pause and build a pose
Because lines are imagination


No
                           Lines converge in flat dis
                               Tances because in
                                   Poetry there
                                     Is no van
                                        Ishing
              ­                                 .

“Men Ditch Suits, and Retailers Struggle to Adapt”

                      -Wall Street Journal, 25 March 2019

We all must be good comrades now
We all must wear good comradewear
As if we worked with wrench and plough
Instead of cruising an office chair

We all must be good comrades, da!
And from one’s well-lit office space
Sneer at “the suits” - so long, Grandpa!
And so decolonise this place

We all must be good comrades now -
But have you ever milked a cow?

Does this machine **** Fascists?  Probably not
Unless it bores them to a yawning death
Through soporific clichés crudely imposed
Upon a few poor, battered chords that twang
Like the barbed wire of an Arctic gulag
Where happy comrades
          Shiver in the snow
          Wither in the wind
          Starve on slops
          Burn with typhus
          Rot in the tundra
As they build the future upon mass graves
While the anti-Fascist cashes his checks

Doing the household laundry is rather fun
The old roundy-go-thump washing machine
Roundy-go-thumps in time to the dishwasher
While the electric dryer waits patiently

Someday I will have a clothesline again
And summer days and summer sun will love
My shirts and towels so sweetly dry that they
Will want to fly away on the summer breeze

And when the clothes have been folded away
The sun will want to come inside to play

A Citizen of the United States

To: Donald J. Trump

Greeting:

You are reluctant to go to the wars
And I do understand – I went to one
And you missed out. I was sorry to hear
Of your physical disabilities

You are reluctant to go to the wars
And I do understand – but why are you
Eager to send the daughters and sons
Of other fathers off to die for - what?

You are reluctant to go to the wars
And I do understand -

                        Now get off your * and go see those kids

And bring them home

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

   Donnie and Wayne Celebrate the Massacre of the Holy Innocents

While Donny dances for Wayne, dances upon the dead
Celebrating
The latest Massacre of the Holy Innocents

We sit and try to write away the pain
And can’t
We try to shape this chaos into words
And can’t

We are determined to protect the children
And will
We will repudiate the worship of death
We will

While Donny dances for Wayne, dances upon the dead
Celebrating
The latest Massacre of the Holy Innocents

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

                                    Do not Clench unto Others

Merciful God in His infinite love
Will never clench His fist at us

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

                            Do Not Forsake Me, Oh, My Dushen’ka

                                    In honor of Dimitri Tiompkin

When we learned that a Russian wrote the score for High Noon
And another for John Wayne’s Rio Bravo
It made some of the populist faithful swoon
(Alas that nothing much rhymes with Bravo)

Given that Tiompkin was a Russian critter
We’ll just have to cancel John Wayne and Tex Ritter

-attributed to Stalin
           in a note forbidding the arrest of Boris Pasternak

Stalin and Caesar had no use for dreamers
Stern men of destiny prefer strong tools
To execute their leader’s will, and yet
They cry and beg when they are eventually shot

Cloud-dwellers camouflage themselves with words
And shift their sails but not their souls, and keep
Their little ships on course straight to the stars
Straight on until the dawn they help to light

Courage is in your dreams and words and works
May it please God that Stalin has no use

For you

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                                       Don’t Be Still, My Heart

A brilliant young surgeon fitted my heart
With a scientific gadget to keep me alive
And I am alive, and grateful to him
Every time I read and laugh and mow the lawn

But now I read he’s been struck off the list
For a wicked crime – it was on the news
He listened to me and now I wish I could
Listen to him, and maybe help in some way

I read and think and pray and mow the lawn -
Don’t be still, my heart

Don’t you judge me while I am judging you
For judging me when I was judging you
For judging me since I was judging you
For judging me ‘cause I was judging you

Don’t interrupt while I am interrupting you
For interrupting when I was interrupting
For interrupting since I was interrupting
For interrupting ‘cause I was interrupting

What’s that? You say you didn’t hear or see?
How dare you not focus your life on me!?

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

                              Dostoyevsky and Applesauce 2 / $5

                                        Literature in the Supermarket

The nice young man who bags my purchases -
He spoke to me of Notes from Underground
And who the unreliable narrator is
And how he anticipates the revolution

The pharmacist who jabbed me against the ‘flu –
He spoke to me of Robert E. Howard
And how Conan’s psychological issues
Anticipate the author’s death by suicide

A surprising conversation in a small-town grocery
But even more in a modern university

Dostoyevsky’s House of the Dead

In shackles of shame and under the rod
Our brothers lie upon the Russian earth
In penance suffering for the sins of all
Their common cell is floored with filth and mud
Their common bed a shelf of planks and fleas
Their common air befouled with stench and pain
Their several labors in the heat and cold
That blow the seasons lost across the steppes
Exhaust their limbs and cruelly tease their eyes
With river-visions of what might have been
For them there is no hope within this world

And yet

At drumbeat-dawn there is hardly a man
Who does not kneel before the ikons nailed
As surely to the wall as convicts’ sins
Are nailed with Jesus to the shameful Cross
And take that Cross unto himself in depths
Of degradation and despair that bless
The bad thief first, and even so, the good

Dostoyevsky’s House of the Dead


In shackles of shame and under the rod
Our brothers lie upon the Russian earth
In penance suffering for the sins of all
Their common cell is floored with filth and mud
Their common bed a shelf of planks and fleas
Their common air befouled with stench and pain
Their several labors in the heat and cold
That blow the seasons lost across the steppes
Exhaust their limbs and cruelly tease their eyes
With river-visions of what might have been
For them there is no hope within this world

And yet

At drumbeat-dawn there is hardly a man
Who does not kneel before the ikons nailed
As surely to the wall as convicts’ sins
Are nailed with Jesus to the shameful Cross
And take that Cross unto himself in depths
Of degradation and despair that bless
The bad thief first, and even so, the good

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                                         ­  Double Haters

                            The windiest militant trash
                            Important Persons shout

                      -W. H. Auden, “September 1, 1939”

No
I am not a double hater
I am a single writer
Since both parties chose to crater
I refuse to choose either blighter
They offer us only Stink and Stank
So I will leave my ballot blank

Down at the Auto Repair - A Waiting Room Discourse

Blah blah blah Trump blah blah blah Bannon blah
Blah blah blah da(ng)ed schools blah blah it’s all
Fake news blah blah blah double-blah media
Clintons blah blah blah kids these days blah blah

Blah buzz buzz buzz that wouldn’t have happened
In my day blah blah blah I can’t believe
What they’re charging blah blah blah FEMA blah
Blah Trump blah blah they don’t want us to know

Blah blah blah da(ng)ed schools blah blah it’s all
Fake news blah blah blah double-blah Jesus

(You can turn it over if you want, but the other side’s just the same)

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

Of Course I Didn’t Worship at The Super Bowl

As a man who had better tend to his soul
Of course I didn’t worship at the Super Bowl

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]


                                       Dragons for Your New Year

                                          For Doris and Anthony
                                       Who have known dragons

                    Eustace had read only the wrong books; they had a lot to
                    say about exports and imports and governments and
                    drains, but they were weak on dragons.

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


The dragons are a polite and ancient race
And very conscious of their dignity
It would not do to neglect their seasons and feasts
Lest they neglect to visit you this year

They want to bring good fortune to your house
But first you must make a place for them -
Their breath will warm your room, your hearth, your heart
Their knowledge will make your children worthy and wise

Their songs will send your family happy dreams
For dragons are a polite and generous race

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                    Draining the Blood of Humans at Twilight


                           A powerful monster //  living down
                           in the darkness growled // in pain…

                         -Beowulf, Burton Raffel translation


In the sinister dusk // they seek our blood
A ghastly enemy // of disgusting thirst
Stealing up from the swamp // and primordial mud –
Well, we stole their habitat // – mosquitoes were here first!

“…the war…often seems to have happened to someone else.”

-C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy

A pickup truck beside a Navajo road
Tables of souvenirs, a Thermos of coffee
Clotheslines of dreamcatchers catching the sun
For now; the dreams must wait for sleepless hours

“You were in Viet-Nam,” the old man said
To another old man. No mystery;
He simply took a chance to make a sale
And did, for both had known the Vam Co Tay

Old men along the road, catchers of dreams
Who burned their chances in the long ago

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Logosophiamag.c­om
Hellopoetry.com
Fellowshipandfairydust.com

                           Dreams Blown Apart at 60,000 Feet

Spiraling down from the empyrean blue
Like a gutter-flung cigarette stub
Or a vapor trail over winter fields
Dreams blown apart at 60,000 feet

A spy balloon cannot compete with love
In its ascent to impossible heights
An unexpected launch
                                                                          a sudden death
A fallen mystery lost among the ice

That brief encounter in the turn of a dance
Shot down with only her disapproving glance

An Empty, Rusting Boxcar

This day will be just like so many others
An empty rusting boxcar creaking and grinding
Along behind other rusting boxcars
And followed by yet more rusting boxcars

Along a railway line from nowhere to nowhere
Across far plains, dry, featureless, and void
Dreams ride the rails like hoboes from the past
But they never seem to arrive anywhere

An empty rusting boxcar creaking and grinding
This night will be just like so many others

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

            Drive-Through Covid Testing and Bladder Control

Just waiting in a car-queue, something new
Every hour up a hundred yards or so
Readings on the MePhone, a book or two
And good ol’ Morning Al on the radio

Clutch, go, brake, clutch, inches at a time, wait
News on the up hour, and news on the down
Scan the QR code, number, name, and date
For the nice lady in a mask and gown

Hold your head forward, now strike a pose
Then up my nose the little swabbie-thing goes…

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                            Driving Home After Work:
                  “Thus Spake Zarathustra” on the Radio

The first few bars must always remind us of
That space movie from the future long ago
With sophomores beating each other up
Or anyone trying to spell “Zarathustra “

Without looking it up; no spelling now
Driving into a drought-red setting sun
The vapours of chemicals, road tar, dust
Allergens drifting among the toxins

Poetry sorts meaning from chaos seeming -
Maybe not tonight (Sneeze!)

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

         Dropping Stuff at Midnight for the Gregorian New Year

            (The Julian calendar is so old that it’s a Boomer thing)

I don’t know why people drop things at midnight:
A ball of electric lights in New York
A single light bulb as a gag somewhere else
As The People chant in unison, “WOO! WOO!”

Maybe this year they’ll drop a flaming car
Its finely-crafted batteries on fire
Torching the holy QAnon tee-shirt stand
As foretold in the House of Representatives

(Yawn)

Couldn’t all of this wait until daylight?
I don’t know why people drop things at midnight

Drunk girl crying in the parking lot
          Always begins her ‘plaints with “I”
Dull boy whining on an email screen
          Always begins his notes with “I”
Mean girl screaming in the shopping mall
          Always begins her rage with “I”
Sad boy ******* on a cigarette
          Always begins his verse with “I”
‘Lone girl staring at a tv set
          Always begins her sigh with “I”

And why?

Because they overdose on I, ME, MY

Dry Well

A Gift from Fort Apache Energy, Inc.

“We will be drilling with a fresh water mud system
which has no environmental impact.”

- Allan P. Bloxsom III, President

As woodland creatures shy until the dark
Drift as a silent blessing through the trees
At dusk some sad folk gather ‘round the wounds
Gored geometrically into the ground
A palisade of wood and water and earth
Now guarding nothing but pale desolation:
A pond of death whose hydrocarbon sheen
In corpselike stillness entertains no life
A sewerage ditch bedecked with human turds
A dumpster skip piled high with promises
Piles of unidentified white powder
An unattended garbage fire, a shirt
Some bolts, planks, screws, sandwich wraps, cigarette butts
A cargo cult of curiosities
Liturgically in statio around The Hole
That venerable new hole, that hole of hope
That fabled argosy laden with dreams
That fell into the depths, and never returned
At dawn a tower stood, adorned with lights
By dusk it was folded, and stolen away
Like the long-storied tents of Araby
Or a Roman camp in the Teutoburg
Abandoned among the darkening woods
For the curious primitives to poke
And **** about, chattering in their tongue
About the marvels of a superior race
Who make no environmental impact.

Duct-Tape Automobile
How awkward when a body part
Falls out onto the interstate
That fragment of FoMoCo art -
It spun away in a figure eight!

There is a new part now on order
For this old car; it ain’t no Lexus
It rolls along in taped disorder
And that is how we do it in Texas

God bless our state, and the strong duct tape
That holds together my Ford Escape