The Dreariness of Dawn

“Carpe Diem.” Dawn, and all its cliches’
But what would one now seize? Unrequited dreams
That slouch in the corner filing their fingernails?
A cup of coffee at the kitchen door?

Dawn is the illusion that this day might
Be different from those that came before
Like advertisements promising happiness
And delivering failures postage-due

Well, you might as well get up, and get dressed
Dawn.  Because, maybe, this time, just maybe…

Lawrence Hall
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(This poem may be considered as a dyptich / diptych / dipstick with "The Dreariness of Dawn")

                                   The Dreariness of Dusk

Anticipated no victories today
Expected no letters to be answered
Or packages of life to be delivered
Not given even the hope of a hope

But…

But, no, the weary hours were unrelieved
The weary, dreary hours of near-despair
Plodding like a mule harnessed to the past
And given only the ghost of a ghost

As was expected, the teapot was warm -
“Yes, but there ain’t going to be no tea” 1

1 Katherine Mansfield

The duck and cover drill was never frightening
Not like arithmetic, or the teacher’s stare
For if the rockets fell, no more homework
Or switch-inducing notes to Mom and Dad

“Lawrence is a smart boy but needs to work harder.”
We crouched beside our desks and giggled
About old Khruschev bombing East Texas
Any American could whip three Commies

We had James Stewart and President Eisenhower

And so

The duck and cover drill was never frightening

The Dying Romantic Mathematician

“Your trapezoid is vectored to a sphere”
She sighed, “and parallels are polygon.”
“All, all is perpendicular,” he coughed,
“And arcs are so rectangle to sad Pi
Equiangular in the radius
And rhombus has gone Pythagorean.
O canst thou concave the isosceles?”
“Yes!” she coplanared. “Yes!” he gasped in pain,
“Oh, yes, our love is solved for X!"
                                                                He died,
Quadratic equations upon his lips

Lawrence Hall, HSG
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                             The Eclipse – We Have Been Warned!

The world is coming to an end yet again
The InterGossip and Q have determined it’s so:
“It’s in th’ Bible!” she shouts, “It’s full of sin!
I’ve got my freeze-dried food; I’m ready to go!”

Twelve easy payments until the Apocalypse
(Just don’t invest in any green bananas)
“They’ll take us away in U.N. spaceships
Giants from the deep, up from Atlantis!”

The world is coming to an end yet again -
“Jesus warned us!” she yells as the nurse checks her in

Lawrence Hall, HSG
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                       The Ekonomia of Easter Sunday as Observed

Our blue-haired fire hazards block the aisle
And verily, yea, verily, the narthex too:

“These young women these days, they just don’t know
How to hide Easter eggs, in my day we had to hunt
And now they just make it all easy for these kids
We were up all night filling plastic eggs
And these young women, they just don’t help
And these kids, they just take the empty eggs away
Don’t they know how much things cost these days
You’d think they’d leave them for us to fill next year
But no, they just leave them all over the place
And we have to go around and pick them up
These young women these days, they somehow think
That things just happen and they don’t help at all
I can’t imagine why they don’t want to work with us
These young women these days…”

This was not true of the first Easter Sunday
But it was probably true of the second

Lawrence Hall, HSG
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                                       The Elections of 2024

                     How sharply our children will be ashamed…
                     remembering how in so strange a time
                     common integrity could look like courage

                                     -Yevtushenko, “Talk”

                    1. Thesis (of a sort)

The nation shamble-shuffles erratically
Erratically to a lectern and microphone
A microphone on a Potemkin stage
While a bewildered audience feebly applauds

                    2. Antithesis (of a sort)

The nation lemming-marches along the streets
Lemming-marches along with bullhorns and flags
Bullhorns bellowing in 5.56
The Gospel according to Saint QAnon

                    3. Recusancy instead of synthesis

But I am an American, not a D, an R, a Q
My faith is in the Constitution, and maybe
                                                       In you

She giggles, soft-hidden behind the green
And summer-teases, a shimmer in the air
She peeks at him and laughs, this fairy queen
With mischief in her eyes and flowers in her hair  

While through the forest glades our young, fresh knight
Must keep his path as duty to his King
She dances by him, laughing, lithe, and light
What will he have - chapel, or fairy-ring?

And while he makes his vows, she all unseen -
She giggles, soft-hidden behind the green

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

                           The Emperor’s New Kafka

When an insect woke up one morning he found
Himself changed into a politician
And thus gatekeeper to Das Schloss, key clam
Through whom all arrival applications must pass

All shipping boxes to be checked for ticks
In a village that cannot be surveyed
Unescorted thinkers may not be seated
At corner tables in the Herrenhof

Many are desperate to be admitted
But few are desperate to be committed

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

                           The Empires That Might Have Been

            “The empires of the future will be empires of the mind.”

                            -attributed to Winston Churchill

Empires of the mind – what a glorious dream
A world of laboratories and libraries
Of beauty through truth, music, words, and art
The free exchange of ideas and discoveries

Ministers of state might have launched missives, not missiles
In polished meter instead of heavy prose
And the worst of enemies would have shared
Champagne and verse on a veranda at dusk

While their children scampered in search of fireflies
Then giggled secrets on the porch of St. Michael’s Church

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

                           The Empires That Might Have Been

            “The empires of the future will be empires of the mind.”

                            -attributed to Winston Churchill

Empires of the mind – what a glorious dream
A world of laboratories and libraries
Of beauty through truth, music, words, and art
The free exchange of ideas and discoveries

Ministers of state might have launched missives, not missiles
In polished meter instead of heavy prose
And the worst of enemies would have shared
Champagne and verse on a veranda at dusk

While their children scampered in search of fireflies
Then giggled secrets on the porch of St. Michael’s Church

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

                   The End-of-Term School Literary Magazine

She wrote that her poem had been inspired
By the Holy spirit, Who spoke to her
And guided then her hand upon the page
In a competition for Most Original Work

But the reflective reader cannot imagine
That the Third Person of the Trinity
Writes in free verse and says “Cerulean”
And splits infinitives in bludgeoned rhymes

In metaphors borrowed and rather tired
She wrote that her poem had been inspired

Lawrence Hall
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                   Among Sandbags at 2200 Hours –
                     The Enemy Might be Listening

We were smoking and talking: girls, of course
And cars, and whether we would live, and then
Tolkien, Lewis, the nature of the Good
Poetry, free verse, blank verse, Cohen, McKuen

An officer barged along and sat himself down
And asked us what we were talking about
We mumbled noncommittal inanities
And then were mostly silent, blowing smoke

He may have concluded that we were stupid
Or that we were those radicals he’d heard about

A dimly-lit and dripping corridor
Echoing with the screams of broken souls
As they are liberated for a new age
The executioner adjusts his hood,
Wipes his hands free of blood and fragments of  bone,
And checks his incoming text-messages.

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

                                   The Epistemology of Lies


                               Above all, don’t lie to yourself.

                  -Father Zossima in The Brothers Karamazov


The problem is not in detecting a lie
But in detecting that which is not a lie
In a fallen world in which snakes twist and writhe
Around the golden apples of our youth

Through our garden they slither, shiny and smooth
And at first softly, susurrantly, soothingly
Assuring us that that we don’t know what we know
That we should trust them, follow them, obey them

And if we pause to think, they bully us all -
And one by one the golden apples fall

Lawrence Hall
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Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                                              The List is Death

There is said to be a list – but whose?
Who wrote it? Where is it? Where has it been?
On what teakwood desk does it now repose
Around which names and lives are negotiated

The matter is not that names are being removed
But that your name might be written in
Because your attitude has been noticed
The hand that once shook yours signs away your life

Someone pencils your name upon The List
That’s your loyalty reward (you won’t be missed)

Thoughts ‘n’ prayers as in Two Corinthians

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

              The Ever-Glorious Presidential Medal of Freedom
                        With a Wal-Mart Gift Card Attached

As a child I played miniature golf, you see
So is there a Medal of Freedom for me?

Lawrence Hall
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Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                                      The Evil of Banality

                       As Hannah Arendt did not exactly say

Handcuffs with their metallic efficiency
Leather-holstered on polished *****-belts
Distinguish more a grab with their subtle cachet
Than low-Prole zip ties in disposable bags

The wrists of citizens handcuffed without warrants
By an official wrist encircled with
The gift of a Rolex from Mister Big
Who will never countenance the arrest of his sons

Handcuffs should click as tastefully, you see
As the door of an unmarked SUV

The Evolution of Sophomores

Poor sophomores like polliwogs within
Their small Samsaric Sea do swim about
And seemingly without purpose or point
Startled by shifting shadows or loud noises

But polliwogs in time absorb their tails
Then grow their legs, and hop ashore to eat
Mosquitoes, moths, and flies and dragonflies;
Sophomores acquire their driving licenses

And seemingly without purpose or point
Do drive about their small Samsaric Sea

Lawrence Hall, HSG
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          The Existential Despair in Replacing a Lawnmower Battery

My language is blue and my knuckles bleed -
I can never find the wrench I need!

The Existential Despair of Diet and Exercise

A banana instead of a bite of cheese
Skipping the butter on ground-acorn toast
The mocking of perfidious calories
One more notch in the belt – feel free to boast!

To the treadmill, now, with your lazy (self)
Off the cliff with those Sisyphean pounds
And a steak for dinner? – just give it a pass
Think yourself skinny, and make hopeful sounds

(Time passes)

A week of denial, now the scales – oh, da(rn):
You lost no pounds; you gained a kilogram!

Sunlit sailboats in daubs of orange and red
And mass-produced impressionist barn owls
In flight above an unsecured wire rack
Of greasy copies of Reader’s Digest

Behind the receptionist’s hole-in-the-wall
Children of the Cornbread centered in plastic
Jesus-frames grin against their will, freeze-posed
Among department-store studio trees

Across the walls some glued-on murals roam
(But at least this isn’t the funeral home)

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Fellowship & Fairydust (fellowshipandfairydust.com)
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                    T­he Eyes of a Stalker

Dear Publisher:

Yes, I thank God you are free to publish your books
And I thank that wise First Amendment thing
Even though crafted by agnostics and rebels
Who ought to have been faithful to their King

You are free to call that parasite a prince
You are free to profit from his treacheries
But selling your honor for shillings and pence
Reveals your failure as cultural trustees

But know you something of that sullen talker?
On the cover you have given him the eyes of a stalker

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

          The Feast of Saint Stephen as Observed at the Truck Stop

                            On the occasion of meeting a friend
                         for breakfast on the Feast of St. Stephen

Now the overpass looked down
On the Feast of Stephen
With some garbage strewn around
Moldy and uneven
Brightly shone the neon light
Though the frost was cruel
When a poor man came in sight
Pumping diesel fuel

(This is gonna be one of the Greats, eh!)

The Feast of the Epiphany This Year

If the Three Kings were to visit today
They’d need the proper paperwork
Passports and visas, and what is the  purpose
Of your visit? A check through INTERPOL

A cavity search by rubbery hands
An escort armed with bribes and Kalashnikovs
Through tourists armed with me-phones, selfie sticks
And cardboard chalices, following a Starbuck’s

Searching the East for a wondrous ATM
If the Three Kings were to visit today

An ironmonger is a but a hardware store
And equally inaccurate both ways
For not nearly all that is mongered is iron
Just as not all that is hardware is hard

At the ironmonger one finds toilet seats
Hammers and saws, water valves, mosquito spray
Welders’ caps and leather gloves, wrecking bars
And hunting licenses against the fall

Coffee in paper cups, men vested in jeans
Stained with the work of tending the Garden
Chanting the liturgies of field and shop
Of pump and plow and press, piston and plane

Cups empty, then, their Ite, missa est:
“Well, boys, I got to go now; y’all be blessed”

“The F_g with the Bow Tie” 1

            “Only in Russia is poetry respected – it gets people killed.
              Is there anywhere else where poetry is so common a  
              motive  for ******?”

                                                -Osip Mandelstam 2

Spain. Poetry got people killed in Spain -
And still wherever tyrants of delicate nerves
And artistic sensitivities hear
Whispered rumors of whispered disapproval

And so an innocent, fearful and trembling
Must be motored away to a moonless death
Upon orders spoken, written, tweeted
Telephoned, telegraphed, or teletyped

One prays he has a moment to adjust his tie
Perfectly - as an honor to Poetry




1 The slur is attributed to Federico Garcia Lorca’s murderers:
https://lithub.com/dictators-****-poets-on-federico-garcia-lorcas-last-days/

2 Quoted by Yevgeny Yevtushenko in 20th Century Russian Poetry

The Fifth Karamazov

When young we identify with Alyosha
His optimism and his innocence
His fragile, flowering Orthodox1 faith
A happy, almost-holy fool for Christ

When older, the sensual Dimitri,
With irresponsible lusts and desires
Grasping for the rewards of the moment
Now, ever now, wanting everything now

Then older still, as intellectual Ivan
Sneeringly aloft, above all faith and flesh
A constructor of systems and ideas
From the back pages of French magazines

Though never do we identify with
Nest-fouling, leering, lurking Smerdyakov
Our secret fear, unspoken fear, death-fear:
That he might be who we untruly are

But hear, O hear, the holy bells of Optina2
Those Russian messengers3 singing to us
Inviting us to meet Alyosha again
At Father Zosima’s poor4 hermitage


1Russian Orthodox
2The name of the real monastery upon which Dostoyevsky modeled his fictional one
3The Brothers Karamazov was first published as a serial in The Russian Messenger
4Poor only by earthly standards

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                     The First Barn-Jacket Morning in Autumn

Dawn – windy and cold
The first barn-jacket morning
Wild geese singing south

A Statement Solo and a Response Choral in Existential Whine Mode*

Solo: Before we end for today – do begin thinking about a topic for your research paper due in December.

Chorus: I don’t understand…but you said...are you talking about the persuasive essay…what does “expository” mean…oh, this is not expository…but we’ve never written a persuasive paper…is this the persuasive research paper you’re talking about…what is the difference between “expository” and “persuasive”…but what are we going to write about…I mean like why don’t you give us a topic…I don’t understand…when is this due…but that’s the pro and con, right…it’s not…but you said…what does “bibliography” mean…so when is this due…but how many pages…so you just want the bibliography and the first page…I don’t know what you mean by a thesis that can be argued either way…I don’t understand why you don’t give us a topic…I’m confused…what do you want us to write about…but when is this due… I don’t understand…but you said...are you talking about the persuasive essay…what does “expository” mean…but we’ve never written a persuasive paper…is this the persuasive research paper you’re talking about…but what are we going to write about…I mean like why don’t you give us a topic…I don’t understand when is this due…but that’s the pro and con, right…it’s not…but you said…we’ve never written a research paper before…what does “bibliography” mean…so when is this due…but how many pages…so you just want the bibliography and the first page…I don’t know what you mean by a thesis that can be argued either way…I don’t understand why you don’t give us a topic…I’m confused…what do you want us to write about…but when is this due… I don’t understand…we’ve never written papers like this before…but you said...are you talking about the persuasive essay…what does “expository” mean…but we’ve never written a persuasive paper…is this the persuasive research paper you’re talking about…but what are we going to write about…I mean like why don’t you give us a topic…I don’t understand when is this due…but that’s the pro and con, right…it’s not…but you said…what does “bibliography” mean…so when is this due…but how many pages…so you just want the bibliography and the first page…I don’t know what you mean by a thesis that can be supported with authoritative sources and logic…I don’t understand why you don’t give us a topic…I’m confused…what do you want us to write about…but when is this due…!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!????????????­

The First Blast of the Trumpet 1 (if not the Trump) Against
the Monstrous Regiment of Social Media

V: Follow us on Facebook or Twitter.
R: No.


1 No apologies to the odious John Knox

The first shots slammed across the woods at dawn
Into my sleep, there taking down my dreams
Which can’t be slung into a pickup truck
And carried to the processors by noon

Venison is a bit gamey, of course:
That’s why they call it game, wild game, then food
Blended with pork and spices for Thanksgiving
And that’s a nice little dream in itself

Let’s not indulge sentimentality here
In forest glades or on china plates – it’s just a deer

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                                       The First Folio of...You?

                  On the 400th anniversary of the First Folio
                  Of some playwright or other in England

I fear that there will never, ever be
A First Folio of the works of – Me!
Bound in leather most luxuriously
For sale at a wildly exorbitant fee

Scanned for pleasure over cups of tea
And studied by academics thoughtfully
Beloved by the climbing bourgeoise
As much as by the high nobility

I can’t adorn my poems with a PhD
So will kind readers accept a high school degree?

O wing’ed messenger of happiness,
Aloft among the pollinating flowers,
At last you have returned from Mexico
And warm months there among soft latitudes
Where little birds can make a holiday
Far, far away from withering Arctic winds.

O tiny traveler, what souvenirs
Did you declare to customs at the Rio Grande?
South winds to tell the flowers to wake up
And Rosaries of morning fogs to bless
The yawning grasses with a morning drink,
And fresh new sunlight for the industrious bees.

O buzzing and impatient little friend!
Just wait a minute, your breakfast is coming -
The old glass feeder washed and packed away
In harvest-rich October’s golden light
Must be recovered and refreshed for you,

And

How good it is to have you home again.

The first Lenten penance is being told:
Lent is not just about giving up things
Lent is not just about giving up things
Lent is not just about giving up things

Lent is not just about giving up things
Lent is not just about giving up things
Lent is not just about giving up things
Lent is not just about giving up things

Lent is not just about giving up things…
*But did anyone ever say it was?

1st Waitress

                    “Like, the flag’s waving in the wind, okay?
                    But there ain’t no wind on the moon.  I’ve been
                    Graduated two years, and they can’t fool me.”

2nd Waitress

                    “It was, like, on a pole and stuff, you know?”

1st Waitress

                    “They would say that, wouldn’t they, right? Okay?”

The First Mowing in Spring – Inspection Tour

Interior Dialogue

or

Why is That Old Man Talking to Himself?

V: Have I left that shovel outside since fall?
R: Your ol’ daddy would say something about that!
V: I could have sworn I put that hose away.
R: Obviously, you didn’t.  And what a mess.

V: Pretty little ground flowers – shame to mow them
R: Shame if you don’t – later, they’ll choke the grass
V: Where is the copper cap for that corner post?
R: I told you to use lots more glue, but nooooo

V: You got anything good to say this morning?
R: Well, ain’t it grand to see another spring!

The First Sunday of Advent

A calling-crow-cold sky ceilings the world,
Lowering the horizon to itself
All silvery and grey upon the fields
Of pale, exhausted, dry-corn-stalk summer

The earth is tired, the air is cold, the dawn
False-promises nothing but an early dusk
As calling-cold-crows crowd the world with noise,
Loud-gossiping from tree to ground to sky

Soon falling frosts and fields of ice will fold
Even those fell, foolish fowls into the depths
Of dark creek bottoms where dim ancient oaks
Hide darkling birds from wild blue northern winds

Crows squawk of Advent disapprovingly,
As Advent-autumn drifts to Christmastide
When all the good of the seasonal year
Then warms and charms the house, the hearth,  the heart.

(a little radiosonde launched by weather balloon from Texas A & M in Bryan-College Station)


There is perhaps a certain indignity
In grounding back on earth among some weeds
Your late balloon a fragment of itself
Your parachute all damp and limp and still

But, oh! what an adventure you have lived!
Scuffy the Tugboat might well envy you
Your day and night in scientific flight
With helium instead of pixie dust

Like Peter Pan you sailed along the wind
Straight on until morning, then home again

The Flying Squadron of Church Ladies

At First Communion the Flying Squadron
of Church Ladies surround the children to:
Reprove, reproach, command, censor, chastise,
Berate, exhort, implore, upbraid, adjust

Chastise, upbraid, embarrass, harangue, rebuke,
Enjoin, dictate, direct, require, apprise,
Advise, inform, beseech, explain, uphold,
Impart, compel, remind, forewarn, correct:

Because since Peter’s time, all this is what
The Flying Squadrons of Church Ladies do

The Fog of What? 6th or 7th attempt at posting
Lawrence Hall
[email protected]  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                     ­       The Fog of What?

                        “Russian Attack Sets Ukraine Nuclear Plant on Fire”

                                            -BBC, 3 March 2022

The radiation from Zaporizhzhia
Might slither across our poor dying earth
Like serpents bringing our sins back home to us
That we might meditate upon them in death

And all our unpaid bills, our ungiven thanks
The cars we meant to fill with gas today
Like Bible pages rustling in the nuclear wind
Will have to be completed by a different hand

But this fog of war, that’s what they call it -
In truth it’s only the fog of ////
The fog of war

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

                                     ­       The Fog of What?

                        “Russian Attack Sets Ukraine Nuclear Plant on Fire”

                                            -BBC, 3 March 2022

The radiation from Zaporizhzhia
Might slither across our poor dying earth
Like serpents bringing our sins back home to us
That we might meditate upon them in death

And all our unpaid bills, our ungiven thanks
The cars we meant to fill with gas today
Like Bible pages rustling in the nuclear wind
Will have to be completed by a different hand

But this fog of war, that’s what they call it -
In truth it’s only the fog of ////

The Forces of Happiness

“There will be music, dancing, happiness…by order.”

-Town Crier in Dance of the Dead, an episode of The Prisoner

The Forces of Happiness are released
To worry out of their burrows those poor
Unfocused souls who mumble about their days
In happy, innocuous solitude

With books and cups of tea and scribbled lines
Of happy wonderings and teasing thoughts.
And such is not acceptable to those
Who suffer not any individuals –

To herd them into organized submission
The Forces of Happiness are released

From an idea by Jean Fisher

Six months of gasping, sere, soul-******* heat
Blood-******* mosquitoes, venomous snakes
And fetid, lung-drowning humidity

I loathe the summer, and I care not if
That wretched season goes away in silence
Or in noise -
                       only that it GOES AWAY

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                                The French Government Collapses

                                                4 December 2024

How can a government possibly collapse -
Did the National Assembly suffer a fainting spell?
Did the cabinet consume poisoned croissants
Or discover they’d been deceived by a California wine?

Perhaps a statue of Saint Joan of Arc
Newly gowned in haute couture from Wal-Mart
Lies prostrate in the Champs Elysee
Next to a made-in-China guillotine

How can a government have worked all in vain –
Did everyone in office go in Seine?

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]

                                        ­The Fuel Pump Screen Queen

She’s fresh and lovely on the television screen
Promoting a recipe for a sugar-free treat
And fashion tips for being In The Scene -
Her face on the fuel pump is ever so sweet

She looks so summery in her fashion tee
As gasoline vapors waft through the air
She whispers a makeup hint only to me
And the best techniques for brushing my hair

She speaks to me so charmingly and nicely
That I forget the fuel dials spinning so pricely

The Futility of the Coccolithophores

In a careless moment, much to my grief
I lost the heritage of millions dead
And much like an unconscionable thief
Considered my atrocities, and fled

In reefs and shoals they lived, they worked, they died
From ancient times, and even until now
In patience layering their art with pride
Each tiny home and funereal how

Not even in their ruins can they now talk
Because I dropped and broke them – goodbye, chalk!

(A class for correctional officers
at the local community college)

Thirty-six-thousand a year to begin
No education or experience required
The recruiting posters are pretty, though:
Handsome young people uniformed in grey

But the poor sergeant can’t control his class
His students have their cell ‘phones and their ‘tudes -
“Tell Momma to pick me up like I said!” –
Slouched in their seats or wandering the halls

While dozing over her own telescreen
A fat corporal yawns by the soda machine

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

                                     SORRY OUT OF SERVICE

SORRY OUT OF SERVICE

Thus saith the comma-less yellow plastic bags
Fitted to the gasoline pumps of the nation
Where men are free from fuel and punctuation
Free not to take vaccines, wear masks, or vote

SORRY OUT OF SERVICE

The check is in the mail that does not come
Or maybe in a hijacked delivery truck
Silhouetted by a burning liquor store
Where dreams of lottery winnings go to die

SORRY OUT OF SERVICE

And there’s nothing left in the looted shops
(Let’s blame the teachers, Asians, and cops)

Lawrence Hall, HSG
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                     The Gates of Hell & Ur F8v Bible Slogan Tee

A friend did not leave the church of his youth -
Like a foundering ship it slipped beneath the waves
Sloshings of fashions, shopping-mall usages
And dangling Peavey speakers listing to port

There were not enough bongos and guitars
To keep everyone afloat in a theological storm
A committee sold off the parking lot
There’s a day care now in the parish hall

He signed off his articles for the drowsy watch
And took to dark baptismal waters in despair