Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                            The Kittens Come on Little Fog Feet

                                 As Carl Sandburg did not say

At dawn: coffee and the Wordle and thoughts
The moon’s still full, but one last star winks out
The dew-bathed oaks drip onto a tricky word
Fog drifts in silence among the tricky light

A little paw stirs soft autumn’s molding leaves
And then two eyes appear, and a greeting tail
The forming image of the cat completes itself
And then another – two abandoned cats

These tiny orphans approach – and love begins
To them I pledge
They will never be hungry or lonely again

How wonderful to live in Freeport, Maine
Where beautiful women and handsome men
In youth eternal rock their five-bar boots
And flannel shirts in happy, snowy scenes

Where laughter echoes through those forest glades
Forever free of electrical lines
Skunks burrowing under the cabin floor
And neighbors’ overflowing septic tanks

Oh, what a dreamy life for you and me
In Freeport, Zip Code 04033!


(Just having a little fun; everything I’ve bought from L.L. Bean’s catalogue is wonderful!  I’d love to live in the perfect New England scenes depicted in the catalogue. If you squint your eyes carefully you can see Bob Newhart’s inn on page…)

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

                               The Land of We’ll Get Right on It –
                                              Songs of My People

You are a valued customer
No public restrooms
We don’t carry parts for that
Restrooms out of order
We’ll be out to make a bid tomorrow morning
No public restrooms
We’ll have your mower fixed this week
Restrooms out of order
Our driver couldn’t find your house
No public restrooms
Your call is very important to us
Restrooms out of order
My best mechanic ran off with my wife
No public restrooms
Our service tech will be there between eight and four
Restrooms out of order
Our next representative will be with you shortly
No public restrooms
Click…if…buzz…you…know…brrrt…your…click…party’s…buzz…ex­tension…
Restrooms out of order
We’ll call you just as soon as it’s ready
No public restrooms
The pump reader doesn’t work; I’ll just take your credit card inside
Restrooms out of order
All our representatives are busy right now
No public restrooms
Our Monday Hours are 9-11 and 1-3
Restrooms out of order
Your security question is…
No public restrooms
It’s $250 just to take the dashboard off for a look
Restrooms out of order
I charge $75 an hour starting as soon as I drive out of the shop
No public restrooms
Our breakfast menu ended at 9
Restrooms out of order
I’m just not going to make it this morning, but I’ll be there tomorrow
No public restrooms
I need you to unplug the modem and look for…
Restrooms out of order
I’ll have to call you back, honey, there’s a customer (sigh)
No public restrooms
We don’t work on that model
We don’t work on Saturdays
We don’t work
Closed for Emergency
Closed for Lunch
Closed

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]


                            The Last American Westclox Baby Ben

                                                         (Maybe)


It ticked into my heart at the Goodwill store
Two dollars’ worth of Americana
A charmer in a battered metal shell
Hiding behind a tired plastic face

The tick, the tock, the talk of Peru, Illinois
The clock that woke America each dawn
For work and study, and to meet the Chicago train
For a century until time ran out

It clicks and clanks and ticks and tocks and talks

All-day dutiful hands, a jangling bell -
How long will this old clock last?

Only time will tell

Where can one shop for Christmas if not at Sears:
J. C. Higgins sporting goods, Craftsman tools
Kenmore sewing machines, wonderful toys
The greatest candy counter in the world

And, oh! the best of all:

The little electric trains behind glass panes
Travelling across a cotton-snow Christmas land
From one tiny plastic village to another -
The Santa Fe Railway on tinplate tracks

A little boy’s dear dream for Christmas day
(But after an hour his parents drag him away)


Good-bye, Sears; thanks for the childhood memories.

Not much longer now before we and Keats
Must pack up all our impedimenta
Into a photocopier paper box
And after a Wal-Mart-cake reception – leave

No one will notice us, and that’s okay
Thomas and Frost will meet us with the car
Greene will suggest that we go for a drink
The designated driver might be Shakespeare

With Fermor beside him reading the map
Guareschi and Wodehouse laughing in the back
Lewis and Chesterton will bring the beer
And Leonard Cohen will adjust his hat

In God’s name we will sit under the apple trees
And tell merry tales of the lives of kings


          And whether we shall meet again I know not.
          Therefore our everlasting farewell take:
          For ever, and for ever, farewell…
          If we do meet again, why, we shall smile;
          If not, why, then, this parting was well made.

                             -Julius Caesar V.1.115-119

Lawrence Hall, HSG
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                                  The Last Day in Ordinary Time

Time is not at all ordinary, of course
It is an ordinal of flowing days
Whose current in its journey swims among
The well-marked seasons of sacred observances

Advent into and through Christmas and its promise
Lent into and through Easter and its fulfillment
Cycles of seasons, penance, and merry feasts
Each as a step in the great dance of Creation

All seasons echo God’s eternal rhyme
Blessing our senses with His created time

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

                 The Last Literary Magazine I Will Ever Buy

A weighty enough tome for fourteen dollars
Guest-edited by a famous visiting poet
For that much money there should be more hollers
But it’s mostly free verse, wouldn’t ya know it

Self-pitying free verse (oh, how I have suffered)
First-person pronouns shattered and scattered about
From each other with white space well buffered
Each polemic a sustained, censorious pout

The thesis of each yelp in this literary gong?

All that we say and do and think is wrong

Lawrence Hall
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Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                   The Last Nights of Club Ozymandias in San Diego


                            Shelley always makes one think
             (often about how to pronounce his middle name)


I met a tout along a darkening street
Who said – “two trunkless legs of neon dance
There, upon that wall, on neon feet
An electromechanical contrivance to prance

In remnants, but wiggling hips and pouty lips
Tell that the artisan well caught the lust
Of lonely sailors as a pretty girl strips -
In time those young men and the dancer will be dust

These letters appear, written in cold fire:
I am the Queen of Club Ozymandias
Look upon me with your hot desire
Look upon me, and imagine us…

Tomorrow all will be leveled

A housing estate will arise, a planner’s scar
Nothing will remain of laughter and drinks
Of sailors flinging their pay upon the bar
For a dancing girl now silent as the Sphinx”

That lopper-thingie on the end of a pole
Indelicately intrudes among the leaves
Telescoped out, its harsh geometry
Unnatural among the greenery

There seeking out an elusive apple spared
The nightly browsings of the day-shy deer
Or the nightly pillagings of raccoons
Who destroy more than they will ever eat

But there’s that apple – careful, careful – snip:
And down it falls, with an apple-saucy flip!

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

                                      The Last Time I saw Dan

It’s only a Denny’s, right? Over on Garth Road
Just off the interstate.  Breakfast with Dan
Years ago now, but the table was still there
Where we drank coffee and I mostly listened

Oh, his body was frail, had been for years
But his mind, oh, that mind, physician and pilot
Philosopher, writer, scientist, raconteur
His thoughts were always far beyond the stars

I thought of him all through my breakfast special
And when I left, patted the vinyl bench
                                               where he had lived

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

                              The Last Time I Saw Van Horn, Texas

Van Horn, Texas is a ****** colony
Eruptions delivered through a cosmic gap
Woo-hoo emissions into curvy space
And then limply falling back down, down to earth

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,
For Advent-autumn drifts to Christmastide
When all the good of the seasonal year
Then warms and charms the house, the hearth, the heart

Lawrence Hall, HSG
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        The Latest Atmospheric River End-of-the-World
             Pineapple Express Bomb Cyclone from H**l


                     The news is falling! The news is falling!

                             -as Chicken Little did not say


An apocalyptic storm of such intensity
We’re all going drown in a flood of breaking news
The streets already overflowing with hyperbole
From reporters in damp shoes awaiting their cues

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

                                     ­   The Lawnmower Man

He came at last, with pickup truck and tools
And for some two hours there was hammering:
Bang! Bang! Bang! Clang! Bang! Clang! Bang! Clang! Bang! (Dang!)
(Dang!) Bang! Bang! Bang! Clang! Bang! Clang! Bang! Clang! Bang!

And then he went to the store for a bigger hammer:
Bang! Bang! Bang! Clang! Bang! Clang! Bang! Clang! Bang! (Dang!)
(Dang!) Bang! Bang! Bang! Clang! Bang! Clang! Bang! Clang! Bang!
Bang! Bang! Bang! Clang! Bang! Clang! Bang! Clang! Bang! (Dang!)

Heat, humidity, grease, the wrong wrench
The grease gun’s empty, the wrong hex key
Dead battery, no brake spring, maybe next week

The evening was concluded with a lecture
On the infallibility of Donald Trump

A mist, but not of memories or ghosts,
And not a silent mist - a noisy one
Drifts darkly over this altar to the past
The docent pauses for each motor home

Gear-growling up the unexpected *****
Along the road from that point to this one
Well-paved and posted: fifteen miles per hour

For cell-‘phone shots where each historic death
Is marked with stones among the sunlit grass
The docent speaks of her peoples: Cheyenne,
Arapaho, Sioux, and soldier boys blue

With frequent and reflective pauses as
A Winnebago circles Last Stand Hill

The Local Department Store’s Last Christmas

The overly-arranged rat-packery
Of cool-cat Christmas songs from the fifties
Descends like stardust date-expired upon
The ghosts of Christmases that never were

The aisles are teeming only with those notes
Because unlike the music of the past
Old customers have not been stored on tapes
To be replayed among the China-made

White Christmas Drummer Boy Jingle-Bell Rocks
Only mechanical air wah-wah-wah

Playin’ on the back porch, got an old dog
Chewed my toy car from the ten-cent store
Scared my dear momma with a green toad-frog
When she told my daddy I got my britches wore

(If you see a log truck you’ll have good luck)

Early get the cows up, early off to school
Running up the lane to catch the yaller bus
Paddled by the principal for actin’ like a fool
Hours in the classroom hearin’ Teacher fuss

(If you see a log truck you’ll have good luck)

Then in the afternoon to the locker room
With hardly any time for a ***** stop
Coach-Bubba’s rolling bassy voice of doom
Bellowing “I WANNA HEAR THE LEATHER POP!

(If you see a log truck you’ll have good luck)

Runnin’ the roads in an old-timey Ford
A fifth of Jack Daniels underneath the seat
Stupidly standin’ on the running board
Singin’ to the radio, O so sweet!

(If you see a log truck you’ll have good luck)

Runnin’ the roads on graduation night
Well, hello, great big world, and here I am
They say I got to get a job now, sure, that’s right
Say, buddy, what’s this place called Viet-Nam?

But

If you see a log truck
                                       you’ll have
                                                             good luck

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

                              The Loneliest Man in the world

          Those he commands move only in command,
          Nothing in love: now does he feel his title
          Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe
          Upon a dwarfish thief

                                         -Macbeth 5:2

His palaces and dachas are Dunsinanes
With polished floors and television maps
With whining voices in empty uniforms
With woods that come against him in the night

His life, his dreams are sere and crumbling leaves
Waiting only for the broom to sweep them away
Waiting only for the dead to summon them
Waiting only for the final hour to come

He does not hang his banners on reality
He only pushes buttons on remote controls

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

The Loneliest Man in the world

          Those he commands move only in command,
          Nothing in love: now does he feel his title
          Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe
          Upon a dwarfish thief

                                   -Macbeth 5:2

His palaces and dachas are Dunsinanes
With polished floors and television maps
With whining voices in empty uniforms
With woods that come against him in the night

His life, his dreams are sere and crumbling leaves
Waiting only for the broom to sweep them away
Waiting only for the dead to summon them
Waiting only for the final hour to come

He does not hang his banners on reality
He only pushes buttons on remote controls

The Loneliest Man in the World
Lawrence Hall
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https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                              The Loneliest Man in the world

          Those he commands move only in command,
          Nothing in love: now does he feel his title
          Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe
          Upon a dwarfish thief

                                         -Macbeth 5:2

His palaces and dachas are Dunsinanes
With polished floors and television maps
With whining voices in empty uniforms
With woods that come against him in the night

His life, his dreams are sere and crumbling leaves
Waiting only for the broom to sweep them away
Waiting only for the dead to summon them
Waiting only for the final hour to come

He does not hang his banners on reality
He only pushes buttons on remote controls

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

The Lone Ranger Masks Again

When I was a boy I wore my Lone Ranger mask
I even wore my Lone Ranger mask to school
Where mean ol’ Miz Griggs made me take it off
But now I may (as opposed to “can”) wear my mask

Indeed, I must wear a mask, and so, ha!
Ya can’t make me take it off now, Miz Griggs!
I can wear my Lone Ranger mask, so boo-hoo!
Me and the Lone Ranger, we ride again!

Only…the problem is…I’m not in school

Rats

Lawrence Hall, HSG
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                                      The Lord of One’s Love

                                    Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 26

The lord of one’s love can only be God
For whom all things are loved in gratitude
Kissings as well as blessings, and all are blessed
Presented before the Altar and the Throne

The lord of one’s love can only be God
All other lords are merely utilitarian
Well-honored as long as they know their place
Kings and queens, bishops, happy lovers, and dreams

The lord of one’s love can only be God
That no other love or lord can be

In memory of Michel Legrand


Young lovers have from time to time made promises
On midnight docks before the troopships sailed
On dripping railway platforms censed in steam
At bus stops and on glassed-in airport ramps

Young lovers have from time to time made promises
And pledged them in their letters with kisses sealed
And cancelled politicians upside down
Then posted to a world that is not yet

Young lovers have from time to time made promises -
If it takes forever, we will wait for them

Lawrence Hall
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The Luna Moth

The moon does not in fact wax anything,
She does not wane; she simply ever-is;
She rules the softly-sung, soft-summer nights,
A willing queen, and willingly obeyed.
The luna moth, her winged votary,
Clings to indulgent oaks of their kindness,
Their moon-sent goddess from another world,
And strangely robed and crowned in lunar green,
Pheroming softly for some other moth
To come perform with her those rituals
Of love illogical, of sacrifice;
For all a luna moth can do is live
A summer week or so, but in those hours

She loves

In lunar beauty, strangely eternal
Who needs a dying luna moth?
                                                We do.

Lawrence Hall
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The Luna Moth

The moon does not in fact wax anything,
She does not wane; she simply ever-is;
She rules the softly-sung, soft-summer nights,
A willing queen, and willingly obeyed.
The luna moth, her winged votary,
Clings to indulgent oaks of their kindness,
Their moon-sent goddess from another world,
And strangely robed and crowned in lunar green,
Pheroming softly for some other moth
To come perform with her those rituals
Of love illogical, of sacrifice;
For all a luna moth can do is live
A summer week or so, but in those hours

She loves

In lunar beauty, strangely eternal
Who needs a dying luna moth?
                                                We do.

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]

                       The Machine Pauses (and then Restarts)

Within a Dark-Lit Egg

Mechanical Air
Mechanical Light
Electronic Beepings
Procrustes is a Short, Bitter Man Who Doesn’t Like Anyone

Mechanical Air
On the day Papa Benedict died
I lived
And so prayed with him
As the electronics beeped in the new year

Mechanical Light
A crucifix on the wall faded away
And gas was silent in a tube
And when the haze was gone
The crucifix was still there

Electronic Beepings
BeepBEEPBEEPBLEEP beep                 beep
beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep
I turned to my wristwatch
But it was dead

Procrustes is a Short, Bitter Man Who Doesn’t Like Anyone
Tubes in both arms, and arms must not be bent
Hard plastic bubbles beneath weary sheets
A plastic paddle of obscure call buttons
There is no time within no time

All made better

Heilige Elisabeth von Thuringen
And those who serve with her
Quiet voices beyond the door, beside the bed
Soft footfalls hastening to come to us
With baskets from the Lord’s table



(Cf. The Machine Stops, E.M. Forster)

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                                         The Magic in Hebrew Words

Max gave me a book: 52 Hebrew Words
For Christmas
Appreciate the irony that isn’t there –
If Judaism isn’t real, then neither are we

Words in Hebrew seem to be topped as flames
As Light - the light as truth, the light for truth
As flame for sacrifice, as flame for peace
As Torah unrolled, all Creation unrolled

Everything begins with a word, the Word
Today we will begin with Shema – Hear

With gratitude

The Man Born Blind

We are all born blind, and stumble through our lives
In darkness lost along the River Styx
While clinging to our long-accustomed fear
As if it were a rule to be obeyed

The light is offered, then usually denied
As if it were yet another cruel joke
Long promised and then suddenly yanked away
More lost hopes rotting among the mouldering leaves

For some the obscure is more comfortable
Than promised light that never seems to shine

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Time Travel

On a stack of giveaways, a paperback:
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. – The Mad Scientist Affair
Napoleon with each sable hair in place
And Ilya in his groovy turtleneck

Poised for action on a four-color cover
With clever gadgets against wicked T.H.R.U.S.H.
Spies, guns, jet planes, secret lairs, beautiful girls
Mr. Waverly, and “Open Channel D”

Solo and Kuryakin, so cool, yeah, man -
Teachers and parents – they just didn’t understand!

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

                             The Man Who Delivered the Movies

The Saturday afternoon matinee
Outside the Palace Theatre in a line
Impatient for the hour, the man, John Wayne
Air-conditioning, popcorn, Coca-Cola, escape

Then riding to the rescue of the ranch
The man who delivered the reels of fun
Running up the steps with a big grey case
Of Rio Bravo – he brought us our dreams

And did he know, speeding to little towns
That he too was a hero of the Golden West?

Lawrence Hall, HSG
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                                      The Man Who Never

A bottle in the weeds along the road
A plastic remnant of the American game:
If you drink this fizzy and smoke a toad
You’ll get the car, the house, the girl, the fame

Nahhh

Another forty-something without a job
Just self-pitying songs on the radio
Stealing someone’s gas, another sucker to rob
Bumming money from Mom for no place to go                  

They didn’t believe in you, but you got ‘em showed -
Yeah, dude, you built a career along this road

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

                       The March of the Triumphalist Electrons

                 “Forward, Electronics, your victory’s achieved!
                   In all communications, progress is our creed!”

                               -Communist youth song in
                 Solzhenitsyn’s “For the Good of the Cause”

In all obedience learn to code, to code
For in obeying orders you think for yourself
And rebel by chanting and clenching your fist
As an individual just like everyone else

Now burn your poems, your notebooks, and your pens
And slaughter your thoughts wherever they hide
We will send you your soul through a little screen
Unisize, unisex, one soul fits all

And then, like Moloch and Herod, turn your wild eyes
Your burning eyes
Upon your children

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

                                             The Mediaeval Project

Let us progress to the Middle Ages
Those centuries that anchor us in love
Oh, yes, we’ll take along our antibiotics
Our printing presses, eyeglasses, and pocketknives

But we will progress to a living world
Of well-tended fields and chapels of ease
The daily mysteries of the Rosary
Following the mysteries of the plough

Let us progress to the Middle Ages
Each life a Word written on sunlit pages

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

               The Men of the Bible Class Pose for a Photograph
                   on the Steps of the Methodist Church in 1968

My grandfather once threatened some other old man
With his pocketknife just before the ten o’clock
Maybe it was over a point of theology
That’s surely as exciting as Bible class ever got

The Baptist men were the city council
And most of the school’s board of trustees too
But the Methodists somehow had more self-assurance
You can see it in their bearing and their suits

They seem to be their fathers in 1898
With railroads and sawmills – great times ahead

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

                                               The Metternich System

Like Metternich
We seem to be shoring up crumbling institutions
Institutions that have no use for us:
Heavy-lipped Habsburgs, an ossified Church

Like Metternich
We ask if the revolutionaries have permission
To ****** each other for the Goddess Reason
While princes and oligarchs flee for their lives

Like Metternich
We wonder if Napoleon won after all

“The sun looks down on nothing half so good as…
                two friends talking over a pint of beer...”

                        ― C.S. Lewis, "The Weight of Glory"

They may keep their dark Ministry of Fear -
We joy in our bright Ministry of Beer

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

                               The Ministry of Clockery

                                 Moonbeam Saving Time

Change for the sake of change – spare change? Spare change?
There must be a Ministry of Clockery
With Cratchit-y clerks drawing clocks at their desks
Supervised by a Scrooge of Clockery

They scriven at their screens and so change things
Chanting “Change is good” and “Progress is change”
“The more things change, all the more change for us”
And if nothing needs changing, yes it does

And once in a while at the Coke machine
One of the Cratchit-y clerks laughs, “Spare change?”

The Mirror Heal'd from Side to Side

When a mirror looks
Into you, deep inside you
Does it see itself?


(An allusion to Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott”)

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

                                     The Morning of the Funeral

Mostly waiting. Coat and tie, Sunday shoes
Quiet conversation. How was your breakfast
Who’s driving the cousins to the airport later
Do the animals have water and food

He’s in a better place now. Have you got the readings
Sunlight slanting to the floor where the puppies sleep
Who’s going to unlock the church for the flowers
Who wants a breath mint. Are we ready to go

I’m glad we’re having a Mass. Fr. Ron is so good
Mostly waiting. Coat and tie, Sunday shoes

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

                    The Morning Radio Guy Turns Himself Off

He was much of my mornings for years
His news, his jokes, his notes, his anecdotes
His affirmation of the goodness of man
Began each day with good humor and wit

But now he brandishes the radio waves
Like an old man threatening with his cane
By-Godding both the future and the past
Trapped forever in a 6th of January

Poor man! All he does now is scorn and scoff -
It’s like he’s turned his own radio off

The Most Boring American Legion Meeting Ever

A Monologue in Two Parts

I.

Voice:

“Ya wanna talk prostrate1 cancer? I’ll tell ya
About prostrate cancer those PSAs
Don’t mean nothing and those doctors don’t know
Nothin’ I’ve had 15 on my PSA

“Ever since when and I ain’t got prostrate cancer
But this feller I knew he had a one on his
PSA and he had stage five cancer
And he died, so don’t tell me nothin’ about

“Prostrate cancer ‘cause I go the meetings
And so I know, I tell ya, yessir, I do…”


1Prostate, of course

II

Same Voice:

“Say, did y’all have any good buffets in Iraq
Or that other place Afghanistan
The buffets in Manila were expensive,
I tell ya, expensive, they cost forty dollars,

“Yessir, they did, and that was right down the street
From the embassy and that was too much
Just too much for what ya got, I tell ya
And they gave us ‘phone cards and they were made

“Right there and sixty minutes disappeared
Off it right when you dialed the number, yessir…”

L’Envoi

A Second Voice (in pain, weak, much like the voice of the Bleeding Sergeant in Macbeth):

“I move we adjourn.”

No lovesick lad ever poured out his heart
To a Scantron®©™ card and its suave machine
Posed seductively in brushed aluminum
In a smoky corner of the faculty commons

Or with a thundering Number Two scribed
A manifesto that menaced the world
(But bubbled carefully within the squares)
And ground it through a Scantron®©™ 888

For indeed

Moses brought not Scantron®©™ down from Sinai
To teach God’s laws through an electric eye

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

         The Most Embarrassed Young Father in All of Christendom

                                   I will go in to the Altar of God.
                                   To God who giveth joy to my youth.

                                      -The Roman Missal, 1962

The processional had hardly ended
With each minister and server in place
Each knee for a moment respectfully bended
In acknowledgement of God’s gentle Grace

When came to our ears a frightening assault
Of sirens and horns, and then flashing lights
Beneath the sanctuary’s sacred vault
A catalogue of wild electronic frights

To the narthex door a father rushed
Awkwardly in the sight of God and man
His handsome manly face was deeply flushed
His son’s toy helicopter was clutched in his hands

He carried the noisy gadget far away -
(A true helicopter parent we may say!)
We delight in our children; for them we pray
And thank God for all families this Sabbath day

                                 I will go in to the Altar of God.
                                 To God who giveth youthful joy to old age.

                                                   -Parenting 1301

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

          The Mostest Magicalist Familiestest Christmas Ever

She will make this the most magical family Christmas ever
With the perfect tree
The perfect gifts
The perfect table
The perfect meal
The perfect ambience
The perfect decorations

A memory worthy of inclusion in a Hallmark movie
She will make this the most magical family Christmas ever

No matter how many children she reduces to tears for it

A Temporary, Part-Time, Adjunct Faculty Instructor of No  
    Significance Whatsoever at a Little Cinder-Block Community
      College Unknown to Anyone Beyond the Interstate Bypass
     Asks the Most Important Question About Admissions Bribery


Oh, please forgive this seeming diatribe
But I am one of the scrivening tribe
A poor Chaucerian scholar, a scribe

Who asks

Why doesn’t anyone offer me a bribe?

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

    The Most Obscene Words Ever with regard to Christmas Music


"As arranged by"

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                                 This Smart Watch Will Last

                      Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in

                              -Henry David Thoreau, Walden

I do not set the time; time simply is:
The dawning day requires no entrance code
The morning frost need not be set to wake
The yakking crows cannot be switched to “Off”

The lingering fog sends no notifications
The bare-limbed oaks re-set themselves in spring
The sky is the background app refresh
The wind is a warranty for life

All these good things are made to be -
I do not set the time, but God sets me

When meteors on dinosaurs
Fall crashing like the Temple of Dagon
And signals beam from ****** Mars
And mastodons make war on dragons

We little ones must run and hide
In rocky cleft and burrowed cave
While monsters in their wars decide
Just whom to **** and whom to save

When dragons make war on mastodons
Let’s disappear like leprechauns

Maybe.

Or not.