Hello poetry
Are you there for me today?
I need a friend, but only words will do I’m afraid
It helps if they rhyme
But I’ll take what I can get
Give me some solace
I need to forget
Take me to a new place
Where there’s hope and joy
Hello poetry, how have you been?
I hope you’re not annoyed
It’s your job to comfort
Take me in
Tell me everything will be all right
Please begin

What's that thing that you Yanks do?
From the civil war to World War Two
From Gettysburg to the sea o tranquility
That haunting sound gets driven into me
Through the smoke and swathed in reverb
The nations emotions
Sonically preserved
Uniquely you
You ******* own it
That old evocative
American trumpet.

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                               Who Shares Your Desk?

Hundreds of friends share my desk with me
Leaving coffee and wine and tobacco stains
All over the place, their thoughts cluttering my mind
Dreams and possibilities for my heart

Yevtushenko and his Silver Age poets
More Russian poets
Shakespeare in a worn college omnibus
Larry McMurtry
(One must understood that in Texas Lonesome Dove is a holy text)
The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse
The Oxford Book of Narrative Verse
The Oxford Book of Christian Verse
The Oxford Book of Seventeenth Century Verse
Leonard Cohen and his famous blue raincoat
Cavafy at an oblique angle to the universe
Wordsworth and Dorothy out for a walk
Plath
Keats
Sondheim
Montale
Hopkins
The Oxford Book of English Verse, the 1939 Q Edition
(Not that Q!)
The Oxford Book of English Verse, the 1999 Ricks Edition
Pasternak
Lewis
Frankl
The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse
Kafka
Herrick
Milosz
Virgil
Tennyson
Wavell and his manly flowers
Claude McKay
300 Tang poets (they do seem to drink a lot)
Mary Oliver and all her doggies

So there they are, in untidy rows and piles
(The Tang poets simply will not behave)
They are patient with my slovenliness
Pens, screwdrivers, a Rosary, two light bulbs
(I don’t know why)
A thermometer from my grandparents’ house

A 1962 Missale Romano and a toy fire truck
An Orthodox ikon from Tod of happy memory
A Tupperware coffee cup they don’t make anymore
Spare spectacles for seeing what comes next

Hundred of friends who ask the best of me
And who don’t mind my rows and piles of words
They talk to me, and I ask their advice
I pray I am not a disappointment to them

Or to you

My mind is a
scrapbook of
tattered
memories and
ghosts that waltz to
sullen Cohen
songs in my heart.

Sometimes
it hurts
like a
rotten tooth.
I have a foul and
electric
taste in my mouth.
A metallic bitterness.
There’s a febrile and
pale stranger in the
mirror that cowers
back at me.
Tears, like candle wax.

I used to
try and drink the
pain away.
Chase worldly
pursuits, like a
dog at the track
after that mechanical
rabbit.

As I get older,
I try to practice
wisdom.
I got off that
dirt road to
damnation Island.
We are in this
carnival of ****
together.
I seek a higher love
and try to ease another's
aching,
a pursuit worthwhile.

She slipped away with no goodbye
No parting gasp or widened eye
One heartbeat she was here, then she was gone.

I didn’t know it was the day
When she would gently drift away-
The nurses said that time was down the road.

For many hours I’d held her  hand
And when I could no longer stand
I sat nearby to read a magazine.

I cannot say with certainty
The moment that her soul leapt free
I feel ashamed and live with secret guilt.

I never should have touched that book
It robbed me of a final look
That might have told me she was on her way.

I had to wait til Laura came
And here her call my Mother’s name
And cry out, O my God - I think she’s gone.

I tell myself it was Mom’s will
To slip away when all was still
But yet I should have stood there at her side.

I might have sensed her spirit’s flight
Or seen some otherworldly light
Instead I idly looked at wedding gowns,

I feel I didn’t make the grade
And ever since that time I’ve prayed
That she’ll forgive the lapse and love me still.

Wherever she is dancing now
I hope she realizes how
My love is wrapped around her like a crown.

And as she starts eternity
With body new and spirit free
I hope she knows her heart lives on in me.

I think about her all the while
Sometimes with tear-sometimes with smile
But she walks closer by me than before.
  
The wisdom that she shared with me-
The training in the way to be
Are part and parcel of my very soul.

I’ll always be a part of her
Through any change that may occur
My love and fond remembrance will not fade.

So though she left without goodbye
To claim her mansion in the sky
I know she’ll save a corner there for me.

And come that future afternoon
Maybe distant, maybe soon,
I’ll hold her hand in greeting, not farewell.

And she will say she overlooked
My sitting down with bridal book
And that she knows I did the best I could.

She knew the measure of my love
And as she joined the realms above
Considered me to be her good girl still.

Then all the pain I’ve hid inside
Will disappear and I can glide
Into my own eternity at peace.          
                ljm

White, black, green, and red,
Waving a flag.
Let the world know
There is a right to be alive—
The people of Palestine have,
In their own olive land.

When Donald Trump does a push-up, he pushes the earth away.
He counted to infinity, TWICE, all in one day!
The Boogeyman checks his closet for Trump each night,
For under his  ̶t̶o̶u̶p̶e̶e̶ ̶ TOTALLY LEGIT HAIR™  is another fist, ready to fight.

When he enters a room, darkness runs out in fear,
He can slam a revolving door, make silence appear.
He doesn’t sleep, he waits—he doesn’t blink, he stares,
And gravity bows when he takes the stairs.

When Donald Trump looks in the mirror, it shatters from awe,
He has no age; time itself is held by his law.
He’s the reason Waldo is always well-hidden,
In Trump’s world, rules are forbidden.

His tears cure cancer—too bad he never cries,
And every hand he’s dealt is aces in disguise.
Death once knocked on his door, then quickly fled—
For even the Grim Reaper fears Donald Trump instead.

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                         Atheist Chaplains Forging Mixed Metaphors

         “Atheist chaplains are forging a new path in a changing world”

                                    -CNN 7 November 2024

One seldom thinks of chaplains at a forge
Work-weary, work-stained from hours of smoke and sweat
With mighty hammer strokes bending hot iron
To the will of the artisan in useful things

Some writers forge nothing but metaphors tired
From overuse, and mixed as verbal soup
In music, art, literature, and life paths can be

Cleared
Paved
Traveled
Surveyed
explored
Followed
Noted
Marke­d
Mapped
Found

But it is not in the nature of paths to be forged

Atheist chaplains and metaphor soup
Are nothing more than an ouroborosian loop

(Look upon this fresh metaphor and neologism
And despair)

How many times must the helping hand
Be bitten, slapped or pushed away
Before it never reaches out again.

With motives pure as a newborn’s eyes
I offer everything I can to help
With what I can’t afford to spend

And hours I really shouldn’t take-
And every time it is a sham
And all my help is nothing.

All I want is just one chance
To save a life or make the day
For someone who is sinking

And without hope of aid or rescue.
But it never seems to go that way
The homeless throw away my blankets

And tell me they can’t eat my lunch.
They take my funds and skulk away
To add it to their horde,

While I beat up my aching bones
To earn enough to try again
In eighteen hour workdays.

Is there really no one out there
Waiting for my caring grasp
To pull them from a certain death.

Is there no one disadvantaged
Who will bless fate for the coat
I’ve taken from my closet for them.

Is there no life that will change
In the minutest way because
I strived with all my might to help them.

This is life’s unkindest blow for me-
That I’m denied the hero’s role
And every hand I reach to save
Draws back and turns to walk away
With laughter echoing across
The distance to my downcast eyes.
ljm

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

         By Reading This Content You Agree to Our Privacy Policy


          It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander
          when you were…within range of a telescreen.

                                             -Orwell, 1984


But your privacy? Nah; deal with it, you see
Baked beans, magazines and mountain scenes
Vacation trips and handy houseware tips -
They see you, they know you, they hunt you

Podcasts, partisan views, gossipy news
Engine parts, how-to vids, and funny kids
Treating head lice, tax advice, dancing mice
They see you, they know you, they hunt you

Through your made-in-Shanghai Palantir
Adverts will forever make you fear,
                         My Precious



(“Palantir” is here an allusion to Tolkien’s genius, not to the software people.)