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

                            ****** Most Cosy

A ****** cannot possibly be cosy
With blood all over the vicarage floor
And while Miss Marple is politely nosy
There is still the problem of all that gore

A ****** committed in an English village
Is hardly cosy to m’lord who died
Surrounded by hop fields under tillage
He still is dead (tho’ in the countryside)

A ****** cannot possibly be cosy –
But is the widow finding life now rosy?

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

                               Learning to Comb Your Hair

Do you remember learning how to comb your hair?
Your mother had you look into the mirror
(What a handsome young man!)
And watch as she made magic with a comb

First, she chased all your hair forward and down
Until your eyebrows laughed for the fun of it
And then she chose an imaginary line
And parted the strands for the rest of the day

Hooray!

Do you remember learning how to comb your hair?
(Now in your mother’s memory send up a prayer)

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

                         Our Vines Have Tender Marsupials

In summer the ‘possums come seeking my garden
In grey winter they come seeking dog food
Tonight they cling high up in the bare vines
Hiding from the dachshunds snuffling below

All the animals’ eyes stare back at the flashlight
Unsure of their duties in the misty rain
Whether to climb, to move, to bark, to hiss
And so we all pause to ponder the mysteries

Fear, hunger, confusion, artificial light –
Pretty much metaphors for the covid time

(The title is a play on Our Vines Have Tender Grapes, MGM, 1945)

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

                                    Salt and Mrs. Lot

We are told that Mrs. Lot was turned into
A pillar of salt for looking back to view
The flames of cursed ***** and Gomorrah
For looking to the past, instead of tomorrow

Maybe

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

               A Sure Way to Be Banned from a Political Website

Is to ask a critic, by way of correction:
If he voted in his last school board election


                A Sure Way to Be Banned from a Catholic Website

Is to ask a radtrad priest just why he must
Promote his fantasies about others’ lust

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

       “FBI vetting Guard troops in DC amid fears of insider attack”

                                         -Associated Press

          “…we need to put all of the mechanisms in place
           to thoroughly vet these men and women…”

                              -Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy

Men of Destiny always make a mess
Of life, of death, of shabby governance
And from the safety of their bunkers
Polish their medals and send in the young

“These men and women” – “these” – he sneers the word
As if privates and corporals try to block votes -
His predecessors, trusting budgets, bullets, and bombs
Didn’t trust us one bit in Viet-Nam

It is the Pentagon’s original sin:
When they ** up they blame the enlisted men


FBI vetting Guard troops in DC amid fears of insider attack (apnews.com)

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

                                 Coffee Shop Darwinians

          “We’ll set a fine, new, well-oiled machine in place
            of the old one and this time we’ll put the Normans
            into it instead. That’s what justice means, isn’t it?”

                                        -Saxon Monk in Becket

No, of course it didn’t have to happen
We’re not campus coffee shop Darwinians
Determined that five innocents needed to die
Within the gears of our new, well-oiled machine

And that more should come, chanting “O Machine!” 1
“Follow the Science!” and “Learn. To. Code!”
As they sacrifice themselves to a Tweeter-sanctioned
Infestation of Manifest Destiny

And I’ve got a feeling, as you might agree:
No one on either side quotes Dostoyevsky


1 “The Machine Stops,” E. M. Forster

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

        The Writer, the Reader, and the Synapse Between Them

                                               Per V.B. & W.K.

From the writer to the reader
From the speaker to the listener

Like a 16-year-old crossing a field at noon
A little word has a lot of ground to cover in the heat
A mile of open ground to a wall and some trees
Where confusion does not want it to arrive

From the writer to the reader
From the speaker to the listener

If we send a little word across a field
But stay behind ourselves and only watch
To see what happens - how responsible are we
If the word dies screaming among the wheat

From the writer to the reader
From the speaker to the listener

Like a 16-year-old crossing a field at noon
A little word has a lot of ground to cover in the heat

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

                                This Side of the Covid

The Covid still is spinning me around
And flinging random thoughts against the roof
The bat-cave roof of this cosmic centrifuge
Whoops-a-go with a plastic temperature

And here’s a finger for the oxygen thing
With which to touch a passing ice-cream dream
And clutch it to a forest long sacrificed
For all the snot-paper I needed last week

So if, dear friends, I fail to make any sense
My words are piled in drifts along the fence

I think.

Maybe.

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

           Soldiers Sleeping Beneath a Bust of Father Abraham

In the Capitol exhausted soldiers sleep
Beneath a bust of Abraham Lincoln
And a sign that reads: “Cameras and related gear
Not authorized in this area.”

After days of transports and formations
Of stringing wire and policing the area
Of orders and marches and lines for the head
And maintenance of all weapons and gear

They sprawl just any whichaway on a floor
To be mocked with sneaky MePhone photographs
“Is that all our overpaid soldiers do? Sleep?”
And stepped around by those whom they protect

Insolent civilians might not give a ****
But our soldiers are blessed by Father Abraham