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

                     A December Sunflower but No Cigar

While walking in the garden, thinking about things
And wishing I had a cigar, I saw a sunflower
A volunteer, a brave young volunteer
From late summer’s glorious display

Most everything around it was brown and down
Except for a few tiny timid weeds
Some withering blades of tenacious grass
And a few scruffy zinnias along the fence

In January’s frosts it will disappear
But for now, the little sunflower - and we - are here

I tried to think of someone I could venerate.
I listed all the names my mind could generate.

I thought about war heroes from the Middle East.
They should be listed near the very top at least.

I thought about the doctors and the Nurses.
They deserve our praise in many verses.

The First Responders all deserve applause
Their service never ever takes a pause.

Though there are many people I could laud,
The only one I venerate is God.
ljm

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

                      Another Christmas Behind the Wire

                   “I was in prison, and ye came unto me”

                                  -St. Matthew 25:36

The hallways of our dormitory echo
God’s holy silence on this Christmas Eve
The only light’s the Star of long ago;
It shines this night for us, whose hearts believe

For we are all now at the Manger met
Before the Altar of eternal Light
Such different personalities, and yet
We share our common faith on this rarest night

We bring our gifts to Mary’s fair-born Child:
A pen, a broom, a book, a welding rod,
A wrench, a mop, some papers neatly filed –
Our daily labors offered up to God

But silence now: offices, hallways, gym -
As silent as the streets of Bethlehem

Having dispatched the sound rabble
with mostly love,
our already flaccid balloon
deflates with a final raspberry

a fitting fanfare to a term
that left its markers marked,

the shared mirth,
across eyes and hearts,
at a **** noise
proving once again:
we are why we’re here

Winter nights, long
like the light is lost in thought
I sometimes think of you
and the equation of our loss/gains

even though I’m **** at maths
and numbers are for squares
the outcome on the page
is positive

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

                               The Curse of Windows 11

                          Vista®© Risen from the Grave?

Tonight I installed Windows 11
Which scattered my folders and apps to H///
I quickly recovered Windows 10 (not much rhymes with eleven)
Which, as we know, works perfectly well

The thunderous thrumming of sorries

words and worries
racing to and from my most
vital of organs just like we used to
run, as fledgling beasts,
  season after season
from our temporary houses
to the ghosts of rotting homes;
Back when we were alive

bright and breathing,
daring the world, so full
of thorns and hard corners,
to make us heel and obey
  "Go on and try!"
not realizing
even the most ferocious of wildlings
can grow brittle

whittled and world-weary.
Taming is a slow poisoning.
The arsenic of fear and loss
  Like acid in my throat
clogging my arteries and pores
with a feral tenacity we
once owned, making me weak

greasy and gray.

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

                               Where Someone Waits for You

A plane’s navigation lights chart our dreams
To Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, and the moon
And farther into the mysterious night
To somewhere far away, where adventures begin

But we are left here in December’s dark
Wondering when there will be a flight for us
When we can flee this joyless land at last
For that elusive happiness long deferred

And maybe someone there is dreaming too
And we down here can happily wonder who

-


decades ago this was a tasty
quick meal between ten
hour shifts and sleep

tangy cheese in a metal container
that i cooked on a burner as the
shells boiled to a full fluff nearby

i mixed in some diced ham that
in of itself could have filled
a morning omelet,
had i the time—

to—day’s products consist of
much smaller shells that boil
into gooey blobs

and cheese– sealed in some kind
of chemically pre-melted state
inside of a silver bag,

and ham—

packed in smaller cans–
very much tasting like
the machines that process it.

i wonder now what level of
creature is low enough to
be able to live off of this

to within what measure
of survival

or—

if in fact this stuff
could actually be
                            
eating  it...


s jones
2021


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