I'm Gonna Tell Santa Claus on You! - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

I’m Gonna Tell Santa Claus on You!

 

Nora and Theo

 

The children scamper across my grassy lawn

And bring me wiggly worms to identify

Big acorns to admire, lemons fallen weeks before

Sticks and leaves, pinecones, flowers, and bits of bark

 

They lose their shoes and socks beneath the oak

They drink from the water hose and don’t turn it off

They chase the dog and the dog chases them

They shriek out joyfully because they can

 

I growl that if I mow another bit of brick

I’m gonna tell ol’ Santa Claus on them

 

They laugh at me, and bring me another worm

When She Sold Her Old Ford Mustang - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

When She Sold Her Old Ford Mustang

 

Y’all need some more coffee? I got some fresh

 

That car was my dream; had it since I was twenty

When I got married it was our honeymoon ride

When I got divorced it was all I had

After me and my baby got away from the beatings

 

Your breakfast okay? We got a new cook

 

We sometimes had to live in it, y’know?

So like I had to tell my son I’m selling it

I promised it to him for his graduation

That car was our life. But it ain’t safe

 

Did I tell you we got a new cook? He’s pretty good

 

I’m been waitin’ tables in this old café for years

Watchin’ the world go by on th’ highway

Schrodinger's Turtle - rhyming doggerel

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Schrodinger’s Turtle

 

Don’t let a quantum mechanic work on your car

 

A cat on a fence post probably got there himself

And may be observed to be alive or dead

A turtle in a box is not on a shelf

“And I don’t know why,” the scientist said

 

“Meow,” the poor little cat cried out in dread

Dump Metaphors into the Mixmaster and Stir-Whir-into-a-Blur - poem (of a sort)

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Dump ‘Em into the Mixmaster and Stir-Whir-into-a-Blur

 

Americans

iconic

cannot

icon

write

bombshell

without

axe to grind

employing

the knives are out

tiresome

gunning for

old

fwiw

metaphors

business-as-usual

 

 

Battleground states

Eye-watering

scores to settle

Cringe

Bloodthirsty

Guru

Meltdown

Woke

Wardrobe malfunction

Green light

Eviscerate

Breaks cover

Breaks silence

Jaw-dropping

 

Dump ‘em into the magical metaphorical Mixmaster® and stir, stir, whirrrrr…

The Gates of Kiev are Smoke-Poisoned Skies - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The Gates of Kiev are Smoke-Poisoned Skies

 

The Gates of Kiev are now only the skies

Drone-battered-bombed by the Siloviki

Against the peace of churches and sunflower fields

Workers and scholars and pastoral scenes

 

The Gates of Kiev once opened to all the world

Musicians, artists, builders, priests, and poets

Departed as missionaries to every land

Civilization from the Kievan Rus’

 

But now

 

The Gates of Kiev are smoke-poisoned skies

Through which foul Satan falls upon Slavic lands

Poet, Just Look at You - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Poet, Just Look at You

 

Just look at you, wrestling with your ideas

Perceiving beauty among the burning ruins

Gently shaping the sorrows of the day

Into comfort

 

Just look at you, wrestling with your words

Heart and mind in position of function

Boldly shaping the confusions of the day

Into meaning

 

Just look at you, putting your readers first –

You are good

Who Share Your Desk? - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

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 that I am not a disappointment to them

 

Or to you

Which Karamazov are You? - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Which Karamazov are You?

 

Wise Dostoyevksy

Writes with holy words the mysteries  

Of the Russian soul

Which Karamazov are You? - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Which Karamazov are You?

 

Wise Dostoyevksy

Writes with holy words the mysteries  

Of the Russian soul

For Remembrance Day / Veterans' Day: An Old G.I. Belt Buckle - Poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

An Old G.I. Belt Buckle

 

 

For Storekeeper Third Class Thomas of Knoxville, Tennessee

 

“What he believed, he did.”

 

-Laurence Binyon

 

“In Memory of George Calderon”

 

 

An old belt buckle in the back of a shelf

Greening brass on a belt now much too short

Maybe the same one I wore on the Vam Co Tay

Scattered thoughts shift to Thomas; I don’t know why

 

A good man with a clipboard and a fifty-cal

Sitting on the edge of a bunk feeding a child

Spooning c-rats and making the kid laugh

“One for meeee…and one for youuuu!”

 

I wonder whatever happened to good ‘ol Thomas

I wonder whatever happened to the child

 

I wonder whatever happened to all of us

Atheist Chaplains Forging Mixed Metaphors - poem (of a sort)

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

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)

Vice-President Kamala Harris’ Speech of Gratitude and Farewell to Her Faithful Followers in the Early Hours of 6 November 2024

 Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Vice-President Kamala Harris’ Speech of Gratitude and Farewell to Her Faithful Followers in the Early Hours of 6 November 2024