Wednesday, November 30, 2022

Navigating the Rules - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim’s Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Fellowship & Fairydust (fellowshipandfairydust.com)

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Navigating the Rules

 

Everything not forbidden is compulsory

 

-T. H. White, The Book of Merlyn

 

The rules are immutable and absolute

Except when they’re not. The rules this week

Are whatever the powerful might say -

Questions are a burden; simply obey

 

Accept that whatever you think is wrong

To the truculent who disapprove of you

For you are outdated, a relic, a prat

And you are wicked to disagree with that

 

Anything in your defense that you might urge

Is now a forbidden ism subject to purge

Tuesday, November 29, 2022

Negotiating Toilet Paper - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim’s Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Fellowship & Fairydust (fellowshipandfairydust.com)

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Negotiating Toilet Paper

 

The escort carried three rolls of toilet paper

As she walked me to the classroom area

One each for Dorm A, Dorm B, and the guards

Some fellows walked casually along the path

 

“And you guys know how to walk single-file”

 

“Yes, ma’am”

 

“Yes, ma’am”

 

“Sure thing, ma’am”

 

And thus in silence they formed that single-file

 

“One roll of toilet paper per prisoner per week

Sometimes it’s just not enough,” she said

“We had a meeting on it; I told the guys

Sometimes administration just doesn’t get it”

 

Dignity, like treaties, can be broken

In many ways

Monday, November 28, 2022

The Eyes of a Stalker - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Fellowship & Fairydust (fellowshipandfairydust.com)

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

The Eyes of a Stalker

 

Dear Publisher:

 

Yes, I thank God you are free to publish your books

And I thank that wise First Amendment thing

Even though crafted by agnostics and rebels

Who ought to have been faithful to their King

 

You are free to call that parasite a prince

You are free to profit from his treacheries

But selling your honor for shillings and pence

Reveals your failure as cultural trustees

 

But know you something of that sullen talker?

On the cover you have given him the eyes of a stalker

Sunday, November 27, 2022

FIFA FO FUM - weekly column, 27 November 2022

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

FIFA FO FUM

 

Association football, aka soccer, aka football, is said to be “the sweet sport,” though no one seems to know why. Soccer is nominally a healthy youth sport in which teams of young men and women kick a round ball and occasionally each other, but what one observes in the FIFA World Cup is a sour political mess of grownups acting like children without any positive role models.

 

When we drive by a school or a park and see children playing sports we consider how good it is for them to practice self- and external discipline in pursuit of a common goal.

 

When we open the news and read about adults burning down cities in response to other adults playing those same sports, we wonder at what point did society fail to heed the lessons of youth.

 

No sport can be considered sweet when its commercial sponsors, national sponsors, fans, and players choose to condemn each other in matters religious, national, racial, and political, with apparently little regard or respect for a well-played round, inning, or goal. There are lots of accusations and few congratulations, and fists instead of handshakes.

 

FIFA footer is not a sport, it is an incubator of hatreds and ideologies, and for a very few, great wealth.

 

This nation is hardly innocent in the matter – the behavior of adults attending youth sports in schools and even in church leagues reminds us that at one time children were encouraged and guided in sports by the adults in their lives, not overwhelmed with partisan passion from the stands.  As President Theodore Roosevelt said,

 

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds…”

 

Sports for young people are important as part of their intellectual, moral, and physical development. A child participating in a team or even kicking a ball around the back yard is much further along to adulthood than the poor schlub vegetating on the couch with the little Orwellian telescreen for hours at a time.

 

A parent must determine that elusive dividing line between encouraging the child in sports as opposed to displacing the child from making any decisions, and it’s never easy.

 

But as for FIFA as a role model for anything, that’s easy – no.

 

-30-

Saturday, November 26, 2022

On the Eve of Advent - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Fellowship & Fairydust (fellowshipandfairydust.com)

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

On the Eve of Advent

 

On the eve of Advent Jupiter ascends

As is his custom at dusk this time of year

Then Mars and the company of Orion

And all the dutiful stars awake, arise

 

To mark the passing of Ordinary Time

And arc into the west and disappear

Late leaves rustle unseen in the deepening dark

We whisper our Compline prayers along with them

 

And in the absence of light await the Light

Which will appear in the most unlikely places

Friday, November 25, 2022

Old Men in Chambray Shirts - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Fellowship & Fairydust (fellowshipandfairydust.com)

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Old Men in Chambray Shirts

 

Meditation on a theme of Tod Mixson

 

We don’t see khakis, Bull Durham, or farmers’ hats

Or muscled arms that toss square bales of hay

Two strokes hammering a ten-penny through two-by-fours

One stroke of an axe splintering lightered pine

 

A hand-rolled smoke dangling from sun-blistered lips

An old boot heavy on a rattlesnake’s head

An old stock knife to cut that b*****d apart

And old, unwritten yarns from the long ago

 

For now old men wear shorts and slogan tees

A flock of gabbing fools with knobby knees

Wednesday, November 23, 2022

The True Knowledge - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Fellowship & Fairydust (fellowshipandfairydust.com)

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

The True Knowledge

 

The True Knowledge

 

Them slaves was happy and well taken care of

Prisoners lay around in air-conditioned private rooms

Teachers don’t teach nothin’ but sex and all them lies

I need disability; I’ve got five ARs to support

 

The True Knowledge

 

They sell children at the pizza parlor

Jesus is my king and Trump my president

I saw them suitcases full of votes

Don’t try to tell me there ain’t no Q – FACT!

 

The True Knowledge

 

I didn’t have to go to no fancy college

I got me [whisper] some sites - they teach The True Knowledge

Tuesday, November 22, 2022

The Glowing Page - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Fellowship & Fairydust (fellowshipandfairydust.com)

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

The Glowing Page

 

Once upon a time, when I was young

In wonder I opened the pages of Stanyan Street

And heard those sometimes artless verses speak to me

Through pages golden with the California sun

 

Once upon a time, when I was young

I received a message from Zima Junction

It was somewhat confusing in translation

In Viet-Nam the reception wasn’t very clear

 

It helps to understand that poetry never speaks

For the briefcase politician in his Jeep

Sunday, November 20, 2022

Football and the Several First Thanksgiving - weekly column 11.20.2022

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Football and the Several First Thanksgivings

 

In 1863 President Lincoln established the annual observance of Thanksgiving in honor of the Union victory at Gettysburg (President Lincoln proclaims official Thanksgiving holiday - HISTORY). Over the following decades the holiday was backfilled with stories and histories of questionable accuracy, moving the focus back from Gettysburg to Plymouth Colony, but a holiday dedicated to gratitude for God’s blessings is always good anyway.

 

Without a football game between the University of Texas and Texas A & M the days loses much of its meaning, though. Sniff.

 

Different groups claim that the dinner-on-the-grounds at Plymouth was not the first Thanksgiving. Texas, being Texas, claims TWO first Thanksgivings [The First Thanksgiving? | TX Almanac (texasalmanac.com)]:

 

1541 – the expedition of Francisco Vazquez de Coronado in May in Palo Duro Canyon and

 

1598 – the expedition of Juan de Onate at San Elizario. No one, including the Spanish government, gave thanks for Onate when his mass murders were finally reported.

 

San Augustin / Saint Augustine, Florida claims yet another first Thanksgiving [The First Thanksgiving - Castillo de San Marcos National Monument (U.S. National Park Service) (nps.gov)]:

 

1564 – the expedition of Pedro Menendez de Aviles and 800 settlers.

 

Most of the images show the First Nations participating in the several first Thanksgiving, which is ironic – it’s as if someone shows up at your house uninvited, cooks your food, and then invites you to sit at your own table and at the foot, not at the head.

 

But all nations appear to have migration stories, and so almost every group has displaced other groups and each has been displaced in its turn. The one exception I know (and I am wonderfully ignorant) are the Acoma of what is known at the present as New Mexico. The Acoma maintain that their ancestors came from the earth right there, not somewhere else, and that is a rare historical narrative indeed.

 

Other Europeans who colonized part of what is now the U.S.A. include:

 

France – 1524

 

Holland – 1615

 

Sweden – 1638

 

Russia – 1732

 

Presumably they too had their own first Thanksgivings, so metaphorically there should be room at the table for everyone and at almost any time of the year.

 

Maybe the only matter upon which all agree is that any Thanksgiving should include a football game.  Every culture on the planet played forms of football from prehistory and it was a biggie in this hemisphere. Thus, playing any kind of football game on Thanksgiving is a very Meso-American thing to do.

 

-30-

Saturday, November 19, 2022

Tumbrils Rattling Ideas to Their Deaths - poem

 

Tumbrils Rattling Ideas to Their Deaths

 

 

“Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.”

 

-attributed to Gustav Mahler

(But no one sources the quote so maybe it’s from someone else)

 

 

That which is good is now tumbriled through the streets

The carter following the map upon his MePhone

Or rather the map upon their MePhone

Now that one man must not, dare not be he

 

That which is true is stood upon the gallows

It may tweet aloud for a moment or two

But weighted down with the burdens of trends

It must immediately be jerked up short

 

That which is beautiful is burnt as fuel -

All sacrificed to Moloch, loving and cruel

Friday, November 18, 2022

The Grim Intensity of Mars - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Fellowship & Fairydust (fellowshipandfairydust.com)

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

The Grim Intensity of Mars

 

Tonight the grim intensity of Mars

Along the horizon is the war god’s warning

A pagan prophecy of blood among the stars

A judgement upon this planet of ghosts

 

Tonight the withering scorn of Jupiter

Withdrawing his light is a repudiation

Of Earth’s cultures of disassociation and death

Of powdered skulls for smoothing a footer pitch

 

While corpses influence corpses through blank blue screens

The last man dies with Karamazov in his hands

Thursday, November 17, 2022

Saint Joseph and Ice Cream - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Fellowship & Fairydust (fellowshipandfairydust.com)

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Saint Joseph and Ice Cream

 

“I thought I heard you saying it was a pity…I never had any children…But I have, you know … Thousands of ’em … thousands of ’em…”

 

-Goodbye, Mr. Chips

 

In memory of a happy summer morning with Abbie and Alexander in Ottawa

 

Every man is a father after the Order of Saint Joseph

Every child is his to nurture and protect

A man must practice wisdom and honor

In order to pass them on to a new generation

 

And there is something to be said for ice cream -

I was entrusted with two little children

For a walkabout around Parliament Hill

“And give them nutritious snacks,” their mother enjoined

 

Most strictly enjoined

 

I asked myself what good Saint Joseph would do -

Surely he would buy them an ice cream each

 

And it was so

And now you know

Wednesday, November 16, 2022

Painter's Cough - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Painter’s Cough

 

He tossed his cigarette and introduced himself

And coughed

A weary old man with a weary beard

He coughed

And came inside to check the painting prep

He coughed

And was not happy with the previous work

He wheezed

 

He began bringing in his equipment and paint

He coughed

He gazed around the rooms disapprovingly

He coughed

He sanded and he sanded and he sanded

He coughed

He sanded and sanded all morning long

He wheezed

 

He croaked, “Oh, man, this dust’s getting’ to me”

He coughed

So he went outside for a cigarette

(Presumably he coughed)

His methy helper finally showed up

He coughed too

They griped about the poor preparatory work

One wheezed, one coughed

 

Neither wore a respirator or mask

They coughed

And talked about a nephew in jail again

They coughed

The helper offered me some backstrap at lunch

He coughed

And was surprised when I said, “No, thanks”

He wheezed

 

The contractor went away for a while

The painters coughed

And spent more time outside with their cigarettes

Presumably they coughed

The plastic dust sheets were silent and still

And never coughed

The painters took more frequent breaks and smoked

And probably coughed

 

And so the weary day wore itself out

The painters packed their equipment and their coughs

And promised to return tomorrow and finish

And clear away the piles of dust and debris

And maybe they will

 

Cough

Monday, November 14, 2022

The Weight of a Rifle - poem

 

The Weight of a Rifle

 

I had quite forgotten the weight of a rifle.

 

-C. S. Lewis to his brother, 11 August 1940, upon joining the Home Guard

 

Despite the cold and the morning mist

Some of the fellows reported wild boars

Up against the tree line across the fields

So with my old rifle I took a walk

 

I found their feral diggings and rootings 

And stood and listened to the autumn winds

Sighing in the tree tops, but there were no hogs

Robert Frost could have made something of it

 

I marched for miles in my merry youth

Laughing and singing by squad and company

M-14 rifles slung over our skinny shoulders

Our government thought this was a good idea

 

I found some bright-red holly-berries this morning

Which was more fun than shooting at hogs

 

Or at other men


Letters of C. S. Lewis, ed. W. H. Lewis, Harvest / HBJ, San Diego, 1966



Feral Hogs Attack and Kill a Woman in Texas - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

Sunday, November 13, 2022

Destry Rides Yet Again - column / movie review 13 November 2022

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Destry Rides Yet Again

 

You know, I don't hold too much for first impressions. The way I figure it, the last impression is important.

 

-Tom Destry

 

One of the satellite channels programmed a weekend of Audie Murphy cowboy movies. In my youth these were a Saturday afternoon staple down at the Palace Theatre, of happy memory, and I was pleased to revisit Destry (1954).

 

Dismissing Destry and other post-war shoot-‘em-ups as cheap, mass-produced, predictable entertainment would be easy, and in fact Destry features few surprises: a young, unassuming cowboy whom everyone underrates arrives in a corrupt western down to clean it up. The chief villain is an oily fancy-pants with a concealed Derringer and who surrounds himself with a crew of stupid, disposable gunslingers. There is a bad girl and a good girl (think of Grushenka and Katerina in The Brothers Karamazov), an incompetent mayor, an incompetent sheriff, a kindly old Doc, a brass-voiced old aunt, and assorted fearful townsfolk.

 

Destry, however, stands out because of the director, George Marshall, and an outstanding cast of some of Hollywood’s finest.

 

Marshall was the director of 1939’s Destry Rides again and wanted to re-make it in color and with a larger budget. His 1954 Tom Destry is the son of James Stewart’s Destry, and so the second film could be considered a sequel rather than a remake. That the second film is not as well-known as the first is unfortunate, because it is excellent in its own way.

 

Audie Murphy was a great actor. He is better known for his many cowboy films, but was brilliant as a conflicted young idealist in The Quiet American. Filmed in Saigon in 1958 with some studio sequences in Rome, this controversial film was not a financial success (and author Graham Greene hated it) but Murphy is finally given a chance to portray a complex, conflicted character and carries it off wonderfully. In Destry he anticipates this complexity as a young deputy sheriff dealing with apparently impossible situations while upholding the law.

 

Mari Blanchard, whose career was all too short, is the brunette bad girl who chooses the right path in the end, but because she was the bad girl she must die.

 

Lori Nelson is the blonde good girl, generally forgettable except at the end, when she discharges two revolvers into the ceiling to get Destry’s attention.

 

Wonderful Mary Wickes is the brass-voice old aunt (Doc’s wife, actually, but P. G. Wodehouse would see her as an aunt).

 

Lyle Bettger is the Snidely Whiplash villain, cunning, cruel, and treacherous. He seems to be enjoying his role immensely.

 

Thomas Mitchell is the bumbling, drunken sheriff, often comical but who in the end dies tragically when shot in the back by the villains. This is the point when Destry stops being Mr. I-don’t-like-guns Nice Guy and the plot goes all Katie-bar-the-door.

 

Best known as Scarlett O’Hara’s pa, Mitchell enjoyed a long career in Hollywood and was a closet intellectual and playwright as well as a much-honored actor.

 

Wallace Ford is loveable ol’ Doc. This great actor’s early life was, as many have noted, Dickensian. He was born in England as Samuel Grundy and grew up in a series of orphanages and brutal family placements in England and in Canada. Sam and another boy, named Wallace Ford, escaped to America (Danged illegal immigrants, right? Ford later served in the cavalry.) on a freight train. Wallace Ford was killed while the boys were trying to board another train, and in his honor Sam took Wallace’s name. Now there is a story worth filming.

 

Edgar Buchanan always played bumbling, comical old grumps, uncles, and mayors, but in a surprise turn he is in this film a determined villain and is killed trying to murder Destry.

 

John Doucette steals his one brief scene as a growly-voiced bully, and long before he was the Skipper Alan Hale, Jr. sails a horse as a tough trail boss impatient with the young deputy sheriff’s determination to follow the law in all things.

 

By the end of the film the set is littered with more bodies than the final scene in Hamlet, and yet there is no blood. Why were movie deaths so tidy in those days? Everyone in the cast and crew were survivors of the Depression and the Second World War. Some of them had been in combat in the Second World War and others in the First World War. All of them would have lost friends or relatives in the wars, and all of them knew how fearful, painful, and prolonged most deaths are. We can only speculate that, knowing hunger and death and loss for so long, the filmmakers were not going to show those horrors in their art. It sometimes seems that the brutal deaths in modern cinema are staged by filmmakers whose own lives have featured no more trauma than not making the swim team at Yale or maybe having to wait in line at a Starbuck’s.

 

But this is only speculation.

 

Another reality is that there is little diversity in 1950s cowboy films, although we know that the American West was peopled by all sorts of peoples from all sorts of backgrounds and cultures. But a film reflects the aesthetics of the dominant culture in the time in which it was made, not the time in which it is set, thus all those blonde Romans in Spartacus. John Ford was one of the few filmmakers trying to get things right (cf. Sergeant Rutledge and Cheyenne Autumn, for instance), but he is now faulted for his efforts while the other producers and directors of the time who ignored social injustice get a pass.

 

Well, as the man says in Slaughterhouse Five, so it goes.

 

And I see I have drifted away from my topic, the fine craftsmanship in Audie Murphy’s Destry. It is a good film indeed, almost Shakespearean in its individual tragedies but with the young lovers reunited at the end. We hope that they lived happily ever after.

 

-30-

The Not-So-Red Tsunami Tide Pod - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

The Not-So-Red Tsunami Tide Pod

 

A plague a’ both your houses!

 

-Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet

 

The Blues and the Reds -

 

At each other they slang and curse and cuss

But while doing so they can’t bother the rest of us

 

Alas that both parties are expensive dastards -

We have to pay taxes to support those (wretches)

Saturday, November 12, 2022

Is This a Carry On Movie? - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Is This a Carry On Movie?

 

The Things They Carried The Things We Carry

Things People Carry The Light We Carry

Call Us What We Carry What We Carry

What I Carry

 

Maybe we can put something down, okay?

Thursday, November 10, 2022

When a Man Starts Talkin' about His Jesus - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

When a Man Starts Talkin’ about His Jesus

 

When a man starts talkin’ about his Jesus

Cling not to his faith, but to your wallet

When a man says we all worship the same God

You’d better cling even tighter to your brain

Tuesday, November 8, 2022

A Few Poems for Remembrance Day, previously published in LogoSophia

 The Result was Silence – LogoSophia Magazine


By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall (Rated PG13)


“The Result was Silence”

“Today I initiated a telephone conversation with the President of the Russian Federation. The result was silence.” -President Volodymyr Zelenskiy

There is no silence in Kiev this dawn
Morning commutes, intermittent news feeds
Explosions. Power failures. How many will die
Without finishing their WORDLE today

Old men rattle their dentures in outrage
Sky News reports a couple of police officers
In the street below, smoking cigarettes
Which makes more sense than most things just now

Kharkov’s air-raid sirens are deeper than Kiev’s
There is no silence in Kiev this dawn


A Few Kind Thoughts for Roman Soldiers

If you have stood your watch throughout the night
To guard a clothesline of national importance
Dug foxholes only to fill them up again
And then patrolled through long days in the heat

If you have enjoyed Cinderella Liberty
And talking about poetry and girls
With a few mates down at the coffee shop
Because that’s all your poor pay can afford

You will then understand the conscript guards
Posted to keep order on Calvary


Afghanistan, Graveyard of 19-Year-Olds

Ghosts shriek in the wind from the Hindu Kush
Falling upon the lowlands in despair
Of any reality beyond death
In the blood-sodden sands where sinks all good

Walls, monuments, souls, hopes – all blow away
In the wreckage of long-fallen empires
Their detritus trod upon by tired men
Whose graves will be the howling dust of time

And yet the empire masters will return
And leave fresh offerings, remnants of the young:
A British Enfield, a Moghul’s lost shoe,
A cell phone silent beside the Great Khan’s skull

(First published in The Road to Magdalena, 2012)


We Have No Enemies Among the Dead
For the Young Crew of the Moskva
14 April 2022

Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave…
O hear us when we cry to thee
For those in peril on the sea -The Navy Hymn

Proud admirals and presidents rattle their medals

The young – in screams among burst steam lines die
Explosions and darkness and seawater and hatches sealed
The bulkheads blown, there is no up, no down
Only pain and horror and throat-torn shrieks

Proud admirals and presidents jing-aling their medals

Training manuals, pocketknives, and comic books
Naughty pinups, letters from Mom, wrenches, and boots
Toolboxes, ball-point pens, and coffee cups
Fall with the young deep down into the sea

Proud admirals and presidents dazzle the room with their medals

Mothers and fathers grieve in emptiness
Our Leaders caution them to mind their attitude

Proud admirals and presidents – to Hell with their medals


Crazy Old Men with Rockets ‘n’ Bombs

When you read to your brother or sister
A go-to-sleep book about bunnies and stars
You are healing a wound in Creation
Made by some malevolent old man

When you sing along with the washing machine
And help your MeeMaw up those tricky stairs
You are healing a wound in Creation
Made by some malevolent old man

When you sit on the steps late at night
And watch a pirate ship sail close by the moon
You are healing a wound in Creation
Made by some malevolent old man

When you pray for the bombed-out refugees
And put a little extra in the collection plate
You are healing a wound in Creation
Made by some malevolent old man

When you sing a song to the universe
It remains in the heavens forever

Because

You helped heal a wound in Creation


No Bombers Over Our Lady Help of Christians Catholic School in 1958:
A Brief Discussion of a Successful Cold War Tactic

from an idea suggested by Kirk Briggs

Some have scoffed about hiding under our tables
As protection from the Soviets’ nuclear strikes
But scorn not this truth of those factual fables:
It worked! No bombers! Post that as one of our “likes!”