Lawrence Hall, HSG
Monsoon Coffee
The old men argue whether
we have monsoons
Or if our afternoon
thunderstorms are unworthy
Of scientific labels,
notations, or marks
To be discussed on the six
o’clock news
Each day at four I take my
coffee outside
To sit beneath the oak and
take the air
With a book, the Wordle,
or an empty mind
As thunderheads rise like
monsters in the east
Fearsome clouds menace the
sky-paling moon
And breezes wind
themselves up for the daily monsoon
Lawrence Hall, HSG
The Percolation of Our Beautiful Green Earth
Like MeeMaw’s aluminum
coffee pot
The earth percolates through
all the seasons
Of rain and drought and freeze,
of dust and mud
The ground we work gives
up its annual troves
The tiller’s tines turn up
old pocketknives
Old nails, old screws, old
bits of window glass
An unfired flash cube from
a party long ago
Gardening is also archaeology
I excavate from the
machine while sitting in the shade
Decades-old fence wire wrapped
around the blade
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…!
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Waiting-Room Art:
Same Old Bicycle Leaning Against the Same Old Sunlit
Wall
We’ve all seen that bicycle,
that sunlit wall
In photographs taken in Italy
And Austin (don’t forget
the bike-lock now)
In paintings from old-lady
art classes everywhere
Perhaps that bike and wall
are a Statement
About Milieu and Patina
and, like, stuff
Neoformalist New Socialist
Realism
Inverted kitsch deflating
the patriarchy
I propose a fresh vision:
what I would like
Is that old wall crumbling,
and crushing that bike!
Lawrence Hall, HSG
The Hanging of Jake Spoon
Nothing in his life / Became him like
the leaving it
Macbeth I.iiii.7-8
At dusk. Heat. Heat and
dust. Jake’s last slow ride
Words through a fog of
fear, last words, slow words
Old pals and dead enemies
on either side
Slow cooings and callings
from unseen prairie birds
Smooth Jake, always good
for a laugh and a drink
A ladies’ man, a gamblin’
man, a man of charm
Unreliable, yes, not one
to pause and think
Tho’ he never meant nobody
no harm
He suddenly spurred his
pacer, making amends
His moment of nobility, to
spare his friends
Lonesome
Dove can be said to
be The National Book of Texas.
Lawrence Hall, HSG
The Fairies Themselves Now Dance Sweet Summer In
My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird
-Mary Oliver, “Messenger”
Everything is sacramental this week:
The Strawberry Moon in the fullness of being
Midsummer magic by day and by night
The English quarter day, the Feast of St. John
And holy bonfires in honor of light
Good honeybees take Communion at every flower
Soft breezes sing hymns among the ripening corn
The woods and fields are baptized in happiness
The sun and moon bless maidens and swains
We need no clocks or calendars to tell us when –
The fairies themselves now dance sweet summer in
Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
1957: The Year We All
Became Soviets
“…we’re
going to get science applied to social problems and backed by the whole force
of the state…”
Mark Studdock in C. S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength
Soviet Science launched a beeping toy into space
In the name of Progress; a mass-murderer ordered it so
And a month later Science launched and killed sweet Laika
Abandoned in orbit to die alone
Brave America suffered the Aunt Pittypat vapours:
We too must launch our slide-rules into space
And set our children to study Sovietism
Send civilization into orbit to die alone
Dogs and apes and men have flamed out in crashes
And Alexandria again is but pale ashes
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Do You Miss Your Trapper-Keeper?
This is the middle of June so why
Haven’t the back-to-school sales begun?
This year’s cooler than cool styles
Have been stored in shipping containers
For months or years on Indonesian docks
Or in warehouses in Long Beach
The teeny-boppers who modelled those clothes
Might be in graduate school by now
If school were as cool as the ads
Taylor Swift would be the principal
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Old and Unselected Poems
Why do publishers entitle
volumes of verse
New and Selected Poems?
Is it the editors’ lack of
imagination?
Or is it some sort of
secular rubric
An inky “We’ve always done
it that way?”
When you finish writing a
poem it is new
It didn’t exist before
you, and now it does
And someone who reads your
poem has selected it
It wasn’t selected until
someone picked it up
Every poem is forever new
and selected
And to the joy of your
friends, so are you
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Somewhere in New Mexico I Tipped a Waitress 25%
NOT I - NOT ANYONE else, can travel that road for you. You must travel it for yourself.
-Walt Whitman
On a cool autumn morning in New Mexico
A greasy spoon along the interstate
Walt Whitman and I enjoyed breakfast together
Bacon and eggs, hash browns, coffee and toast
And it was very good – no heaves of gas
But Whitman found an errand in some other soul
And sang a different self to California
McKuen rode with me the rest of the way
Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Mockingbirds at Dusk in a Time of War
They might be fighting;
they might be he-ing and she-ing
Their leaf-rich oak could
be their arena
Or it might serve them as
their bower of bliss
For love in this
magnolia-scented dusk
They’re still at it,
whatever their “it” might be
But breaking off to blitz
the subtle cat
Sneaking about in quest of
a bunny or squirrel
But who from feathered
fury must now retreat
They might be fighting;
they might be he-ing and she-ing
But then
They
might be mocking the rest of us
Bower of
bliss – cf. Spenser’s The Faerie Queene
Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Petite Bourgeois, Personal, and Self-Indulgent
I used to admire your poetry. I shouldn't admire it now. I should find it
absurdly personal. Don't you agree? Feelings, insights, affections...
it's suddenly trivial now.
-Strelnikov to Yuri in Doctor Zhivago (film)
In the evenings I sit on my summer lawn
Slouched in an old, much-painted metal chair
That symbol of petite-bourgeois respectability
With a little table for my drink, my pipe, my book
(The cat pads by on errands of his own)
At dusk a friend or two might amble along
And join me for a glass, a smoke, a talk
We casually swat at mosquitoes and rumors
And argue about Doctor Zhivago and Lonesome Dove
(A fast-diving mockingbird mocks the cat)
In a fallen world of chaos and suffering
With fear of revolution in the air
Is it right to indulge ourselves with such trifles
As sitting and talking with old friends in the twilight?
Oh, yes
(The cat and the mockingbird continue their game)
Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Little Children are Much Like Dachshund Puppies
With wildly scattered toys the lawn is messed -
Little children came to visit – O how we are blessed!
Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
From Shakespeare: My
Spirit is Thine, the Better Part of Me
Cf.
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 74
No kinsman could offer comfort there,
To a soul left
drowning in desolation.
-“The
Seafarer,” trans. Burton Raffel
When we die, our little things disappear:
Hairbrushes and pocketknives, fountain pens
Car keys, spare change, books, clothes, unopened mail
A souvenir coffee cup from Canada
An old uniform, a pistol from the war
A clock, a crucifix, Topsider shoes
Family pictures, a graduation ring
A magnifying glass, a radio
Bits and bobs, all sorts of trivial stuff
And a poem for you – it’s not enough
Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Book Removal Training
The orange flames waved at the crowd as paper and print dissolved inside them. Burning words were torn from their sentences.
-The Book Thief, p. 112
And now burning words must be torn from free people
For if people read they might think about things:
Why does the Party’s Jesus hate everyone
And why are weapons superior to ideas
Can a hangperson’s noose teach us to love
Burning crosses comfort a frightened child
Do the cult’s censors fly our flag upside down
While stealing books from our children’s hands
A state that trains people to purge library books
Is a slave state
Florida revises school library book removal training after public outcry
Story by Douglas Soule, USA TODAY NETWORK
Florida revises school library book removal training after public outcry (msn.com)
Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
A Congressssssional Hearing
“But hiss for hiss return’d with
forked tongue”
-Paradise Lost, X.518
Men in nice suits meet in
air-conditioned luxury
Ties perfectly knotted, Cain’s
mark on their lapels
Enthroned behind paneled
tables of polished oak
Where by the magic of a
secular oath, all are honorables
There is a chair, who is a
man, not a chair
Who wields an oaken gavel
of authority
As he smiles benignly and
modestly
An ‘umble adornment to the
Republic
Then “bash!” goes the
gavel, and yelling begins
And no one seems to know
why
Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
The God of Children and Blueberries
For Theo (who is three today) and Nora (who is more than three)
“It is eaten, and renewed, every day.”
-Ramandu’s daughter in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
God is prodigal with his seasons and feasts -
This is the season of blueberries, each day a feast
Great clouds of fat blue globes hang upon the little trees
Water and sky shading into Prussian blue
This is a table-tree, all are invited
To stand with buckets and thirsty lips
To pick and take, to take and eat, each day
The feast magically renewed each dawn
Mockingbirds, robins, sparrows, rabbits, and squirrels
And children
Picking, pecking, plucking, nibbling, biting
All at Aslan’s Table, and all at peace
Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
A D-Day Reminder
to Every Neo-Nazi Oaf
Including Members of Congress
And Justices of the Supreme Court
There is poetry in this:
Our flag was not
flown upside-down at Normandy
Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Behold a Man
Cf. Shakespeare’s Sonnets 67 & 68
He is a man who needs no oils or scents
The arts of makeup, filters on a lens
A touch of blush upon his honest chin
A photographer’s vanity lights placed just so
He is a man who is his own manly self
Washed, shaved, and combed by his own rugged hands
Hands that know shovel, hammer, ax, and saw
A businessman’s hands, a protective father’s hands
He is a man who needs no frippery
For he is clean and honest and just, you see
Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
The Doorkeeper of
Notre Dame
“I pray you remember the porter”
-Macbeth II.iii.22
“‘Tis my limited service” on Sundays to mind the door
To open it to the faithful with cheerful greetings
This is pretty much my skill-level, this modest chore
Such is the ancient custom for Sunday meetings
A family of long acquaintance approached, almost late
They live some miles away and had a long drive
Their youngest son held his hand out at the holy gate
I thought his intent was a youthful high five
But with only one finger he greeted me!
And that was my lesson in humility
As for the boy
While the servers rang the welcoming bell
His momma yanked him outside and gave him (peace)
