Lawrence Hall, HSG
A Martyr is a Poem
For Alexei
Navalny
“Only in Russia is poetry respected; it gets people
killed.”
-Osip Mandelstam
His soul was a poem; upon it he wrote
Of hope for Russia’s peoples frozen in pain
A poem of stern rebuke to Rolex tyrants
Who censored him with beatings, poison, and death
He spoke
He died
Because he spoke he died
Because he spoke the truth he died
They left his unfinished poem upon the ice
His soul was a poem – we must complete his verse
Lawrence Hall, HSG
There are no Foreign
Accents in Texas
“For all its enormous range of space, climate, and physical
appearance, and for all the internal squabbles, contentions, and strivings,
Texas has a tight cohesiveness perhaps stronger than any other section of
America.”
– John Steinbeck
There are no foreign accents here, n'est-ce pas?
Un acento extranjero is for Auslander
And there are no mga dayuhan here
The dat belongs to all of us and to niemand
Before even the Pierwsze Narody there was the jord
And les humains have come in successive amaza
Izdao each other with אלימות and кровь
Κατακτήσεις and 背叛 instead of féastaí
But 私たち are trying to make it bora now -
There are no foreign accents here, capisci?
I played with Microsoft’s
translator ]english to
spanish - Search (bing.com)] because to my regret I have no language
other than English and puer parvus scholis Latinis.
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Dragons for Your
New Year
For Doris and Anthony
Who have known dragons
Eustace
had read only the wrong books; they had a lot to say about exports and imports
and governments and drains, but they were weak on dragons.
-C. S. Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader
The dragons are a polite and ancient race
And very conscious of their dignity
It would not do to neglect their seasons and feasts
Lest they neglect to visit you this year
They want to bring good fortune to your house
But first you must make a place for them -
Their breath will warm your room, your hearth, your heart
Their knowledge will make your children worthy and wise
Their songs will send your family happy dreams
For dragons are a polite and generous race
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Reader Responses in
the U. K. Daily Mail
RepubliCraps. Demoncrats. Repugs. DemoCraps. MAGA. Magats.
Maggots. Clown. Orange clown. Clowns. Clown show. Absolute clown show. Absolute
commie clown show. Diaper Joe. Dr. Potatohead. Moron. Selected not elected.
Deplorables. Trailer trash. Absolute trailer trash. Said no one ever. Oh wait. Lock
her up. Lock him up. Throw away the key. Absolutely. Joebama. Drumpf. Dump. Woke.
Wokista. Wokerati. Absolutely Woke. Biden’s America. Trump’s America. Mean
tweets. No mean tweets. These teachers. These schools. These universities. TDS.
Absolute TDS. Liberal idiots. Extremist idiots. Absolute idiots. ROFL. Grab
some popcorn. …in 1, 2, 3… Dumpster fire.
Absolute dumpster fire. You can’t make this stuff up. Train wreck. Absolute
train wreck. Car crash. Absolute car crash. Total car crash. The jokes write
themselves. At its finest. Pure evil. Absolute pure evil. Cue crickets. Of biblical
proportions. Of epic proportions. Of absolute epic biblical proportions. Rinse
and repeat. Rules for thee but not for me. Two-tier justice system. Absolute
two-tier justice system. You could look it up. Follow the science. Full stop. LOL.
End of. Absolutely. Fact. FACT!!!!!
Lawrence Hall, HSG
The Disinterment of
Neruda
Qui sine peccato est vestrum, primus in aliam lapidem
mittat
This Neruda - the Fascists murdered him
This Neruda - let us murder him again
The people read and love his poems too much
And they ignore ours – let us dig him up
This Neruda – we will dig him up
And subject him to our Inquisition
We now will tell you what each fragment means
Each fragment of each word, his flesh, his bone
We have our bullhorns and our three-beat chants
His poems will mean what we tell you they mean
Shut up
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Let’s Meet Again at
the Robin Hood Oak
1.
In my boyhood, to the Robin Hood oak
I tip-toed in those hot summer afternoons
With my three sharp arrows and my little bow
Craftily eluding the sheriff’s men
I softly whistled and waited, and then anon
From out of the sun-shimmering heat
From out of the merry magical greenwood
An answering whistle sighed through the air
Great skill at making a bow or a plan -
I was a favorite among Robin’s band
2
In my old age, to the Robin Hood oak
I slowly walked in lonely afteryears
Carelessly, for I was a baron now
With my ownership and my walking stick
I whistled and waited, and waited more
From out of the sun-shimmering heat
From out of the merry magical greenwood
There was only a silence, a silence sad
Little boys grow up, and then must disappear -
And that’s okay; the magic is forever here
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Poetry and Jazz Stroll
into a Smoky Bar
Poetry, like jazz, is itself
If you feel a need to explain it
You’ve failed
Art
sings itself
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Wipe That
Geographical Expression Off Your Face
Alas, poor country! / Almost afraid to know itself
-Macbeth IV.iii.164-165
We are now a geographical expression
An almost amorphous land mass occupied
By violent tribes of shifting loyalties
Lawrence Hall, HSG
A Burning Car in Baghdad
The
delusion that by force you can impose the Millennium on the human race is one
of the most dangerous delusions in existence.
― Agatha Christie, They Came to Baghdad
In the center of Baghdad a burning car
Illuminates long centuries of pain
Inflicted by schemes of improvement upon
A city of scholarship, wisdom, and art
Militias, commanders, air-strikes, and bombs
So clever that they can single out one car
Without harming another car at the traffic light -
And somehow this will make the world all better
Dullard journalists will type “tit-for-tat”
Because they don’t know anything else to say
And neither do I
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Cups and Jugs and
Kettles and Beds
St. Mark 7:1-13
Let the coffee cups rattle with denunciations
About the contextual meaning of “beds”
At the fossil table in the roadside café’
That Javneh of theological studies
For the health and comfort of our other guests
No smoking, please
Lawrence Hall, HSG
A Sanitary Pad Along
Beer Can Road
To walk abroad, and recreate yourselves
-Julius Caesar III.ii.256
A sanitary pad along Beer Can Road
Sodden and heavy with the waning night’s damp
And beer cans shining in the morning sun
Completing a picture of misadventure
I once found a ratchet wrench about here
And a knot of twist-ties further along
And a couple of disposable lighters for toking crack
I’ll just give this latest detritus a miss
But on my morning stroll I won’t pass by
Without a prayer for happiness for all
Especially my nocturnal predecessors
Lawrence Hall, HSG
A Dusty Drum Kit
In a re-sale shop in Huntington, Texas
Fronting for decaying videotapes
And clocks that will never again chime the time
Through tinny mechanical syncopation
A drum set reposes without percussion
An arpeggio of silent despair
Whose cymbals and snare impatiently wait
As do the bass and other impedimenta
For the hand of a youth who has something to howl
The next kid through the door might bell the cat:
“There it is – I will rhythm the truth with that!”
Monarchy
can easily be ‘debunked;' but watch the faces, mark the accents of the
debunkers. These are the men whose tap-root in Eden has been cut: whom no
rumour of the polyphony, the dance, can reach - men to whom pebbles laid in a
row are more beautiful than an arch. Yet even if they desire equality, they
cannot reach it. Where men are forbidden to honour a king they honour
millionaires, athletes or film-stars instead: even famous prostitutes or
gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it
food and it will gobble poison.
-C.S. Lewis, “Present Concerns,” 1948
Lawrence Hall, HSG
The Latest Atmospheric River End-of-the-World
Pineapple Express Bomb Cyclone from H**l
The news is falling! The news is falling!
-as Chicken Little did not say
An apocalyptic storm of such intensity
We’re all going to drown in a flood of breaking news
The streets already overflowing with hyperbole
From reporters in damp shoes awaiting their cues
Lawrence Hall, HSG
A
Quatrain to Explain the Infinite Monkey Theory
If you set a monkey at a typewriter
To type and type for all eternity
What he will type, that little blighter
Is a politician’s speech – nonsense, you see!
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Sacrifice in a Low
Place
Cf. 1 Kings 3
I would go to a high place and sacrifice to God
But there is no high place; this is an alluvial plain
Dark with conifers except along the sloughs
Dark in their own ways with cypress and oak
And I am old, too old to be a prophet
And I have often asked for all the wrong things
So I will take those things into the dark
And leave them at the foot of a pagan oak
I will learn the statutes from the whisperings
I will go into the quiet, and listen for God
Lawrence Hall, HSG
A Rotor-Tiller and the
Feast of the Presentation
Names have not been restored, as
Aslan says
Some are pleased to call this Ground-Hog Day
Although there are no ground hogs here
But the Presentation is everywhere and forever
I passed the morning deconstructing the tiller
(instead
of sacred texts)
Working debris from around the tines
Thinking about the coming spring and how -
How the Presentation is everywhere and forever
Names have not been restored, as Aslan says
Still, the Presentation is everywhere and forever
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Browsing the Poetry Titles
in the Book Store
I soon had a thorough understanding of the rules. For a poem to go through
there
had to be a few lines devoted to [
]
-Yevtushenko, p. 68, A Precocious Autobiography
Call Me by the Post-Colonial Things We Carried Without Borders
in the Boat in the Twilight Garden of our Being Unsilencing the Silent Voices Songs
of Our Powerful People Aimlessly in Fire New and Selected Hopes To Change Your
Life Forever Becoming the Healing You
Always Wanted to Be in the Emptiness Within While Searching the Soul of the
Underself in Quest of Anti-hierarchy For Elegies of the Lover
Who
Never
Was
But
Who
Might
Be on the Silences of Screaming Wings in a Rhapsody of a
Plangent Tangent of Voided Meanings at the End of the Rainbow World When a Golden Sickle
Pierced the Sighings of the Moon in Your Shivering Hand Leaves in the Exiled
Gentleness of Barbed Wire
Pillows Comforting Your Cerulean Soul-Quest of Meaningful Meaninglessness adrift in the Writhing
Arms of your Powerful Weakness as a Twinkling Pancreas
Vaults Ambition Through
Disconnected Quotes from Shakespeare Who was My Soul-Twin Aflame with Passionless
Passion for a Forbidden Vegetable Incarnadining the Cosmic Cypress of Your Unattainable
Body Through the Music of the Trapezoids as the Forbidden
Kiss of Life
And, like, stuff
50. 31 January 2024, Wednesday
in the 4th week in Ordinary Time.
Lawrence Hall, HSG
She Had a Problem with Amarillo, Texas
She bought a revolver and a box of cartridges
And on her way outta town she put six rounds
Into the Amarillo city limits
sign
And for the most part lived
happily ever after
This is something told to me long ago. Amarillo is great fun
and could be a vacation destination.
25 Amazing Things to Do in Amarillo - Lone Star Travel Guide
Lawrence Hall, HSG
“My Oath of Enlistment Does Not Have an Expiration Date”
Well, yeah, it does
If it doesn’t then I’m out of uniform
If it doesn’t then I’m absent without leave
(54 years –
you’d think someone would have noticed)
If it doesn’t then I need to report to base
If it doesn’t then I must obey President Biden
If it doesn’t then I must obey all officers
(Is that a
shavetail ensign at my door?)
If it doesn’t then the manual of arms…
(With a
walking-stick? Really?)
If it doesn’t then I gotta get up at 0400
If it doesn’t then my Sperry Topsiders need a shine
I left my oath of enlistment in Viet-Nam
There, with the memories of many dear friends
It will rest in peace without any regard
For someone else’s made-in-China slogan tee
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Elon Musk Invites Us Down
for Chips and Dip and Destruction
They have pulled down Deep Heaven on their Heads
-C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength
He’s implanted a chip, says Mr. Musk
Into the brain (certainly not the hip)
Of some poor patient who’s now just a husk
A talking head, a thing, a radar blip
And what could go wrong with this poor android
A man now fitted with an electric brain
Adjusted and programmed and tweaked and toyed -
A failed experiment thrashing in pain?
And if he fails, this humanoid chip
Musk might use him for guacamole dip
Lawrence Hall, HSG
A Penny Candle – and if
You Don’t Have a Penny, Love Will Do
The key to the lighting of a church candle is that, in its tiny light, all the mystery of life is drawn up into an eternity excluding only sorrow and loss.
-Tod Mixson
It’s not just that a candle struggles against darkness
But that we do too, trying to sort the chaos
With weary eyes and unsure, trembling hands -
But it is something that we’ve lit the candle
It’s not just that a candle flickers in the darkness
But that we shape against shadows all our hopes
Bundling them into a pilgrim’s haversack
For whatever remains of our journey to Light
For in the end we give the candle away
Offering it to a passing Whisper in the night
Lawrence Hall, HSG
This Smart Watch Will
Last
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in
-Henry David Thoreau, Walden
I do not set the time; time simply is:
The dawning day requires no entrance code
The morning frost need not be set to wake
The yakking crows cannot be switched to “Off”
The lingering fog sends no notifications
The bare-limbed oaks re-set themselves in spring
The sky is the background app refresh
The wind is a warranty for life
All these good things are made to be -
I do not set the time, but God sets me
Lawrence Hall, HSG
The Army of God and, Like, Stuff
They’re loud and they’re
smarmy
They boo and they hiss
They say they’re God’s Army -
But does God know this?
An 'Army of God' Vigilante Group
Plans to Head to the U.S.-Mexico Border (esquire.com)
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Avon Man and the
Mystery of His First-Best Bed
I gyve unto my wief my second best bed…
-Attributed
to Shakespeare in his will. Or Churchill. Or Milton. Or Elvis. Or Some Famous
Man. And Shakespeare was secretly a Catholic. (No, he wasn’t.) (Yes, he was.)
(No, he wasn’t.) (Yes, he was; I read it on the InterGossip.)
That second-best bed doesn’t matter a pop
Those anyones whoever slept in it are deads
Memorialized as dashboard bobbleheads
At Ye Olde Anne Hathawaye gifte shoppe
Kinge Richarde nevere cryede, “mye kyngdome fore ye bedde!”
Yea, goode olde Sirre Erpinghame joked, “Now lye I like a
kynge”
So what’s the deale withe the firste-beste bedde thynge?
Thatte seconde bedde is where the Widowe rested hir hedde
Ande thusse ye scholares maken withouten cessatione
Unsupportede argumentes and allegationes
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Dentistry and Dogs
What would the world be like without dogs?
-Mary Oliver
Our little bit of the world was frozen that day
At the dentist’s office something that makes something else
Do something else was frozen and would not work
And so I waited with Mary’s book about dogs
Dog is one of the
messengers of that rich and still magical first world.
The frost was still upon the windowsill
As an hour passed for me and Mary’s dogs
Their adventures in the woods, their lonely times
Their happy glances into their human’s eyes
Our new dog, named for the
beloved poet, / ate a book
Even though the something else was frozen in ice
Our little bit of the world was warmer for a time
Because of the dog’s
joyfulness, our own is increased
Quotes from Mary Oliver, Dog
Songs, Penguin, New York: 2013
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Hickory-Doomsday
Clock
Analogue or Digital?
That Doomsday Clock has ticked since
1947
The sweep hand always dancing on the edge of doom
Sometimes a missile more (7, 6, 5, 4…
Sometimes a virus less (a jab, I guess)
I’ve been thinking of buying me one
Maybe from the times-table at Wal-Mart
Or as a timeless fashion from Amazon
I want to know the hour we’re going to die
But are we truly any closer to Heaven?
That Doomsday Clock has tocked since 1947
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Out-Outpatient Surgery
A little happy pill along the
way
A fuzzy memory of the waiting
room
A bright fluorescent-lit
consulting room
A slippery fake-leather
patient chair
The nurse and I spoke of
children and dogs
(Dang! That needle hurt!)
And about the rain outside
this winter day
(Dang! That needle hurt even more!)
And the doctor spoke (of
what?) (of what?)
Soothingly through the sounds
of cutting flesh
Soothingly through the smells
of burning flesh
And lengths of suture flying
before my eyes
At home I took a happy codeine
pill
While Randolph Scott rode
across the TV
Nurses and doctors make you
all better
Life is good
Lawrence Hall, HSG
You Are Not a Series
of Adjectives
Adjectives can sometimes be useful things
And even aesthetically pleasing, you know
But
You are not a series of adjectives
You are yourself – and how wonderful you are!
Lawrence Hall, HSG
An Apology to Brazos
Bookstore
on Banned Books Week
Oh, our descendants will burn with bitter shame
to remember, when punishing vile acts,
that most peculiar time, when
plain honesty was labeled 'courage’
-Yevtushenko, “Conversation with an
American Writer”
Dear Brazos Bookstore:
Several years ago I wrote you a polite note
Suggesting that you were a bit hyperbolic
On the touchy subject of banning books
“This is America,” I said; “it doesn’t happen here”
I was wrong
I apologize
And you are brave
Cordially,
Brazos Bookstore
www.brazosBookstore.com
2421 Bissonnet St, Houston, TX 77005
(I have no professional connection
with Brazos Bookstore, that wonderful, independent purveyor of books and an agora
of ideas.)
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Awkward Adolescent
Verse
Poetry…
The
authority of empires, driven mad,
Threatened
it so many times,
But
it was the rulers who perished
-Yevtushenko, “Poetry is a Great Power”
They stole his boots even before he died
And scavengers have eaten out his eyes
His flesh and blood commingle with the mud
His rotting hands still claw the earth, the pain
A dime-store notebook, shredded with his heart
Once pencilled with his awkward, juvenile lines
Of undeveloped images and clumsy rhymes
Which will not be shaped and sharpened in this world
Among young bodies rats squabble and hiss -
Someone will be given a peace prize for this
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Methodist Pecans
Methodist pecans
Connie-the-Haircut-Queen sells us pecans
Every Christmas, good Methodist pecans
A fundraiser sponsored by the women’s club
To be baked into cookies and pies for Christmas day
Methodist pecans
They used to come from my grandfather’s trees
But now they’re grown and gathered somewhere else
Packaged in plastic, certified, and sealed
But still they’re good Methodist pecans
Methodist pecans
And in January when the hail-storms rattle
Stuffed in a barn-coat pocket while tracking cattle
Methodist pecans - Texas blessed and Texas’ best!
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Quomodo Catholici
inter se Loquuntur?
Scortillum, scortillum, scortillum!
(Catholic news sites, I’ve had my fill of ‘em)
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Sailing a Couch into
History
We are not permitted to choose the frame of our
destiny, but what we put into it is ours.
-Dag Hammarskjold, Markings, p. 51
Through eating, fatting, sleeping, video games
En couchant in a stasis ossified
By the low expectations of the zeitgeist
(“What’s a zeitgeist?”) some flail into history
The ironic echoes of Call of Duty
Flatten against an empty ‘tater-chip bag
Yesterday flung into the baby’s crib
(“Ain’t no one seen little Shawnee today?”)
His MePhone case is manly hunter green
He's checkin’ out the fantasies on a glowing screen
Lawrence Hall, HSG
In the Foggy Dawn - a
Hawk on a Fencepost
For him the hayfield is his restaurant
A baby mouse, perhaps, or a tasty rabbit
But I prefer a bacon-egg-cheese croissant -
For breakfast we are all creatures of habit!
Lawrence Hall, HSG
What Do These
Teachers Teach These Children in These Schools?
PETA thinks this is how farmers get the wool off sheep? 😂 | Not the Bee
Sheep-shearing isn’t a topic in English class
Not here in cattle country; we give sheep a pass
Lawrence Hall, HSG
You’re Going to Be
Okay
You’re going to be okay
Your feet hit the deck this morning
You offered up that cup of coffee to God
And He delighted in your happiness
Lawrence Hall, HSG
My Illegal Oxygen-ish Apple Watch
My Apple Watch ™ © ® has the oxygen feature –
Do I confess to the Law? Or to the preacher?
(My Apple Watch worked fine until it was messed up by the last two updates, which cannot be undone. When this thing fails completely I will find a cheap knockoff on amazon.)
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Awaiting Cataract
Surgery
You can't get a cup of tea big enough or a book long
enough to suit me.
- attributed to C. S. Lewis
and others
I will give up my books
When someone pries my cold, dead hands from them
Companions of my youth, tellers of truth
Next to my heart when the mortar rounds fell
But now I see the world
As through a dark lens darkly, well enough
For most common household purposes
But those dear words on any page – not so
I never thought I’d say
That I’m looking forward to surgery day!
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Our Former President Loves Us All
The People grant him power; he grasps for more
He asks them for their votes and for their deaths
His eunuchs tell us that it was just a joke
Like Two Corinthians walking into a bar
But when the folding chairs are folded away
And that one night of transient glory is over
The caucus captains and their caps depart
Cheap souvenirs tatted in white and gold
They stumble home through limousine fumes and ice:
“For a moment I was Somebody – it was nice”
Lawrence Hall
A Government Church?
We establish no religion in this country. We command no
worship. We mandate no belief, nor will we ever. Church and state are and must
remain separate.
- President Ronald Reagan, Speech in Temple Hillel, Valley
Stream, New York,
26 October 1984
Each American may his own conscience search
For by the Grace of God we have no national church
Cf. The Constitution, Article
VI and Amendment I
Lawrence Hall
To Accept Israel
“Israel
was not created in order to disappear - Israel will endure and flourish. It is
the child of hope and the home of the brave. It carries the shield of democracy
and it honors the sword of freedom.”
– President John F. Kennedy)
To deny Israel is to curse ourselves
For we are inheritors of the Covenant
That He should be our God, and we His people
He creates us, He calls us – this is so
He has given us prophecy and law
Cattle in the fields, fish in all the seas
And lovers, flowers, sunsets, songs, salvation
The Great Dance of Creation - and Himself
Let not the sinister whisperer divide us!
To accept Israel is to accept - everyone
Lawrence Hall, HSG
An English Major
Screaming at a Wall Clock
(A French officer would be too well-mannered to do that)
Passing from one office to another in quest
Of some elusive official signature
I saw a woman screaming at a clock
And heard her, too, because screams are like that
“She’s an English major,” someone said in explanation
“She and her boy Wordsworth are at it again
And meddlesome Coleridge keeps putting his oar in”
I nodded in understanding; Milton had mentioned it
A scholar should never scream at institutional clocks;
He should discreetly disapprove of them
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Garage-Sale Rolodex®
for Seventy-Five Cents
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed,
debriefed, or numbered. My life is my own.
-Patrick McGoohan as Number Six in The
Prisoner
The Rolodex was once a symbol of power
Of knowledge marshalled into sequences
Orderly sequences alphabetized by names
By names and cross indices of subjects and dates
Of enemies or allies or contacts, rarely friends
Condensed in ink on smoothly finished cards
Restrained in place by colored plastic tabs
Awaiting the stroke of an office tyrant’s hand
The Rolodex was subsumed within The ‘Phone
Thus still your life cannot be called your own
Lawrence Hall, HSG
A Third Couplet for
the Coup
The president’s son humiliated our representatives -
They’re as useless as gas-station pregnancy preventatives
