Lawrence Hall, HSG
Upon an Abomination in Paris
Opening Ceremony at the Paris
Olympics
All are welcome at the
Table of the Lord
But first
It’s always good manners
to wash your face and hands
Saturday, July 27, 2024
Upon an Abomination in Paris - poem
Let's Go for Coffee - Grab Your Flak Jacket - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Let’s Go for Coffee - Grab Your Flak Jacket
Some give their sons semi-automatics and hate
Instead of family and purpose and love
Instead of guided study and structured faith
Instead of fishing poles and summer afternoons
Thursday, July 25, 2024
Your New (Famous Name Brand) Credit Card Has Arrived! - an assemblage of corporate tech-babble
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Your New (Famous Name Brand) Credit Card Has Arrived!
UserName already taken card
number invalid access code
too short
access code already taken
last four
digits of your social
download the app
link pay save 3 easy ways
to activate
scan the QR code with your
phone’s camera
error visit
MyFamousNameBrand.com/Activate
register your account for
consumer center
error error error invalid
please say yes or no
I didn’t quite get that
call 1-XXX-XXX-XXXX
this call is being
monitored for your protection
we didn’t tell anyone that
enable
paperless statements set
up alerts error
your number is invalid
your number is invalid
your number is invalid all
our representatives
are busy right now but I
could refer you to
our site your number is
invalid select
your savings every day
earn save save
even more that number
cannot be accessed
see your rewards program
terms for details
please try again
Prisoners Working in the Early Morning Rain - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Prisoners Working in the Early Morning Rain
We have all worked in the rain – building fences
Getting up the cows for milking twice a day
Sloshing through the muck to make deliveries
And usually with some choice in the matter
Prisoners have choices too – cells or a work detail
In designer costumes with horizontal stripes
Not much of a choice, but the work is needful and good
Picking up the litter of freedom and patching the road
Through the wipers I wave. They wave back. Rain -
We have all passed by our fellow man in the rain
Sunday, July 21, 2024
Orgiastic Screaming from Below - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Orgiastic Screaming from Below
Those who called for Nonsense will find
that it comes
-C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength
We have seen Milton’s
Pandaemonium
Choreographed on a wide palantir
Fallen angels praising the
Great Fallen One
In a High Council of
electrified lies
Great thunderings of fire and
rolling smoke
Issuing from a shiny
plastic throne of power
The Great Fallen One
framed in Elvis lights
On the floor the lesser
ones screaming in ecstasy
The Great Fallen One has a
plan for us
After all the balloons,
too, have fallen
[Allusions to C. S. Lewis' That Hideous Strength, Milton's Paradise Lost, and Tolkien's Lord of the Rings]
My Great Replacement Theory - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
My Great Replacement Theory
(or maybe just a lesser replacement theory)
Teenagers opened the doors for me at Mass
Which used to be my job, but they stepped up
And in stepping up they are replacing me
Which is good - I miss my youth but delight in theirs
A boy and a girl giggled and whispered
In a language I don’t know except that
Having once been young, I know it well -
A perfect translation was in their eyes
All languages come from Old Solar, Lewis says
And to Old Solar will someday return
We must all be replaced someday
For in Creation’s Great Dance that is a step
Teenagers opened the doors for me at Mass
And God will open another door afterward
Saturday, July 20, 2024
The Mysterious World of Azalea - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
The Mysterious
World of Azalea
If I were a child, this would be a happy place
A hidden leaf-mould world, all darkly green
Summery green beneath the shaded sun
Between the roots, beneath the leaves, alone
If I were a child, this would be a happy place
A brand-new comic book, some army men
A Roy Rogers cap pistol without any caps
A plastic Tarzan leaping from branch to branch
If I were a child…but alas, I’m not -
Friday, July 19, 2024
Who Gives a Fig? - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Who Gives a Fig?
Some people say that they don’t a give a fig
Which we would never hear from a happy fig tree -
The one at the bottom of the garden gives its fruit
As a blessing to every passing animal
Squirrels and rabbits, sparrows and mockingbirds
Share in this sugary summer delight
I speed by on my riding lawnmower
And take a fig myself, only to give it away
Some people say that they don’t a give a fig
But I think we need more figs in our lives
(As Amanda Holmes did not exactly say)
Thursday, July 18, 2024
How Many Moons Can You See? - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
How Many Moons Can You See?
It was a full moon and, shining on
all the snow,
it made everything almost as bright
as day.
-C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch,
and the Wardrobe
When the subject of vision
came up
(as it must with an
ophthalmologist)
I told Dr. Talbot that I saw
two moons
When only one of them would
be sufficient
But which one?
After a gentle touch of
surgery
I now see only one moon, which
is nice
But I rather miss that
other moon
And wonder if in her exile
she misses me too
Where is she?
On whatever planet you
happen to live
I don’t think you can have
too many moons
For Bob Newhart of Happy, Happy Memory - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
For Bob Newhart of Happy, Happy Memory
“He will not refuse one who is so blithe to go to Him”
-Saint Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons
With just a telephone, a clipboard, and a stutter
He was a happy band of some of our best friends:
May we with him
At last approach that Inn where all are welcome
The joy he gave us proceeds before him
The angelic choirs soften their hum and throb
Because
That loving Voice we all most long to hear
Will gently say,
“Hi, Bob.”
Monday, July 15, 2024
Fire Ants Devouring the Corpses of Unhatched Wasps - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Fire Ants Devouring the Corpses of Unhatched Wasps
Nature does not, in the long run, favour life.
-C. S. Lewis, “On Living in an Atomic Age,” 1948
A formation of formicidae trekked north-northwest
Across a vast and lonely sunbeaten expanse
Their imperial quest a fallen wasps’ nest
Between a lawn chair and a potted plant
The ants greedily ripped open the paper shells
Like Christmas crackers for the goodies inside
The ghastly drippings of pupae in their jaws
Fragments of dead wasplings for their demanding queen
A formation of formicidae trekked east-southeast -
What, then, is the number of an unnumbered beast?
Sunday, July 14, 2024
We Were Dressers of Sycamores - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
We Were Dressers
of Sycamores
Amos
7: 12-15
Saint
Mark 6: 7-13
From the readings for the 15th week in
Ordinary Time
All of us are sent, one place or another
On curious missions little understood
No detailed instructions, no notes, no maps
Take this road and go on until it ends
And greet the folks you meet along the way
Some of them will need your help, your love
Some of them will give you help, their love
And one of them might murder you
All of us are sent, one place or another
We can’t get out of it; we’re needed, brother
On the Events of 13 July 2024 - a quote from MACBETH
Lawrence Hall, HSG
On the Events of
13 July 2024
…that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague th’ inventor. This even-handed justice
Commends th’ ingredience of our poisoned chalice
To our own lips.
-Macbeth
I.vii.8-12
These Professors - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Those Who Stereotype “These Professors”
Exodus 20:16
These professors
Dr. Moriarty was a PFC on
certain Pacific islands
Who could bayonet an enemy
Clear a jammed machine gun under fire
See his pals blown to pieces next to him
And work out subtle textual analyses
These professors
Dr. Chambers was a retired
colonel of Marines
A natty little man in blazer and bowtie
Who could bayonet an enemy
See his pals blown to pieces next to him
Deconstruct the minutiae of energy distribution
And toss a foul-mouthed football player out on his sorry ass
These professors
Dr. Dale was a butcher
until his thirties
When he entered college
for the first time
He knew your hamburger from the outside in
The economics of building a business
He probably could have bench-pressed a Ford Fiesta
And when he spoke of Wordsworth, Keats, and Coleridge
You could feel the air of The Lake Country
These professors
“These professors” were
complete men
Strong in war and word and
wisdom and work
Unlike envious Unferths who
learn life only second-hand
From Fox News and John Wayne movies
And closed loops of echoing InterGossip sites
Saturday, July 13, 2024
Beowulf Visits the Dentist - a bit of fun, maybe a bite of fun
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Beowulf Visits the Dentist
Arise from the nitrous oxide
From the somnolence, dreams, and pain
With forge-hammered teeth
And then go out
Go out and bite something
(Trying for the Anglo-Saxon four-beat line)
Friday, July 12, 2024
Is That IPhone Surgically Attached to You? - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
“Is That IPhone
Surgically Attached to you?”
“Is that thing surgically attached to you?” the
teacher sighed.
“You can’t talk to me like that!” the MePhone replied.
Ford vs Chevy - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Ford vs Chevy
In an era where everything was either Ford or Chevy
I was an MG roadster
Unreliable
But lots of fun
Thursday, July 11, 2024
Their Ephemeral Temples Look Much the Same - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Their Ephemeral Temples Look Much the Same
Their ephemeral temples
look much the same
In a semi-circle the
faithful sit or stand
And turn their eager faces
to an altar flood-lit
To be magicked by their
leaders and gods
They wave their arms in
ecstasy and awe
As lantern-slides of flags
and martyred heroes
Ripple as electronic waves
beamed into their eyes
Commanding free obedience
through spontaneous scripts
At dawn
Contractors will tear away
the plywood and paint
Take down the plastic
statues and columns
The recordings of
programmed emotions
And heave them into the
beds of rented trucks
Preaching or politics, or
some other game:
Their ephemeral temples
look much the same
How is Your Adventure So Far? - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
How is Your Adventure So Far?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
-Mary Oliver, “The Summer Day”
Even if you are looking up at an I.V. drip
Instead of green leaves and a summer sky
Your adventure is not nearly at an end
Not even in this life – and the next life, wow!
Your childhood joys have never slipped away
That cheesy 45 rpm that graced your first dance
Has not come to the end of its groovy grooves
You’ve still got the happiness, the moves
Your first job, boot camp, university
Riding a big red bus ‘round Piccadilly Circus
Drinking from your canteen on a mountain top
Your first kiss, that evening in Rome – there’s more to come!
Your first car is still parked in the driveway
Waiting to take you where you always meant to go
Sunday, July 7, 2024
A Hurricane: Outer Bands and Inner Thoughts - haiku
Lawrence Hall, HSG
A Hurricane: Outer
Bands and Inner Thoughts
Sun gives way to clouds
Stillness to winds, birds circle
Searching for meaning
Reading the Magna Carta Will Make Us Smarter - rhyming doggerel
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Reading the Magna
Carta Will Make Us Smarter
(And it bans fish weirs in the Thames)
The Kings have been subject to the law since 1215
But are American presidents? That remains to be seen
In Defense of King George | Smithsonian (smithsonianmag.com)
The President Can Now Assassinate You, Officially | The
Nation
A Sunday Morning Church Message: "Some Folks Need Killing"
Lawrence Hall, HSG
A Sunday Morning Church
Message: “Some Folks Need Killing”
“…disciple-makers through the power of Jesus Christ!”
-Lake Church
A lieutenant-governor strutting and yelling in church
Demanded the deaths of “some folks” unspecified
The faithful of Lake Church heard out his deadly cause
And then obediently applauded him -
The man who might someday order their executions
NC Lt. Gov. Robinson defends ‘folks need
killing’ comments (msn.com)
Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson at NC church meeting:
“Some folks need killing” (yahoo.com)
Hurricane Track Attack Forth and Back - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Hurricane Track Attack Forth and Back
Spaghetti models are not
really spaghetti
But only colored lines
across electric maps
Squiggling in iridescence around
the Gulf
Slithering atop the waves,
then to your house
The weather reporters’
cliches fall from the skies
As microbursts of
bottled-water-babbles
Canned goods and fresh
radio batteries
Tune to this station as your
roof blows away
Spaghetti models are not
really spaghetti
But watch the news in the
street – he’s getting all wet-ty!
Yes, We Are a Republic, Much Like Haiti - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Yes, We Are a
Republic – Much Like Haiti
As
for the men in power, they are so anxious to establish the myth of infallibility
that they do their utmost to ignore truth.
-Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago
In America every night is Kristalnacht
Everyone seems to hate everyone else
Gunfights in our parks, mass murders everywhere
Communist-made fireworks celebrate freedom
From state to state a reichskirche is on the march
Employment is down, prices are up
Vultures circle our dying President
Some in Congress promote raw genocide
The Supreme Court authorizes presidential crimes -
As St. Thomas More said to Lord Norfolk:
“I show you
the times”
It Wasn't the Fourth of July - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
It Wasn’t the Fourth of July
That we may wander o’er this bloody field
To book our dead, and then to bury them
-Henry V IV.vii.75-76
It wasn’t the fourth of July, but it was about then
Near the Cambodian border, on the Vam Co Tay
Searching for two American airman whose machine had gone down
Down, down into the steaming green Vam Co Tay
Bloated and floating, quite still when we saw them
The sloshy prop wash bumped them about a bit
Empty eye sockets, mouths open in silent screams
We poncho-linered their bodies aboard the boat
Cigarettes of despair against the stench and rot
This was not what we sang about in school
Wednesday, July 3, 2024
The Haunted Electric Toothbrush - doggerel
(I don't know why this program has suddenly decided to double-space. Perhaps it is conspiring with my electric toothbrush)
Lawrence Hall, HSG
The Haunted
Electric Toothbrush
This morning
at dawn
I was alone
I heard a moan
A mysterious
groan
A ceaseless
drone
It wasn’t
the ‘phone
It was my
toothbrush
It had on
its own
Turned itself
on
My Philips Sonicare ™© and (legal protections in a peach tree) has
done me good service for years. This morning it turned itself on atop a glass
shelf with other little bottles of this and tubes of that, making an unusual
moaning / groaning / droning that took me some time to sort out. It is a great
device; when it finally hands in its lunch pail (as Bertie Wooster would say) I
will buy another just like it.
Tuesday, July 2, 2024
Friday, June 28, 2024
Monsoon Coffee - poem
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
Wednesday, June 26, 2024
And the Earth Will Give Up Its...Old Fence Wire - poem
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…!
Tuesday, June 25, 2024
Waiting-Room Art: Same Old Bicycle Leaning Against the Same Old Sunlit Wall - poem
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!
Sunday, June 23, 2024
From Lonesome Dove: The Hanging of Jake Spoon - poem
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.
Wednesday, June 19, 2024
The Fairies Themselves Now Dance Sweet Summer In - poem
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
1957 : The Year We All Became Soviets - poem
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
If Taylor Swift Were Your Principal - poem
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
Old and Unselected Poems - poem
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
Tuesday, June 18, 2024
Somewhere in New Mexico I Tipped a Waitress 25%
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
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
