Neither a Menshevik nor a Bolshevik Be - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Neither a Menshevik nor a Bolshevik Be

                                                            What is’t you do?

                                                                                                  A deed without a name.

-Macbeth IV.1.48-49

This is not a matter of recusancy
To wish a blessing on your houses both
That in the Grace of God you amend yourselves -
But go away and do it somewhere else

And take with you your posings and your twootings
Your alligator shoes, expense accounts
Your plastic soldiers all saluting you
And your designer plots of great import

And leave good folk alone to their good work
With sweat-stained hands in clean domestic peace

"Withdrawn from Salem Public Library" - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

“Withdrawn from Salem Public Library”

“Salem Public Library, East Main Street,
Salem, VA 24153”
A happy book, thought-stained, and often-read
An anthology of Russian poetry

Salem, Virginia must be a marvelous town
A library stocked with poetry, and stocked
With poetry readers who have turned again
And again to favorite pages here and there

Long-ago poets murdered by the Soviets
But finding love at last in Salem, Virginia

Adventures with an Olivetti - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Adventures with an Olivetti

(In which the scrivener violates his rule never to write in the first-person)

My bed was a Sears & Roebuck sleeping bag
And my world headquarters that old MG;
An Olivetti portable processed
My words, my fresh young words, that no one read

I owned more books than clothes, and only those few
That could be stowed in the passenger seat;
I fancied myself the new Rod McKuen
And I wasn’t - but I remember the road

When the world was new, adventures every day
And I miss that - but mattresses are nice

Where do I Apply to be Corrupted? - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

True Faith and Allegiance

A retired admiral peddles insurance to
“My fellow veterans,” still ripping off
The enlisted with bogus bonhomie
About how they all were merry shipmates

Retired generals ooze into something new
Suits for the business of dealing in souls
Souls bought and sold internationally
Where careless talk could cost discreet kickbacks

The surviving enlisted, wounded and sick,
Are doled out vouchers for a bus ride home

The Flying Squadron of Church Ladies - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Flying Squadron of Church Ladies

At First Communion the Flying Squadron
of Church Ladies surround the children to:
Reprove, reproach, command, censor, chastise,
Berate, exhort, implore, upbraid, adjust

Chastise, upbraid, embarrass, harangue, rebuke,
Enjoin, dictate, direct, require, apprise,
Advise, inform, beseech, explain, uphold,
Impart, compel, remind, forewarn, correct:

Because since Peter’s time, all this is what
The Flying Squadrons of Church Ladies do

Western Civilization Will Collapse if You Don't Buy Someone's Book About the Collapse of Western Civilization - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Western Civilization Will Collapse if You Don't Buy Someone's Book

About the Collapse of Western Civilization

There was a review in The University Bookman…

Western civilization is in a state
Of imminent collapse, which someone says
In a review of a book which I ought
To buy if I love Jesus and the West

And somehow all this is my fault because
I haven’t finished The City of God -
Oh, Kirk-Centered sir, I really do love
The Good, the True, and the Beautiful, but

I’m not going to buy your book
Because your attitude is in a state

Thirteen Reasons Why Not - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Thirteen Reasons Why Not

We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny.

But what we put into it is ours.

-Dag Hammarskjold

1. God made you; you can never be replaced
2. God made you for some purpose – live to find it
3. Someone is blessed in knowing you each day
4. You must live so that others may live
5. Someone desperately needs your kindness right now
6. You haven’t yet written your book, your story, your song
7. When you offer up your suffering, you help others
8. Children running barefoot through the flowers of spring
9. Children running barefoot through the leaves of autumn
10. Dachshund puppies. And leaves. And flowers. And children
11. Coffee and a talk with a good friend
12. Breakfast and the Sunday morning funnies
13. That empty pew God has saved just for you

Approach the Pierian Spring Carefully - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Approach the Pierian Spring Carefully

From an idea suggested by

Rev. Raphael Barousse, OSB

I would that I could taste the Pierian Spring
But he who drinks unworthily the sacred
Will lose even the little that he has
And wither into mummification

One’s poor attempts at innocent, ill-formed verse
May be forgiven because of their innocence
But a little learning, as the man1 once said,
Means duty, and might not be forgiven

If used intemperately or harshly; still -
I would that I could taste the Pierian Spring

1Alexander Pope

But What About the Dog? - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

But What About the Dog?

Bedtime is a poem written with love:
You change into your jammies at 8 o’clock
You wash your hands and face, you brush your teeth
You kneel beside your bed and say your prayers

And then the dog leaps up onto your pillow
And then your mother says the dog can’t stay
And then you plead, and doggie looks so sad
And then your mother sighs and says, “All right,

“But only for tonight,” then kisses you

(but not the dog)

Childhood is a poem written with love

Trapped in the Coffee Shop of Lingering Death - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Trapped in the Coffee Shop of Lingering Death

He knows everything about every war
Because although he never went to one
He had good friends who did, and they told him
All about it, and about Patton, so there

He knows all about Jesus, and, like, stuff
The Templar tunnels beneath the Pentagon
The Seal of Solomon lost on Oak Island
And Mexico’s lost Tribe of Israel, so there

Which can lead the unsaved to tell a lie:
“Oh, gosh, I have to rush, I forgot about…”

So there.

For Rod McKuen - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

[From 2015]

For Rod McKuen

The gentle singer of our youth has died
The poet of empty Sunday afternoons
And solitary strolls through Balboa Park
Among lovers and Frisbee-chasing dogs

Of laughing with shipmates while cleaning rifles
Because we knew more than the armorer
About dreaming away from learning war
About pretty girls laughing in the sun

And a chansonnier in sweater, sneaks, and jeans:
The gentle singer of our youth has died

The Washington Post Asphyxiates Itself - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Washington Post Asphyxiates Itself

“Democracy Dies in Darkness,” you say –
But your arguments die under your popups, okay?

Emmaus isn't on the Map - poem

/Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Emmaus isn’t on the Map

The road from Emmaus is not in the book
Emmaus isn’t even on the map
Still, people walk to Emmaus every day
And then they go away to somewhere else

Because while everyone visits Emmaus
It’s only for supper and a new assignment
Although the directions seem somewhat vague
Those who have been there seem to know the way

The road to Emmaus is in the book
The road out of town is mapped in the heart

Prisoners in Our Own Cells - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Prisoners in Our Own Cells

Sometimes we are prisoners in our own cells
Obsessed with approval from The Other
Still wanting to sit at the cool kids’ table
In the junior high cafeteria of life

But we are meant to live near an open door
And make a tabernacle of the cell
From whence, long since, a stone was rolled away,
And welcome to the modest Table there

All of outcast humanity to taste
The good, the true, and the beautiful

Mr. Hall Proposes a Toast - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Mr. Hall Proposes a Toast

Ladies and gentlemen, I propose a toast:
What will you have – wheat? White? Honey or jam?
Sourdough for me, lightly-browned, almost golden
With lots of butter, melted all through the crust

Let the warm scene of our merriment be
A café in winter, beneath a large window
All steamy, with rain or snow outside
And we don’t have to go anywhere

Or do anything but talk over our coffee –
Ladies and gentlemen, I propose a toast

The Impatience of the Nineteenth Century - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Impatience of the Nineteenth Century

The impatience of the nineteenth century
Left us the genocide of the twentieth
With all the progressive apparatus of death:
Infanticide, death camps, firing squads, gas

And now unto the twenty-first – smart bombs
Are flung by geosynchronous satellites
Deep, deep into the imperfect souls of men
Thus breaking bodies for the perfect state

In victory the dying last voice will croak
“At least we freed ourselves from those awful kings”

The Archaeology of the Weekly Trash Pickup - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Archaeology of the Weekly Trash Pickup

Q-tips that know too much about your ears
A banana peel that’s lost its appeal
A church bulletin out of date for years
The festive lid from a microwave meal

The vacuum cleaner’s latest bag of dust
A toilet paper roll facing its end
A razor blade that now must go to rust
A coffee can (that rare Colombian blend)

A family’s weekly story goes out with the trash:
But I hear the truck – I had better dash!

Instructions from the Colonial Office - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Instructions from the Colonial Office

(Poetry is Everywhere)

Adjuncts if you teach online or off-campus
I am attaching detailed instructions
Assessment masters and tally sheet masters
As Word files you can copy these and score

Your assessments by hand fill out the tally
Sheets and e-mail them to me if you need
To have your assessments in Blackboard
E-mail me and I can send these to you

As Zip files with instructions for how you
Load them into Blackboard adjuncts if you

Counting Dachshunds - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Counting Dachshunds

Some people go to sleep by counting sheep
But I instead must count two dachshund pups
Who are not comforted by box or crate
Or fluffy towels upon the bedroom floor

Astrid and Luna commandeer the pillows
By right of conquest over human hearts
And there recline like princesses royal
Throughout the watches of the dreaming night

O sleepy little carnivores, you bless
Both nights and days with doggie happiness!

"Oh, Look, the Humans have Returned" - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

“Oh, Look, the Humans have Returned”

In spring our little hummingbirds return
And geese begin to vee their way back north
The front-yard squirrel continues to fatten himself
Upon the cardinal-contested seeds

Aggressive mockingbirds dive-bomb the cats
Pale butterflies dance lightly in the sun -
But none of these can be the same who met
Us on an autumn day in the long ago

Someday others will live here, and the birds
Will say “Oh, look, the humans have returned.”