"Jose was Dead. So was His Fitness Watch" - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Moleskine is Chinese Now

The Moleskine™© is Chinese now, has been for years
And anyway Hemingway would probably type
Into his electronic personal device:
“Jose was dead. So was his fitness watch.”

Still

There’s rhythm in a pen as in a key
One flows, the other taps, syllables dance
Your thoughts into an opera of life
Performed in a theatre of silent stars

The Moleskine is in your hands now, will be for years
So choreograph your thoughts onto that page

Keep Calm and Field Guide a Field Guide to Field Guides about Field Guides, Only They Aren't - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Keep Calm and Field Guide a Field Guide to Field Guides

about Field Guides, Only They Aren’t

A Field Guide to Awkward Silences
The Norton Field Guide to Writing with Readings
A Field Guide to Secure Wi-Fi
A Field Guide to Asset Forfeiture
A Field Guide to “Fake News”
A Field Guide to Lies
A Field Guide to Antibiotic Stewardship in Outpatient Settings
A Field Guide to the Italian New Right
A Field Guide to Getting Lost
A Field Guide to Ripple Effects Mapping
A Field Guide to Murder and Fly Fishing
A Field Guide to Jerks at Work
A Field Guide to Bad Faith Arguments

And so it field guides, and so it field guides
As dear old Kurt Vonnegut did not say
And what field is the writer talking about?
About the farmer outstanding in his field?

Alas there is no field guide to writing
A title blessedly free of field guide
Which would be a feel-good fieldless guideless
For which humanity would be grateful

About as original as Keep Calm
Keep Calm and Say Something Original
Let the last field guide be Keep Calm about
A Field Guide to Burying Tired Cliches’

Nonessential Canadian and American Poets - a poem about poems, which is seldom a good idea

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Nonessential Canadian and American Poets

The words still flow, even though the grants do not
And an old scribbler’s name can never appear
On a shortlist of emerging young poets
Or on a shortcake from the Wal-Mart bakery

Unless it’s his birthday. No candles, though
“Good ink,” they say, never “Good electrons”
And so the words don’t flow, they just – emerge?
And, anyway, emerging from what, eh?

But still –

We are poets: we work, we serve, we write;
We pray that we help and heal and give delight

Pictures on Your Map of Time - a poem for the new year

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Pictures on Your Map of Time

A new calendar is a map of time
Showing you spaces in which you might live
And setting off the seasons and solemnities
The penances and feasts in order just

Beneath pictures of cafes’ in Water Street
Arctic-wind hiking trails in Ikkarumiklua
A pint of Quidi Vidi in The Gut
And Peter Pan’s statue in Bowring Park

Or maybe

Our Lady of Walsingham
Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe
Notre Dame de La Salette

Or some puppies and kittens!

And may you find your heart’s desires this year

Is Taos Burning? - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Is Taos Burning?

“…inspired by the pinon nut native to the Southwest.”

- label on a coffee packet

Inspired

Apparently real pinon is not to be had,
Not anymore; the coffee is lesser now
Its taste inspired by a chemistry lab
Although the packet looks the same

Inspired

Instead of coffee flavored with pinon
The bean is only – inspired – and what is that?
It pretends that a chemical is from
The mountain pines of far New Mexico

Inspired

I want to go away to old Taos today
Where they make the best coffee at Michael’s Café

Art in Pursuit of Man - Reaction to a Temper Tantrum in a Fashionable Arts Magazine

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Art in Pursuit of Man

Reaction to a Temper Tantrum in a Fashionable Arts Magazine

Art cannot be but in pursuit of man
Whether or not man is in pursuit of art
For men are shifting shoals of shiftlessness
Artistic absolutes that calendar-clique

But art is not defined, not locked in time
Art does not yield her crown in obedience
To yet another Decree 349
To yet another Order of the Day

Art is herself; her names are Sapientia
And Sophia; she creates; she does not obey

The Ikon Corner - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Ikon Corner

“…and looking at a picture on the opposite wall.”

-C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Ikons are windows to another World
Of Theos and Theotokos, of our saints
Some as merry as yet are others stern
While forming from the prayerful writer’s 1 hand

And in the saints the Light of God shines through
True witnesses to that transcendental Truth
And so we pause and with a candle catch
The prayer-light of their eternity

(As does the bedes-spider 2 who lives there)
Ikons are windows to that truer World


1 In Orthodoxy an ikon is said to be written rather than drawn or painted, but y’r ‘umble scrivener is no authority; the reader might begin a study of ikons / icons with:

http://www.pravmir.com/how-to-sep-up-an-icon-corner-at-home/

2 An Orthodox friend discovered that a spider had made its home among his ikons, and so in peace and hierarchical obedience the little creature served God as a sort of canon, or perhaps a bedes-spider, until its death.

The Smart Cave (but with nice curtains) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Smart Cave

This house is silent now, this new smart house
The storm has downed the power lines; wild rains
Against the windows beat like hungry wolves
And all house gadgetry is silent and still

And just as still: the Barnes & Noble Nook™®
The Ipod™® unsupported, the dead FitBit™®
That failed before its third Christmas day
The La Crosse(tm)® that failed before its second

And dead are all the promises that they gave:
Our silent gadgets in this cold, dark cave

Ramandu's Island - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Ramandu’s Island 1

Long-fallen stars and quarrelling lords must wait
For seasons upon seasons to pass in flight
Seasons, and Feasts upon a Table set
Untasted by sleepers, and winged away

But, exiles, you may taste of mercy here
And you may taste forever of that Feast
If you are not afraid to hear the silence
Where out of time all healing will be given

If you can trust that which you cannot know -
Long-fallen stars and quarrelling lords will wait


1 C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

The Window Frog - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Window Frog

The human and the tree frog say good night
The human inside and the tree frog out
Sharing a pane of glass but little else
For frogs maintain their standards, don’cha know

And sticky pads and frontal lobes don’t mix
Not in polite reptilian society
Since humans, you know, they’re not really green
Nice enough in their place, of course, but still…

Good frogs dismiss the human as a lazy jerk -
For sleeping while all honest creatures work

The Robin's Christmas Dinner - a merriment (a bit rough on the worms, though)

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Robin’s Christmas Dinner

(ripped from the pages of the Middle Ages – “Sumer is icumen in”)

Merrily he eats the worms
Pull them from the ground!
Their heads pop up
On them he sups
As they squirm around
Chirp, robin!

The squirrels are eating all the seeds
The cardinal’s head’s a-bobbin’
The doves are cooing
The cows are mooing
Chirp merrily, robin!

Robin, robin
How well you chirp
Now eat the worms and burp!

Burp, burp, burp!


On seeing dozens of robins, a squirrel, a woodpecker, a cardinal, and a dove outside my window on Christmas morning.

But the Animals were First - Poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

But the Animals were First

“We read in Isaiah: ‘The ox knows its owner,

and the ass the master’s crib….’”

-Papa Benedict, The Blessings of Christmas

The ox and ass are in the Stable set
In service divine, as good Isaiah writes
A congregation of God’s creatures met
In honor of their King this Night of nights

And there they wait for us, for we are late
Breathless in the narthex of eternity
A star, a road, a town, an inn, a gate
Have led us to this holy liturgy

Long centuries and seasons pass, and yet
The ox and ass are in the Stable set

For Our Mothers on Christmasd Eve - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

For our Mothers on Christmas Eve

For Katherine Mattie Bevil Blanchette Hall, 1922 – 2010

and all our mothers

Beyond all other nights, on this strange Night,
A strangers’ Star, a silent, seeking Star,
Helps set the wreckage of our souls aright:
It leads us to a stable door ajar

And we are not alone in peeking in:
An ox, an ass, a lamb, some shepherds, too -
Bright Star without; a brighter Light within
We children see the Truth those Wise Men knew

For we are children there in Bethlehem
Soft-shivering in that winter long ago
We watch and listen there, in star-light dim,
In cold Judea, in a soft, soft snow

An Annotated Study in December's Leaf Litter - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

An Annotated Study in December's Leaf Litter

Leaves fallen are summer’s tabernacle
Upon earth as altar, bearing life within
And life without: children, a protesting squirrel
And that storied grasshopper, unprepared

Neither blanket nor carpet, but a studio
Of life, in which cellular structure frames
The secrets of green chloroplastic life
And graphs the sweet, wind-chorused songs of summer

They fall asleep for a time, to awaken in spring:
Leaves fallen are summer’s tabernacle

Sale - Communion Cups, Recyclable, 1000/box, $9.99 - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Sale – Communion Cups, Recyclable, 1000/box, $9.99

The Holy Grail, the Chalice of Our Lord
Borne to Glastonbury, the Isle of Avalon
By the holy man of Arimathea
Then lost, and quested for by noble knights

The Holy Grail is present still, each day
In vessels blessed for sharing Eucharist
Whose Elevation in the Upper Room
Was then, is now, and forever will be

In setting fit, in prayerful accord:
The Holy Grail, the Chalice of Our Lord

Winter Solstice - The Year's Compline - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Winter Solstice – The Year’s Compline

The winter solstice is the year withdrawing
From all the busy-ness of being-ness,
And life in all its transfigurations
Seems lost beyond this cold, mist-haunted world

Time almost stops. Low-orbiting, the sun
Drifts dimly, drably through Orion’s realm
Morning becomes deep dusk; there is no noon
Four candles are the guardians of failing light

Until that Night when they too disappear
Beneath a Star, before a greater Light


Lawrence Hall
Coffee and a Dead Alligator to Go
Available from amazon.com on Kindle and as bits of dead trees

We Have Built for Ourselves a Faraday Cage - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

We Have Built for Ourselves a Faraday Cage

We have built for ourselves a Faraday cage
And locked ourselves inside; no rays can touch
Our souls codified in magnetic strips
The Good, the True, and the Beautiful in chips

No ray, no beam, no pulse can penetrate
The protection racket of secret codes
(Except when they bloody well can and do)
While we posture behind scientific wires

Passive self-destruction is all the rage

For this

We have built for ourselves a Faraday cage

Gotterdammerung of Lesser Gods - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Gotterdammerung of Lesser Gods

Expect no pity as you fall and fall
Weighed down by the medals you gave yourselves
Through your closed loops of self-congratulation
In your officers’ clubs and private planes

You led us from the sky and from the rear
Secure in air-conditioned bunkers sealed
Against pollution by heat and dust and rot
And the uncollected bodies of the dead

Expect no pity as you fall and fall
Weighed down by your accumulated wealth
Through your closed loops of self-congratulation
In boardrooms and governments and private planes

You sacrificed us for your resumes -
You’re out of single-malt; now go away

A Polar Vortex Nightmare - rhyming doggerel

Lawrence Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

A Polar Vortex Nightmare

I saw a polar vortex in my dream
Drinking his coffee with sugar and cream
Then water skiing on the warm gulf stream –
He seemed to plan, he seemed to plot, to scheme

I tried to wake, I tried to warn, to scream
But wait – now just what is this wild dream’s theme?
Why was my sleep all night a mental steam?
My dream was confused, for this was the meme:

My gutter ball alienated my team

And so

I saw a bowler vortex in my dream

Churchill and Christmas, 1941 - a very brief weekly column

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

“Let the Children Have Their Night of Fun and Laughter”

Y’r ‘Umble Scrivener can add nothing to the Christmas narratives in St. Matthew and St. Luke, and will refrain from any attempt to babble about “the true meaning of Christmas” (all major credit cards accepted), and so for this week yields this space to the words of Churchill on the first Christmas of the Second World War for the USA, but the third Christmas of the war for his nation. His words address a specific situation in 1941, but for every Christmas they still apply:

          Let the children have their night of fun and laughter. Let the gifts of Father Christmas delight    

          their play. Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasures before we turn again

          to the stern task and the formidable years that lie before us, resolved that, by our sacrifice and

          daring, these same children shall not be robbed of their inheritance or denied their right to live

          in a free and decent world.

          And so, in God's mercy, a happy Christmas to you all.

          Winston Churchill

          December 24, 1941

          Washington, D.C.

(https://www.nationalchurchillmuseum.org/christmas-message.html)

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