Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Yeah, and the Bad
Haircut Too
House Panel Subpoenas Author of January 6 PowerPoint
-news item
The times are so terribly out of joint
With cartoons and sounds replacing words
I’d have anyone arrested for a PowerPoint
For the crime of shooting us lots of birds
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
The Curse of
Windows 11
Vista®© Risen from the Grave?
Tonight I installed Windows 11
Which scattered my folders and apps to H***
I quickly recovered Windows 10 (not much rhymes with
eleven)
Which, as we know, works perfectly well
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Where Someone
Waits for You
A plane’s navigation lights chart our dreams
To Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, and the moon
And farther into the mysterious night
To somewhere far away, where adventures begin
But we are left here in December’s dark
Wondering when there will be a flight for us
When we can flee this joyless land at last
For that elusive happiness long deferred
And maybe someone there is dreaming too
And we down here can happily wonder who
Would Robin Hood
Steal a Post Office Pen to Give to the Poor?
“Oh, he’s so handsome, just like his reward posters!”
-Sis in Disney’s Robin Hood, 1973
I haven’t seen a reward poster in ever so long
Post-office portraits of men grizzled and mean
Each of ‘em wanted for some felonious wrong
(And living a life uncouth and unclean)
Maybe one of ‘em stole a post office pen
$500 or a year in prison
For committing that heinous federal sin
(He told the judge he thought it was his’n)
I haven’t seen a reward poster in years
(But still I’d leave that pen alone, my dears)
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Prince William Sans
Culotte
Prince William, Duchess Katherine, and the Children
Pose for a Christmas Snap
Is the reason for pants minus
That a pair of trousers itches?
Oh, please, Your Royal Highness -
Put on your britches!
Mhall46184@aol.com
December Tornadoes
In this often cynical
world we still find people whose greatest joy is to go and help other people
without any thought of personal compensation. As soon as the news about the December
tornadoes flashed across the news groups of good men and women, often
associated with churches, saddled up and rode to the sound of need.
They are taking
food, water, blankets, and other assistance to the displaced, and bringing
their chainsaws, loaders, and other power equipment for clearing debris from
roads and property so they can help the locals jump-start the years-long
process of rebuilding their homes, businesses, and lives.
The rest of us
can help by contributing wisely – wisely – to these worthy small organizations.
Two unhappy
truths require us to be careful about financial aid: (1) some of the large, legendary,
famous-name-brand charitable groups are not what they used to be, and (2) any smarmy
scoundrel can access the InterGossip, build an attractive,
professional-appearing site, and start soliciting dollars that will never buy
the first bottle of water or the first blanket for the displaced.
The best option
always is to contribute through your own church or a small local charity you
know well. Indeed, it may well be that your church or club puts together working
parties for just such emergencies, and there is where you can give.
The need is real.
Remember that most of the victims were working the night shift in factories and
warehouses, and others were in nursing homes and sometime just at home. They weren’t
paying big bucks to take rocket ship rides or for vacations in Biarritz; they
were working so their children could have a Christmas. Most of them had little;
now many of them have nothing.
And, after all,
they helped us after the hurricanes. We can do no less.
We can all give a
little something so that everyone has a hot meal and warm place to sleep, and
that the children can have presents under the Christmas tree after all.
-30-
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Beaten and Shot
To Blessed Stanley Rother, Padre Francisco, Padre
Apla’s – a petition
Missionaries and martyrs, pray for us
That we may still our anger and intemperance
And listen not to the voices of hate
But rather to the small still voice 1 of love
Missionaries and martyrs, pray for us
That we may think before we write in blood
And resolve our differences through God’s peace
With prayer, understanding, and fellowship
Missionaries and martyrs, pray for us
That we never state a thesis as death
Blessed Stanley Rother – thank you
1 1 Kings 19:12
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Assorted Broken
Saints, Some with Parts Missing
A petition to Saint John Marie-Baptiste Vianney
After doing some time in this fallen world
We all are broken, and missing a few of our parts
Having lost some hopes and strengths along the way
But we keep chooglin’ along, making it work
And shoveling (life) with us, our parish priest
Just as Chaucer wrote, beginning at dawn
Five of six cylinders from church to church
Ignored by the bishop and unknown to Rome
Our daily saint in his well-worn chasuble
His old shoes squeaking to the Altar of God
Saint John Vianney, pray for our laborers
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Offenders
to St. Jude – a petition for prisoners
In the system they’re called offenders
No one knows why; the offenses are over
Concrete dorms, three-high bunks, white uniforms
And overhead the sting of fluorescents
I’m not going all Pollyanna here
All of them know the poisonous passions of meth
The stench of blood, the sting of fluorescents
In fearing eyes in a gas station at night
The stench of cells, the sting of fluorescents
In glaring eyes in the booking area at night
Humiliations, transports, stripped and searched
Form a straight line with hands behind your backs
But still, a man’s a man
The difference between a man inside the wire
And a man outside the wire
Is often only that one man is inside the wire
And the other man is outside the wire
“For all have sinned…”
Christmas is coming
Will there be a letter from home?
St. Jude, help all of us to be better men
In spite of ourselves
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
You Were in
Bethlehem – Don’t You Remember?
Setting up the family Creche
When you were a little child you knelt before
The Infant Jesus there in Bethlehem
Among the animals you placed your toys:
Barbie and Buzz, and Woody the Cowboy too
Even the Wise Men smiled to hear you sing
To the Holy Family your baby songs
In cold Judaea in the long ago
The Christmas story is true, and you were there
And so forever
You are a Christmas child and kneel before
The Infant Jesus – here in Bethlehem
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
A Polar Bear’s
Diet
Do polar bears caution each other about
The dangers of eating human livers?
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
When Your Friends
Let You Down – Maybe That’s a Good Thing
St. Luke 5:17-26
Letting a pal down through a hole in the roof
To free him from paralysis and sins
Sounds much like a Larry, Darryl, and Darryl goof
And maybe it is – we are blessed in our friends
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
He Never Met a Phor He Didn’t Like
He never met a phor he
didn’t like
Where the dead are always
spinning in their graves
A discarded cup looks like
a war zone
And poems are unpacked
instead of read
Or hyperbole ‘WAY OVER THE
TOP!!!!!!!!!!!!
OMG! OMG! OMG! OH!!!!!!!!
MY LIFE HAS BEEN CHANGED
FOREVER!!!!!!!!!!
NO ONE HAS EVER SUFFERED
AS MUCH AS I!!!!!!!!
And freighted his lines
with adverbs in rank
Until they really actually
literally sank
Inferior doggerel, not otherwise posted
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Banners That Fan
Our People Cold
Where
the Norweyan banners flout the sky
And
fan our people cold
-Macbeth I.i.49-50
Banners for sale, strung on lines in the breeze
Not an American flag among the lot
But only parodies and mockeries -
Betray your country with cash on the spot
In the name of freedom a tyrant’s face
Falsely imposed over our red, white, and blue
Children will ask, in their innocent grace:
“Mommy, whatever does F*** mean to you?”
These are not our good brave flags of old
But only foulness that fans our people cold
Lawrence Hall, HSG
All Children by
Nature Have a Desire to Learn
“All men by nature have a desire to know.”
-Aristotle, p. 3 of Man in the Universe in the 1943
Classics Club edition
We would now say “all men and women,” that is, if the
fashionable among us will allow Aristotle a voice at all.
Once upon a time I was sitting in the car reading,
waiting for the spouse-person who was yakking with some other women after Mass.
Suddenly I noticed a little boy standing next to me at the window. He said, “You
look like Father Brown.”
Well, any little boy who reads G. K. Chesterton has
certainly been raised right, and I was pleased to meet him.
The little boy is now taller than I am, but for me he
will always be that kid was a strong reader even when he was so small he was
only about car-window high.
His name is not Jacques, nor is his little sister’s name
Chantel, but give the unhappy temper of our time I will not reveal their true
names, the town in which they live, nor the school they attend. Things have
just gotten too weird.
Because they live far, far away I see Jacques and Chantel
only a few times each year when they come to visit their grandparents, but it
is always fun to hear what books they are reading, what new music they have
learned, and how their summer jobs are going.
This is because their parents have given them love not
only in food, clothing, and shelter, but in making their home a library, a
music studio, an art museum, and a science laboratory. The farm animals are
outside.
A few months ago their mom posted from their living room a
video clip of Chantal singing a solo and Jacques accompanying her on a (viol? viola?).
As the song says, if you’re gonna play in Texas you gotta have a fiddle in the
band. Big fiddle. [Alabama - If You're Gonna Play In Texas (You Gotta Have A
Fiddle In The Band) Lyrics | AZLyrics.com]
Well, okay, they’re rich folks who can afford to send
their kids to fancy-schmancy schools, right?
Nope. Two working parents and an ordinary public school
in Texas.
Jacques and Chantel, you see, were never permitted to
feel sorry for themselves and submit to the Sauron’s eye that is the
InterGossip. They have always had to work, study, and try to get along with
their fellow humans.
Recently their mom sent a video of Jacques (but not
Chantel, who was in a different program) in a Christmas presentation by their high
school’s madrigal club. All the young folks were in beautiful costumes along
the mediaeval-renaissance continuum (I know nothing about fashion) except for
one who seemed to be a pirate, but, hey, good fun! The musical presentations of
old – as in olde – Christmas hymns and Christmas carols, along with some contemporary
just-plain-fun songs were outstanding: professional in voices, professional in
musical talent, and professional in stagecraft, and obviously professional
through months of disciplined rehearsals. It can only have been difficult.
I don’t know who the music teacher is, but she does a
fantastic job in leading her students.
On this night, the kids got to have some fun, and they
certainly did – such energy!
We’ve all been to school musical presentations and often
suffered through them. We smile through the sixth-grade band’s pieces when what
we really want to do is cover our ears. We applaud the children not because the
strange noises they’ve made are objectively good but because the children gave
it a go at all and we want to encourage them.
Okay, sometimes we want to encourage the brass to
practice in the next county, but, hey, childhood.
However, the Christmas-themed program staged by Jacques
and his fellow high school musicians was objectively good. The applause was not
aw-ain’t-they-cute applause but real wow-they-are-great applause. With discipline, practice, and the handing on
of civilization from one generation to the next you get something good.
Only some hours later did I wonder if all those good, smart,
talented, hard-working young people had been patted down for firearms.
All men and women by nature have a desire to know; all
children by nature have a desire to know. The question for us is this: what
do we give our children to know?
-30-
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
And Whose Fault is
That?
Then
said Jesus unto the twelve, “Will you also go away?”
Then
Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go?
You
have the words of eternal life.”
Catholics are much disapproved of these days
And whose fault is that?
Catholics even disapprove of each other
And whose fault is that?
Lawsuits and lockouts and altars abandoned
And whose fault is that?
The ‘net all clogged with angry Catholic sites
And whose fault is that?
Well, yeah, mine too
We are perfectly free to go away
But we won’t – because He asks us to stay
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
All the Little Midnight
Lights
To awaken in the middle of the night
Is to realize that this midnight dream
Is a fairyland of points of light
Arcing and soaring like a magic stream
The curious visions before your flickering eyes
Begin to focus as strange, blue-lit scenes
In a half-awake haze you realize
The lights are from all your little machines
Manufactured by men, mechanical light
And somehow that just doesn’t seem quite right
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
The Old Sears Store
Remains Unsold
The big Sears store was a happy place
But now it’s only an empty space
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
By word and example…parents lead their children to authentic freedom, actualized in the sincere gift of self, and they cultivate in them respect for others, a sense of justice, cordial openness, dialogue, generous service, solidarity, and all the other values which help people to live life as a gift.
-St. John Paul
the Great, Evangelium Vitae
Do we sing to our
children machine gun dreams
Instead of sugar
plums? Little sleepyheads
Now tucked away
into their little beds
In matching
camouflage blankies and sheets
Do children code
messages to Santa asking him
For Barbie’s Bunker
all accessorized
With guns and
knives properly pint-sized
And Super Sniper
Skipper and Recon Ken?
Do children hide
bayonets beneath their coats
And measure the distance
to their classmates’ throats?
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
All Power to the People’s
Soviet of Gadgetry
1.
The servile arts teach us to plan
Wars for sending our children to die
Barbed wire for penning our fellow man
Computers to sneak and snoop and spy
2.
The liberal arts teach us to ask
Why?
