Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
The Great Big Russian Doomsday Submarine
As with Leviathan or Moby
Dick
Or Captain Nemo’s Nautilus,
perhaps
The Belgorod haunts
the darkness of the seas
And it haunts our minds,
our darkest fears
We scorn shabby Russian
gimcrackery
The wreckage of tanks, the
ashes of men
Whose feeble aircraft
flame down from the sky
But this thing – it needs
to work only once
What if it’s real, so very
real
That we don’t finish…
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Another Student. Another Funeral
Another former student.
Another funeral.
A folder with a photograph
and a prayer
No one gave the cause of
death - I only know
We’re not supposed to be
burying our children
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Builders of
Empires
Great men of thought, of character and strength
Have built from time to time empires of industry
Empires of soldiers and sailors forcing conquests
Of ancient lands and nations for their own purposes
Great men have built ziggurats and stood upon them
Mapping the Dance of the sun, moon, and stars
Great men have written books, pondered the arts
And given us the empires of the mind
But a man alone in his cell telling his beads
Builds better and forever, for all of us
(In context “man” is
gender-neutral. As Samuel Johnson would say, “And there’s an end on’t.”)
(“Empires of the mind”
references a speech by Churchill at Harvard in 1943.)
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Man vs. the Awful Majesty
of the Hummingbird
In the sun-soured heat of dusk I stood
Harvesting a few midsummer sunflower seeds
Tough prairie stock that the First Nations knew
A little sack of them to share with others
Under the half-moon a god appeared
A green-necked hummingbird of august mien
A tiny little god, but a god indeed
For it judged me a trespasser, and glared at me
And I withdrew respectfully
I wished I had a picture of the moment
But the moment was, and the moment is
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
What if the Banker
Had to Stand in Line at Your House?
HOURS 1000-1100
and 1400-1500
What if the banker had to stand in line
(six feet
apart, please)
While you stared blankly at a computer screen
And finally mumbled, “Howc’nIhelpyoutoday”
While chewing gum and hardly looking up
What if the banker asked you a question
(a mask is
recommended)
And after a long, unproductive silence you mumbled
“notatthishouseyoucoulddoitonline”
Or “that’snothowyournameisinthesystem”
What if the banker actually did her job
(WHAT!?)
Instead of balancing out her resume’?
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Upon Reading C. S.
Lewis’ The Abolition of Man
For Grace
“…the doctrine of objective value…”
-p. 29
At least I think I read it, did I not?
The book exists and was read, but by whom?
I’m beginning to feel that I’m the trousered ape
Who feels that a slide rule is for scratching one's back
But reality obtains – if a tree falls
That tree forever falling in the forest
In 7th grade science, and no one hears it
It sends a sound into the universe
I think I understand about truth and space
But if I’m confused, I’ll simply ask Grace!
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Sunday Morning: A
Dead ‘Possum and Broken Glass
After the buzzards pluck the ‘possum’s eyes
Like businessmen at the airport Holiday Inn
Choosing olives for their plates at the buffet
It will still be grinning at the sun
After the beer bottle’s empty promises
And the powderings of broken glass have worn away
Along with the tire-tread promises of ads
A cardboard temptress will still be grinning at drunks
“We moved 84,000 cases this month”
The latest life-partner pukes on the trailer floor
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
A Government of Merovingians,
by Merovingians, and for Merovingians
John LeCarre’ asks what you owe to your country when you no
longer recognize it.
-cover blurb, Silverview
Inadequate klansies in gas-station shades
Bullhornistas polluting the civic peace
Q-Anonsters lurking behind their screens
Purported patriots hiding behind their masks
Doxers sneaking and spying like Milton’s Satan
Gollums clutching their “My Precious!” black rifles
Censors memory-holing literature and art
Anti-Communists Communisting our lives
Drug gangs and firebombs, looters and spies:
This is a nation no one can recognize
(So work, vote, volunteer, and, as Mr. Churchill said, never give in.)
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Summer on the Lake
Children slosh noisily about on a catamaran
While lovers in the shade sit with crosswords and drinks
Or barefoot stroll along the lakeside sand
Each wondering what the other thinks
Minnows hover in the amber shallows
Dragonflies search among bright waving flowers
Sheltered beneath wind-trembling Chinese tallows
Throughout the drowsy, dreamy summer hours
This is early July, soft winds in the dales -
Which means it’s time for back-to-school sales
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Q
Where they go one, they go all
Just like sheep in a rented U-Haul
(Bah, bah, bah!)
Lawrence Hall
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
A repost for Canada Day:
Come Laughing Home at Twilight
Beaumont-Hamel, 1916
And, O! Wasn’t he just the Jack the Lad,
A’swellin’ down the Water Street as if –
As if he owned the very paving stones!
He was my beautiful boy, and, sure,
The girls they thought so too: his eyes, his walk;
A man of Newfoundland, my small big man,
Just seventeen, but strong and bold and sure.
Where is he now? Can you tell me? Can you?
Don’t tell me he was England’s finest, no –
He was my finest, him and his Da,
His Da, who breathed in sorrow, and was lost,
They say, lost in the fog, among the ice.
But no, he too was killed on the first of July
Only it took him months to cast away,
And drift away, far away, in the mist.
Where is he now? Can you tell me? Can you?
I need no Kings nor no Kaisers, no,
Nor no statues with fine words writ on’em,
Nor no flags nor no Last Post today:
I only want to see my men come home,
Come laughing home at twilight, boots all mucky,
An’ me fussin’ at ‘em for being’ late,
Come laughing home at twilight.
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
An Exercise in Humility and Colombian Coffee
I once saw one
of those slogan coffee cups
(I’m sure it would
have served as well for tea)
Which read
something like this:
The beginning of faith
Is to
realize that you are not
The ruler
of the Universe
And it is so – I
am not very good
At ruling even myself
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
A Chewing-Gum Girl
Waiting for the Sunset Limited
Long, long ago
In the station at Tucson we waited
Someone said the locomotive had burned in the desert
A girl with earphones chewed gum through the hours:
Roundy-CHOMP, roundy-CHOMP, roundy-CHOMP-CHOMP
Her eyes were closed, her music was her god
She clutched a leatherette case of tapes
Just as some clutch a Bible, and chewed:
Roundy-CHOMP, roundy-CHOMP, roundy-CHOMP-CHOMP
Her mechanical chomps could have been the rhythm
Of the passenger train that wasn’t there
My paperback novel never joined in:
Roundy-CHOMP, roundy-CHOMP, roundy-CHOMP-CHOMP
I don’t remember her boarding the train
That in the evening finally arrived
She might be in the Tucson station still:
Roundy-CHOMP, roundy-CHOMP, roundy-CHOMP-CHOMP
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Fashionable
Death Cults Then and Now
After
the June 1941 German
invasion of the Soviet Union and Einsatzgruppe mass shootings
of civilians, the Nazis experimented with gas vans for mass killing…
-Gassing
Operations | Holocaust Encyclopedia (ushmm.org)
Dozens
of migrants were found dead in an abandoned big rig in San Antonio on Monday in
what appears to be the deadliest human smuggling case in modern U.S. history.
-At least 50
migrants found dead inside a truck in San Antonio, officials say (cnbc.com)
We have our death vans too, not well-organized
But rolling down the American road
Unseen by our leaders in their personal jets
Flying to Frisco or maybe Cancun
Bombings and shootings on the street and in church
Job lots in hospitals, by the dozens in schools
For we too specialize in genocide
And may Moloch and Herod bless our AR-15s
If any children survive, we’ll call them Generation
Something
And tell them each day how inadequate they are
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
The Narthex as a Barricade
I have become a
greeter in my old age
(Why is that
pickup truck circling the parking lot?)
How good to see
you! What happy children you have!
(Any bulges in
that unknown man’s pockets?)
The Altar
servers are in place for the processional
(Why is that man
just sitting in that car?)
The lector gives
everyone a word of welcome
(Pssst – do you
know that guy sitting in the back?)
I open doors and
hand out bulletins
And watch
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
To Please Her Man
She underwent the stomach-stapling knife
To please her man, to tighten her tummy and cheeks
While in recovery she bled out her life
He married his girlfriend within a few weeks
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
The Pale Lady of
the Well
I am mostly English, which is now uncool
And my soupcon of West African genes
Along with a whiff of Russia and First Nations
Protest Northumbria and East Anglia
But when outside at dusk with poetry and pipe
And a whisper of single-malt offered to the earth
Sometimes I seem to see visions proper to a Celt
And hear soft songs from the dawn of time
How is it that an Englishman can still
Sense the White Lady near the well at dusk
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
At Noon, After
Mowing
I sat in the shade and mended a hose
A water hose whose fittings had parted ways
And on the grass some mockingbirds and jays
Argued and shrilled – but why? Nobody knows
I cut away the plastic (hecho en China)
And fitted brass (hecho en Mexico)
For repairs that is the best way to go
To make a hose secure – what could be finer?
And what could be finer than to sit a while
In the dreaming shade? Yes, that’s my style!
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
The Lawnmower Man
He came at last,
with pickup truck and tools
And for some two
hours there was hammering:
Bang! Bang! Bang! Clang! Bang! Clang! Bang! Clang! Bang!
(Dang!)
(Dang!) Bang!
Bang! Bang! Clang! Bang! Clang! Bang! Clang! Bang!
And then he went
to the store for a bigger hammer:
Bang! Bang!
Bang! Clang! Bang! Clang! Bang! Clang! Bang! (Dang!)
(Dang!) Bang!
Bang! Bang! Clang! Bang! Clang! Bang! Clang! Bang!
Bang! Bang!
Bang! Clang! Bang! Clang! Bang! Clang! Bang! (Dang!)
Heat, humidity,
grease, the wrong wrench
The grease gun’s
empty the wrong hex key
Dead battery, no
brake spring maybe next week
The evening was
concluded with a lecture
On the wonderfulness
of Donald Trump
(In the event the lawnmower runs fine now)
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
We Know Where You RINO Traitors Live
Some Christians by a newer word seem to abide:
For they preach Trump, and Him crucified
(As Charles Spurgeon did not say)
