Lawrence Hall, HSG
You Are Not a Series
of Adjectives
Adjectives can sometimes be useful things
And even aesthetically pleasing, you know
But
You are not a series of adjectives
You are yourself – and how wonderful you are!
Monday, January 22, 2024
You Are Not a Series of Adjectives - poem
An Apology to Brazos Bookstore on Banned Books Week - poem (sort of)
Lawrence Hall, HSG
An Apology to Brazos
Bookstore
on Banned Books Week
Oh, our descendants will burn with bitter shame
to remember, when punishing vile acts,
that most peculiar time, when
plain honesty was labeled 'courage’
-Yevtushenko, “Conversation with an
American Writer”
Dear Brazos Bookstore:
Several years ago I wrote you a polite note
Suggesting that you were a bit hyperbolic
On the touchy subject of banning books
“This is America,” I said; “it doesn’t happen here”
I was wrong
I apologize
And you are brave
Cordially,
Brazos Bookstore
www.brazosBookstore.com
2421 Bissonnet St, Houston, TX 77005
(I have no professional connection
with Brazos Bookstore, that wonderful, independent purveyor of books and an agora
of ideas.)
Sunday, January 21, 2024
Awkward Adolescent Verse - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Awkward Adolescent
Verse
Poetry…
The
authority of empires, driven mad,
Threatened
it so many times,
But
it was the rulers who perished
-Yevtushenko, “Poetry is a Great Power”
They stole his boots even before he died
And scavengers have eaten out his eyes
His flesh and blood commingle with the mud
His rotting hands still claw the earth, the pain
A dime-store notebook, shredded with his heart
Once pencilled with his awkward, juvenile lines
Of undeveloped images and clumsy rhymes
Which will not be shaped and sharpened in this world
Among young bodies rats squabble and hiss -
Someone will be given a peace prize for this
Saturday, January 20, 2024
Methodist Pecans - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Methodist Pecans
Methodist pecans
Connie-the-Haircut-Queen sells us pecans
Every Christmas, good Methodist pecans
A fundraiser sponsored by the women’s club
To be baked into cookies and pies for Christmas day
Methodist pecans
They used to come from my grandfather’s trees
But now they’re grown and gathered somewhere else
Packaged in plastic, certified, and sealed
But still they’re good Methodist pecans
Methodist pecans
And in January when the hail-storms rattle
Stuffed in a barn-coat pocket while tracking cattle
Methodist pecans - Texas blessed and Texas’ best!
Friday, January 19, 2024
Quomodo Catholici inter se Loquuntur? - doggerel
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Quomodo Catholici
inter se Loquuntur?
Scortillum, scortillum, scortillum!
(Catholic news sites, I’ve had my fill of ‘em)
Sailing a Couch into History - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Sailing a Couch into
History
We are not permitted to choose the frame of our
destiny, but what we put into it is ours.
-Dag Hammarskjold, Markings, p. 51
Through eating, fatting, sleeping, video games
En couchant in a stasis ossified
By the low expectations of the zeitgeist
(“What’s a zeitgeist?”) some flail into history
The ironic echoes of Call of Duty
Flatten against an empty ‘tater-chip bag
Yesterday flung into the baby’s crib
(“Ain’t no one seen little Shawnee today?”)
His MePhone case is manly hunter green
He's checkin’ out the fantasies on a glowing screen
Thursday, January 18, 2024
In the Foggy Dawn - a Hawk on a Fencepost
Lawrence Hall, HSG
In the Foggy Dawn - a
Hawk on a Fencepost
For him the hayfield is his restaurant
A baby mouse, perhaps, or a tasty rabbit
But I prefer a bacon-egg-cheese croissant -
For breakfast we are all creatures of habit!
What Do These Teachers Teach These Children in These Schools? - doggerel
Lawrence Hall, HSG
What Do These
Teachers Teach These Children in These Schools?
PETA thinks this is how farmers get the wool off sheep? 😂 | Not the Bee
Sheep-shearing isn’t a topic in English class
Not here in cattle country; we give sheep a pass
You're Going to Be Okay - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
You’re Going to Be
Okay
You’re going to be okay
Your feet hit the deck this morning
You offered up that cup of coffee to God
And He delighted in your happiness
Wednesday, January 17, 2024
My Illegal Oxygen-ish Apple Watch - doggerel
Lawrence Hall, HSG
(Photograph taken 23 August 2023)
My Illegal Oxygen-ish Apple Watch
My Apple Watch ™ © ® has the oxygen feature –
Do I confess to the Law? Or to the preacher?
(My Apple Watch worked fine until it was messed up by the last two updates, which cannot be undone. When this thing fails completely I will find a cheap knockoff on amazon.)
Tuesday, January 16, 2024
Awaiting Cataract Surgery (Catchy title, eh!)
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Awaiting Cataract
Surgery
You can't get a cup of tea big enough or a book long
enough to suit me.
- attributed to C. S. Lewis
and others
I will give up my books
When someone pries my cold, dead hands from them
Companions of my youth, tellers of truth
Next to my heart when the mortar rounds fell
But now I see the world
As through a dark lens darkly, well enough
For most common household purposes
But those dear words on any page – not so
I never thought I’d say
That I’m looking forward to surgery day!
Monday, January 15, 2024
Our Former President Loves Us All - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Our Former President Loves Us All
The People grant him power; he grasps for more
He asks them for their votes and for their deaths
His eunuchs tell us that it was just a joke
Like Two Corinthians walking into a bar
But when the folding chairs are folded away
And that one night of transient glory is over
The caucus captains and their caps depart
Cheap souvenirs tatted in white and gold
They stumble home through limousine fumes and ice:
“For a moment I was Somebody – it was nice”
Sunday, January 14, 2024
A Government Church?
Lawrence Hall
A Government Church?
We establish no religion in this country. We command no
worship. We mandate no belief, nor will we ever. Church and state are and must
remain separate.
- President Ronald Reagan, Speech in Temple Hillel, Valley
Stream, New York,
26 October 1984
Each American may his own conscience search
For by the Grace of God we have no national church
Cf. The Constitution, Article
VI and Amendment I
Saturday, January 13, 2024
To Accept Israel - poem
Lawrence Hall
To Accept Israel
“Israel
was not created in order to disappear - Israel will endure and flourish. It is
the child of hope and the home of the brave. It carries the shield of democracy
and it honors the sword of freedom.”
– President John F. Kennedy)
To deny Israel is to curse ourselves
For we are inheritors of the Covenant
That He should be our God, and we His people
He creates us, He calls us – this is so
He has given us prophecy and law
Cattle in the fields, fish in all the seas
And lovers, flowers, sunsets, songs, salvation
The Great Dance of Creation - and Himself
Let not the sinister whisperer divide us!
To accept Israel is to accept - everyone
An English Major Screaming at a Wall Clock - poem (and a mostly-true story)
Lawrence Hall, HSG
An English Major
Screaming at a Wall Clock
(A French officer would be too well-mannered to do that)
Passing from one office to another in quest
Of some elusive official signature
I saw a woman screaming at a clock
And heard her, too, because screams are like that
“She’s an English major,” someone said in explanation
“She and her boy Wordsworth are at it again
And meddlesome Coleridge keeps putting his oar in”
I nodded in understanding; Milton had mentioned it
A scholar should never scream at institutional clocks;
He should discreetly disapprove of them
Friday, January 12, 2024
Garage-Sale Rolodex for Seventy-Five Cents - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Garage-Sale Rolodex®
for Seventy-Five Cents
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed,
debriefed, or numbered. My life is my own.
-Patrick McGoohan as Number Six in The
Prisoner
The Rolodex was once a symbol of power
Of knowledge marshalled into sequences
Orderly sequences alphabetized by names
By names and cross indices of subjects and dates
Of enemies or allies or contacts, rarely friends
Condensed in ink on smoothly finished cards
Restrained in place by colored plastic tabs
Awaiting the stroke of an office tyrant’s hand
The Rolodex was subsumed within The ‘Phone
Thus still your life cannot be called your own
A Third Couplet for the Coup
Lawrence Hall, HSG
A Third Couplet for
the Coup
The president’s son humiliated our representatives -
They’re as useless as gas-station pregnancy preventatives
Another Couplet for the Coup
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Another Couplet for
the Coup
Presidents and their bangers bully judges, you see
So the laws apply only to you and me
Wednesday, January 10, 2024
He Won't Even Notice - a Bitter Couplet for the Coup
Lawrence Hall, HSG
He Won’t Even Notice
- a Bitter Couplet for the Coup
They cry that he is anointed of Jesus, that he saves
(His limousine will rumble over their poor graves)
Upon the Return of Artifacts to Wounded Knee - poem
Lawrence Hall
Upon the Return of
Artifacts to Wounded Knee
“We hope the spirits are on their way now.”
-Richard Broken Nose
A knife, a needle, an arrow, a pair of shoes
Some beads, a shirt, a drum, a tobacco pouch
A little girl’s doll, fragments of a pot
And tools for completing one’s daily chores
They are not artifacts; they are not displays
They are the ordinary necessities of life
Stolen from the dead hands of innocents
To be numbered, indexed, filed, boxed, and mocked
These things are sacred now, part of the Great Dance of Creation
We pray the spirits will come and take them home
As plundered items return to Wounded Knee, decisions await
(artdaily.com)
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