Lawrence Hall, HSG
A
Quatrain to Explain the Infinite Monkey Theory
If you set a monkey at a typewriter
To type and type for all eternity
What he will type, that little blighter
Is a politician’s speech – nonsense, you see!
Saturday, February 3, 2024
A Quatrain to Explain the Infinite Monkey Theory
Sacrifice in a Low Place - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Sacrifice in a Low
Place
Cf. 1 Kings 3
I would go to a high place and sacrifice to God
But there is no high place; this is an alluvial plain
Dark with conifers except along the sloughs
Dark in their own ways with cypress and oak
And I am old, too old to be a prophet
And I have often asked for all the wrong things
So I will take those things into the dark
And leave them at the foot of a pagan oak
I will learn the statutes from the whisperings
I will go into the quiet, and listen for God
Friday, February 2, 2024
A Rotor-Tiller and the Feast of the Presentation - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
A Rotor-Tiller and the
Feast of the Presentation
Names have not been restored, as
Aslan says
Some are pleased to call this Ground-Hog Day
Although there are no ground hogs here
But the Presentation is everywhere and forever
I passed the morning deconstructing the tiller
(instead
of sacred texts)
Working debris from around the tines
Thinking about the coming spring and how -
How the Presentation is everywhere and forever
Names have not been restored, as Aslan says
Still, the Presentation is everywhere and forever
Thursday, February 1, 2024
Browsing the Poetry Titles in the Book Store - oh, yeah
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Browsing the Poetry Titles
in the Book Store
I soon had a thorough understanding of the rules. For a poem to go through
there
had to be a few lines devoted to [
]
-Yevtushenko, p. 68, A Precocious Autobiography
Call Me by the Post-Colonial Things We Carried Without Borders
in the Boat in the Twilight Garden of our Being Unsilencing the Silent Voices Songs
of Our Powerful People Aimlessly in Fire New and Selected Hopes To Change Your
Life Forever Becoming the Healing You
Always Wanted to Be in the Emptiness Within While Searching the Soul of the
Underself in Quest of Anti-hierarchy For Elegies of the Lover
Who
Never
Was
But
Who
Might
Be on the Silences of Screaming Wings in a Rhapsody of a
Plangent Tangent of Voided Meanings at the End of the Rainbow World When a Golden Sickle
Pierced the Sighings of the Moon in Your Shivering Hand Leaves in the Exiled
Gentleness of Barbed Wire
Pillows Comforting Your Cerulean Soul-Quest of Meaningful Meaninglessness adrift in the Writhing
Arms of your Powerful Weakness as a Twinkling Pancreas
Vaults Ambition Through
Disconnected Quotes from Shakespeare Who was My Soul-Twin Aflame with Passionless
Passion for a Forbidden Vegetable Incarnadining the Cosmic Cypress of Your Unattainable
Body Through the Music of the Trapezoids as the Forbidden
Kiss of Life
And, like, stuff
Wednesday, January 31, 2024
She Had a Problem With Amarillo, Texas - quatrain
50. 31 January 2024, Wednesday
in the 4th week in Ordinary Time.
Lawrence Hall, HSG
She Had a Problem with Amarillo, Texas
She bought a revolver and a box of cartridges
And on her way outta town she put six rounds
Into the Amarillo city limits
sign
And for the most part lived
happily ever after
This is something told to me long ago. Amarillo is great fun
and could be a vacation destination.
25 Amazing Things to Do in Amarillo - Lone Star Travel Guide
"My Oath of Enlistmant Does Not Have an Expiration Date" - well, yeah, it does
Lawrence Hall, HSG
“My Oath of Enlistment Does Not Have an Expiration Date”
Well, yeah, it does
If it doesn’t then I’m out of uniform
If it doesn’t then I’m absent without leave
(54 years –
you’d think someone would have noticed)
If it doesn’t then I need to report to base
If it doesn’t then I must obey President Biden
If it doesn’t then I must obey all officers
(Is that a
shavetail ensign at my door?)
If it doesn’t then the manual of arms…
(With a
walking-stick? Really?)
If it doesn’t then I gotta get up at 0400
If it doesn’t then my Sperry Topsiders need a shine
I left my oath of enlistment in Viet-Nam
There, with the memories of many dear friends
It will rest in peace without any regard
For someone else’s made-in-China slogan tee
Tuesday, January 30, 2024
Elon Musk Invites Us Down for Chips and Dip and Destruction - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Elon Musk Invites Us Down
for Chips and Dip and Destruction
They have pulled down Deep Heaven on their Heads
-C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength
He’s implanted a chip, says Mr. Musk
Into the brain (certainly not the hip)
Of some poor patient who’s now just a husk
A talking head, a thing, a radar blip
And what could go wrong with this poor android
A man now fitted with an electric brain
Adjusted and programmed and tweaked and toyed -
A failed experiment thrashing in pain?
And if he fails, this humanoid chip
Musk might use him for guacamole dip
Monday, January 29, 2024
A Penny Candle - and if You Don't Have a Penny, Love will Do - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
A Penny Candle – and if
You Don’t Have a Penny, Love Will Do
The key to the lighting of a church candle is that, in its tiny light, all the mystery of life is drawn up into an eternity excluding only sorrow and loss.
-Tod Mixson
It’s not just that a candle struggles against darkness
But that we do too, trying to sort the chaos
With weary eyes and unsure, trembling hands -
But it is something that we’ve lit the candle
It’s not just that a candle flickers in the darkness
But that we shape against shadows all our hopes
Bundling them into a pilgrim’s haversack
For whatever remains of our journey to Light
For in the end we give the candle away
Offering it to a passing Whisper in the night
This Smart Watch Will Last - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
This Smart Watch Will
Last
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in
-Henry David Thoreau, Walden
I do not set the time; time simply is:
The dawning day requires no entrance code
The morning frost need not be set to wake
The yakking crows cannot be switched to “Off”
The lingering fog sends no notifications
The bare-limbed oaks re-set themselves in spring
The sky is the background app refresh
The wind is a warranty for life
All these good things are made to be -
I do not set the time, but God sets me
The Army of God and, Like, Stuff - doggerel
Lawrence Hall, HSG
The Army of God and, Like, Stuff
They’re loud and they’re
smarmy
They boo and they hiss
They say they’re God’s Army -
But does God know this?
An 'Army of God' Vigilante Group
Plans to Head to the U.S.-Mexico Border (esquire.com)
Thursday, January 25, 2024
When It Comes to Shakespearean Scholarship - This isn't It
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Avon Man and the
Mystery of His First-Best Bed
I gyve unto my wief my second best bed…
-Attributed
to Shakespeare in his will. Or Churchill. Or Milton. Or Elvis. Or Some Famous
Man. And Shakespeare was secretly a Catholic. (No, he wasn’t.) (Yes, he was.)
(No, he wasn’t.) (Yes, he was; I read it on the InterGossip.)
That second-best bed doesn’t matter a pop
Those anyones whoever slept in it are deads
Memorialized as dashboard bobbleheads
At Ye Olde Anne Hathawaye gifte shoppe
Kinge Richarde nevere cryede, “mye kyngdome fore ye bedde!”
Yea, goode olde Sirre Erpinghame joked, “Now lye I like a
kynge”
So what’s the deale withe the firste-beste bedde thynge?
Thatte seconde bedde is where the Widowe rested hir hedde
Ande thusse ye scholares maken withouten cessatione
Unsupportede argumentes and allegationes
Wednesday, January 24, 2024
Dentistry and Dogs - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Dentistry and Dogs
What would the world be like without dogs?
-Mary Oliver
Our little bit of the world was frozen that day
At the dentist’s office something that makes something else
Do something else was frozen and would not work
And so I waited with Mary’s book about dogs
Dog is one of the
messengers of that rich and still magical first world.
The frost was still upon the windowsill
As an hour passed for me and Mary’s dogs
Their adventures in the woods, their lonely times
Their happy glances into their human’s eyes
Our new dog, named for the
beloved poet, / ate a book
Even though the something else was frozen in ice
Our little bit of the world was warmer for a time
Because of the dog’s
joyfulness, our own is increased
Quotes from Mary Oliver, Dog
Songs, Penguin, New York: 2013
Hickory-Doomsday Clock - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Hickory-Doomsday
Clock
Analogue or Digital?
That Doomsday Clock has ticked since
1947
The sweep hand always dancing on the edge of doom
Sometimes a missile more (7, 6, 5, 4…
Sometimes a virus less (a jab, I guess)
I’ve been thinking of buying me one
Maybe from the times-table at Wal-Mart
Or as a timeless fashion from Amazon
I want to know the hour we’re going to die
But are we truly any closer to Heaven?
That Doomsday Clock has tocked since 1947
Out-Outpatient Surgery - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Out-Outpatient Surgery
A little happy pill along the
way
A fuzzy memory of the waiting
room
A bright fluorescent-lit
consulting room
A slippery fake-leather
patient chair
The nurse and I spoke of
children and dogs
(Dang! That needle hurt!)
And about the rain outside
this winter day
(Dang! That needle hurt even more!)
And the doctor spoke (of
what?) (of what?)
Soothingly through the sounds
of cutting flesh
Soothingly through the smells
of burning flesh
And lengths of suture flying
before my eyes
At home I took a happy codeine
pill
While Randolph Scott rode
across the TV
Nurses and doctors make you
all better
Life is good
Monday, January 22, 2024
You Are Not a Series of Adjectives - poem
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!
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
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