Lawrence Hall, HSG
Search Them Out and Destroy Them
Do you truly and honestly
want your writing
Finally to be actually and
really stronger?
Then go search out your
adverbs. Kill them all.
Do you want your writing
to be stronger?
Saturday, March 9, 2024
Adverbs: Search Them Out and Destroy Them - poem
Friday, March 8, 2024
Wild Insects I Have Known - doggerel
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Wild Insects I
Have Known
(as Ernest Thompson Seton did not say)
Please don’t tell me that red wasps are benign
A recent one I met had my behind in mind
Its sting by design was most malign
So as I sit please be patient and kind
If I indulge in an unmanly whine!
Sunday, March 3, 2024
No One Keeps a Diary Anymore - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
No One Keeps a
Diary Anymore
Which
is better — to be ruled by one tyrant three thousand miles away or by three
thousand tyrants one mile away?
– Mather Byles
No one keeps a
diary – life is safer that way
Men have been hanged for what they have written
It may be that they revealed some forgotten crime
Or, worse, that they possessed the gift of thought
No one keeps a diary – life is safer that way
The Moms for Liberty are scared of books
Even the diary of a little girl
Because children must not read or write or think
No one keeps a diary – life is safer that way -
And have you self-purged your own books today?
South Carolina school district reviews, returns books after
ban attempt (msn.com)
Saturday, March 2, 2024
Bees and Breeze and Lime-Green Butterflies - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Bees and Breeze
and Lime-Green Butterflies
How
beautiful the world is
In
the morning cool and clear!
-Anna Ahkmatova, “The Lime-Trees by the Open Door”
Bees and breeze and lime-green butterflies
Follow the little green electric tiller
Bouncing through the turf from clod to clod
Upending roots and sticks and last year’s grass
Fresh soil awakened from its winter sleep
Eager to push summer sunflowers up and up
Sneezes and wheezes follow the tiller too
Pollens in green and yellow, clouds of allergens
But, oh, the earthen scents, perfect skies -
Bees and breeze and lime-green butterflies!
Friday, March 1, 2024
Is LONESOME DOVE a Sacred Text? - quatrain
Lawrence Hall, HSG
One of Texas’
Sacred Books
Taking an oath by placing one hand
On a copy of Lonesome Dove
Is not yet law in our sacred land
But by the Grace of God above…
Someday it might be
Tuesday, February 27, 2024
Never Mind the Guns and the Drugs; Seize the Books - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Never Mind the Guns
and the Drugs; Seize the Books
By
1938, the Nazis had banned eighteen categories of books,
4,175
titles, and the complete works of 565 authors…
-Molly Guptill Manning, When Books Went to War
Ideologues search libraries for dirty books
Because reading might give people ideas
And encourage them to think for themselves
Tyrants are threatened by words and ideas
Censors search Mary Poppins for dirty words
Because a wide vocabulary might give people ideas
And encourage them to think for themselves
Tyrants are threatened by words and ideas
In an era when even mere literacy is suspicious
Tyrants are threatened by words and ideas
How conservative and liberal book bans differ amid rise in
literary restrictions - ABC News (go.com)
The Spread of Book Banning - The New York Times
(nytimes.com)
States Tell SCOTUS That Social Media Censors Conservatives :
The NPR Politics Podcast : NPR
List of banned films - Wikipedia
Over 170 books banned from Florida school libraries
following new education reform - CBS News
Monday, February 26, 2024
Broccoli on the Primary Ballot - quatrain
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Broccoli on the Primary
Ballot
(As President Bush
maior did not say)
Broccoli, limp broccoli, that’s all I see
Just rotting broccoli all stink, stunk, stank
No real choices today, only broccoli –
The same old broccoli, putrid and rank
Sunday, February 25, 2024
The Dime-Store Philosophy of Kahlil Gibran - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
The Dime-Store
Philosophy of Kahlil Gibran
How The Prophet Made Kahlil Gibran a Household Name in
America ‹ Literary Hub (lithub.com)
The dime-store philosophy of Kahlil Gibran
(“Daddy,
what’s a dime-store? And what’s a dime?”)
Reposing mostly undisturbed on brick-and-board shelves
The free-verse love-salad of Rod McKuen
And Lord of the Rings in
50-cent paperbacks
The Seekers played over and over on the phonograph
(“Daddy,
what’s a phonograph? Is it something bad?”)
Have you heard The Mamas and the Papas’ latest single?
Peter, Paul & Mary in “stacks of wax”
Three-chord commandos in every coffee shop
Looking back - it wasn’t the greatest stuff
But for the time and place, it was good enough
A Dragon Has Just Flown Over the Treetops - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
“A Dragon Has Just
Flown Over the Treetops…”
“We must all show great constancy.”
-C. S. Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Dragons! They seem to land among us daily
Blotting out all happiness, all innocent joys
In appearance and demeanor ugly and scaly,
Suppressing silence through foul foolish noise
Dragons! They don’t like anything about who we are
Our words, our works, our walks, our dreams, our tunes,
Our happy memories of a long-ago star
Our lazy moments in barefoot afternoons
Dragons! They want to crush us in the end
But we’ve read the story – we always win
Saturday, February 24, 2024
The Great Matter of Processing Hogs at the County Jail
Lawrence Hall, HSG
The Great Matter
of Processing Hogs at the County Jail
The poets have been mysteriously silent on the topic
of hogs
-as G. K. Chesterton did not say
Our candidates for county sheriff have promised
There will be no more hanky-panky hog-ness
At the county jail
(Where
Elvis says the cats do wail)
Maybe the prisoners are going vegan now
The chief deputy says the hogs are a charity
That the prisoners are happy to butcher them
And share the meat out for the hungry poor
And nobody gets any personal advantage out of it
But whether the prisoners were volunteers or tasked
Certainly none of the hogs was ever asked
Friday, February 23, 2024
No, I Will Not Watch X - quatrain
Lawrence
Hall, HSG
No, I Will Not Watch X
For all
the same reasons I repudiate Q
I will not
watch X, not even for you
And I
regret that you asked me to -
They’re
both a Macbethian witches’ brew
Night of the Long Sporks - quatrain
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Night of the Long Sporks
Republicans have their
sporks out for each other
Slashing each member with
unpassable bills
Impeaching each MAGA
sister and brother -
The 118th Congress gives me
the chills!
Thursday, February 22, 2024
IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT ALL OVER EUROPE AND OHIO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Lawrence Hall, HSG
IT’S THE END OF THE
WORLD AS WE KNOW IT
ALL OVER EUROPE
AND OHIO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Great AT&T Blink of 2024
America has failed, Babylon has fallen
Amid sturm und drang and riot and rout
Civilization has collapsed and we can’t call it in
Because our telephones are out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(Oh, it’s back on – is this Joe’s Pizza?)
How to Write a Modern Scholarship Application Letter
Lawrence Hall, HSG
How to Write a Modern
Scholarship Application Letter
On a photocopy of a photocopy
of a word soup scribbled in pencil on a torn-out sheet of notebook paper at
lunch:
My future life plan goals include being a jet pilot or a
dentrist I havent chose a college yet I have a A in honers English your cholarship
would mean I don’t have to stress about working and my mom and dad don’t have
to stress about working I can just make good grades about stressing about
working I love aminals my hobbies are hanging with my friends and video games I
want to attend community college and become a veteranariarian PHd i was in
peewee football and cheerleading I want to major in bussiness’es and get my
batchelors in bussinnesse’s administeriation in my spare time I hanging with my
friends and we right fourwheeler’s and s’tuff i have looked at your program and
it look’s alright for me maybe I would like it because as a wise man once said to
thine true self be thine I am active in my crurch I WRITE music and build legos
my dreams are in my music i write I help with blue Santa last year I take care
of my specail need’s sister which is why I want to be an pediatrishin to help
specail nee’ds kids and I can inspire other’s to be like me my swimming coach
said I would never make the team and I did so I showed everyone who didn’
believe in me because the key to the bridge to success lys in my dream’s
because my dream’s are what make me me and my dream’s are going to take me to
place’s I never dreamed of as a wise man his name was Martin Luther King said
as a wise man named Gandih said it’s in this book as a wise man named Churchell
said as a wise man named Rosa Parks said as a wise man said
As a wise man said
As a man said
Maybe he said
Maybe
I found it in a book somewhere
Standing the Test of Time - quatrain
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Standing the Test
of Time
So tell me about life’s test – is it multiple-guess?
Or fill-in-the-blanks for my empty mind
If the most common answer is C…oh, what a mess!
Gimme a hint, Teach; I’m falling behind!
The Wind Drove the Pages Wild - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
The Wind Drove the
Pages Wild
Reading Yevtushenko on a Windy Day
The flapping, fluttering pages went wild in the wind
And poetry sometimes should go wild, blow wild
To shake those gently slumbering words awake
Provoking peaceful musings into a storm
Nouns chasing verbs into logical conclusions
That turn about and bite the reader in the (hand)
And adjectives torment the symbolism
While adverbs, as always, were mostly in the way
I just wanted a quiet hour with coffee and verse
But flapping, fluttering pages went wild in the wind
Tuesday, February 20, 2024
A Single, Intemperate, Ill-Mannered Line About Tucker Carlson
Lawrence Hall, HSG
A One-Line
Dismissal of Tucker Carlson Isn’t a Poem, But…
Democracy dies in dorkness
Waiting for the Other Boot to Drop - quatrain
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Waiting for the
Other Boot to Drop
And it’s not even a good and honest boot
But the steel-tapped heel and studded sole
Of anger, hatred, and existential despair
One that takes time to pause and stomp the flowers
(The village grouch; you know him well)
Faces Among the Leaves - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Faces Among the Leaves
At first she thought it was but the rock and the
bushes…
But all at once she was aware of a
face among the leaves…
Sigrid Undset,
Kristin Lavransdatter
There
are curious faces among the leaves
Among
the trees and sometimes in the trees
Along
the road a little old man appears
Looking
at me from the trunk of a rotting pine
He
seems to be a little bit annoyed
But
not dangerous; he’s become used to me
Tapping
along with my shiny hiker’s stick
Searching
the winter sky for something of truth
And
there are bare feet dancing in the underbrush
And
faces in the trees I must not see
A Ballerina Arrested for High Treason - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
A Ballerina Arrested for High Treason
Let them dance in praise of His name
-Psalm 150
A ballerina was arrested for high treason
And no wonder – dance is a beautiful
thing
Whether the thunderous tread of a
country line
Or the ethereal flights of Russian
ballet
Dance is a joy, and so must be suppressed
A ballerina was arrested for high treason
A dancer moves to mysteries of her own
On
an imperial stage in Saint Petersburg
Or
barefoot in a meadow among butterflies
Dance
is a joy, and must be controlled
A ballerina was arrested for high treason
In
the street or in a moonlit fairies’ ring
Such wild wonder – dance is a
dangerous thing!
A ballerina was arrested for high treason
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