We Have All Written Poems about September - and, yes, this is a poem about September

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

We Have all Written Poems about September

 

 

(Not applicable on that half the planet where September is a springtime month)

 

(Certain taxes and fees might apply)

 

(Offer void where prohibited)

 

(Some assembly required)

 

Everyone writes poetry about September

The cooling of the summer-sun-beaten earth

A few more hummingbirds with maps of Mexico

A first leaf skittering across the grassy lane

 

The sky looks a little different somehow

A fresh breeze rises with the gentle dawn

Sitting outside at dusk is comfortable now

Notebook and pen are easier to the hand

 

Everyone writes poetry about September

As every worker and dreamer ought to do

For English Pick Up the Anglophone - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

For English Pick Up the Anglophone

 

For English pick up the Anglophone

For French the Francophone

For others in Canada the Allophone

          (“‘Allo! ‘Allo!”)

For Mandarin or Cantonese the Sinophone

For Portugal the Lusophone

In Deutschland perhaps the Deutschesphone

          (or perhaps not)

And in Russia the Russophone

 

Please phone in, everyone

 

Because isn’t it wonderful -

So many phones, and each with a direct line to God

Li Po Writes to us from his Mountain - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Li Po Writes to us from his Mountain

 

Li Po, “Ancient Air,” p. 84

A Book of Luminous Things, ed. Czeslaw Milosz

 

We read of the poets of China

In the days of the Golden Tang

In the time of The Gathering of Kings

When The Silk Road carried dreams

 

Government officials were the poets

And poets were the government officials

Who knew The Five Classics by heart

And wrote of China in Tang quatrains

 

They were writing to the Emperor

And now they are writing to us

God in the Hands of Angry Sinners - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

God in the Hands of Angry Sinners

 

As Jonathan Edwards did not say

 

How do they find so much hatred in their Book?

 

Why do they bind their scriptures and themselves

In anger, duct tape, and camouflage

Why do they raise high the AR and their fists

Instead of salvation and the Holy Cross?

 

Where do they find so much hatred in their Book?

 

Why have they abandoned the altars of Truth

For the flagpole idolatry of the pagan state

In coven-circles facing each other and a pole

Like Canaanites and their wooden Asherim?

 

Why do they find so much hatred in their Book?

 

If they would look beyond their own perimeter wire

They would see

A Maiden dancing

            In Galilee

For Booger-Dog of Happy Memory - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

For Booger-Dog of Happy Memory

 

And for his pet human Max

 

The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is his dog.

 

-George Graham Vest

 

His fuzzy little bed is empty today

His dinner is untasted, his water bowl full

Awaiting his ungentlemanly slurps

And his favorite toy seems lonely and lost

 

He will not claim space on my pillow tonight

Nor chase dream rabbits while cuddling with me

Nor lick my nose to wake me up at…

(Geez, Booger, do you know what time it is!?)

Leaping and barking to be allowed outside

 

He will not bound into the kitchen at dawn

Happily barking his joy unto God

Circling and snuffling for his breakfast treat

A bit of bacon or egg from a loving hand

 

Because his brave little soul has flown

To wait for me at the foot of that glorious Throne

Cleaning a Metaphorical Rifle - short poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Cleaning a Metaphorical Rifle

 

The Detachable Magazine Holds Ten Lines

 

There is no such thing as an unloaded word

And once a word has left the barrel it’s gone

You cannot call it back – were you sure of your aim?

Draft Beer, Not Students - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Draft Beer, Not Students

 

A slogan from the 1960s

 

In illo tempore:

 

A young man swaggers across the ‘versity quad

Smoking a Marlboro or affecting a pipe

‘Way cool in his sports coat and turtleneck

Shakespeare or physics held loosely in his hand

 

A young woman passes through the ‘versity quad

Smoking a Parliament or checking her mirror

‘Way cool in her pencil skirt and layered look

Shakespeare or physics held closely to her heart

 

Sed in tempore nostro:

 

Pronouns galumph across the ‘versity squad

One fist raised in hate, the other clutching a glowing box

You are not a Banana - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

You are not a Banana

 

Sticker Not, Lest Ye be Stickered

 

A banana bears a sticker to say it is a banana

(The banana, that is, not the paper sticker)

Even though a banana is obviously a banana

(It has a yellow skin and some squashy stuff inside)

 

If we take the banana sticker from the banana

And stick the ticker to a tomato

The tomato is not then a banana

However much someone claims it so

 

Sticking sticky stickers to humans is also wrong

A man is himself; a woman is herself

If we stick a sticky sticker to a human

As a joke, well, that’s just a bit of fun

 

But if as a judgement then we are false witnesses

 

Stickers, nothing but stickers, excuses

Failures of intellect, truth, and caritas

Stickers are two-dimensional; they have no depth

Stickers are useless even on bananas

 

And our brothers and sisters are not bananas

Barefootin' Among Watermelons on a Summer Afternoon - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Barefootin’ Among Watermelons on a Summer Afternoon

 

For J. W., His Dad, and His Uncle Brandon

 

J. W. is blessed with family and purpose and love

Guided study and chores and structured faith

Happy barefootin’ days among the watermelons

A fishing pole and buzzing-bee summer afternoons

Feeding the Squirrels and Birds at Dawn - very short poem

 Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Feeding the Squirrels and Birds at Dawn

 

A squirrel sits upon a little mound of corn

And faces the east with its nimble forepaws

Clasped gently together as if in prayer

The Grave Robber of Fifth Avenue - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The Grave Robber of Fifth Avenue

 

Unferth postures upon the ashes of warriors

The warriors he has despised all his wretched life

Because he is unworthy to be one of them

Warring with only his mouth and never a spear

 

He mocks their wounds, their missing limbs, their graves

He steals their widows and orphans for himself

As ornaments to his manic caperings

While arrogating honors he could never win

 

But when the Dragon comes…

 

But when the Dragon comes, lashing its tail

Unferth will be ghosted away as a howling wail

J. Alfred Prufrock and the Giant Peach - not really a poem, just three frivolous lines of blank verse

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

J. Alfred Prufrock and the Giant Peach

 

“Do I dare to eat a peach?” He asked

“Yes, yes. just eat the stupid peach and stop

Banging on about it,” I replied

Kafka and the Self-Service Checkout Kiosk - a bit of fun

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Kafka and the Self-Service Checkout Kiosk

                                                                 Thanks to Rowan Pelling

                                    Those who have never suffered through Kafka

Should not employ the adjective “Kafkaesque”

The landgraf would not approve

 

When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning

from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed

in his bed into a monstrous self-service checkout kiosk.

 

Someone must have traduced Joseph K.,

for without doing anything wrong

he was arrested in the checkout line

one fine morning

 

It was late in the evening when

the supermarket supervisor arrived.

 

 

Kafka, The Metamorphosis. Trans. Stanley Corngold. New York: Norton. 1972

 

Kafka, The Trial. Trans. Willa and Edwin Muir. New York: The Modern Library. 1956

 

Kafka, The Castle. Trans. Willa and Edwin Muir. New York: Schocken. 1982

 

The hell of self-service checkouts is becoming Kafkaesque (yahoo.com)

To God, Who Still Gives Joy to Our Youth - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

To God, Who Still Gives Joy to Our Youth

 

 

Introibo ad altare Dei

 

Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutam meum

 

 

Missals calendaring the liturgical year

Mantillas in reverent rows marked out by children

Children as rosary beads sorting out the Aves

And men in this-is-choking-me suits and ties

 

Candles in colored glass in reverent rows

Decades of prayers, centuries incensed with prayers

Corinthian columns in reverent rows of awe

Or perhaps the humble Doric, upholding Heaven

 

Fiddleback chasubles in liturgical colors

Sequenced by seasons in prismatic reverent rows

Sewn long ago by loving reverent hands

Each stitch enriched with a Latin prayer

 

Fidgety altar boys in their Sunday shoes

The processional cross their grandfathers knew

Nonnas, Nanas, MeeMaws in reverent rows

The occasional bead-bang of a rosary against a pew

 

The occasional knee-pinch to a squirming child

Latin responses in sequenced reverent rows

Latin, which later we were told we didn’t understand

Quia putabant nos stulti essemus

 

And on the Altar the eternal Sacrifice

Which no tyranny can ever take away

 

Sed fuit, est, erit

If a Book Could Take Just One Human to a Desert Island - very short not-really-a-poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

If a Book Could Take Just One Human to a Desert Island

 

Who would it take?

 

You?

 

Me?

 

Dostoyevsky?

 

A librarian?

Upon Re-Reading William L. Shirer's THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Upon Re-Reading William L. Shirer’s

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

 

Perhaps one day America will go fascist democratically, by popular vote.

 

-William L. Shirer, New York Times, 29 December 1969

 

We do not live Samsara, for Samsara has meaning

So this is not Samsara; this is a cascade of deaths

We live in linear time – or maybe we don’t -

And the gods of hate sneak in ahead of us

Before Me Sits Young Pablo Neruda - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Before Me Sits Young Pablo Neruda

 

On the paperback cover of Residence on Earth

 

Before me sits pensive Pablo Neruda

His young face resting upon his slender hand

He looks a little to the left of the photographer’s eye

He appears to be thinking great thoughts

 

Or he might be thinking

 

Why am I posing like a high school senior?

 

 

Residence on Earth, introduction by Jim Harrison

New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation

Assembling a Metal Lawn Chair with Great Care (and a Ball-Peen Hammer) - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Assembling a Metal Lawn Chair with Great Care

 (and a Ball-Peen Hammer)

 

A friend gave me a lawn chair in tangerine

Bright tangerine, with instructions in English

Which I followed most assiduously

Which parts of the chair most surely did not

 

The instructions did not mention a ball-Peen hammer

With brutality and words which must not be spoken

(Think of Vulcan and his mighty strokes)

I finally assembled the chair to my satisfaction

 

And then I sat down

 

Our Children Will Ask Us What We Did in 2024 - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Our Children Will Ask Us What You Did in 2024

 

 

            Thus was th’ applause they meant,

Turned to exploding hiss, triumph to shame

Cast on themselves from thir own mouths.

 

Milton, Paradise Lost, X.545-547

 

 

Have we not learned?

 

The Zeppelinfield, the Kroll Opera House

The Great Hall of 10,000 People

The Hippodrome, the Piazza Venetia

Red Square, and the Quicken Loans Arena

 

Weak beings subsumed within one commanding Will

Adoring with glistening eyes and beating hearts

A strident oligarchy of destiny

Chanting obscurities and pumping fists

 

But when the chanting stops and foul diktats roll –

Will you - will I? - be a defiant soul?

Blue Moon and a Spooky Old Tree - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Blue Moon and a Spooky Old Tree

 

To watch the moonrise is almost liturgical

Her bright silver light behind the far-off pines

Rising and glowing and larger and larger

Silent and silver, lifting above the woods

 

I set a camera to watch Moon through the night

Electronics see the night and light differently

The old apple tree appears white and skeletal

And ghosts pretending to be insects flit about

 

Moon and trees and ghosts when left alone

Make merry mischief knowing that I am gone