Lawrence Hall, HSG
I Hear America Whining
The world’s fattest people, packin’ the pounds
Driving in to McDonald’s whenever struck by the mood
And then to the beer joint, drinking in rounds
While complaining about the price of food
Saturday, October 26, 2024
I Hear America Whining - doggerel
Friday, October 25, 2024
Torah is Written with Flames - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Torah is Written with Flames
English letters are as
orderly as a battle line
But Hebrew letters are
flames in their shining shapes
Even on a printed page
they dance in light
And with Light comes Truth;
you can see God in them
For Hebrew letters are the
Burning Bush
The fires of Mount Horeb,
the Temple sacrifice
The light of a Talmud
scholar’s study lamp
The light of Torah upon
civilization
We don’t know our letters
as well as we should
But God has written them
upon our hearts
Tuesday, October 22, 2024
Driving Home After Work: "Thus Spake Zarathustra" on the Radio - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Driving Home After
Work:
“Thus Spake Zarathustra”
on the Radio
The first few bars must always remind us of
That space movie from the future long ago
With sophomores beating each other up
Or anyone trying to spell “Zarathustra “
Without looking it up; no spelling now
Driving into a drought-red setting sun
The vapours of chemicals, road tar, dust
Allergens drifting among the toxins
Poetry sorts meaning from chaos seeming -
Maybe not tonight (Sneeze!)
We are All Children When We Attempt Haiku
Lawrence Hall, HSG
We are All Children When We Attempt Haiku
We all write Haiku
We’re not any good at it
But we honor the Shijin
SNL: Because Men Who Betray women are so Amusing
Lawrence
Hall, HSG
SNL: Because Men Who Betray Women
are so Amusing
Re: Bang-Bang
Baldwin
A man
shoots a woman
For
which another woman takes the fall
And Saturday
Night Live
Is
okay with it all
Saturday, October 19, 2024
Cardinal Dolan Kisses King Herod's (Hands) - doggerel
Lawrence Hall, HSG
The High Priest Kisses King Herod’s (Hands)
His Eminence the Cardinal of New York
The High Priest kisses King Herod’s (hands)
And joins him for a feast of mockeries and lies
Giving the tyrant for his crimes a pass
Laughing at Truth as civilization dies
Over lobster and beef they pity the poor
While robed in white ties and evening gowns
And silken ecclesiastical couture
(One of them has visions of papal crowns)
Gluttony and scorn at a rented manse -
All that is missing is Salome’s dance
Thursday, October 17, 2024
The First Barn-Jacket Morning in Autumn - haiku
Lawrence Hall, HSG
The First Barn-Jacket Morning in Autumn
Dawn – windy and cold
The first barn-jacket morning
Wild geese singing south
Tuesday, October 15, 2024
The Kittens Come on Little Fog Feet - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
The Kittens Come on Little Fog Feet
As Carl Sandburg did not say
At dawn: coffee and the Wordle and thoughts
The moon’s still full, but one last star winks out
The dew-bathed oaks drip onto a tricky word
Fog drifts in silence among the tricky light
A little paw stirs soft autumn’s molding leaves
And then two eyes appear, and a greeting tail
The forming image of the cat completes itself
And then another – two abandoned cats
These tiny orphans approach – and love begins
To them I pledge
They will never be hungry or lonely again
Sunday, October 13, 2024
On Reading THREE HUNDRED TANG POEMS - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
On Reading Three Hundred Tang Poems
From The Jade Mountain they
came
300 Tang dreams
Each in its well-ordered
frame
Cups adrift in streams
The ancients speak to us
still
Wisdom from the high
Each word a clear-flowing
rill
Each a song, a sigh
Three
Hundred Tang Poems
Translated
and edited by Peter Harris
© 2009 by
Peter Harris
Typeset in
Somerset, England
Printed and
bound on Possneck, Germany
Everyman’s
Library Pocket Poets
New York:
Knopf
Toronto:
Penguin Random House
London:
Everyman’s Library
Saturday, October 12, 2024
An Autumn Flight - haiku
Lawrence Hall, HSG
An Autumn Flight
A leaf fell, a leaf
A life of summer in flight
In bright golden flight
Friday, October 11, 2024
A Dixson Ticonderoga #2 Pencil from 1955 - poem and photograph
Lawrence Hall, HSG
A Dixon Ticonderoga #2 Pencil from 1955
Neither plans nor bathroom
vents last forever
The workmen pulled down the old
one from ‘55
Amid a tumble of old nails
and bits of wood:
A Dixon Ticonderoga #2
The yellow paint a little
aged now
The green metal ring a little
bit dull
The eraser now hardened
beyond all use
The point well-sharpened with
a pocketknife
What sturdy craftsman from
the long ago
Measured out his work - I’d like to know
Thursday, October 10, 2024
One Does Not Pre-Imagine Pre-Edward R. Murrow Pre-Babbling - not exactly a poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
One Does Not Pre-Imagine Pre-Edward R. Murrow Pre-Babbling
A Lesson in Clear Writing for Journalists
Hunker down, swath of destruction, hunker down, write your Social Security number on your arm, hunker down, eerie, hunker down, monster, hunker down, time ticking down / away, hunker down, pre-positioned, hunker down, pre-planned, hunker down, pre-need (and maybe even pre-hunker down), hunker down, pre-deployed, hunker down, spooky (and possibly pre-spooky), hunker down, snapped like matchsticks (“Daddy, what’s a matchstick?”), hunker down, doomed paradise, hunker down, paradise lost, hunker down, lost paradise, hunker down, apocalypse, hunker down, biblical, hunker down, storm of the century (again?), hunker down, doomed, hunker down, doomed, hunker down, pummeled, hunker down, pummeled, hunker down, pummeled, hunker down, power lines brightly bursting, hunker down, eerie calm, hunker down, eerie quiet, hunker down, birds chirping, hunker down, unexpected sparks, hunker down, hazards are unfolding, hunker down, street lamps waver, hunker down, one-two punch, hunker down, what we know, hunker down, hunker down, hunker down
Tuesday, October 8, 2024
A Treatise on the Burrowing Habits of Dachshunds - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
A Treatise on the Burrowing Habits of Dachshunds
A dachshund will burrow under the
garden fence
For every dachshund thinks she is a wolf
A fearsome apex predator with a
squeaky toy -
This is in the nature of dachshunds
A dachshund will burrow into your
tightly-closed hand
Nosing out the doggie treat you have
hidden there
A fearsome apex predator and omnivore
-
This is in the nature of dachshunds
A dachshund bill burrow into your end-of-day
lap
Watching both the television and the
cats
A fearsome apex predator drooling on
your book -
This is in the nature of dachshunds
A dachshund will burrow, borrow, beg,
and bark
And in her foreshadowing of that
better World to come
A dachshund will burrow deeply into
your heart -
And love you forever
This is in the nature of dachshunds
And of you
Sunday, October 6, 2024
We Are Offered Two Candidates for the Presidency - not nearly a poem (but then not nearly a valid choice)
Lawrence Hall, HSG
We Are Offered Two Candidates for the Presidency
I am afraid that one of them will win
Friday, October 4, 2024
Falling Into Truth - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Falling Into
Truth
The fall of October’s leaves
is nothing new
Except that it is – this leaf
never fell before
And we were never here to
watch this leaf
Because we and the leaf were
somewhere else
Except that we were, we are,
we will be
A little leaf, each of us, springtime-new
Then dancing merrily the
summer through
Now floating gently into a
winter’s sleep
A coverlet soft, a hymn, a
night-light moon
Sleep - sleep – another
spring is coming soon
Thursday, October 3, 2024
WE ARE AMERICANS! We Buy Toilet Paper and Fight, Fight, Fight! - a sort-of poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Dock Workers’ Strike – BUY TOILET PAPER!
WE ARE AMERICANS!
Whenever threatened by enemies furry or domestic
By hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, storms
By shortages of food, water, and electric power
By aliens stalking us and eating our cats
By famine, fire, dispossession, revolution
WE BUY TOILET PAPER! WE ARE AMERICANS!
We are armed with our AK-16s and AR – 47s
Uniformed in our Wal-Mart camo from China
Size 89XXXXL-Lard-ass
And we will by God stand together as ONE -
And fight each other to the death for toilet paper!
Oh, and do you know Jesus?
Saturday, September 28, 2024
His Check Engine Light is On - weak excuse for a poem but there's a nice fresh metaphor
Lawrence Hall, HSG
His Check Engine
Light is On
He came by today, a friend from long ago
“I haven’t seen you in a hamster’s age.”
“Yep, too long.”
“How ya doin’?”
“Good enough for government service.”
“Wanna beer?
“Thought you’d never ask.”
“Kids all doin’ good?”
“Yeah; real proud of ‘em. All grown and gone. Yours?”
“Oh, yeah, doin’ doin’ just fine.”
“Heard you was in th’ hospital last year.”
“Yep, made almost about three months of of it.”
“Too much fun.”
“Yep.”
“At our age…”
“Yep.”
“Kids these days.”
“Yep.”
“You okay now?”
“Better’n I deserve. You?”
“Well, you know, my Check Engine light’s on.”
Fresh metaphors are scarcer than crocodile feathers. Thanks,
Chris.
Meditation and Merriment in Early Autumn - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Meditation and Merriment in Early Autumn
We cannot stay young and strong for long -
Both of us have grey hair at the temples
-Du Fu, “To the Recluse Wei the Eighth”
After summer rains the earth is still green
In the cooling breeze oak leaves dance happily
Old lawn chairs are the humble chairs of poets
Old lawn chairs are the glorious thrones of kings
The seasons remind us of our mortality
We sit and ponder the mysteries of change
We will die, to be replaced by other poets
Who will sit and ponder the mysteries of change
And still, whatever these deep thoughts betoken -
I need to mow, but the lawn mower is broken
Three Hundred Tang Poems
Translated by Peter Harris
London: Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets, 2009
An All-You-Can-Eat Buffet of Summer Bugs - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
An All-You-Can-Eat Buffet of Summer Bugs
(He was small in the spring)
When a tree frog moves up in
the world
He becomes a fashionable window
frog
No longer the pain of a rough
tree bark life
But rather the pane of easy
living
(He grew larger during the
summer)
My bedroom window is his
buffet
An all-he-can-eat buffet of bugs
Delicious summer bugs shared
around
With an uncommon house gecko of
style
(He’s really big now)
I look out at a hungry tree
frog, you see
But now – is he looking
hungrily in at me?
The Cosmic Inertia of a Six-Pound Dachshund - short poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
The Cosmic Inertia of a Six-Pound Dachshund
Why is the resistance
factor
In shifting a six-pound
dachshund
Who does not want to be
shifted
Greater than that of tons
of iron?
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