Lawrence Hall, HSG
Dump ‘Em into the
Mixmaster and Stir-Whir-into-a-Blur
Americans
iconic
cannot
icon
write
bombshell
without
axe to grind
employing
the knives are out
tiresome
gunning for
old
fwiw
metaphors
business-as-usual
Battleground states
Eye-watering
scores to settle
Cringe
Bloodthirsty
Guru
Meltdown
Woke
Wardrobe malfunction
Green light
Eviscerate
Breaks cover
Breaks silence
Jaw-dropping
Dump ‘em into the magical metaphorical Mixmaster® and
stir, stir, whirrrrr…
Lawrence Hall, HSG
The Gates of Kiev
are Smoke-Poisoned Skies
The Gates of Kiev are now only the skies
Drone-battered-bombed by the Siloviki
Against the peace of churches and sunflower fields
Workers and scholars and pastoral scenes
The Gates of Kiev once opened to all the world
Musicians, artists, builders, priests, and poets
Departed as missionaries to every land
Civilization from the Kievan Rus’
But now
The Gates of Kiev are smoke-poisoned skies
Through which foul Satan falls upon Slavic lands
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Poet, Just Look at You
Just look at you, wrestling with your ideas
Perceiving beauty among the burning ruins
Gently shaping the sorrows of the day
Into comfort
Just look at you, wrestling with your words
Heart and mind in position of function
Boldly shaping the confusions of the day
Into meaning
Just look at you, putting your readers first –
You are good
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Who Shares Your Desk?
Hundreds of friends share my desk with me
Leaving coffee and wine and tobacco stains
All over the place, their thoughts cluttering my mind
Dreams and possibilities for my heart
Yevtushenko and his Silver Age
poets
More Russian poets
Shakespeare in a worn college
omnibus
Larry McMurtry
(One
must understood that in Texas Lonesome Dove is a holy text)
The Oxford Book of Twentieth
Century English Verse
The Oxford Book of Narrative
Verse
The Oxford Book of Christian
Verse
The Oxford Book of
Seventeenth Century Verse
Leonard Cohen and his famous
blue raincoat
Cavafy at an oblique angle to
the universe
Wordsworth and Dorothy out for a
walk
Plath
Keats
Sondheim
Montale
Hopkins
The Oxford Book of English
Verse, the 1939 Q Edition
(Not
that Q!)
The Oxford Book of English
Verse, the 1999 Ricks Edition
Pasternak
Lewis
Frankl
The Oxford Book of Victorian
Verse
Kafka
Herrick
Milosz
Virgil
Tennyson
Wavell and his manly flowers
Claude McKay
300 Tang poets (they do
seem to drink a lot)
Mary Oliver and all her doggies
So there they are, in untidy rows and piles
(The Tang
poets simply will not behave)
They are patient with my slovenliness
Pens, screwdrivers, a Rosary, two light bulbs
(I don’t
know why)
A thermometer from my grandparents’ house
A 1962 Missale Romano and a toy fire truck
An Orthodox ikon from Tod of happy memory
A Tupperware coffee cup they don’t make anymore
Spare spectacles for seeing what comes next
Hundred of friends who ask the best of me
And who don’t mind my rows and piles of words
They talk to me, and I ask their advice
I pray that I am not a disappointment to them
Or to you
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Which Karamazov are You?
Wise Dostoyevksy
Writes with holy words the mysteries
Of the Russian soul
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Which Karamazov
are You?
Wise Dostoyevksy
Writes with holy words the mysteries
Of the Russian soul
Lawrence Hall, HSG
An Old G.I. Belt Buckle
For Storekeeper Third Class Thomas of Knoxville, Tennessee
“What he believed, he did.”
-Laurence Binyon
“In Memory of George Calderon”
An old belt buckle in the back of a shelf
Greening brass on a belt now much too short
Maybe the same one I wore on the Vam Co Tay
Scattered thoughts shift to Thomas; I don’t know why
A good man with a clipboard and a fifty-cal
Sitting on the edge of a bunk feeding a child
Spooning c-rats and making the kid laugh
“One for meeee…and one for youuuu!”
I wonder whatever happened to good ‘ol Thomas
I wonder whatever happened to the child
I wonder whatever happened to all of us
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Atheist Chaplains Forging Mixed Metaphors
“Atheist chaplains are forging a new path in a
changing world”
-CNN 7 November 2024
One seldom thinks of chaplains at a forge
Work-weary, work-stained from hours of smoke and sweat
With mighty hammer strokes bending hot iron
To the will of the artisan in useful things
Some writers forge nothing but metaphors tired
From overuse, and mixed as verbal soup
In music, art, literature, and life paths can be
Cleared
Paved
Traveled
Surveyed
explored
Followed
Noted
Marked
Mapped
Found
But it is not in the nature of paths to be forged
Atheist chaplains and metaphor soup
Are nothing more than an ouroborosian loop
(Look upon this fresh
metaphor and neologism
And despair)
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Vice-President Kamala Harris’ Speech of Gratitude and Farewell to Her Faithful Followers in the Early Hours of 6 November 2024
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Election Night
2024: Dry Bones
“All we are, basically, are monkeys with car keys”
-Grandma Woody in Northern Exposure, “Animals R
Us,” 1991
An early dusk falls under clouds from the Gulf
Yellow houselights wink on as daylight winks off
Supper in greasy bags from fast-fooderies
That everyone argues they can’t afford
Then like the lozenge in A Space Odyssey
A screen appears and dominates all
And family groupings center themselves around it
In excited cavortings before the images
Of brightly-colored cultic election scores
As fists swinging dry bones crush enemy skulls
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Nora, Theo, and Pushkin-the-Rescue-Cat
After rough adventures Pushkin has found his way home
The children celebrate with him his happy new life
By crowning their purring prince with vines and flowers
And he is pleased to accept their adoration and love
Too soon children must leave their merriments
And rebuild civilization among the wreckages
In a time of hatreds and ideologies
When all seem to have forgotten the way to Jerusalem
And so for now
May children enjoy the springtime of their lives
For they (and the cat) remind us of our appointed path
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Porta Coeli
“I pray you, sir, remember the porter”
-Macbeth II.iii.20ff
We are all porters; we open doors for others
Sometimes we open them for ourselves
If we close a door, it is against the rain and cold
And not against each other
(Yes, in Macbeth
the Porter is drunk and inept, and when he says “remember the porter” he is
asking for a tip in spite of his incompetence. I put the line in anyway because
we are all porters.)
Lawrence Hall, HSG
The Most Embarrassed Young Father in All of Christendom
I will go in to the Altar of God.
To God who giveth joy to my youth.
The Roman Missal, 1962
The processional had hardly ended
With each minister and server in place
Each knee for a moment respectfully bended
In acknowledgement of God’s gentle Grace
When came to our ears a frightening assault
Of sirens and horns, and then flashing lights
Beneath the sanctuary’s sacred vault
A catalogue of wild electronic frights
To the narthex door a father rushed
Awkwardly in the sight of God and man
His handsome manly face was deeply flushed
His son’s toy helicopter was clutched in his hands
He carried the noisy gadget far away -
(A true helicopter parent we may say!)
We delight in our children; for them we pray
And thank God for all families this Sabbath day
I will go in to the Altar of God.
To God who giveth youthful joy to old age.
-Parenting 1301
Lawrence Hall, HSG
The Sunday Evening News in a Time of Elections
“Good things of day begin to droop
and drowse”
-Macbeth III.ii.58
Suddenly the yellowing afternoon
is still
For Indian Summer breezes
have slipped away
While clouds of silent
midges swirl against the sun
For reasons of nature known
only to themselves
The treeline is blue as
evening comes on
But the hayfields glow
golden for a little while
Until Old Sol falls asleep
at last
And the firstling stars
come out to play
A rabbit shyly nibbles at
the dewing grass –
The day is over; we have
to let it pass
Lawrence Hall, HSG
A Plumber’s Assistant, a Nazi, and an Artificial Tree
Nazi Rally in Madison Square Garden, 10 February 1939
Isadore Greenbaum wanted to punch a Nazi
And so he charged – he didn’t get very far
And was beaten up by Real Americans (cough)
(It took only four or five of ‘em)
And arrested by the New York City Police
One Nazi stopped kicking Greenbaum to set aright
An artificial tree that was about to fall
Which is a curiosity – what remnant of good
Was in that man that he kept a decoration in place?
Greenbaum is a hero in our nation’s history -
The tidy Nazi remains a mystery
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
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
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!)
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
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
