Wednesday, February 7, 2024

A Burning Car in Baghdad - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

A Burning Car in Baghdad

 

 

The delusion that by force you can impose the Millennium on the human race is one of the most dangerous delusions in existence.


― Agatha Christie, They Came to Baghdad

 

 

In the center of Baghdad a burning car

Illuminates long centuries of pain

Inflicted by schemes of improvement upon

A city of scholarship, wisdom, and art

 

Militias, commanders, air-strikes, and bombs

So clever that they can single out one car

Without harming another car at the traffic light -

And somehow this will make the world all better

 

Dullard journalists will type “tit-for-tat”

Because they don’t know anything else to say

 

And neither do I

Cups and Jugs and Kettles and Beds - something more than a Quatrain

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Cups and Jugs and Kettles and Beds

 

St. Mark 7:1-13

 

Let the coffee cups rattle with denunciations

About the contextual meaning of “beds”

At the fossil table in the roadside cafĂ©’

That Javneh of theological studies

 

For the health and comfort of our other guests

No smoking, please

Tuesday, February 6, 2024

A Sanitary Pad Along Beer Can Road - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

A Sanitary Pad Along Beer Can Road

 

 

To walk abroad, and recreate yourselves

 

-Julius Caesar III.ii.256

 

 

A sanitary pad along Beer Can Road

Sodden and heavy with the waning night’s damp

And beer cans shining in the morning sun

Completing a picture of misadventure

 

I once found a ratchet wrench about here

And a knot of twist-ties further along

And a couple of disposable lighters for toking crack

I’ll just give this latest detritus a miss

 

But on my morning stroll I won’t pass by

Without a prayer for happiness for all

 

Especially my nocturnal predecessors

 

Monday, February 5, 2024

A Dusty Drum Kit - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

A Dusty Drum Kit

 

In a re-sale shop in Huntington, Texas

 

Fronting for decaying videotapes

And clocks that will never again chime the time

Through tinny mechanical syncopation

A drum set reposes without percussion

 

An arpeggio of silent despair

Whose cymbals and snare impatiently wait

As do the bass and other impedimenta

For the hand of a youth who has something to howl

 

The next kid through the door might bell the cat:

“There it is – I will rhythm the truth with that!”

 

Sunday, February 4, 2024

The Latest Atmospheric River End-of-the-World Pineapple Express Bomb Cyclone from H**l

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The Latest Atmospheric River End-of-the-World 

Pineapple Express Bomb Cyclone from H**l

 

 

The news is falling! The news is falling!

 

-as Chicken Little did not say

 

 

An apocalyptic storm of such intensity

We’re all going to drown in a flood of breaking news

The streets already overflowing with hyperbole

From reporters in damp shoes awaiting their cues

 

Saturday, February 3, 2024

A Quatrain to Explain the Infinite Monkey Theory

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

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!

Friday, February 2, 2024

A Rotor-Tiller and the Feast of the Presentation - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

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

Reading the Room - doggerel

   Lawrence Hall Mhall46184@aol.com Dispatches for the Colonial Office   Reading the Room   I don’t know to read a room, but look – I’m stil...