Elon Musk Invites Us Down for Chips and Dip and Destruction - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Elon Musk Invites Us Down for Chips and Dip and Destruction

 

They have pulled down Deep Heaven on their Heads

 

-C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength

 

He’s implanted a chip, says Mr. Musk

Into the brain (certainly not the hip)

Of some poor patient who’s now just a husk

A talking head, a thing, a radar blip

 

And what could go wrong with this poor android

A man now fitted with an electric brain

Adjusted and programmed and tweaked and toyed -

A failed experiment thrashing in pain?

 

And if he fails, this humanoid chip

Musk might use him for guacamole dip

 

I am not a Luddite. Electronic chips, as with pacemakers, eyeglasses, and artificial joints, will be used by wise scientists and healers to make our lives better. But I wouldn't trust just anyone in the matter.

Tower 22

"Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, 

and make perpetual Light to shine upon them." 

Specialist Kennedy Ladon Sanders, 24

Specialist Breonna Moffett, 23

Sgt. William Rivers, 46

This Smart Watch Will Last - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

This Smart Watch Will Last

 

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in

 

-Henry David Thoreau, Walden

 

I do not set the time; time simply is:

The dawning day requires no entrance code

The morning frost need not be set to wake

The yakking crows cannot be switched to “Off”

 

The lingering fog sends no notifications

The bare-limbed oaks re-set themselves in spring

The sky is the background app refresh

The wind is a warranty for life

 

All these good things are made to be -

I do not set the time, but God sets me

When it Comes to Shakespearean Scholarship - This isn't It

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Avon Man and the Mystery of His First-Best Bed

 

I gyve unto my wief my second best bed…

 

-Attributed to Shakespeare in his will. Or Churchill. Or Milton. Or Elvis. Or Some Famous Man. And Shakespeare was secretly a Catholic. (No, he wasn’t.) (Yes, he was.) (No, he wasn’t.) (Yes, he was; I read it on the InterGossip.)

 

That second-best bed doesn’t matter a pop

Those anyones whoever slept in it are deads

Memorialized as dashboard bobbleheads

At Ye Olde Anne Hathawaye gifte shoppe

 

Kinge Richarde nevere cryede, “mye kyngdome fore ye bedde!”

Yea, goode olde Sirre Erpinghame joked, “Now lye I like a kynge”

So what’s the deale withe the firste-beste bedde thynge?

Thatte seconde bedde is where the Widowe rested hir hedde

 

Ande thusse ye scholares maken withouten cessatione
Unsupportede argumentes and allegationes

Dentistry and Dogs - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Dentistry and Dogs

 

What would the world be like without dogs?

 

-Mary Oliver

 

Our little bit of the world was frozen that day

At the dentist’s office something that makes something else

Do something else was frozen and would not work

And so I waited with Mary’s book about dogs

 

Dog is one of the messengers of that rich and still magical first world.

 

The frost was still upon the windowsill

As an hour passed for me and Mary’s dogs

Their adventures in the woods, their lonely times

Their happy glances into their human’s eyes

 

Our new dog, named for the beloved poet, / ate a book

 

Even though the something else was frozen in ice

Our little bit of the world was warmer for a time

 

Because of the dog’s joyfulness, our own is increased

 

 

Quotes from Mary Oliver, Dog Songs, Penguin, New York: 2013

 

Awkward Adolescent Verse - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Awkward Adolescent Verse

 

Poetry…

The authority of empires, driven mad,

Threatened it so many times,

But it was the rulers who perished

 

-Yevtushenko, “Poetry is a Great Power”

 

They stole his boots even before he died

And scavengers have eaten out his eyes

His flesh and blood commingle with the mud

His rotting hands still claw the earth, the pain

 

A dime-store notebook, shredded with his heart

Once pencilled with his awkward, juvenile lines

Of undeveloped images and clumsy rhymes

Which will not be shaped and sharpened in this world

 

Among young bodies rats squabble and hiss -

Someone will be given a peace prize for this

 

Methodist Pecans - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Methodist Pecans

 

Methodist pecans

 

Connie-the-Haircut-Queen sells us pecans

Every Christmas, good Methodist pecans

A fundraiser sponsored by the women’s club

To be baked into cookies and pies for Christmas day

 

Methodist pecans

 

They used to come from my grandfather’s trees

But now they’re grown and gathered somewhere else

Packaged in plastic, certified, and sealed

But still they’re good Methodist pecans

 

Methodist pecans

 

And in January when the hail-storms rattle

Stuffed in a barn-coat pocket while tracking cattle

 

Methodist pecans - Texas blessed and Texas’ best!