The Children’s Back Yard Museum of Art
Children are the truest arbiters of art.
Finding beauty in the unlikeliest things:
A bottle cap, a rusted auto part.
Metal washers, broken glass, cigar rings
Search Results for: Lawrence Hall
A Dream About Birdcage Walk
By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … In the perfection of an impossibility / I was tagging along behind Margaret Thatcher
Read MoreLest Our Old Shoes Sit Easier Than Our New
By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … When we were children we were proud of our new shoes / Our once-a-year shoes in situational poverty / Although we went barefootin’ most of the time / As long as the weather and parents allowed
Read More“Remarkably Like Any Other Place”
By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … Life is a pilgrimage from cell to cell: / The bedroom of one’s childhood, the college dorm / The noisy barracks, merry in spite of all / Eighty conscript soldiers bunked out in rows
Read MoreTime is a Falling Leaf (Battery not Included)
By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … A child and a puppy playing on the lawn / Tumbling through soft grass in the bliss of June / We joy in their celebration of life / Everything is new / Except that it isn’t
Read MoreThe Pale Lady of the Well
By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall …when outside at dusk with poetry and pipe / And a whisper of single-malt offered to the earth / Sometimes I seem to see visions proper to a Celt / And hear soft songs from the dawn of time
Read MoreSpring 2023: An Issue of Liberty
Join us as we explore the issues of Life! In this issue you will find thoughts on history, Jesus, the prison system, motherhood, and plenty more!
Read MoreThe Saturday Morning Tee-Ball Hero
By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … A little moppet scampers around the tee / Waving her plastic bat as a warrior’s sword / Or as a fairy-wand to magic the day / Her first-ever tee-ball lesson with Dad…
Read MoreWho Has Been Eating My Chair?
By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … Lawn chairs are for lawn-sitting quite at our ease / Soft summer evenings with a book and a glass / With birds and squirrels chittering away / Merrily over their supper of chicken scratch
Read MoreSend Them Your Dawn, O Lord
We repudiate Putin and all his works / And all his pomps and all his engines of death / And all his malignant servile orcs / Who crucify humanity with lies
Read MoreThe Shape of a Poem, the Shape of a Life
Yes, they are awkward, those poems written in shapes / But if God writes our lives as poetry / Limned and formed for our continuation / We ask that He shape us with clarity and charity
Read MoreEverybody Writes a Poem About the Moon
Everybody writes about the moon / Often trying to force a balky rhyme / Along the continuum of spoon and croon / Which just won’t fill the bill, the quill, or the time
Read MoreWake Up, Back Yard!
Brave seedlings from last year’s sunflowers arise / Among the tiny wings of zinnia buds / And the pushy skunk cabbages who hang around / Like playground bullies who ought to go find jobs
Read MoreOn the Consumption of Art
But we do not consume a work of art / Sometimes we almost seem to marry it / Joining art in a sacrament of love / Beyond the velvet ropes of ownership
Read MoreDon’t Follow the Science
“Follow the science” is itself an unscientific expression, personifying science as a sort of cosmic Boy Scout troop leader or perhaps a soldier taking the point. It suggests that we should not follow our hearts (which is just as illogical), our music, our dreams, or anything else except science personified almost as a deity.
Read MoreAll Intelligence is Artificial
No, no, we are not banks of blinking lights / And random teletype-type taps and beeps / Like Patrick McGoohan’s educational General / Or George Jetson’s mainframe at Spacely Sprockets
Read MoreTreadmills, Exercise, Open Cars, Champagne, and Cigars
The panther-like litheness of my youth (cough) long ago expanded into the, oh, prosperous look of Chaucer’s merchant, and so I have gotten into the excellent but Calvinistic habit of, well, treading along a treadmill every day.
Read MorePeople of the Book
The Thought became Incarnate in Judaea / And thoughts become incarnate in the books we read / For thoughts are tabernacles of our hopes / Tents in the deserts of our wanderings
Read MoreOn the Consumption of Art
An artist writes about the consumption of art / As if a painting, a poem, a video / A statue in the lobby of the medical center / Were a tin of meatballs and spaghetti
Read MoreFor Jack On His Birthday
In the long ago I was reading a book / (And doubtless thinking many brilliant thoughts) / Sitting in my car outside Our Lady’s Church / Waiting for some old-lady meeting to end
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LogoSophia Magazine 