By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … Those inexpensive missals, all in a row / Upon the chimneypiece of their little home / Each with its ribbons in orderly place / Like children in line for the Eucharist
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By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … I learned that my watch was praising me / For somehow managing to stand on my feet…
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By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … 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…
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By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … Sitting for an hour at an outside café / Sipping coffee and writing verse and, yes / Discreetly noting elegant mademoiselles – / I never got to Paris, but my daughter did
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By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … We can’t take our books with us when we die / That reality shouldn’t bother me, but it does: / The copy of The Brothers Karamazov / I carried in Viet-Nam – off to a re-sale shop?
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By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … Every morning begins with sunlit hope / Perhaps an echo of the Passover seder / “Why is this morning unlike all other mornings?” / Because this day our hope will be fulfilled
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By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … A camera time-stops images as electrical codes / Formed by Kyanon Kabushiki Gaisha / And if that is not high art, then what is? / But codes are not you in your many dimensions…
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By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … The Pulitzer people did not telephone today / Nor did the Library of Congress or the folks at Nobel / I could paper a room with rejection slips / Except that rejections are electronic now
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By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … Methinks I have astronomy; it must be so: / Today the moon eclipsed the jovial sun / And through the clouds and rain a darkness ruled / But with my little car’s headlights I backed it down
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By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … You will make something beautiful in any event / Even if only a silly ceramic frog / Holding a perfectly pointless umbrella / Upon the tree-stump where you feed the birds
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By Joshua David Ling … William’s head bled from the flat of Brock’s axe / Everything happening seemed to be going too fast. / He blinked as he stared through the glare of the sun / But his ears did not fail when Fenris yelled “RUN!”
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By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … Time need not play the tyrant; we have tyrants enough / But it is true that we must go away / When time and God say we have played our game / And must withdraw into another world
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By Cordelia Fitzgerald … The vessel within the vessel of human flesh / Pierced but not hardened by iron transfixed, / Grief and lead-laden from hours of pain unmixed / With comfort, now comfort seeks in her God.
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By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … I used to light a candle for you before Mass / With a prayer that ascended to Heaven / For as long as the candle remained lit / Even after everyone departed, deep into the night
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By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … The flapping, fluttering pages went wild in the wind / And poetry sometimes should go wild, blow wild / To shake those gently slumbering words awake / Provoking peaceful musings into a storm
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By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … In my boyhood, to the Robin Hood oak / I tip-toed in those hot summer afternoons / With my three sharp arrows and my little bow / Craftily eluding the sheriff’s men
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By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall .. Dragons! They seem to land among us daily / Blotting out all happiness, all innocent joys / In appearance and demeanor ugly and scaly, / Suppressing silence through foul foolish noise
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By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … A ballerina was arrested for high treason
/ And no wonder – dance is a beautiful thing / Whether the thunderous tread of a country line / Or the ethereal flights of Russian ballet / Dance is a joy, and so must be suppressed
By Joshua David Ling … The funeral was hard, the eulogy brief. / Cyrus fought back tears and heart-wrenching grief. / She said she’d find the wretched machine and its creator. / And none would be able to hide from The Great Vindicator.
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By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … Fronting for decaying videotapes / And clocks that will never again chime the time / Through tinny mechanical syncopation / A drum set reposes without percussion
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LogoSophia Magazine 