A Sequence of Poems for Holy Week
The air is thurified – the incense given
Our Lord upon His birth is fumed at last;
The censer’s chains, clanking like manacles
Offend against the silence at the end of Mass
Tag: Mack in Texas
Palm Sunday Well-Sanitized
There is social distancing in Jerusalem
Mostly among Romans and Greeks and Jews
Who don’t much like each other anyway –
How is this day different from all other days?
When You are Chosen as Poet Laureate
Do you suppose someday you’ll see your name
In the content pages of an Oxford book
An Oxford book of verse for this or that
Among the greats (who will want your autograph)
The Ministry of Clockery
Change for the sake of change – spare change? Spare change?
There must be a Ministry of Clockery
With Cratchit-y clerks drawing clocks at their desks
Supervised by a Scrooge of Clockery
A Response to Q-ness – I Will Never Take Instruction from a Consonant
Whenever I’m down, and feeling a little blue
I wonder whatever it is I can do
What traditional learning I can pursue
To recover the happiness I once knew
Citizen Potato Head is a Class Enemy
“Mr.” indeed! No, no, Citizen Potato Head!
Bourgeois titles are forbidden by law
As are toys lacking in social realism
Clearly you are no good Comrade of ours
Homeschool, Screenschool, Noschool
Today’s first lesson is that no such construct as “homeschool” exists, either as a noun or as a verb. When your father taught you hunting safety he did not homeschool you; he taught you. If your sixth-grade teacher taught you not to spit tobacco into the classroom litter basket because your parents failed in their duty of teaching basic hygiene, manners, and dignity, he did not schoolhome you.
Read MoreSomeday a New Arthur
Someday a new Merlin among the ruins
Will give a new Arthur a trove of hidden books:
Chaucer and Milton, Shakespeare, Coleridge, Keats
And maybe even long silent Malory…
Ice Wednesday
Many crosses of ice but no ashes
Trees sagging from the icicles dragging
Little birds desperate for last summer’s seeds
The ice ground whitening, whitening, disappearing
A Saint Valentine’s Day Gift for my Daughter Who Lives Far Away
An agent of the federal government
May or may not deliver a package to you
Tomorrow, or not just one but maybe two
Or maybe one package at one time…
Kristin Hannah’s Winter Garden, Sort Of
James Lee mentioned that he really liked Kristin Hannah’s novels, which I pooh-poohed as chick-lit. He assured me that they are really good, and that with my love of Russian literature I would appreciate Winter Garden, parts of which are set in Leningrad…
Read MoreIf Your Life Were a Time Capsule
If your life were a time capsule of sorts
In what cornerstone would you brick in
Against a mysterious opening day
When someone in the future would open you up…
A Saturday Morning In The Bookstore
Why are there now so many books of lists of ten things we must do before we die? Why not nine, or eleven? And why should pay someone for a list of experiences he says you and I must fulfill before we shuffle off what Shakespeare is pleased to call this mortal coil? Will my life be meaningless if I don’t jump out of an airplane over Scotland, see a famous statue in a Buddhist temple in Bangladesh, eat fried snake in Singapore, bicycle through Kenya, visit some snaky island off Honduras, or flush a certain Czarist toilet in St. Petersburg?
Read MoreThis Fog Won’t Last
Oh, no. The night is misty indeed, but the stars –
The stars still shine; be brave, and look for them.
Some Say This is the End
Some say this is the end of the Trump era
Some with glee
Some in mourning…
Karens
I love me my Karens, good, sweet, and kind:
Junior high love-notes and school yard flirtations…
Yevgeny Yevtushenko Admires Himself
Recently I finished a book only half-remembered from my youth, Yevtushenko’s A Precocious Autobiography. I had no idea that a poet I had long admired was such a phony.
Read MoreStorm Heaven, if You Will
By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall (Rated G) In the midst of a world of light and love, of song and feast and dance, he could find nothing to think of more interesting than his own prestige. -C.S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost Storm Heaven with your selfless prayers, if you willBut not your […]
Read MoreA Covid Christmas
But first we celebrate the great world’s turning
With Advent and the holy Christmas time
With liturgies followed by the Yule log burning
Through feasting and cheer, and each well-sung rhyme
The Advent of Our Discontent
Everyone accuses everyone else
Of treason; they’d call each other Quislings
If they had any history, but they don’t
Only Hochhuth and Unferth on the air…
