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
By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … 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
By Amanda Pizzolatto … Oh mother of the Holy Offering / How patiently you wait for the light of day / In silence you bear your suffering / For you know death will not keep Him away
By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … 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
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
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
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
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
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
Let us instead look within our fatal selves / With every resentment validating the Fall of Man / With every snub murdering Abel again / With every lie sentencing Christ to death
A poisonous lump of flesh in malignant repose / Her lair all befouled with scraps of souls / In life sought out with her multiplex eyes / Her Sauron-eyes – it was the hopes that died first
On the sixth day God made the animals / The cat generally disapproved of the others / And in a superior fashion licked its paws / In the springtime shade of the very first oak
Oh, isn’t it awkward being passed along / Up and down confusing, fluorescent-lit corridors / From receptionist to nurse-practitioner / To technician to physician and back again
The fragility of teenaged boys is well known / Despite their tough hands stained with oil and grease / And their slouch and their ‘tude, wanting to be grown / Their loud voices disturbing the classroom’s peace
Oh Christmas crib, oh Christmas crib, / What a privilege you were blessed to have / From you food to animals was given / And now you carry the Bread of Heaven / Oh Christmas crib, oh Christmas crib, / What a privilege you were blessed to have
Good children dress warmly to watch for the star / The star of Bethlehem, the shepherds’ star / The star of the magi, true-guiding star / And more than all of these, the children’s star
A deep, slow stream of tones, of modes, of chants / Where time and all eternity flow as one / Through voices and dreamlike echoings / Among the Altars of the earth and sky
While cleaning house I found a tinsel star / A tiny tinsel star from long ago / When once upon a time it shone so far / Above a Christmas scene in cotton snow