Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                         A Corporal Who Would Never Be a Sergeant

He was a corporal who would never be a sergeant
In a Palmach squad that would never be recognized
By the Palmach or by the Haganah.
He was a rabbi of the rocks and rubble and roads

He would never be recognized as a rabbi
He loved a curly-haired girl who would never marry him
And was friends with a little feral dog
Who crept out to him from behind the ruins

There was blood that called to him from Poland
In Yiddish and Hebrew; he didn’t remember why
He was a luftmensch, but dependable in his way
A littleness never admitted to staff meetings

He did what he was told to do, and then ignored
He delivered messages and curious packages
To obscure points forbidden to him and his kind
And the dog was shot dead for someone’s sport

With an old British rifle he cleared strongpoints
So that the officers could add to their resumes’
And he was told by the cooks that he was too late
As they laughed and closed the door on him

Confusion and smoke, and fighting in the streets
Burning corpses and armored cars, wild screams
There was little of him after the RPG hit
And children scurried out to mutilate and steal

He was posted as missing, possibly a deserter

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                            She Loved Waiting for Godot


                 “Like impatience etherised on a table”

                               -As T. S. Eliot did not say


She said that he loved Waiting for Godot
That for her it was a great work of art
I told her to go wait in someone else's life
Because I have built some meaning into mine

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                                               Substackery

                         (I don’t know what a substack is)

To a man who wrote an essay on classical music:

I can’t tell you that I really enjoy your work
I’d have to pay fifty dollars for the privilege
But if you will pay me only five or so
I will tell you that I really enjoy your work

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office


  Tonight I Looked Up at the Sky and Named it Warren G. Harding

                                               Because I Can


     “All names will soon be restored to their proper owners. In the
                       meantime we will not dispute about noises.”

                -Aslan in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe


Denali, McKinley, Denali, McKinley again
The Gulf of Mexico is this week’s Gulf of America
Confederates in storage bewail their sin
Fort Beauregard is now good Fort Generica

Highways are named by passion and mood
Local streets for the glorious heroes of yore
But a new generation finds the old signs rude
And replaces them perhaps with a football score

Slow-fading names to cuss and discuss
But in the end what will God name
                                                                ­         each of us?

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                                       Tiny Artists of the Night

Snowflakes by flashlight in the deepening dark
I left them to their night of proper tasks
They beamed down to the earth all over the park
And for the cold grey dawn they’ve made great masks

Plateaus of iridescent white to layer the lawn
Transcendent beauty in a transient medium
Still falling against the feeble all-day dawn
Little artists who form great truths from tedium

And then mysteriously they fly away
To shape more existentials some other day

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                                           The Dignity of the Office

Whatever the incoming president fancies
(One hopes to speak without fear of libel)
Ageing (entertainers) in chancy pantsies
And will he take his oaf on a Village People Bible?

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                          The White House Inaugural Banquet
                           and the Idle Dishwashing Machine


                    Henry II: Fork?

                    Becket: It's for pronging meat and carrying it to the
                                 mouth. It saves you dirtying your fingers.

                    Henry II: But then you ***** the fork.

                    Becket: Yes, but it's washable.

                    Henry II: So are your fingers. I don't see the point.

                                                   -Becket (1964)

The White House dishwashing machine is idle, kids
Our leaders grub with fingers for their food
Cardboarded burgers as greasy pyramids
On mahogany Queen Anne tables strewed

The sycophants kiss their effendi’s (ring)
And fall to feeding at his soigne trough
No waiters are needed to pour and pass
The diners chortle and chew and choke and cough

The White House dishwashing machine is idle, guys
(Dessert is Velveeta oozing over French fries)