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

                                Flight of the Lawn Chairs

                                The Lion-Winds of March

Wild winds now rise to a Valkyrie’s strength
And dark clouds roar to the hammer of Thor
While lightning traverses the poor earth’s length
As if our Nordic gods have gone to war

As if our Nordic gods have gone to war
The walls and windows rattle against the rain
Foul enemies batter against the door
The wrath of Grendel, the hatred of Cain

The wrath of Grendel, the hatred of Cain
Have set my old lawn chairs to flying again!

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

                           A Ghost Road Through the Marsh

              The days are gone
              When the kingdoms of earth flourished in glory

              -from “The Seafarer”, Burton Raffel’s fine translation


Water ran in rivulets among the weeds
The wind was lowering, the rain had stopped, the sky
Was low and grey over a landscape bleak
With wreckage and windfall from the passing storm

An old man slowly worked to clear the road
While the young impatiently hooted and honked
Their displeasure that the world they hadn’t worked
Wasn’t working quite right for them today

The old man sometimes spoke with the ghosts of Rome
Who had built and marched their roads until
The egos and angerings of emperors and kings
Abandoned all good work to slow decay

The young one-fingered past him among the brome
And disappeared forever into the gloam

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

        William Ernest Henley Never Owned a Snapper Lawnmower

                                                 Unsparkus

Out of the oil that covers me
Black as the pit of a president’s soul
I resent whatever flawed designs may be
With my unmechanical soul

In the fell clutch of a slippery clutch
I have often winced and cried aloud
Under the bludgeonings of that son-of-a-Dutch
“I’ll junk this [mess]!” I have avowed

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of engine-part prices
And yet the promise of a case of cold beers
Finds me hammering again at these devices

It matters not how high the grass
How charged with prices the hardware store bill
I am going to whip this foul machine’s [self]
Or bury the [buzzard] in the nearest landfill!




Legal stuff:

William Ernest Henley, "Invictus," from Poems (London: Macmillan and Co., 1920): 83-84. Public domain.

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

                             Soup as a Medium of Exchange

In today’s trading soups were generally down
Although vegetable beef found a brisk trade
Potato soup was bullish in Block D
And each minestrone was five cigarettes

The market closed slightly up at evening count
But this could not compensate for the day’s fall
Naked-lady tats are expected to go high this week
Ten soups for an inked image of yo’ mama

The morning market will open in this metal hell
When some dumb * rings that *ing bell

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

                                      The Seven Seeing-Stones

Good Tolkien writes of spring far better than we
With layered allusions to Celtic and Nordic myths
His Fairy Folk sing clearly in rainbow rhymes
Among the crocuses abloom ‘round ancient trees

My crocuses bloom ‘round a shaggy lawn
With garden furniture in need of paint
And morning coffee in a Tupperware cup
To serve as a greeting to the rising sun

Friend Tolkien writes of spring for you and me
And through his Seven Seeing-Stones – we see!

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

            Scriptural Textual Analysis Applied to Act II of Macbeth

                                The Book of Steve Jobs 43:13-16

“Oh, no, Mr. Hall!
It’s right here in the Bible!” she exclaimed
Standing up suddenly from her desk
Eagerly waving her MePhone aloft

And then she paused
Appeared to be slightly embarrassed
Laughed
Took a selfie

And laughed some more

As did we all

Happiness

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

                                              The List is Death

There is said to be a list – but whose?
Who wrote it? Where is it? Where has it been?
On what teakwood desk does it now repose
Around which names and lives are negotiated

The matter is not that names are being removed
But that your name might be written in
Because your attitude has been noticed
The hand that once shook yours signs away your life

Someone pencils your name upon The List
That’s your loyalty reward (you won’t be missed)

Thoughts ‘n’ prayers as in Two Corinthians