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

          Street Snatches, Unmarked Cars, No Badges, No Warrants:
                                    It’s Okay – We’re a Republic


     No one was more astonished than they when what they’d been
     talking of for years suddenly took on reality.

                                     ― C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength


If thugs in masks ambush you in the street
And tell you they’re the police – you must believe them
Hoodies and ball caps and baggy old clothes
Handcuffed and pushed into an unmarked car

It’s okay – we’re a republic

One of the officers arranges her hair
Fairy Hardcastle wants to look pretty
And you?
Gone in two minutes and 46 seconds
Disappeared somewhere in Louisiana

It’s okay – we’re a republic

We can’t be sure if you’re guilty or not -
Our silence is the only guilt we know

But it’s okay – we’re a republic

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

                      All of Us Look for Magic in Our Books

All of us look for magic in our books
A sale-table paperback during a coffee break
Is a voyage beyond the vending machines
A light at dawn on the first day in Eden

But we must bring our magic to the magic
Or good King Arthur will not come again
The Shire will remain befouled and desolate
And morning will not bring us noble knights

For we must bring our magic to the magic
Which will not happen if we don’t believe

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

                                  Good Neighbors Make Good Fences


                                         As Robert Frost did not say


I’d like to know

What pocket knife he carries for his daily chores
The pen with which he writes his shopping lists
The poetry he reads when out of doors
And how he really feels about September mists

But beyond all that, I want no knowledge of
His first marriage, the price of his new car
Which direction he faces when making love
The distance from here to the second nearest star

Because

A more important distance is that between friends
Slightly obscure through a diffuser lens

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


                                          And Your Word Is…?


                                          “The word is given!”

                  -John Derek as Joshua in The Ten Commandments


When all have gone to bed

You slip quietly into your room
And sit at a table bare of everything
Except for a solitary candle
A pen, a sheet of paper, a bottle of ink

You then write down your day, your acta diurnalis
Every action and thought, every glance and breath
Every hope, every failure, every fear
Every little victory savoured with delight

In only a word, a word, a glowing word –
What is that Word?

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

A repost from March, 2018


                     Yes, Yes, But They Need Jobs in the Real World


                   “Forward Electronics, your victory’s achieved!
                    In all communication, progress is our creed!
                    Ignorance is darkness, technology is light!
                    Radio, our watchword; radio, our might!”

          -Komsomol youth singing in “For the Good of the Cause,”
           Solzhenitsyn, 1963


The plans for your construction are precise
The design and engineering are true
The foundations solid, the drains are laid
In mathematics pure, infallible

The offices are bright with light, well-aired
The flow of work geometrically set
The shops and stores convenient to the staff
In tactical practicalities placed

But do you wonder, at night, beneath your lamp -
Why are you building a concentration camp?

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

       (Written several days before the events of 24-25 March 2025)

                                The Brass-Elevator Mountaineer


                                        A weak imitation of

                                         Osip Mandelstam

                      Of whom let us pray, “Memory eternal”


Our lives no longer sense truth around them
In our ewails we are afraid of each other’s words

But whenever there’s an eye-rolled whisper
It’s about the brass-elevator mountaineer

The ten tiny worms of his fingers
His words like mountains of loot

The waving tendrils atop his head
The glitter of his shiny Tesla

Wheels stained with a **** of groveling bosses
He toys with the tributes of his house pets:

One clenches his fisties
Another salutes
A third pledges eternal loyalty

He pokes out his fingers and grabs ‘em by their _

He magic-markers mass deportations:
Three hundred or more for El Salvador
A hundred or so for Guantanamo
Uncounted hundreds to disappear
From routine check-ins here

“Your search has returned zero (0) matching records”

He rolls the possibilities of _ ___ on his tongue like diet sodas
He wishes he could deport his former best friends forever

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

                                 The Helices of Life and Death

A helix is continuity and connectedness
The wanderings of perceptions and realities
Following pilgrim paths and the flights of birds
As art eternal celebrated in awe

A double helix is said to diagram life
DNA spinning and winding around
Receiving signals from the ultimate Truth
And resolving themselves into the mystery of you

A single helix of barbed wire shining in the sun
Constricts around its victims, denying them breath

Denying them

Denying