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

                               The I.T. Department Goes Wild

We are subject to the whims of every I.T. blighter
But never have we heard
That Hemingway was locked out of his own typewriter

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

                                             To the I.C.E. Gangs


          In the dock…slumped in their seats fidgeting nervously…
          They seemed to be a drab assortment of mediocrities. It
           seemed difficult to grasp that such men…had wielded such
           monstrous power…

   -William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third *****, p. 1142


When this is over, we will not come for you -
But good and faithful servants of our laws
With warrants, in uniform, in marked cars
Not hiding behind masks –
                                                      they will come for you

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

                       The Imperial WE Decreed a Cease-Fire


          "We are great. We are free. We are wonderful. We are the most
          wonderful people…!  We all say so, and so it must be true."

                        -The Bandar-Log in The Jungle Book


The press, the congress, the people - they all must cower
A cringing staff to serve as disposable tools
All the appearances and appliances of power
In the hands of vain, acrimonious fools

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

                    I Gave my Friend a Poem for Her Birthday

I gave my friend a poem for her birthday
“It’s not as much fun as an electric train,” she said,
“But it’s pretty good.”

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

                                               Bombs – All Sizes

                                    -As Jack Kerouac did not say


          If we are all going to be destroyed…let that bomb when it
          comes find us doing sensible and human things praying,
          working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the
          children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint
          and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened
          sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies
          (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our
          minds.

                        -C.S. Lewis, “On Living in an Atomic Age,” 1948


Bombs fall tonight, but then they fall every night
Conceived over single-malt, born of the generals
Suffering not at all as their electronics systems
Guide them in the ways the Bible salesman deems

Bombs fall tonight, on a nuclear facility, they say
We can only ask the ashes and winds
While in our triumphalist Ozymandian presumption
We fancy that bombs will never fall on us

Bombs fall tonight – and have we been doing
Sensible and human things?

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

                                     Parlements of Foules

The Parlement of Foules of whom old Chaucer wrote
Meet yearly on the Feast of Valentine
In Venus’ temple to negotiate
The noble rites of love and life and youth

The Parliament of Birds on my front lawn
In their several sub-species negotiate
Their seeds and crusts with outraged squawks and shrieks
But in the end manage to satisfy all

Good Parliaments of Birds are of order and rules
But humans elect poor Parliaments of Fools

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

                                      The President’s Complaint


            “Speak, vermin!...What is the meaning of all this waste,
             this gluttony, this self-indulgence?”

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


Juneteenth celebrates freedom from *******
But the president would have us all in Don-dage