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

                                                Surgery in Three Parts


                                                 1 - Fear for Tomorrow

I don’t know what will happen to her tomorrow -
The anaesthesia and the surgical trauma
Invading all those organs compromised
Compromised by age and failing health

There’s a contract coffee bar in the lobby main
One could savour a coffee and a croissant
While waiting for a messenger of life or death
Does anyone know where the chapel is?

A marriage should not end in ICU
In the echoing chants of “Code Blue…Code Blue…”

                                          2 - Fear for Today

Morning is filled with possibilities
But today…
Morning is fraught with possibilities

                                           3 – Deo Gratias

The surgeon and the RN visit me
In a cold-as-a-morgue fluorescent-lit room
With their masks loose about their necks
To report that all went well

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

                             This is my Stacking Swivel


                  We were speaking of historic stacking swivels,
                  and Shelley thought there might be poem in it


This is my stacking swivel. There are many like it
But this one is mine; that recruit training moment
When I was issued my G.I. stacking swivel
I felt like Sergeant Rock, over the top

My stacking swivel makes me feel like a man
This American stacking swivel of instant death
A chilled-steel weapon of liberating power
Striking fear into the enemies of freedom

Look upon my stacking swivel, ye mighty!
And despair!

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?