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

                                       Another Texas Runaway Scrape


                   Why, Richard, what does it profit a man if he gains the
                   whole world but loses his soul? But for Chicago!

          -As St. Thomas More does not say in Robert Bolt’s fine play


The Democratic representatives fled; what woe!
That the Republicans did not also go!






Texas Democratic legislators flee state to protest GOP's redistricting plan - CBS News

Texas Democrats flee to Illinois to block Trump-backed GOP redistricting plan - Chicago Sun-Times

Texas Democrats break quorum | FOX 4 Dallas-Fort Worth

Will Texas Democrats be arrested for leaving the state? Here's what we know | khou.com

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

                 The Widder-Woman Who Lives Down the Road

There’s a widder-woman who lives down the road
She used to work for a veterinarian
Whenever a stray tomcat comes to visit
She castrates it on her kitchen table

Sometimes she invites me over for supper

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

                                    A Visit to the (Euphemism)

             With Praise for The Sacred White Bowl of Our People

Several times each day the call of sanitation
Requires of each of us a digestive salutation
Within an appropriate private station
For needful purgation and evacuation

All of mankind, of every land and nation
Even Thracian, Haitian, Croation, Dalmatian
Must discreetly retire for a brief duration
To return to the earth a small donation

In this we must conclude, in explanation
From the indignity of the situation
With no exception, and no aberration
That Man is not the glory of God’s Creation

(All employees must wash their hands before returning to work)

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


                                Point-and-Won’t-Shoot Camera

The concept of the point-and-shoot camera obtains
But a Me-‘Phone camera doesn’t see it that way
I stopped to watch a bug-grazing bird
Who approached me as if she wanted to visit

I took out my Me-‘Phone for a photograph
And it didn’t recognize my handsome face
And I had to tap a four-digit code
And the bird grew suspicious and flew away

O Egret, in your beautiful brown and white -
I truly understand your need for flight

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

               The Strange Adventure of Tarzan, the Epsteinian Files,
                                  and The Burn-Bags of Opar

I am not at liberty to lay before the inquiring minds of an objective public the manner in which the curious document and chilling testimony below came into my possession except that this was through the offices of a mysterious midnight visitor on business from Porlock with a wooden leg and an ivory eye of curious and antique design – or was that an ivory leg and a wooden eye? – and I must assure the reader that it was the visitor from Porlock who made do with a tapping ivory eye and a sightless wooden leg or sightless eye and tapping artificial leg, not the pleasant village of Porlock, because English villages are possessed of streets and lanes, not eyes and legs, on a stormy night at the time of the equinoctial gales when ships put to sea knowing that they (the crews, not the ships) must place their lives into the hands of our merciful and loving God who knoweth all things and disposeth all things and so now pray take a seat and light your pipe while I set my spectacles aright and read to you this strange narrative entrusted to my discretion and, like, stuff:

             The Strange Adventure of Tarzan, The Epsteinian Files,
                                   and The Burn-Bags of Opar

In search of The Lost Epsteinian Files
Tarzan slipped into a city ruinous and far
And in a secret tunnel that ran for miles
Stumbled onto The Burn-Bags of Opar

Queen Kristi of Opar, long in love with Tarzan
Sacrificed to her gods a dog and a goat
Then in an armored golf cart chased him as far as she can
(Okay, then, you try to rhyme “Tarzan”)
To the edge of the Alligator Alcatraz moat

Tarzan, exhausted, thought he was a doomer
Kristi was sharpening her sacrificial knife
                   (or loading her thirty-thirty; the records are unclear)
But she was death-whispered by Laura Loomer
Thus saving the burn-bags and our hero’s life

And The Epsteinian Files?  The mystery no longer abodes -
The scripts for Gilligan’s Island, the lost episodes

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

                                          “Just One More Thing”

His shabby raincoat
His rumply old suit and tie
His “Just one more thing…”

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

                      Soldiers Dicing for Jesus’ Garments

1st Soldier: “Let’s roll the dice for Jesus’ coat and hat.”
2nd Soldier: “We don’t need dice; there’s an app for that.”