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

        Forming a Committee Around a Car That Wouldn’t Start

The engine wouldn’t turn over; the electrics were dead
We stood around the open hood, each scratching his head

1st Member:

“It appears to me it’s the dead battery
There’s no indication of a charge, you see”

2nd Member:

“I’m a college graduate, so I am smarter
Obviously the problem is with the starter”

3rd Member:

“There’s a smell in the engine, something tannic
And I should know; I’m a certified mechanic”

4th Member:

“I’m a knight of the road; I drive a freighter
Just let me at that broken alternator”


But none of our skilled efforts came to pass
Because no one had bothered to check

                                                                                                        the gas

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

                                  The Bright Green Wheelie-Bin

                            (Much Superior to a Red Wheelbarrow)

The wheelie-bin is pretty in its own rustic way
Thick plastic moulded in ecological green
To be rumbly-dragged on garbage day
To the end of lane to grace our suburban scene

Very little depends upon the wheelie-bin:
Unpleasant household garbage on its rounds
The really useful stuff has been well dug in
The loam – potato peels and coffee grounds

But note ye well - this garden plot thickens
For we have sparrows and crows
                                                           ­                   but no white chickens

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

                  Do Dreams Fade Away at Dawn? Or Do We?

Do dreams beyond the dreamer dream
The imagined lands from deepest night
In which we live and seem to love -
Do they exist at morning’s light?

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

        It Became Necessary to Destroy the Constitution to Save It

             -as an unnamed army major in Viet-Nam did not say


When old Rip Van Me wakes up each morning he finds
A world unlike the one when his nap began -
Who are these angry faces on great screens?
Why are there cracks in the Capitol dome?

Arrests and deportations, mobs with clench’ed fists
Grim armored vehicles patrolling our city streets
A presidential advisor hurling **** salutes
Personal loyalty checks within our surveillance state

When old Rip Van Me wakes up each morning he finds
A nation of madmen who have lost their minds

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

             Happy Young Lives Rich with Promise and Dreams

                                 “I will go to the Altar of God”

Ephemera among the searchlight beams:
A paperback novel, a Mickey Mouse doll
Purses and ‘phones, and in-flight magazines
Briefcases still securing important work

Ephemera among the searchlight beams:
A note about souvenirs for the kids back home
From the Folger and the aerospace museum
Ice skates in the bins, safely stowed away

But now

Now lost to us among the searchlight beams:
Happy young lives rich with promise and dreams

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

                             Cancelling the InterGossip Service

And how are you today I am so very glad to hear that thank you sir you have paid today so we won’t be able to cancel the service until next month I am so glad to hear that we need a mailing address so that we can send you a box for the equipment thank you sir no a post office box won’t do I am sorry sir you are breaking up yes sir let me read that back to you thank you sir let me verify your account number that is correct and thank you I will need your zip code will you repeat that thank you but our records show that your service address is oh that is not it please tell me again thank you sir I will read it back to you thank you sir you will have thirty days from the twenty-seventh of next month to return the equipment in the box we will provide to you at your mailing address and I have that mailing address so thank you sir if you will wait two minutes while I access your file thank you sir and I will need your mailing address oh I see I have that sir for the equipment return thank you sir which will cost you $350 if it is not returned thank you sir and now I must read you this list now if you have any questions if you will please wait two minutes thank you sir and may I ask why you are discontinuing service and are you moving sir if you will wait two minutes while I update your records thank you sir and I have your mailing address and may I ask why you are discontinuing service with us oh I am so sorry sir but did they tell you it is fibre optic I understand sir before we go I want to advise you that because you are a long-time customer we have a special offer thank you sir I am happy to have helped you sir and I hope you have a good rest of the day

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

                                     Late January is a Time of Grey

I read a little in Billy Collins just now
Because Tolkien is in the other room
Along with the laundry and an unmade bed
Late January is a time of grey

I just want to sit with my coffee awhile
And then I’ll stow the laundry and make the bed
The dishwasher can remain silent until tomorrow
Late January is a time of grey

I was nibbled to death by ducks today
Because
Late January is a time of grey

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

                           A brief Discourse on Forbidden Love

Our culture again is oppressively hag-ridden:
All love in our time is sternly forbidden

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

                           Guarding the Borders Against Criminals


                    In any case we are not attacking them at all.
                    We are offering them incalculable benefits.

                      ― T.H. White, The Once and Future King


They began settling here a long time ago
At first they were welcome, but they developed a ‘tude
We need their charity - they tell us so!
But their intentions are obvious and crude

With insolence, edict, and a heavy political hand
They’ve come to save us from ourselves; that’s what they say
Here in our beloved, Canada, our home and native land –

Oh, won’t the Americans just go away!

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

                       Third Sunday in Extraordinary Time

Dear friends in Christ,

The divine liturgy will be delayed for a few minutes
While the new regime checks everyone’s papers

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

                         A Corporal Who Would Never Be a Sergeant

He was a corporal who would never be a sergeant
In a Palmach squad that would never be recognized
By the Palmach or by the Haganah.
He was a rabbi of the rocks and rubble and roads

He would never be recognized as a rabbi
He loved a curly-haired girl who would never marry him
And was friends with a little feral dog
Who crept out to him from behind the ruins

There was blood that called to him from Poland
In Yiddish and Hebrew; he didn’t remember why
He was a luftmensch, but dependable in his way
A littleness never admitted to staff meetings

He did what he was told to do, and then ignored
He delivered messages and curious packages
To obscure points forbidden to him and his kind
And the dog was shot dead for someone’s sport

With an old British rifle he cleared strongpoints
So that the officers could add to their resumes’
And he was told by the cooks that he was too late
As they laughed and closed the door on him

Confusion and smoke, and fighting in the streets
Burning corpses and armored cars, wild screams
There was little of him after the RPG hit
And children scurried out to mutilate and steal

He was posted as missing, possibly a deserter

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

                            She Loved Waiting for Godot


                 “Like impatience etherised on a table”

                               -As T. S. Eliot did not say


She said that he loved Waiting for Godot
That for her it was a great work of art
I told her to go wait in someone else's life
Because I have built some meaning into mine

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

                                               Substackery

                         (I don’t know what a substack is)

To a man who wrote an essay on classical music:

I can’t tell you that I really enjoy your work
I’d have to pay fifty dollars for the privilege
But if you will pay me only five or so
I will tell you that I really enjoy your work

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


  Tonight I Looked Up at the Sky and Named it Warren G. Harding

                                               Because I Can


     “All names will soon be restored to their proper owners. In the
                       meantime we will not dispute about noises.”

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


Denali, McKinley, Denali, McKinley again
The Gulf of Mexico is this week’s Gulf of America
Confederates in storage bewail their sin
Fort Beauregard is now good Fort Generica

Highways are named by passion and mood
Local streets for the glorious heroes of yore
But a new generation finds the old signs rude
And replaces them perhaps with a football score

Slow-fading names to cuss and discuss
But in the end what will God name
                                                                ­         each of us?

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

                                       Tiny Artists of the Night

Snowflakes by flashlight in the deepening dark
I left them to their night of proper tasks
They beamed down to the earth all over the park
And for the cold grey dawn they’ve made great masks

Plateaus of iridescent white to layer the lawn
Transcendent beauty in a transient medium
Still falling against the feeble all-day dawn
Little artists who form great truths from tedium

And then mysteriously they fly away
To shape more existentials some other day

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

                                           The Dignity of the Office

Whatever the incoming president fancies
(One hopes to speak without fear of libel)
Ageing (entertainers) in chancy pantsies
And will he take his oaf on a Village People Bible?

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

                          The White House Inaugural Banquet
                           and the Idle Dishwashing Machine


                    Henry II: Fork?

                    Becket: It's for pronging meat and carrying it to the
                                 mouth. It saves you dirtying your fingers.

                    Henry II: But then you ***** the fork.

                    Becket: Yes, but it's washable.

                    Henry II: So are your fingers. I don't see the point.

                                                   -Becket (1964)

The White House dishwashing machine is idle, kids
Our leaders grub with fingers for their food
Cardboarded burgers as greasy pyramids
On mahogany Queen Anne tables strewed

The sycophants kiss their effendi’s (ring)
And fall to feeding at his soigne trough
No waiters are needed to pour and pass
The diners chortle and chew and choke and cough

The White House dishwashing machine is idle, guys
(Dessert is Velveeta oozing over French fries)

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

                          The Holy Bible as a Base for a Potted Plant

On a shelf in our local pharmacy
A somewhat tattered Bible has reposed for years
And on that Bible is positioned a potted plant
And above them on the wall a cowboy cartoon

The iconography is elusive to me
One seeks for meaning in an assemblage:
So why this thing in this place at this time?
Existentially speaking (as we said in the ‘60s)
                        Why?

A curious piece of iconography
On a shelf in our local pharmacy

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

    Dag Hammarskjold  Negotiates with Himself and with God

                 Cf. Auden’s introduction to Vagmarken


          We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny
          but what we put into it is ours.

            Vagmarken (Markings), p. 55 in the 1965 Knopf edition


When you were a little child
If you attend a school named for Dag Hammarskjold
How long did it take you to learn to spell his name?

And you are now an adult
And blessed with Hammarskjold’s Vagmarken
How long did it take you to joy in his transcendent good?

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

                                         Front Toward Enemy

If
In what we may laughingly call real life
You can read these three words

                                     FRONT TOWARD ENEMY

You’re in the wrong place

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

          Binding Each Word with an Incantation, a Charm, a Spell

You. Not a generalized out-there “you” but – YOU

                                          Gentle Writer

A mysterious thought is dream’ed unto you
Or a conclusion sails from your observant mind

You take a pen of goose-quill carefully carved
You dip it into a horn or pottle of ink
Not a metaphorical inkhorn of floridity
But the horn of a beast, hollowed out
Stoppered with a fitted wooden plug
And charged with ink of a curious blue
Of minerals or dyes or the juice of berries boiled
And worked with pagan spells or Christian prayers

You take an expensive page of animal-skin
Worked out with scrapings and scrubbings and acids
Or perhaps imported sheets of Egyptian papyrus
(Against which some of the younger brethren sneer)

Remember the annual budget! Be careful, now!
Paper doesn’t grow on trees, you know!
(Well, you could argue about the papyrus)

You set the light just right, the sun or a lamp
The Altar is where candles glow in honor of Our Lord
(And then there’s the budget; candles are expensive)
So you must work with the sun or a tallow lamp
At a writing ***** angled as the amarius says

You think a thought
You lift your pen
With a prayer upon it
You guide it down
You write a word

A word

Each word is magic






What did you write?

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

                                        The Winter Cold Has Gotten Old

  For many years I was a self-appointed inspector of snow-storms...

                                         -Thoreau, Walden

The cold has gotten old without Christmas trees
And little lights in all their vestmental tints
No longer counterpoint the dark northern breeze
No visions of spring, no dreamings, no hints

The happy lawns of summer are mud and frost
The path to the cowshed is a rattle of sleet
The trail to the fishing hole was yesterday lost
And our boots are too thin for our freezing feet

But after our chores, boiling hot coffee, please -
The cold has gotten old without Christmas trees!

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

                            Your Poetry's Background Check

          And above all, who is in power in that part of the country,
          or, rather, who will be by the time we get there?

                                  -Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

We don’t suffer a Soviet Writers’ Union
Except that we do – and what are you up to?
Have you written an ordinary adjective
That will be forbidden in a future place?
                    You sound suspiciously colonialist

Last year DEI was mandatory
This year it will be a forbidden scheme
What guidelines for little magazines
Will be cleansed in the New Order to come?
                    Harriet Monroe is a non-person now

Who will be in charge of your poetry and your life
Whenever you don’t get to wherever it was
                    that you were going?

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

                                         Stand-To for Night Patrol


                      The Americans were said to believe that the
                      Communists are on the defensive…

                          -New York Times, 11 January 1970


I keep seeing a boat’s black silhouette
Upon the red water, against the red sky
And the black-death tree-line along the shore
A dark, decaying scene, and I don’t know why

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

                                      There is More Than One Book

A civilization writes and reads its books
As poetry, pictures, prose, and glorious song
Of war and work and love and peaceful fields
Scholarship and courage and a people’s arts

But when unhappy men with an unhappy god
Maintain that their one book is all we’ll need
In submission to build an empire of death
The threat is clear: their god doesn’t want us

Reading and writing are civilization
From the very beginning of Creation

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

                                         The Magic in Hebrew Words

Max gave me a book: 52 Hebrew Words
For Christmas
Appreciate the irony that isn’t there –
If Judaism isn’t real, then neither are we

Words in Hebrew seem to be topped as flames
As Light - the light as truth, the light for truth
As flame for sacrifice, as flame for peace
As Torah unrolled, all Creation unrolled

Everything begins with a word, the Word
Today we will begin with Shema – Hear

With gratitude

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

                                  Are You a Ptolemaic Too?


            There was a star danced, and under that I was born

                  -Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, II.i.349


This little world isn’t much, but it’s what we’ve got
Our Narnia, our Middle-Earth; it’s green
It’s green and blue and round, an almost-sphere
Fitted with all the ancient conveniences

Let the stars encircle us as a crown
And who will dare to say it is not so?
For we are commanded to grow this garden
By the light of the sun, and of faith and love

As Shakespeare might have said, this blessed plot -
This little world isn’t much, but it’s what we’ve got

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

                                     “LA Fires Bring Art to a Halt”

                 Hyperallergic: Sensitive to Art and Its Discontents


No.

A fire brings nothing to a halt

To the last respiration of the very last soul
And beyond: Art will live because Art lives -

A poet abandoning her car to flee for her life
Holds to her heart her notebooks in a grocery-store bag

To the last respiration of the very last soul
And beyond: Art will live because Art lives

A trumpeter manages to save the mouthpiece at least
While carrying his child out to an ambulance

To the last respiration of the very last soul
And beyond: Art will live because Art lives

A sculptor’s eyes record a wall of windows
To be re-molded as life-filled windows of dreams

To the last respiration of the very last soul
And beyond: Art will live because Art lives:

Firefighters wrestling a hose through smoke and heat
Are a choreograph of life against flaming death

To the last respiration of the very last soul
And beyond: Art will live because Art lives

An artist whose studio is now but smoke
Will stir ashes and water, and paint again

To the last respiration of the very last soul
And beyond: Art will live because Art lives

A little girl will write of her little dog
Her bestest pal whom she never saw again

To the last respiration of the very last soul
And beyond: Art will live because Art lives

In a shelter tonight an aging man
Will sing to himself the love songs of his youth

To the last respiration of the very last soul
And beyond: Art will live because Art lives



                                                        ­       then patch

                    a few words together and don’t try
                    to make them elaborate, this isn’t
                    a contest but the doorway

                                   -Mary Oliver, “Praying”

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


        May Our Children Live Long Enough to Invade Greenland


Man arrested entering the Capitol with a machete and three knives

                                          -U. K. Daily Mail


No weapons in the Capitol; it’s a rule
The adults who work there must be safely bubbled
But when some pimply oaf brings a gun to school
No one in D.C. seems especially troubled

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

               “Now, therefore, write for yourselves this song.”


          -Deuteronomy 31:19 per Talmud at My Jewish Learning
           <community@mail.myjewishlearning.com>


                       “Nunc itaque scribite vobis canticum istud.”

                                             -Douay-Rheims


What song will you write for the people of God?
Something from the Prophets or the Laws
A hymn for Mary, dancing in the spring
Or maybe praise for patient and protective Joseph

What song will you write for your own true love?
Gentle rhyming for the music of her gentle laugh
Iambics and meters her intellect to please
Birdsong sweet to limn her holiness

What song will you write for the world God made?
Matins for mist and mountain and flowered glade

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

                                        Daily Writing Discipline

My self-appointed duty is to write a line or two
Each day, no matter how busy I have been
But today at work I thought of little except you
And how your name is a verse upon the wind

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

                The Arrogance of Proclaiming a Wake-Up Call

His wake-up call was but a manifesto
Retro1968 but less literate
Demanding that the world stop and pay attention
To the temper-tantrums of some middle-aged guy

Who knew all about guns ‘n’ bombs ‘n’ stuff
While the rest of us know all about raising our kids
Working 12-hour shifts, paying our bills
Building our lives, and taking care of each other

The rest of us have grown-up things to do
           The self-pitying waker-upper
Should long ago have ditched his childish ego
           And called himself

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

                            Epiphany Moved and Improved

Whatever committee decides these things
Has chosen to shift ancient feasts about
For the convenience of the modern world
In scheduling meetings and interviews

Magi following a smart watch in the sky
The ostler wants the stable cleared by ten
King Herod tapping massacres on an app
Plough Monday must be reset to Tuesday next

Whatever committee decides these things
Is stricken deaf when the sacring bell rings

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

                                         The Stray ‘Possum Café


          The only comparisons in Western literature might be with the
          Romantics or the Beat Generation, but the Russian Silver Age
          poets outdazzled them in glamour and intrigue.

                                       -Darran Anderson


We lay our scene not in Saint Petersburg
Where Anna Ahkmatova flirted and rhymed
With Gumilyov, Mandelstam, and Tsvetaeva
Among champagne, cigarettes, tears, and pearls

In the old and storied Stray Dog Café  
But in a field on a December night
Where two opossums meet in quest of love
And wrangle in the leaves of intimacy

Poor strays making…art…without any fear
Of execution by the Kremlin Mountaineer




Saint Petersburg’s Stray Dog Café was a matrix for art, music, dance, and poetry from imperial Russia to the Soviet horror, and thence into the world.  It almost serves as a sort of hinge between the 19th century and the 20th. Please read Darran Anderson’s professional and thus accessible article in City Journal:
Anna Akhmatova’s Bravery.

I am having fun with intruding ‘possums among the Silver Age poets, but as for them, yes, they are essential. Their brilliance still shines for us and influences what we write even if we are unaware of them – and for that most of them were murdered by the mad tyranny of Communism.

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

                          Activate Your Card Now! It’s Easy!

‘Enry ‘Iggins, Tiffany in Calcutta, and my Cousins Down the Road

     There even are places where English completely disappears -
     Why, in America they haven't used it for years!

                        -Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady

California and council flats, aye, there’s the nexus
Great Britain taught the world English right and proper
But in hearing my cousins from Caney Head, Texas
I conclude that the Empire has come a cropper!

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

                          This Unit Not Labeled for Retail Sale

You can’t break me apart, she said to me
This unit is not labeled for retail sale
And if you think that you like what you see
You can post your money for the emotional bail

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

                                        So This is the New Year


                               The road goes ever on and on…

    -from at least three variations of a song in The Lord of the Rings


About this new year – it doesn’t look so new
A metaphorical kick of the tires suggests
It’s been down many roads before
But then, so have we

About this new year – it doesn’t look so new
But the first sunlight in the bare oak trees
And upon last summer’s ground-shoaling leaves
Lead me to pull on my boots and step outside

Frost, sky, sunlight, cardinals, squirrels, life
About this new year – it looks pretty good now

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                          Upon Learning of the Death of Papa Ben


                    We are not some casual and meaningless product of
                    evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God.
                    Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is
                    necessary.

                                ­               -Papa Benedict


I awoke from what was called a procedure
And was surprised to be alive, alive
By the brilliance of those called to medicine
By the Grace of God and Saint Elizabeth

When certain images and clouds were cleared
From my weary and befogged body and mind
And the kindest nurse brought a coffee for me
With words of assurances and blessings

I learned that our dear Papa Ben had died

I paused, I put the coffee down, I cried
On this December day when Papa Ben died

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                   You Say You’re Bi-Polar


                                   for a certain wise poet


You say you’re bi-polar. So is the planet
So you’re all right, and I only ask of you -
Please help the rest of us be as good as you
As thoughtful and kind, and as attuned to Creation

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                            ­     Our Lubyanka

Metropolitan Detention Center
All those fuzzy harmless syllables
Grey concrete walls but no clock at the top
Windowless facings along city sidewalks

Our federal marias are white, not black
Because we are not Communists, oh, no
People go in; they don’t always come out
They say that from the basement you can see Florence

You might be transferred there, but mind the steps
Smile at the cameras that have been switched off

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                             Dense Fog Advisory

One wonders why fog should always be dense
Forever faulted for having no sense

Maybe because it’s a low-hanging cloud
Low-hanging around with a low sort of crowd

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com


                            The Last American Westclox Baby Ben

                                                         (Maybe)


It ticked into my heart at the Goodwill store
Two dollars’ worth of Americana
A charmer in a battered metal shell
Hiding behind a tired plastic face

The tick, the tock, the talk of Peru, Illinois
The clock that woke America each dawn
For work and study, and to meet the Chicago train
For a century until time ran out

It clicks and clanks and ticks and tocks and talks

All-day dutiful hands, a jangling bell -
How long will this old clock last?

Only time will tell

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com


                       Hanukkah is a Light That Always Gets In


                            There is a crack in everything.
                            That’s how the light gets in.

                               -Leonard Cohen, “Anthem”


Eight candles of the mind, then, of the soul
In a time of hooded pursuivants
Seeking for truth so that it might be suppressed
Seeking for light that it might be extinguished

There mustn’t be any candles, then, in the windows now
In this Abomination of Desolation
Where wrapped in reptilian rags from Amazon
Sullen illiterates ***** their eyes against the light

If you are somewhat broken, read from the scroll
Beneath the lights of Hanukkah
Eight candles of the mind and of the soul



Note on the quotation: Babblings on the InterGossip led me to verify the above quote, which is from the poem “Anthem” published in Leonard Cohen, ed. Robert Faggen, Everyman’s Pocket Poetry series.

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                      “I’m a Registered Choctaw”


                                kennkarte deutsches ***** - Search


As glad-handy as a Rotarian
Blue-eyed and sporting a blonde jack-***-tail
Aggressively hearty in his greetings to all
“I’m a registered Choctaw,” he boasted

(Tho’ I am but a poor Heinz 57
My muggle-blood trumps his vain trumpery)
He asked how many Hispanics have we got
I said I hadn’t counted and wouldn’t know

He is a grant-writer for the homeless
And seems to grant pretty good for himself

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                       A Porch of Worms on the Feast of St. Stephen

These winter squalls are almost springtime rains
Warm days, cool nights, and windblown showers at dawn
And on the porch appear some curious stains
Dark squirming squiggles progressing up from the lawn

Up from the lawn, up from their earthen beds
In desperate trails of iridescent slime
As peristaltic tubes with wavery heads
Rhythmically marking out their march in time

But all too brief their escape, alas -
A feast for robins who will not let them pass

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                   Did You Enjoy Your Christmas?


                                               Christmas Night


That merry little Christmas that they sing about –
Did you open your gifts around a tree
Tinsel and ornaments and a brilliant star
Pajamas and cocoa and merriment

Did you enjoy a dinner with someone special
Or with happy children and a few friends
Then coffee and cake and quiet memories
Everyone free from telescreens and devices

And now with a fire and soft candlelight
Is this another gentle silent night?

I hope it is so, dear friend

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

      O Ring Out Christmas Safety Cautions and Trigger Warnings

We must not overeat at Christmas dinner
We must not pass the doggie a poisonous treat
We must not speak aloud of loser or winner
We must not undercook the veg or meat

We must not argue during the second course
We must not provoke any bitterness or tears
We must not mention our cousin’s divorce
We must not let Momma drink too many beers

We must not drop our guard on Christmas Day -
For it’s all about family (that’s what some say)

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                            O Little Front Line of Bethlehem

Stopped and questioned multiple checkpoints
A search of their persons and their vehicle
And a stern warning from the local patrol:
“You are not permitted to draw on public funds”

The Holy Family arrives at last at a no-tell inn
“I need to see two forms of identification
And a major credit card from any on this list
Fresh linens are extra; the ice machine is broken”

Surly men in grubby camouflage smoke cigarettes
Occasional gunfire lights up the noisy night

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                             (From The Saint Tibbs’ Day Songbook)

                          Last Christmas I Gave You my Pancreas

I thought there was an idea here
But maybe not
Just a few questions, ma’am
About the guy who received your heart and gave it away
Did he drop it off at a re-sale shop?

Giving a body part at Christmas is sing-able
           Because
“Last Septuagesima Sunday I gave you my heart”
Is not something you can dance to easily
Especially if you have no cardio-pulmonary functions

I thought there was an idea here
Maybe it’s those Nyquil dreams again…

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com


                                           For Cate and Jack

                                           Or Jack and Cate?

                                                On Christmas


Certain joys about Christmas are always true
For among the season’s constant blessings
                        Are you!