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

   Sunday Morning in America: Jesus, Church Shootings, and I.C.E.

I hold the door open for people, and smile
A cheery greeting for all, so good to see you
Your beautiful children are growing up so fast!
           I scan the parking lot for men with guns

Who’s reading from the lectionary today?
The altar servers in their albs line up
Mrs. Busy wants to ask Father a queston
         I scan the parking lot for black SUVs

         I can lock the door against evil, which would be futile
For now I hold it open for you, and smile

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

                                     An Anteroom to Eternity?

                         (Nigdaw in Essex said it much better)

Waiting in the E.R.
More waiting in the E.R.
     The pain is back
Waiting in a corridor as people walk by
     and look at you
Waiting in another corridor, gasping hello to
     a curious, wide-eyed child
Someone gives you an injection
Waiting in yet another corridor
Pushed into a room
     "Oh, wait, it's not ready..."
Pushed back into a corridor
Wait…
The hours...the hours...


Note: my experience with health care professionals, from the nice young man who brings the meal trays to the great physicians, is uniformly wonderful and I am most grateful to them. The – THE – problem is the corporatism that now rules even nominally religious hospitals with the clawing, grasping hands and narrow minds of Scrooges. Administrators and stockholders will cut work hours and understaff units if only a poor dollar, rather than a poor human, is saved.

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

                                         Because They are Young

                               For Those Who Have Lost Children

The good die young, our blessed children, our hopes
Fresh to this world they wanted so much to explore
They wanted to explore everything – earth, air
Words, water, sky, ideas, music, art, love

All the joys of being; all Creation is their stupa
And they fly the eternal pradakshina
In fulfillment, enlightenment, and joy
Infinitely far, and yet still close to us

We are less because they have gone ahead
Along the happy pilgrimage of faith
But they are more, and they celebrate us too:
They love us and wait for us along the Way

The good die young, and because they are so good
We must strive to be worthy of them

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

                                      Where is Herod’s Father?

                 …lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning,
                 Rachel weeping for her children,
                 and would not be comforted,
                 because they are not.

                                   -Saint Matthew 2:16-18

The Herod of today squats alone in his room
Alone, devoid of parenting or purpose
Feverishly feeling sorry for himself
His only friend is his Precious, his glowing screen

(And where is his father?)

He scribbles screaming screeds and manifestos
And draws cool pictures of army guns ‘n’ stuff
Mommy lets him do whatever he wants
Maybe another weapon will calm him down

(But where is his father?)

He counts the children in the village school
He draws a floor plan of the village church
He clutches his he-man tough guy army gear
He sends his sulkings through the GossipNet

(Oh, where is his father?)

A naked AR fantasy hangs on his wall
He takes him down, he wants to ****** him
He feels, he doesn’t think, he feels, he feels –
Maybe Moloch wasn’t such a bad guy after all

(Now where is Herod’s father?)


Legal note: this is not an allusion to any specific instance of infanticide in this nation, but rather to the many causes of why in America hunting season on children is always open.

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

                    An Hour in Which Nothing Much Happened


                                 The country talked quiet;
                       one human voice could drown it out…

                                  Lonesome Dove, p. 26


No real mission; I just wanted a walk
Along the road, with work gloves and loppers in hand
Through the wavery heat on a late-summer day
To clear some windfall blocking much of the lane

Butterflies danced among bright yellow flowers
Mourning doves murmured in the underbrush
Wrens and buntings and sparrows up in the pines
A little snake wriggled for cover and shade

Their beauty and silence – those were their talk
No real mission; I just wanted a walk

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

                          An Eleventh Commandment Falls Upon Us
                            From the Government Religion in Austin


           “Schools not enjoined by ongoing litigation must abide by  
            S.B. 10 and display the Ten Commandments.”

                           -Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton
                                           25 August 2025


          “It denies us the right of worshipping the Almighty according
           to the dictates of our own conscience, by the support of a
           national religion…”

                              -Texas Declaration of Independence
                                               2 March 1836


Our attorney general elects himself God
And imposes upon us his government church  
To rule us, perhaps, by a religion squad
Subjecting us all to seizure and search

For under his high-tech inquisition
One’s conscience must obey his moods and rages
This Torquemada on his punitive mission
He’ll ponder our punishment – maybe the cages?

Our attorney general elects himself God
And Texans famous for freedom submit to his rod

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

                                    Ode on a Monitor Lizard

I saw a picture of a monitor lizard
Its skin is scaley and its tongue is scissored
I’d back away from that wrinkly old wizard -
I don’t want to be ground up in its gizzard!

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

                                  “I Pray You, Remember the Porter”

                                               -Macbeth II.ii.20-21

When I was a young husband and father
I served: on the parish council, taught CCD
Chaperoned bake sales, CYO, and youth trips
Eucharistic minister, lector, and greeter
(No one else could hand out a leaflet with such grace, such  
        elegance, such panache!)

But with age, and one by one, I let them go
This morning I asked to be recused at last
From thirty years on the lector duty list
“God’s benison go with you…”

As lector
I lost confidence in sorting out the new ways of doing things
Of being where I’m supposed to be
And moving when I’m supposed to do so
And moving where I’m supposed to do so
Carrying the lectionary without dropping it
Mounting the Altar steps without tripping
Standing in one place for more than a few minutes
Seeing the words clearly (why is the print so small?)
Wreathing the werbs without thripping over my thongue

But I’m still a greeter – I can open the door
‘Tis my appointed skill level, but ‘tis one
As Macduff did not say
No leaflets, though; that stuff’s now on the InterGossip

I smile and open the door, admire babies, help with coats
Show visitors the way to the euphemism
Tell the kids how tall they’ve grown
(You’re a senior!? Why, I remember when…)

And it’s okay.

I am blessed with honor, love, and troops of friends
(as Macbeth could not say)

Honor, love, and troops of friends

All good.

Deo gratias

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

                                         When Alliteration Goes Bad

Peter
Piper
Picked a
Peck of
Pickled
Hamsters

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

          An Exercise in Alliteration Cut Short by the August Heat

Even summer seems weary with summer:
Withering weeds wish woefully for winter
High heat hangs heavily upon the heath
While garden groundlings gasp across the grass!

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

                                                 Go Ask Your Father

“Go ask your father.”

“Go ask your mother.”

“She said to ask you.”

“Go ask her anyway.”

“Go ask your father again.”

“He said to ask you.”

“Well, I told you to ask him.”

“It’s your mother’s decision.”

“He says it’s your decision.”

“It’s okay with me if it’s okay with your father.”

“It’s okay with me if it’s okay with your mother.”


That was always soooooooooooooooo annoying.


I wish I could be that annoyed again.

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

                               Making Peace with Apple ICloud

(Off. Click)

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

                            America Inspires the Free World

Americans are a people who, when menaced by a tyrant
Watch TV to applaud someone cooking an omelet

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

              Stopping by Literary Criticism on a Snowy Evening

                      From an idea by a happy bumblebee

Whose Deconstructionist Narrative this is I think I know
Their (because we mustn’t say “her” or “his”)
New Criticism is on their podcast, though
They will not see me applying Phenomenology here
To help fill up their woods with Neo-Post-Colonialist blow

My little solar car must think it other-gendered
To pause while I Conceptualize without a Starbuck’s near
Between Foucault and Derrida here
Next to the Sapir-Whorf Theory, and without a beer

They give their location transponder a Derrida shake
To demand a formal apology for this cultural mistake
The only other sound’s the Existential creep
Of Masonic Catholic **** Zionism on the take

Judgmental stereotypes are flying, shallow and cheap
But I have an Inner Reality to keep
And an Intertextual Analysis of Post-Structuralism to steep
And an Aesthetic Objectification of Dialectics to steep

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

                     Dust Devils on a Sunday Morning in August

                                (But this is not about dust devils)

The Road to Emmaus is asphalt now
Instead of dust devils spinning in the heat
The stench of curious chemicals flow
In shimmerings among the hovering oaks

Above the crisping-brown fields circling vultures
Seem focused on me – do they sense a decaying soul?
My great-grandfather drove a wagon to church
I have air-conditioning, and Chopin on the radio

The Road to Emmaus is asphalt now
But you still might meet a Stranger along the way

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

           The Shroud of Turin is True Again Today! Or Maybe Not!

                         The ghost of Amelia Earhart speaks

The U.K. Daily Mail examined the Shroud of Turin
And found Amelia Earhart wrapped up inside:
“Hey! This is my shroud for private buryin’!
So don’t just stand there, all goofy and bug-eyed!”

“You keep changing the place where you found my plane
And yesterday you said the Shroud of Turin is bogus
Today you say it’s real – you babble in vain
The ghost of me wishes you would find a focus”

The U.K. Daily Mail found Amelia Earhart’s plane –
Tomorrow they’ll be sure to lose it again

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

      A Bronze Plaque Commemorating the Trump-Putin Summit
                         at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson
                                            Anchorage, Alaska


                    On this spot on the 15th of August 2025

                                    Nothing happened

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

                                           Our Little Universities

                                          From an idea by Nivek

Many books are little universities
Complete with faculties and study halls
Grassy lawns on which to argue ideas
Syllabi written from your heart and mind

Laboratories of the mind for distilling wisdom
A concert hall of happy voices in song
“Pomes All Sizes” spoken from the heart
And maybe a Rain Tree on your walk to class

The Brothers Karamazov as a prayer book
300 Tang Poems with the wisdom of China
The Oxford Book of English Verse, edited by Q
                    (Not THAT Q!)
Doctor Zhivago in squabbling translations

And some have spoken most eloquently
                                                         for Goodnight Moon
And now what university of yours helps sing
                                                         your world in tune?

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

                                    Let’s All Meet in Cicely

                      From a dream that sailed from Thailand

Let’s all meet in Cicely before the snow
You can find me sitting outside The Brick
At peace as the gentle autumn breezes blow
Having put aside my hiking stick

Fleischmann joins us on that old wooden bench
Chris-in-the-Morning stops by for a beer
Hollings gives Shelly a husbandly pinch
She takes his broom and with it smacks his rear

Maurice and Maggie, Ruth-Anne, Marilyn, and Ed
Drop in with stories of love and life and history
And news brought in by plane and road and sled
To this Brigadoon of happy mystery

Let’s all meet in Cicely before the snow
And share in its peace before we go

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

                               You’ve Read Your Last Free Article

Yes, I have.

(Click. Delete.)

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

                                           Lenin in Petrograd


               They're at it again! I wish they'd decide once and for all
                which gang of hooligans constitutes the government of
                this country!

                          -Uncle Alex reacting to fighting in the streets
                                         in Doctor Zhivago (1965)


More men in masks, and wearing scruffy clothes
Roaming the streets and waving rifles about
And which side they are on, nobody knows
Our capital is now all fear and doubt

Some demand my papers, and others my life
Some challenge my accent and exam my skin
Some threaten with a gun and others a knife
And some an unmarked car to throw me in

“Here, sir, the people govern,” Alexander Hamilton said -
No longer, alas; the people’s laws are dead

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

             Leave it to ****** – The Shakespearean I.C.E. Episode

                                         Dramatis Personae:

Ward, a husband and father

Wally, Ward’s teenaged son

June, Ward’s wife, accomplishing hussefery in a dress and pearls

******, Ward and June’s younger son


Ward:

Wally, I knowest thou hath merry plans for the morrow
But I must tell thee, to thy woe and sorrow
That thou’rt to stay home, and mow the lawn

Wally:

Oh, golly, gee, seest thou my face turn wan?
Beloved father, I cannot with thy orders comport
For I cannot find my comradely passport
Nor, in addition to that paperwork dearth,
Yea, verily, my certificate of birth!
Without which workers are subject to arrest
By I.C.E., as the news and warnings attest

June:

‘Tis true – I.C.E. feareth every gangbanger and yob
But they will imprison some kid at his job
And Superman might get thee; I.C.E. hired him today
That is their new truth, justice, and th'American way

******:

Gee, Wally, if thou’rt carried to Alcatraz
Can I have thy room?

Voice Off:                            

                                                      We needeth no stinkin’ warrants!

Exeunt omnes, pursued by Dogberries with guns

Dear Anonymous Friends,

You are too kind. Thank you for the honor!

-Y'r 'Umble Scrivener

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

                                        Disturbances in Church

The more I am disturbed by liturgical novelties
The less I am disturbed by God

The less I am disturbed by liturgical novelties
The more I am disturbed by God

All of which is logical, not odd

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

                                 The Season of Back-To-School

                When Americans seize books from their children
    and form charitable committees to give them backpacks instead

A great many people did not say the following:

Once you have read a backpack you care about, some part of it is always with you. – Louis L’Amour

These backpacks gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: you are not alone. -Roald Dahl

Good friends, good backpacks, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. ― Mark Twain

If there's a backpack that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it. ― Toni Morrison

“Classic” - a backpack which people praise and don't read. ― Mark Twain

When I have a little money, I buy backpacks; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes. ― Erasmus of Rotterdam

I cannot live without backpacks. ― Thomas Jefferson

If you have a garden and a backpack, you have everything you need. ― Cicero

No backpack is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond. ― C.S. Lewis

A backpack, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe. ― Madeleine L'Engle

And on the subject of burning backpacks: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain backpacks from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those backpacks.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries. ― Kurt Vonnegut

Do you ever read any of the backpacks you burn? ― Ray Bradbury

You don’t have to burn backpacks to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them – Ray Bradbury

Knowing I loved my backpacks, he furnish’d me
From mine own library with backpacks that
I prize above my dukedom – Prospero in The Tempest I.ii.166-168

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

                         As You Sometimes Gently Remind Me…


                                One day I'll suddenly recall:
                                The sun exists!

                           Pasternak, “About These Poems”1


When the world focuses on a sheet of paper
In a little room where hopes have come to die
The pen can’t write out a prescription for life
Or limn the remedies for a fallen world

We begin our days as did Pasternak
A cup of tea against the fear, the fear
Unsure of the conflicting daily edicts
The babblings about ballrooms, tariffs, and arrests

Pasternak opened a window to light and fair

And to the children playing in the snow he cried,
“My dears, what century is it outside?”


1Translations vary

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

                                     The World is Passing By


                      The curfew tolls the knell of parting day

             -Gray, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”


Full moon at dusk, a walking stick, the lane
The neighborhood ‘possum on his supper hour
Bumbling and stumbling to see what the cats have left
Little frogs chanting their Vespers hymns in choir

The evening star as the sanctuary lamp
Advising us of the Presence in the rising mist
The ‘possum has not paused to give his thanks
So I will pause and give thanks in his place

Full moon at dusk, my walking stick, the lane
A fig for the world! This is what we gain

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

                                    In Anno Domini MMXXV
                    Pontius Pilate Asks Us a Serious Question

When Pilate asks us now, “Truth! What is that?”
He probably isn’t being sarcastic.

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

                        Il Laura Loomer Ha Sempre Ragione!

Be a real American – buy Chinese
A true Trump Bible or American Eagle Jeans
The holy Nihil Obstat is Chairman Xi’s
The genes of the jeans are whatever President Loomer means



American Eagle Jeans: Where Are They Manufactured? | ShunVogue

Trump's 'God Bless the USA' Bibles were printed in China, AP review finds | AP News

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.”

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

                           High-Pressure Dome in a Coffee Cup

Blue light - an illusion of comfort at dawn
The streaky windows frame a winter day
Illusions and delusions lying to us
For this is July, when hopes wither and die

The sun’s tentacles ripple across the fields
One of them slithers to your window and leers
Mocking the fantasies of your air-conditioned sleep
Beckoning you outside: come and be fried

The sun’s hot streakings, mortals seeking, they roam
As summer’s slithering death: a high-pressure dome

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

         A Three-Character-Group Code for Advancing Civilization


                                   Learn. To. Dostoyevsky.

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

                                       The Apex Predator


                    They…
                    Have watched me rise from the darkness of war
                    Dripping with my enemies’ blood

                            -Beowulf, trans. Raffel, lines 151-153


The apex predator feeds upon the flesh
Of those who wanted desperately to live
To hew and chew and gnaw and digest and mesh
With those who died with no desire to forgive

The apex predator feeds while others starve
The sentient flee from him in grievous fear
But he always wins, his victims then to carve
In ****** fields and haunted forests drear

War ends violently in drang und sturm
And the apex predator is obviously
                                                  ­ The Worm

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

               She Had *** with Her Brother Says The Daily Wail

She had *** with her brother says The Daily Wail
And was eaten in prison, there without bail
By vampires who live in deep tunnels beneath
A park bench situated in Hampstead Heath

Amelia Earhart’s plane has been found again
She was married to ******’s identical twin
And ******, you know, was secretly straight
Cruisin’ for chicks near the Brandenburg Gate

DNA proves that a Kennedy son
Lives under an alias in Area 51
And commutes to Stonehenge on a weekly basis
Transported by Martian hydroponic stasis

But back to the man who had *** with his sister
Did he use preferred pronouns whenever he kissed her?

Lawrence Hall 5h
Piso Mojado Sounds Somewhat ******
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                           Piso Mojado Sounds Somewhat ******

Piso mojado en Tejas y Colorado
Does not exactly trip from my English tongue
Cuidado that floor in El Dorado
For piso sounds slippily close to dung!

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

                           Piso Mojado Sounds Somewhat ******

Piso mojado en Tejas y Colorado
Does not exactly trip from my English tongue
Cuidado that floor in El Dorado
For piso sounds slippily close to dung!

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
(note - some inappropriate and immature language)

                   The U. S. Army ***** Patrol is On the March!


      https://www.404media.co/pentagon-says-it-will-continuously-
      monitor-bathrooms-to-comply-with-anti-trans-order/

        “What did you do when you were in the Army, Daddy?”

      “Son, I was proud to spy on my fellow soldiers in the latrine.”


Kamerade Hegseth has issued a decree
All soldiers must be issued a G.I. wiener
Without which they have no permission to ***
In our Army all leaner and meaner

C’mon, boys, let’s wave our little flags!
Above and beyond the call of duty
In a morally pure ***** free of ****
Hegseth will inspect each manly *****

Each morning at reveille and wakeup
(After he admires his muscles and makeup)

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

    We Ask Everyone to Respect Our Family Privacy at This Time

“Our family privacy” – they keep saying that
A friend came over and mowed my rankling lawn
Because finding a lawnmower mechanic these days
Is like searching for a unicorn in a shopping mall

Their family privacy – I’m blessed with friends
But lawnmower mechanics seem to be extinct
The temp today was 98 at noon
Nobody chants “Learn. To. Code.” anymore

Their family privacy – chicken *** pies
Are on sale at Brookshire’s for 88 cents
I’ll mail all those bills this afternoon
That’s a really nice shirt you’re wearing today

Their family privacy – a middle-aged woman
Sheds tears upon an altar of VHS tapes

In privacy

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

                                  Betrayed With a Kiss-Cam


                    And the sunlight clasps the earth
                    And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
                    What is all this sweet work worth
                                If thou kiss not me?

                          -Shelly, “Love’s Philosophy”


A kiss is just a kiss, as Dooley Wilson sang
In a Casablanca that never was
A kiss to give one’s life a bit of tang
A kiss to set a lonely heart abuzz

But great unwashed mobs stacked in their masses
Close-looped in a failed sub-culture of dust
Metal in their noses and tattoos on their *sses
Will never find truth without finding trust

For love can never depend upon
The vigilante cruelty of a jumbo-tron




Tech company Astronomer launches investigation into 'kiss cam' moment at Coldplay concert - ABC News

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

                                                Loose Vowels

A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y – why?
(Asking for a dipthong)

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

                                        The Crown of Rachel


                        From an idea inspired by Nat Lipstadt
                          while we discussing something else


A dream about our teacher Akiva of Yavna
When the Romans took a respite from murdering us:
In our youth we approached a little house
Though we were tired from following the goats all day

Akiva was tired from tending his beans
And from Jacob-wrestling with great ideas
But he smiled and asked what he could do
Do for us little children bubbling with questions

“I am inventing the synagogue,” he might have said
“What is a synagogue? A new kind of Temple?”
“It is a machine for learning, a temple of the mind
A school, an altar upon we sacrifice our ignorance”

“But the Romans won’t let us sacrifice anything”
“Sometimes” said Akiva wryly, “they sacrifice us
But in the synagogue we will have a little light
Light and Torah and learning, always learning”

“We want to learn.”

“Oh? And what do you want to learn?” he asked of us

“We want to learn.”

He smiled and sat us at a table under his vines
“I learned to read when I was forty,” he said
As he took out a tablet and a stylus
One of us said, “I can’t imagine being that old!”

Our teacher smiled, smoothed the day from the wax
And instructed us to attend to the Word
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”
That is what he said, not what he wrote in the wax

Akiva prayed, he prayed for us, and wrote
And in the wax the letters formed as fire
As gold and fire:

                                    “Bereshit Bara Elohim…”

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

                                       The Crown of Rachel


                        From an idea inspired by Nat Lipstadt
                           while we discussing something else


A dream about our teacher Akiva of Yavna
When the Romans took a respite from murdering us:
In our youth we approached a little house
Though we were tired from following the goats all day

Akiva was tired from tending his beans
And from Jacob-wrestling with great ideas
But he smiled and asked what he could do
Do for us little children bubbling with questions

“I am inventing the synagogue,” he might have said
“What is a synagogue? A new kind of Temple?”
“It is a machine for learning, a temple of the mind
A school, an altar upon we sacrifice our ignorance”

“But the Romans won’t let us sacrifice anything”
“Sometimes” said Akiva wryly, “they sacrifice us
But in the synagogue we will have a little light
Light and Torah and learning, always learning”

“We want to learn.”

“Oh? And what do you want to learn?” he asked of us

“We want to learn.”

He smiled and sat us at a table under his vines
“I learned to read when I was forty,” he said
As he took out a tablet and a stylus
One of us said, “I can’t imagine being that old!”

Our teacher smiled, smoothed the day from the wax
And instructed us to attend to the Word
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”
That is what he said, not what he wrote in the wax

Akiva prayed, he prayed for us, and wrote,
And in the wax the letters formed as fire
As gold and fire:

                                         “Bereshit Bara Elohim…”

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

                                       Death Falls Apart in White

Snow does not fall in July, and yet there is white
White falling like snowflakes or flower petals
White scatterings across the summer lawn
Ghostly among the leafy sheltering oaks

The hawks are back

An egret about her business of bugs and snakes
Sudden violence high up in the gentle air
Flesh and life claw-ripped, torn, and devoured
Unheard below, only feathers falling as death

The hawks are back

This artificial paradise of feeders and seeders
And flower-bordered lawn is a scape of death
From which the gentle rabbits, birds, and squirrels
Withdraw in silent fear

The hawks are back

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

                   The Last Nights of Club Ozymandias in San Diego


                            Shelley always makes one think
             (often about how to pronounce his middle name)


I met a tout along a darkening street
Who said – “two trunkless legs of neon dance
There, upon that wall, on neon feet
An electromechanical contrivance to prance

In remnants, but wiggling hips and pouty lips
Tell that the artisan well caught the lust
Of lonely sailors as a pretty girl strips -
In time those young men and the dancer will be dust

These letters appear, written in cold fire:
I am the Queen of Club Ozymandias
Look upon me with your hot desire
Look upon me, and imagine us…

Tomorrow all will be leveled

A housing estate will arise, a planner’s scar
Nothing will remain of laughter and drinks
Of sailors flinging their pay upon the bar
For a dancing girl now silent as the Sphinx”