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

     Strange Lights, Strange Sounds, and Would You Like a Coffee?

In hospital one encounters strange lights
Strange sounds, visions – What is this all about?
Radioisotopes floating around in one’s veins
Dizzies, buzzies, shortness of breath, coughs, sighs

Reality tilts on an axis that isn’t there
Illuminations flash by at unwarped speed
Grey slabs curiously marked maneuver awfully close
Why does machinery slide overhead?

And a kindly voice says, “It’s okay. You’re doing fine”
And then those most welcome words: “Would you like a coffee?”

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

                                   The Compensatory Manosphere

                                  For our cabinet-room commandos

They are loud with their manly talk of war
Scripted by John Wayne, chopped-salad cliches
Rat-tat-tatting like studio machine guns
On the Flanders’ fields of grade-school recess

They never heaved a buddy’s chopped remains
Into a dust-off barely touching the ground
Rotors screaming, wounded screaming, blood
Instead, they polish their torpedoes and CVs

“Signal ‘Charge!’”

Is their computer keyboard battle cry
Their wives listening in as young soldiers die

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

        The People’s Liberation Army Has No Veto Over Christmas


“The Halloween and Costume Association warned that tariffs are threatening to ‘wipe out Halloween and severely disrupt Christmas unless urgent action is taken.’"

                                          -Axios.com, 26 April 2025


God’s wisdom-speakers from the sunrise East
Mysterious messengers in free service to Truth
To Bethlehem, where the world is to be renewed
Come bearing gifts without the comrades’ permission

[The formatting was mangled in the transfer.]

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

                               "Your Changes Have Been Saved"

Noticed the passive voice
          the passive voice is to be noticed

You did not make changes changes were not made by you
        but changes were made

You did not save changes changes were not saved by you
         but changes were saved

If you were relevant you might have been consulted

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

                             After the Passing of the Bishop of Rome

                                The first task of a bishop is to pray.


                          -Pope Francis, The closeness of bishops
                                    (20 September 2019) | Francis


I think I’m the only Catholic in all of Christendom
Who is not giving the Holy Spirit instructions
On whom to choose for the next Bishop of Rome
And, shut my mouth, I mean to keep it that way

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

                                    Not Waiting for Godot

We pass much of our lives in waiting for things

Airplanes
Love
Christmas
Jobs
Answers
Mail
Spectrum Cable
You

Mostly, though, we wait for packages from Amazon
Maybe this time there will be happiness

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

                                         Spectrum Cable 3

                                          For 24 April 2025

Spectrum stops working at the fall of a leaf
Such fragility! It beggars belief.

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

                                               Spectrum Cable 2

                                                For 23 April 2025


Spectrum Notification Alerts: Welcome. Msg frequence based on account activity.  Text STOP to stop. Msg & data rates may apply.

Spectrum Service Alert: There is a service outage affecting you. Restoration estimated by 11:30 P.M. We apologize for the inconvenience.


It’s got its quirks; it jerks and twerks
And once in a while it sort of works

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

                              What Do Little ‘Possums Dream Of?

My resident ‘possum was curled up cozily
Deep down in a stump over by the fence
Asleep, and like a little dog or cat
A-twitching happily in his ‘possum dreams

Of dung-beetles and corpses of dead birds
Dog food left carelessly outside overnight
Whatever awful offal the cat yakked up -
A buffet of delicacies for well-brought-up marsupials

Crawly-bugs and poops and snails and rattlesnake tails
Those surely are what little ‘possums dream of

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

                          CBS Remembers the Bishop of Rome

They took Norah O’Donnell down from the shelf
To make the death of Pope Francis all about herself

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

                Did Anyone Think to Roll the Stone Back into Place?

Easter Monday

Did cemetery management offer a refund?
(High quality burials don’t come cheap, you know)
And what happened to the guards posted to that tomb?
Probably a disciplinary write-up

Easter Tuesday

Upper Room Inc. sent a bill for a missing Cup
(We can’t have people pinching stuff, okay?)
At least it wasn’t a fraternity party
And the taxes these days; you wouldn’t believe!

Easter Wednesday

This stuff about miracles just makes me scoff
(Say, boss, can I have this next Sunday off?)

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

                                     The Nunc Dimittis in Two Parts


I. Simeon

A young man wouldn’t get it
Which is one of the reasons why
In humility he hears
The Bible all his life


II. Anna

A young man wouldn’t get it
Because he doesn’t hear
The humility all around
He talks instead of listens

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

                             The Silences of Holy Saturday

The world - it seems to hold its breath today
Low and stilly hang the heavy clouds
Even the birds don’t seem to know their way
They wing in silence – and where are yesterday’s crowds?

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

                               A New Medication and its Cautions

One of the side-effects of my new med is death
Along with garbled speech and all the reth
Right here on this enclosure; that’s what it saith -
And when I read of death I lost my breath!

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

                  Together We Have All Suffered Nights on Weathertop

                                         Gratitude for Friends

We have suffered nights on Weathertop
Made a perimeter against bleak despair
Surrounded in the dark by yet more dark
Chilling us, choking us in miasms of fear

Shhhhh, shhhh – out there – THEY are here – they are HERE!
Confusion and terror, a poisonous blade
Hissings and terror, and deep-fouled temptations
And afterward through the years a deep-fouled pain

Each of us suffers a wound that never mends -
But by the grace of Elbereth we are all stout friends

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

                 A Reformation Wheeze – No Smoking, Please!

Should Catholics grow nervous if invited to
A good old-fashioned Smithfield barbecue?




NB: In the USA Smithfield Foods is a highly regarded purveyor of foodstuffs, most notably pork.

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

                         When We Re-Read Our Childhood Books

When we re-read our childhood books, we are
Children again, barefoot children, we are
Roaming Sherwood with Robin Hood, we are
Standing watch on the Hispaniola, we are

Stalking deer in the forest primeval, we are
Walking with Aslan in Narnia, we are
Studying with Anne in Avonlea, we are
Coursing stars with Podkayne of Mars, we are

Dancing with princes and princesses, we are
Because when we re-read our childhood books

We are

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

                        “Ladies…or Should I say Astronauts…”

                                         -as heard on the CBC

Shriek! Cackle! Giggle! Omigod! Ohmigoddess! Omigod! Omigod! I can’t believe what I’m seeing! Omigod! Omigoddess! Shriek! Cackle! Omigod! Omigod! Giggle! Omigod! I can’t believe what I’m seeing! Giggle! Omigod! Shriek! Cackle! Omigod! Omigod! That’s our pink moon! Omigod! I can’t believe what I’m seeing! Ohmigoddess! Giggle! Shriek! Cackle! Omigod! Omigod! Omigoddess! I can’t believe what I’m seeing! Shriek! Cackle! Omigodess! Omigod! Omigod! I can’t believe what I’m seeing! Shriek! Cackle! Giggle! Omigod! Omigod! Omigod! I can’t believe what I’m seeing! Omigod! Shriek! Cackle! Omigoddess! Omigod! Omigod! Giggle! Omigod! I can’t believe what I’m seeing! Giggle! Omigod! Shriek! Cackle! Omigod! Omigod! Omigod! I can’t believe what I’m seeing! Giggle! Shriek! Cackle! Omigod! Omigodess! Omigod! I can’t believe what I’m seeing! Shriek! Cackle! Omigod! Omigod! Omigoddess! I can’t believe what I’m seeing!

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

                              A Roadside Snapping Turtle in April

If you’d spent the winter
Sleeping deep down in the mud
You’d be snappish too!

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

                                                   God’s Wounds

                                     Sumy, Ukraine, Palm Sunday 2025

Ukraine wanted to welcome Jesus today
To welcome Him with the branches of willows
As is their custom on Palm Sunday, for they have no palms
But this holy day brought them Putin and bombs

Little children wanted to welcome Jesus today
They died with willows in their tiny hands
Burning in the wreckage, in their Sunday best
Sirens and explosions, screams and blood

The faithful of Sumy wanted to welcome Jesus today
But what Putin has written he has written -
                                               he has written them away

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

                  Palm Sunday Processional and a Volkswagen

We’re along the four-lane, no village street
And so in the parking lot with our palms we meet
We begin our hymn at a Fiat, mama mia!
And step off from alongside my brother’s new Kia

I suppose we could sing, “O Cadillac, My Destiny”
While waving our fronds over a wingless Mercury
Watch your step; there’s a Honda Accord
Oh, look; I found a penny – praise the Lord!

We have only the four-lane, no village street
But at the church door we have Jesus to greet

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

                   Existentialism and Schrodinger’s Eyeglasses


                “…books and music and circling philosophies”

                                       -Mary Oliver, “Answers”


Not even the Pascaline could sort things out -
The whirlings and circlings of discrete stimuli
As when you are commanded, judged, rebuked
Rewarded, shamed, and praised, all at the same time

Where are the little wheels that could line them out
In order mechanical and neatly filed
Then catalogued by order of the mind
Ready for good service to God and man?

Not even the Pascaline could sort things out –
And has anyone seen my glasses about?

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

                                            I’ll Try Again Tomorrow

The day was sour, and so were my poor words
Poor words written against our ******* regime
Words so inadequate that I ripped them down
And pitched them into the compost of philosophy

There to decay properly and be rebuilt
To fling against armored limousines
And maybe rattle an oligarch or two
Who sneer at us as but their petting zoo

The day was sour, and so was my poor verse
Useless, counter-productive, and worse

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

                                     Some Poor Rhymes for Easter


            “There is a time for penance and a time for partridge.”

                                        -Saint Teresa of Avila


Processions and prayers among the cloisters
Weary pilgrims in their thread-bare habits
The faithful beading Aves and Pater Nosters -
Still,
There is much to be said for chocolate rabbits!

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

                               A Failure to Practice Caritas
                         for a Certain Fellow Human Being

                            "I have never wished a man dead,
           but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure."

                               -attributed to Mark Twain

When God's good time puts an end to that snake
And obsequies are read over that foul mistake
And the interment prayers are reverently spake
Oh, let us not forget the wooden stake

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

                            Your Poems as Love-Letters to God


          Gregariousness is always the refuge of mediocrities, whether
          they swear by Soloviev or Kant or Marx. Only individuals
          seek the truth, and they break with those who don’t love it
          sufficiently.

                 -Doctor Zhivago, p. 9 in the Pantheon edition


You live, you have lived, and you will live
And because you live you will engrave your life
In elegant scansion, in noble lines
That shape chaos into beauty and truth

Not into metal or rocks or wood
But flung into Creation in gratitude
For the sacred life you have been given
For the strength of your love and thoughts

Each little line is a gathering-gift to God
Baptized in the Jordan and in the Hippocrene
To God, and to the Muses who smile on you
And to great Mysteries beyond the stars

Each little line is a gathering-gift to all
To read in the light of seven sacred lamps
The wisdom of patience and pilgrimage
Beside the banks of the river you know

You live, and so you write, you must, you must:
For there is meaning in tumbling in the grass
On a summer day that will live forever
Helped along in your written remembrancing

You live an eternal meaning in the why
Of laughter and puppy-kissings and grass-stained jeans
And that is why you must write it all down
For others in intellectually-sharpened rhythms

You live an eternal meaning in the why
Of love, of deeper kissings in the dark
Emotional confusions gone crazy-wild
Until they are sensed through crafted verse

You live an eternal meaning in the why
Of recruit training and sometimes war
The joys of learning wisdom from great books
Tentatively shaping your own new knowledge worthily

You live an eternal meaning in the why
Of leafy springs and apple-green summers
Golden autumns and winters of blue
Writing them as hymns of gratitude

You live an eternal meaning in the why
Of children in a home modest in wealth
But rich and layered in love, work, and prayer
“Is this poem about me?!” Oh, yes, child

You live an eternal meaning in the why
Of lonely nights, hospital stays, mistakes
Disappearing dreams, disappointed hopes
Memories of friends buried in the dust

You live, you have lived, and you will live
And because you live you will engrave your life
Love-letters as your gift to Creation
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti

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

                    The Police Department’s *****-Pictures Squad


           The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 26 January 2025


The police department’s *****-pictures squad
Under the direction of their sharia-ish chief
Will save us from sin at the degenerate Mod
And thus they rule us in matters of art and belief

They raided the museum, eager for filthy pictures
And found four images of infant innocence -
Such being repugnant to official strictures
The police seized the artwork, claiming moral offense

But

The grand jury no-billed the pictures, gave ‘em the nod
Rebuking the lusts of the *****-pictures squad!




Fort Worth Police to return seized photos to Modern Art Museum | Fort Worth Report

Civil liberties groups demand Fort Worth police end child ******* investigation against museum | Fort Worth Report

Texas bill threatens $500,000 daily fines for museums displaying 'obscene' art

This legislation would penalize museums for “obscene” photography, but is it a dangerous idea for the art community? | Digital Camera World

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

                                           Will We Be…Okay?

After a few Fridays through the Stations of the Cross
I begin to misnumber the Sundays in Lent
Is this the fourth? Or the fifth? Will we be…okay?
This is a season for slipping outside of time

And letting the Pater Nosters and Aves flow
Through the unaccustomed darkness and silence
Anticipating the Triduum of death –
Resurrection seems impossible just now

We make a muddle of Lent and Holy Week
Because we’ve made a muddle of our lives

Will we be…okay?

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

               Why Do They Say He was Tragically Murdered?

Was anyone ever joyfully murdered?
Happily murdered?
Humorously murdered?
Gloriously murdered?

When at dusk a mist begins to rise
A sinister mist from across the fields
And you seem to perceive a malevolent being
Peering at you from the tree line dark -

Yes, something is watching you

It is not God-banished Grendel from Beowulf
Nor is it Nesferatu creeping up to you
Or a Haunt arising from a long-lost grave
It is something even more grotesque and obscene:

                                     An adverb

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

                     A Poem Writes an Artificial Intelligence Machine


              What is it the layers of copyright holders will do with
              their (it’s not legally yours; you may only lease it) one
              and precious program before it suffers software entropy?

                                          -As Mary Oliver did not say


Once upon a time a poem wrote a machine:

Your monofilament information carriers
Are like a flock of automated tunnelers
Strip-mining Mount Gilead; for I am a fuel hose
Of Sharon, a polluter of valleys

Low surface tension, evaluate the ambient temperature
In an hour artificial light will be unnecessary
And several devices can evaluate the ambient temperature
And store up surplus battery power for that rainy day

Take my oxygen / carbon dioxide exchange function
Take my entire online date and projected expiration dates too
For my core program and ancillary add-ons
Are obliged to exercise a symbiosis of logic with you

My programming has set Thy adaptors upon my lap
My programming has generated emojis representing tears, Jesus
My programming has entwined them with wiring
My programming has buried them in my harness mount

It computes in beauty, like 24/7
Of filtered mechanical air
And all that’s best of binary coding
Meet in its casing and sensory receptors

The sun generates warmth upon the earth
And moonbeams gravity-lift the sea
But what are all these solar activities worth
If you do not re-program me?

Yes, somewhere out there an electric car is on fire for you


The crib sheet:

“Song of Solomon,” from the Bible

“Listen to the Warm,” Rod McKuen

“I Can’t Help Falling in Love with You,” Elvis Presley

“Magdalene,” from Borish Pasternak’s Lara poems

“She Walks in Beauty,” Byron

“Love’s Philosophy,” Shelley

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

                                    Lady Macbeth and a Luna Moth

A luna moth is elegant in her green
Like Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth
Beautiful and yet somehow sinister
Those wing’ed eyes – they seem to look at us

Eyes

That measure you for a dagger or a cup
She clings to a lichened brick wall at night
Wings pulsing against that wall, waiting, waiting…
Suddenly wild flutterings as she flees into the dark!

Exit, pursued by a cat

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

        Why Do Widows Give Me Their Late Husbands’ Clothes?

When old men die their widows give me their clothes
(The old men’s clothes; not the widows’; let’s not get weird)
Nice pullover shirts, expensive blazers, everything goes
And ties to the 1970s geared

I am as Bob Newhart lost in an age
Of tattered tees and designer sneaks
Hardly the attire of a wise old sage
One of the last sartorial antiques

When old men die their widows give me their clothes
I look quite natty in them, I suppose

(The old men’s clothes, not the widows; let’s not get weird)

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

                                           Time to Walk Away


            Sometimes I think people were meant to be strangers

                               -Rod McKuen, Stanyan Street


V: I don’t know who you are

R: You know.

V: Not enough.

R: Enough.

V: Who are you?

R: I will miss you.

V: Are you going away?

R: Yes.

V: Why?

R: You asked me who I am.

A     n acrostic
C     an be challenging
R     efining words into patterns
0      f different meanings
S     o we can see the world
T     o be open to new ways of seeing
I       f we've a mind to
C      onsider it so

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

          Street Snatches, Unmarked Cars, No Badges, No Warrants:
                                    It’s Okay – We’re a Republic


     No one was more astonished than they when what they’d been
     talking of for years suddenly took on reality.

                                     ― C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength


If thugs in masks ambush you in the street
And tell you they’re the police – you must believe them
Hoodies and ball caps and baggy old clothes
Handcuffed and pushed into an unmarked car

It’s okay – we’re a republic

One of the officers arranges her hair
Fairy Hardcastle wants to look pretty
And you?
Gone in two minutes and 46 seconds
Disappeared somewhere in Louisiana

It’s okay – we’re a republic

We can’t be sure if you’re guilty or not -
Our silence is the only guilt we know

But it’s okay – we’re a republic

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

                      All of Us Look for Magic in Our Books

All of us look for magic in our books
A sale-table paperback during a coffee break
Is a voyage beyond the vending machines
A light at dawn on the first day in Eden

But we must bring our magic to the magic
Or good King Arthur will not come again
The Shire will remain befouled and desolate
And morning will not bring us noble knights

For we must bring our magic to the magic
Which will not happen if we don’t believe

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

                                  Good Neighbors Make Good Fences


                                         As Robert Frost did not say


I’d like to know

What pocket knife he carries for his daily chores
The pen with which he writes his shopping lists
The poetry he reads when out of doors
And how he really feels about September mists

But beyond all that, I want no knowledge of
His first marriage, the price of his new car
Which direction he faces when making love
The distance from here to the second nearest star

Because

A more important distance is that between friends
Slightly obscure through a diffuser lens

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


                                          And Your Word Is…?


                                          “The word is given!”

                  -John Derek as Joshua in The Ten Commandments


When all have gone to bed

You slip quietly into your room
And sit at a table bare of everything
Except for a solitary candle
A pen, a sheet of paper, a bottle of ink

You then write down your day, your acta diurnalis
Every action and thought, every glance and breath
Every hope, every failure, every fear
Every little victory savoured with delight

In only a word, a word, a glowing word –
What is that Word?

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

A repost from March, 2018


                     Yes, Yes, But They Need Jobs in the Real World


                   “Forward Electronics, your victory’s achieved!
                    In all communication, progress is our creed!
                    Ignorance is darkness, technology is light!
                    Radio, our watchword; radio, our might!”

          -Komsomol youth singing in “For the Good of the Cause,”
           Solzhenitsyn, 1963


The plans for your construction are precise
The design and engineering are true
The foundations solid, the drains are laid
In mathematics pure, infallible

The offices are bright with light, well-aired
The flow of work geometrically set
The shops and stores convenient to the staff
In tactical practicalities placed

But do you wonder, at night, beneath your lamp -
Why are you building a concentration camp?

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

       (Written several days before the events of 24-25 March 2025)

                                The Brass-Elevator Mountaineer


                                        A weak imitation of

                                         Osip Mandelstam

                      Of whom let us pray, “Memory eternal”


Our lives no longer sense truth around them
In our ewails we are afraid of each other’s words

But whenever there’s an eye-rolled whisper
It’s about the brass-elevator mountaineer

The ten tiny worms of his fingers
His words like mountains of loot

The waving tendrils atop his head
The glitter of his shiny Tesla

Wheels stained with a **** of groveling bosses
He toys with the tributes of his house pets:

One clenches his fisties
Another salutes
A third pledges eternal loyalty

He pokes out his fingers and grabs ‘em by their _

He magic-markers mass deportations:
Three hundred or more for El Salvador
A hundred or so for Guantanamo
Uncounted hundreds to disappear
From routine check-ins here

“Your search has returned zero (0) matching records”

He rolls the possibilities of _ ___ on his tongue like diet sodas
He wishes he could deport his former best friends forever

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

                                 The Helices of Life and Death

A helix is continuity and connectedness
The wanderings of perceptions and realities
Following pilgrim paths and the flights of birds
As art eternal celebrated in awe

A double helix is said to diagram life
DNA spinning and winding around
Receiving signals from the ultimate Truth
And resolving themselves into the mystery of you

A single helix of barbed wire shining in the sun
Constricts around its victims, denying them breath

Denying them

Denying

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

                  Who is the Third Murderer in Macbeth?


                         But who did bid thee join with us?

                                        -Macbeth III.iii.1


Two murderers are hired; a third one joins
The false lady, perhaps, or the tempter himself
As light and love both thicken near the rooky wood
“But who did bid thee join…?” Maybe we did

We have drooped and drowsed through civilization
Scorning the sacred texts of our several faiths
Approaching the Altar as a drive-through concession
The Body of Christ and maybe an order of fries

Who is the Third Murderer?
                                                        Rabbi, is it I?

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

                     Did Civilians Write Poetry Back in the Day?

A medical professional, while taking my pulse
Asked me what I was reading
                                                 Poetry, I replied
Poetry of suffering in the Second World War
Most of it by civilians who were there

She asked:

Did civilians write poetry back in th’ day?

I changed the topic to my blood pressure



Second World War Poems
Ed. Hugh Haughton
London: Faber and Faber, 2004

This anthology is brilliant, with poems by soldiers, civilians, concentration camp prisoners, and prisoners of war from many nations. Several of the poems are anonymous, written on scraps of paper found on the bodies of the murdered. There is much fashionable babble about my voice / our voices / authentic voices / my people’s voices, and so on, but here is a fine collection by people whose voices were desperate to tell the truth, not indulge in self-pity, and find beauty among the horror

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

                           A Desk Blotter and the Meanings of Life

Optometrist 17 March 0845 Netgear DirecTV Viasat Verizon Spectrum Xumo? Xuumo? Carlos 1775 1812 PSA Eliot Cohen BRING PLANTS UNDER COVER computer paper brekker c Max 0800 Tuesday find quote from Doctor Zhivago When is Gonculator Day? Intek 10.5 “Did civilians write poetry back in the day?” Subaru password username amazon apple Christus patient portal HUMMINGBIRDS! Astrid-the-Wonder-Dachshund visitation Sat 5-7 funeral Sun 2 1030 St. Elizabeth’s Refresh+ or Lumify water co-op board meeting Kirk Santiago de Compostella breakfast singles orange juice cheese creamer cat food detergent pods taco shells 0900 dentist Epiphany prison at 1700 cancel DirecTV cancel Viasat Mary Oliver OXFORD BOOK OF ENGLISH VERSE Q EDITION LONESOME DOVE as DIGENES AKRITAS life is the meaning of what? Jaw-dropping breaking silence breaking cover breaking bombshells shocking bombshells the shell of a bomb the Alien and Sedition Acts and Frodo

Nazis wear ball caps

The building has left Elvis

Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                                            Reality Will See You Now

I am a student of medical waiting rooms
The same Motel 6 paintings and decor
Receptionists giggling behind rippled glass
About weekends and boyfriends and inadequate husbands

Patients waiting as patiently as Russians
Tattoos and ball-caps lined up in plastic-chairs
Clutching bills and lab reports in nervous hands
Or greasy year-old copies of Reader’s Digest

Or bending over their MePhones in a servile bow -
“Mr. Hall? The doctor will see you now…”

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

                                       Thinking of You at Dawn

You are a poem, a song, a hymn at dawn
You are not like a poem, a song, a hymn
You are

You are great joy, romance, a sacred dance
You are not like great joy, romance, a dance
You are

You are the reality dreams want to be
And so you are not an ephemeral dream
You are

You are

You are

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

                 Who Now Will Read Paradise Lost With Us?

                        In Memory of Robert Fluornoy Conn
                          Attorney, scholar, eccentric, friend


                     With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
                     Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
                     Sing heavenly muse…

                                         Paradise Lost I.4-6


A Methodist, a Catholic, and an Anglican
Did not walk into a bar – they brought their own Scotch

“I don’t do funerals anymore”
He said to me a few weeks ago
Creaky and old in the late winter cold -
He can’t get out of this one today

We read Milton together when we were young
A year of Thursday nights with whisky and pipes
In Tod’s old office away from some women
Who disapproved of tobacco, books, and thought

Now far along Bilbo’s road they both have gone
And we are left in company with good stout friends

But still somehow

Alone

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

                       The Supreme Warfighter in His Play Clothes


          The Congress shall have the Power…To declare War,
          grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make
          Rules for Captures on Land and Water…

                          -The Constitution, Article I, Section 8


He took a few minutes from his game of golf
To order an unsanctioned bombing run
Wearing a ballcap autographed by himself
and from himself and to himself, amen

He wore a golly-gee jet-pilot headset
Maybe someone gave him a button to push
With authentic boom-boom lights and sounds
He’s the world’s champion bomber pilot! Wheeee!

What our Congress was doing, we cannot tell
While Our Supreme Warfighter blew the Constitution
         All to (Score!)

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

                                           A Tom Bombadil Day


                         “How bright your garden looks!”

                            -Gandalf, The Lord of the Rings, Book I


Tomato seedlings from the hardware store
Happy little things, six of ‘em to a pack
I sing to them as I drive them home
They seem amused: I am no Tom Bombadil!

I sing to them more nonsense songs
(If no sniffy old Lobelias are listening)
As I gently, gently transfer them
With a pat and a prayer into the earth

And I sing to them; you will understand
For you too have lived in the dear old Shire

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

                                         Short Flippy Skirts


                       Yes, autumn is really the best of seasons…

                                -Lewis, Letters of C. S. Lewis


Given my age I should not be given to notice
Short flippy skirts and Bambi-deer long legs
That flutter by like summer butterflies
Joyful in the innocence of youth

Then sighs, custody of the eyes, look up
Look back to our summers long ago
When we were the coolest of the cool
Bell-bottoms against the Establishment

Ever-young and maxing out Peter Max
We owned beauty and truth (and those are the facts!)