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

                             The Curse - of the – Dramatic - Dash

The dash for – dramatic pause – infests
Almost every – essay – these days
Such errant usages - have become pests
And thoughtful writers - might want to mend - their ways

A clear English sentence  - is tight - and terse
A model of - artistic - clarity
But all those pointless - dashes - make the wording worse
Compromising its - structural - harmony

If in re-writing you find – you’ve placed a dash
Just rip that sucker - out – and toss it in –
                   the trash!

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

                  Quomodo Est Imperatoris Golf Ludi Hodie?

One sees the Senators cringing before Caesar
But lording themselves over the citizens of Rome
Putting a polish on their resumes’ and their nails
And checking out the cute new dancing girls

Truth is whatever Caesar decrees this week:
The Goths and Britons have signed an eternal peace
The border with Egypt is now secure
The price of wheat is down, as you can see

Thus the Senate proclaims:

Citizens of Rome!

You may not die of starvation in our streets
Lest you put our fat nobles off their sweets!

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

                   That Untucked-Shirttail Guy at Every Meeting

You know him well, that untucked-shirttail old man
Booming his gassy voice at every meeting
Whatever the topic he leads the van
Interrupting with his self-obsessed bleating

He was a banker, he tells us repeatedly
He knows about finance, more than the treasurer
And he was a cop, too, he yells out heatedly
And arguing the reports gives him much pleasurer

You know him well, that untucked-shirttail old gent
He doesn’t know Jacques Merde, but he will always vent!

(He’s not unlike an American president)

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

                         A Somewhat Whiny Morning Prayer

If only the day
Will live up to the promise
Of this golden dawn

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

                                Flight of the Lawn Chairs

                                The Lion-Winds of March

Wild winds now rise to a Valkyrie’s strength
And dark clouds roar to the hammer of Thor
While lightning traverses the poor earth’s length
As if our Nordic gods have gone to war

As if our Nordic gods have gone to war
The walls and windows rattle against the rain
Foul enemies batter against the door
The wrath of Grendel, the hatred of Cain

The wrath of Grendel, the hatred of Cain
Have set my old lawn chairs to flying again!

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

                           A Ghost Road Through the Marsh

              The days are gone
              When the kingdoms of earth flourished in glory

              -from “The Seafarer”, Burton Raffel’s fine translation


Water ran in rivulets among the weeds
The wind was lowering, the rain had stopped, the sky
Was low and grey over a landscape bleak
With wreckage and windfall from the passing storm

An old man slowly worked to clear the road
While the young impatiently hooted and honked
Their displeasure that the world they hadn’t worked
Wasn’t working quite right for them today

The old man sometimes spoke with the ghosts of Rome
Who had built and marched their roads until
The egos and angerings of emperors and kings
Abandoned all good work to slow decay

The young one-fingered past him among the brome
And disappeared forever into the gloam

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

        William Ernest Henley Never Owned a Snapper Lawnmower

                                                 Unsparkus

Out of the oil that covers me
Black as the pit of a president’s soul
I resent whatever flawed designs may be
With my unmechanical soul

In the fell clutch of a slippery clutch
I have often winced and cried aloud
Under the bludgeonings of that son-of-a-Dutch
“I’ll junk this [mess]!” I have avowed

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of engine-part prices
And yet the promise of a case of cold beers
Finds me hammering again at these devices

It matters not how high the grass
How charged with prices the hardware store bill
I am going to whip this foul machine’s [self]
Or bury the [buzzard] in the nearest landfill!




Legal stuff:

William Ernest Henley, "Invictus," from Poems (London: Macmillan and Co., 1920): 83-84. Public domain.