Lawrence Hall
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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

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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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!)

Lawrence Hall
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Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                         Reliable InterGossip Service Providers

                            This one is dedicated to Spectrum

Don’t tell me that they are unreliable
All of my providers have been quite precise
Sure, the picture and sound are not often viable
But the bills are always on time – how nice!

Lawrence Hall
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Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                                 Prancing Chainsaw Dude

Prancing chainsaw dude
Humiliates all of us
And we obey him

Lawrence Hall
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Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                     Authority Over Everything on the Earth

                                    Sirach 17:1-15

You can’t be authority over all the earth
If in the end you are buried under it
What are man’s honors and dignity worth
After he is ignobly dropped into a pit?

Lawrence Hall
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.

Lawrence Hall
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Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                             Soup as a Medium of Exchange

In today’s trading soups were generally down
Although vegetable beef found a brisk trade
Potato soup was bullish in Block D
And each minestrone was five cigarettes

The market closed slightly up at evening count
But this could not compensate for the day’s fall
Naked-lady tats are expected to go high this week
Ten soups for an inked image of yo’ mama

The morning market will open in this metal hell
When some dumb * rings that *ing bell

Lawrence Hall
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Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                                      The Seven Seeing-Stones

Good Tolkien writes of spring far better than we
With layered allusions to Celtic and Nordic myths
His Fairy Folk sing clearly in rainbow rhymes
Among the crocuses abloom ‘round ancient trees

My crocuses bloom ‘round a shaggy lawn
With garden furniture in need of paint
And morning coffee in a Tupperware cup
To serve as a greeting to the rising sun

Friend Tolkien writes of spring for you and me
And through his Seven Seeing-Stones – we see!

Lawrence Hall
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Dispatches for the Colonial Office

            Scriptural Textual Analysis Applied to Act II of Macbeth

                                The Book of Steve Jobs 43:13-16

“Oh, no, Mr. Hall!
It’s right here in the Bible!” she exclaimed
Standing up suddenly from her desk
Eagerly waving her MePhone aloft

And then she paused
Appeared to be slightly embarrassed
Laughed
Took a selfie

And laughed some more

As did we all

Happiness

Lawrence Hall
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Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                                              The List is Death

There is said to be a list – but whose?
Who wrote it? Where is it? Where has it been?
On what teakwood desk does it now repose
Around which names and lives are negotiated

The matter is not that names are being removed
But that your name might be written in
Because your attitude has been noticed
The hand that once shook yours signs away your life

Someone pencils your name upon The List
That’s your loyalty reward (you won’t be missed)

Thoughts ‘n’ prayers as in Two Corinthians

Lawrence Hall
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Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                               The Daily Mail’s New Profits Plan

Go away, Daily Mail.  Go away, Daily Mail.
I’m not going to spend any money on you
I know that your clips are sweet
But my money clip is mine to keep
And my credit limit insists that I must be true

When you're demanding like this
You’re really easy to resist
Go away, Daily Mail
I won’t pay, Daily Mail
You’re just a clickbait away, Daily Mail
App delete, Daily Mail
I will not beg you to stay


Legal stuff about “Go Away, Little Girl,” a sweet, charming song:
Written by: Gerry Goffin, Carole King
Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind

Lawrence Hall
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Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                    The Destruct Sequence Has Been Activated


                   Upon the occasion of suddenly feeling old  
                   while sitting comfortably in a lawn chair
                   on a rare warm afternoon in February


The destruct sequence has been activated:
The photon torpedoes have all been fired
The memory software is badly outdated
The phaser comm panel cannot be re-wired

The main drive has stopped; the batteries are failing
The passageways are blocked with fallen debris
The controls on the bridge are uselessly flailing
The ship is listing slowly, degree by degree

Everything aboard ship is antiquated –
The destruct sequence has been activated

Lawrence Hall
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Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                             In Praise of Lester Holt, Journalist

His journalism is Ernest Hemingway
His plain and honest words are Robert Frost
His elegance is that of Patrick McGoohan
His America is that of Sevareid and Murrow

His purpose is that the news be accurate
His care for others is Angola-true
His courage is modest but as adamant as steel
His is the reassuring voice in any storm

His boots were stained on Afghanistan’s plain
His bosses’ alligator shoes are stained
                                     with the mark of Cain

Lawrence Hall
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Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                                  Their Candles are All Out


                            “…There’s husbandry in heaven;
                              Their candles are all out...”

                                              -Macbeth II.i.6-7


Good men will tend to see the good in all
When Banquo was aware of the starless night
He saw in that not a lack of light  
But rather the careful conservation of light

And so we see this night, this rainy night
Not as a time of cold and darkness and damp
But an occasion for hearth-gathering the family
For cards, chess, read-alouds, blankies, warmth, peace

Good men will tend to see the good in all
And good must then on all of us befall

Lawrence Hall
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Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                    President Musk and His Five Bullet Points

I was a federal employee in Viet-Nam
(More than five bullets and mortar bombs)
No one in Washington demanded I document my day
Or offered to send me home early with eight months’ pay

Lawrence Hall
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Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                                      The Church Garage Sale

                  (Although the garage sale is in the parish hall
                                   because there is no garage)


A garage sale is a rebuke to us all -
The metaphysical finger having writ
Turns now from that lost Babylonian wall
And points as if to scribe in us this bit:

Why did you buy these masses of junk at all?

Lawrence Hall
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Dispatches for the Colonial Office

          The Self-Anointed King of America, Greenland, Panama,
          Gaza, Canada, Ukraine, and the Gulf of America Turns His
          Sallow Face to Rome


                     “Lest our old robes sit easier than our new!”

                                          -Macbeth II.iv.37


All of us must pass, but here’s the thing -
Who next will teach from St. Peter’s throne?
I am very much afraid that our warrior-king
Will anoint himself the Bishop of Rome

Lawrence Hall
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Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                                     Who is Your Greatest Hero?

Do you now, or have you ever…

Worked double shifts or double jobs to pay the bills
Read to your children instead of yelling at them
Had to jump-start your car in the pre-dawn cold
Jump-started your neighbor’s car in the pre-dawn cold

Do you now, or have you ever…

Done some hard time in the military
Served in the volunteer fire department
Attended divine services without making a fuss
Milked cows, chopped wood, raised a garden

Do you now, or have you ever…

Know which end of a hammer hits the nail
Built a home library for your children and yourself
Set a daily study schedule for developing your mind
Raised your children after your spouse bugged out

Do you now, or have you ever…

Gone to work early and stayed late at work
And did more than was expected of you
Taken your children on nature works
Volunteered at your local hospital

Of course you have

So who is my greatest hero?

                                                  You are

Lawrence Hall
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Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                               You Were Dancing Up the Lane

In an old lawn chair I sat and dozed
And felt amber dusk sealing the day
Though I was weary and my eyes were half-closed
I heard you – you, whistling a romantic lay

You were skipping barefoot up the lane
Your skirt all a-dance for your heart’s desire
O Lady-Queen of our happy demesne
With flowers for me, your most devoted squire

I awoke, I blinked – I was all alone -
The sun had set on us, many years gone

But I saw you dancing up the lane…

Lawrence Hall
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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 mother.”

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


That was always soooooooooooooooo annoying.


I wish I could be that annoyed again.

Lawrence Hall
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Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                             I Believe in Love, NOW STAY AWAY

In the tiny coffee shop all the tables were full
A man kept his table to himself
And would not acknowledge anyone
Defensive behind his deep-thoughts book

The rest of us shared our tables and space
Exchanging greetings, pleasantries, and thanks
Passing the cream and sweeteners and napkins around
                       All
Except for that one poor sullen man

On the cover was a drawing of a Christian dove -
His book was entitled *I Believe in Love

Lawrence Hall
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Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                              The Problems with Self-Publishing

The problems with self-publishing are self-publishers:
“Everyone just loves my book; tell me what you think
It’s about my cousin who was a Navy SEAL
And then became a millionaire and then a priest

“He saved the nation from nuclear warfare
In a mission so classified that we can’t talk about it
(But he told me all about it, of course)
And then he saved souls and counseled with popes

“My book is inspired by the Holy Spirit
So read it tonight and tell me what you think”

Lawrence Hall
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Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                            Graveside Service on a Blustery Day

               “The old order changeth, yielding place to new”

                           -Tennyson, Idylls of the King

The widower assisted to his place
Mourners in unaccustomed dresses and suits
A bible, leaflets fluttering in the wind
And gangly teens unsure what they should do

February clouds roiling and boiling
Even the officiant’s words are blown away
Prayers lifted into silence by the wind
They may have fallen by the gravediggers’ tractor

Or were blown through the leaning chain-link fence
Into the deeply darkening Grendel-woods

But still – in back –
                                                 a boy and a girl shyly touch hands

Lawrence Hall
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Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                       Has All the Gold Been Stolen from Fort Knox?

                     Elon Musk encouraged to crack open Fort Knox
                     and audit the gold reserves

                           -New York Post, 16 February 2025

President Musk will now make an audit
Of the gold in Fort Knox, down to the dime
But all he will find (he may have already caught it)
Is the missing TP from the covid time!

Lawrence Hall
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Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                   Portrait of Monsieur Gaudry and His Daughter

                           For all Daughters and Their Fathers

Monsieur is dressed for a quiet evening at home
As is his daughter in her cozy white wrap
Leaning dutifully upon his shoulder as he predicts
With globe and maps the empires of her mind

The empires of her mind which she will rule
With subtle wit and work instead of war
With armies of thought and beauty and art and truth
To conquer chaos and set the world aright

She's a guardian of goodness in a little girl’s guise
(But inwardly, I think, she’s rolling her eyes)




“The Geography Lesson,” Louis-Leopold Boilly, 1812, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Lawrence Hall
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Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                                     Each Kiss is a Distraction

While we weren’t watching
They might have declared war on Canada
We’d better check around

Lawrence Hall
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Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                                    Watching the Rain Without You

The rain is incomplete without you
If you were here we could sit on the couch
I’d put a Frank Sinatra on the machine
So he and the rain could sing to us

But especially to you

The rain is incomplete without you
If you were here we could lie on the floor
As I read the funny papers to you
And do you like good ol’ Charlie Brown?

But of course you do

The rain is incomplete without you
It misses you almost as much as I

Almost

Lawrence Hall
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Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                                          My Shakespearean Girl

I woke in sadness that the dream had passed
But joyed that the vision had come at all              
To comfort me with happy memories cast
Into my sleep through moonlight on the wall

Through moonlight on the wall, through starlit sky
That long-ago world in our golden youth
When she danced as lightly as a butterfly
Through sunlit fields where all was truth

Through sunlit fields on her little bare feet
As gracefully as a leaping summer fawn
Or rhyme and meter when in verse they meet
In that magic hour whence breathes the dawn

In that magic hour we were once more
So very close to that opening door…

Lawrence Hall
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Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                                       The Graveyard Shift

At two in the morning everything is old
The hours, the work, the fluorescent lights
The air, the night, flickering computer screens
Even the freshly-made coffee in the break room

At two in the morning everything is old
The way the new guy snuffles his dripping nose
The cleaning lady’s mop bucket and its rattling roll
The snoopervisor’s totally fake good cheer

At two in the morning everything is old
“You’ll love the fellowship on graveyards,” I was told

Lawrence Hall
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Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                       A Penny Saved is a Worthless Zinc Disc
                                 Gathering Dust in a Drawer


                          “Feed the birds, tuppounds a bag…”

                               -as Mary Poppins did not sing


It seems that our last penny has been spent
We will miss the fakey copper glint
Our other ***-metal coinage should take the hint:
We do not have a stable governMINT

Lawrence Hall
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Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                              Where Do Tariffs Go When They Die?


   “I have no window with which to look into another man’s soul.”

     Attributed to Saint Thomas More, Queen Elizabeth I, and others


And what do tariffs do while they are alive
If a Canadian cow ambles through a broken fence
And then gives birth on the south side of the wire
Can the calf claim birthright citizenship

                    (Did you hear about the bow-legged cowgirl
                    who couldn’t get her calves together?)

I have no window for looking into the soul of a cow
That is, if a cow can have a soul
Or aluminum / aluminium
Or pig iron (probably not made from real pigs)

                     (Or the clueless cowboy who wore a pig iron on his hip?)

We add 25% to this taxable cow
So that peace and justice return right now

                    (Just put down Canada and no one will get hurt)

Lawrence Hall
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Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                           Just Another Smug Football Recusant

Last night at dusk I admired the brightening stars
And before going inside put the gate on the latch
While saying goodnight to the Moon, Jupiter, and Mars
(Someone said something about a football match?)

Lawrence Hall
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Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                                    Exposition Kills Poetry

Poem:

Most exposition is an imposition
Like the supervisor who shadows you
Babbling incessantly needless admonition
Blocking your work so that nothing gets through

Respect your verse, how it dreams, how it flows
Your poetry is your will, your work, your way
But if you choose to explain it in prose
Your verse is left with nothing at all to say

Your poem is in itself your exhibition
Of art – so ditch the cluttery exposition

Exposition:

What I’m saying here is we shouldn't talk about our poetry because that’s talking about work instead of getting it done and if we have to explain to the reader what a poem means we’re not allowing the poem to be true to itself and so why attempt the discipline of meter, rhyme, metaphor, simile, narrative flow, and the many other elements of poesy if we’re just going to repeat in prose what the meter, rhyme, metaphor, simile, narrative flow, and the many other elements of poesy should be doing if we have crafted our work with artistry as well as imagination because exposition implies that either we don’t respect your work and our reader or that we have been deliberately obscure in our verse which in the event is pointless because a poem is itself, it is supposed to communicate an idea, a dream, a hope and not simply flounder about as a soup of disconnected words in a sort of the king’s new clothes of deception which is patronizing and not clever at all because if a reader who is reasonably well read and understands an age-appropriate catalogue of literary, cultural, historical, and artistic allusion to make connections then we have failed the reader and, worse, failed our own attempts at poetic art.

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                                             Little Thoughts of God

          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, 24 April 2005


Our children play with little toy trucks and trains
Comb Barbie’s hair and then arrange Ken’s tie
They get fussed at for pulling the puppy’s tail
They cuddle up with kittens and Winnie-the-Pooh

Our children create worlds with construction paper
Discover Narnia in a new box of crayons
They get fussed at for writing on the wall
They squirm in church; they tickle Daddy’s beard

Our children love their chapter books (and us!)
“Is this a picture of a pirate ship?”
They get fussed at for asking soooooo many questions
“Daddy, will you read us a story now?”

Dear Lord –

Let our children grow up and make us proud

Dear Lord –

Let our children grow up

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                      Pirates to Starboard next to the Dairy Cows!

My neighbors’ field is low; it tends to flood
Their children sail their kayak as pirates bold
And laugh and splash upon the sloshy mud
Swallows and Amazons in search of gold

Most comfortable with our feet propped up
We old folks sit upon the porch all dry
Each an admiral with his coffee cup
And let the heavy monsoon pass us by

We too were pirates in our dreaming youth
We wish we still were – and that’s the truth!