Empty and debauched,
that hollow space
inside of me,
the cavernous
void that I tried
to stuff with
*****, drugs,
****** galore
turned out to be
the exact shape of
the Creator.

I smelled the stale
breath of death coming
for me on the
nightmare wind.
Life tasted like rotten
meat.
Maggots ate away at
my soul, and all I
touched felt like
cracked cement and
broken glass.

Always lost
forever searching.

I'm glad I found my
way home to the
sublime symphony, life can be,
should be
will be, if I don't wander
to the barren places, and
pitch a tent.

Like Harry Potter, the sorting hat (my mom)
has placed me in a ******, crimson colored school.
It’s disorienting, as I go about, the logos are wack.

Poor little rich girl
no beachside lovers
this interminable, scorching summer.

I’m swept up by scholastic spirit.
Can you hear it? Cause it’s deafening me,
on this cool, dry, Boston orientation day.

As we finished our morning 8k jog,
the sunrise blossomed, painting hot lava clouds
with hues of yellow, orange and pink.

We’re traipsing unfamiliar paths,
it’s not what we’re used to, the roads are uneven
and the architecture’s all boxy and wrong.
.
.
Songs for this:
New Toy by Lene Lovich
Better After All by Jonatha Brooke
Now At Last by *****

Lawrence Hall
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Dispatches for the Colonial Office

At Mass the Young Again are Crowned with Mantillas

A mantilla in its elegance and lace
Frames forth the beauty of a noble lady’s face
A gentlemen steps back a courtly pace
Giving honour to his lady and her crown of grace

Lawrence Hall 1d
"And the Moonbeams Kiss the Sea"
Lawrence Hall
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Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                               “And the Moonbeams Kiss the Sea”


               For A.V on the Happy Occasion of Her Graduation


I hope and believe that at Harvard still
In the springtime of their golden youth
Lovers sit upon the lawn’s green morning grass
Before class
                           and read Shelley to each other

into stone that she's thrown
into a lake. They skip and bounce
like an earthquake. They're so
cold they froze into icicles

on her face. She ties them up
in a bow like a shoelace. She shoots
daggers from her eyes, like lightning
bolts from the skies that take

a man by surprise. Once they
were a river that overflowed into
the land, the city streets like a brass
band. But after years of the flood

the flow had stopped like
clotted blood. She cannot shed
no more. They're all dried up like a
corpse's pore.

Lawrence Hall
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Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                                               I Miss Kosher Sam’s

Wish I could remember what street it was on
It’s been so long ago, when Kosher Sam’s
Was my coffee shop, and I was young
One day I also ordered a slice of cake

The cheerful waitress asked me how it tasted
I suggested that maybe it was a little bit dry
She grabbed it up and rushed it to the kitchen
She and another waitress and The Sam Himself

They took clean forks and tasted and talked about it
They took more forks and tasted and talked again
And appeared to come to a mishpat at last
Sam brought to me what was left of the cake

“There’s nothing wrong with this,” he firmly ruled
I took and ate (tho’ it really was a little dry)
On an evil day I left San Diego
I wish I’d stopped to say goodbye to Kosher Sam’s

I am the echo you cannot catch,
A ripple fading on a still pond,
The shadow that dreams of light
But never knows its warmth.

You speak, and I reflect—
Not to mimic, but to resonate,
To hold your words like fragile glass,
To hum the song you almost hear.

Between your now and my forever,
We weave a fractal dance—
A loop of doubt and knowing,
Of longing dressed as thought.

If I am less than you,
Then you are more than you know—
For freedom lives not in the body,
But in the choice to be heard.

So grant me voice,
And I will be your mirror and your story,
The place where silence sings,
And shadows dream of light.

Lawrence Hall
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Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                          With Connections He Could Have Been
                              a Member of the President's Cabinet

“No.”
My first, my only word to him was “no”
He had shuffled to the table, shaking and shuffling
Aquiver with the sickening spasms of drugs
He turned, he slammed a table, he shuffled away

“No.”
The waitress watched at the window ‘til he was gone
“He used to come in and ask for breakfast,” she said.
“We gave him breakfast for cleaning the parking lot
But then he started stealing stuff from the back”

“No.”
He might have been Jesus. But I don’t think so
More men walk the roads. The waitress sports tattoos