Tonight, I lie in bed and
scribble in a black spiral
notebook.
Why is cruelty easy for
some? Like laying down
a card.

One of my three cats,
Mojo
sits sleepily on
my old maple desk.
She is all black.
The computer screen is
black.
So are the speakers,
microphone,
and a coffee cup that
sits on the desk.

Above my dresser is a
quote by Hemingway.

"There is nothing to writing.
All you have to do is sit down
at a typewriter and bleed."

It's on black paper.

I've had the room set up
this way for over a year.
I'm just noticing all the
blackness.
Midnight in Nod.
It could be because I miss
my daughter.  She's seven.
All the black fades away when
I think about her smile
and those eyes that laugh at the
rain.

I notice that my shirt
is emerald green, with a
few drops of red.

Plop
Plop

Plop.

I know we haven't
Quite met in person--
But--
I. Miss. You.
Because
You're Missing
From Me.

I'm trying to turn the
Page
But this one here is
Blank
And I need you to write the
Next Installment
It's You and Me, Babe:
Let's Go On
Our Adventures
and Paint the World in
Our Love.

The Faintest Hint of Your Touch
The Softest Echo of Your Voice
The Gaze in Your Eye

When you tell me
that you love me--
I can see it and feel it and I
Can't even describe the way it touches
Every Part of Me
and Radiates like a
Pulse
and all the Colors dive into
Waves that Recirculate and
Rebound and
Ricochet

Here I am--
I found you,
and I'm so *******
Glad
that I did.

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]
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

It’s an addiction, an affliction,
And I don’t know what to do,
For I am madly and deeply,
In love with Sudoku.

It’s unnerving, disturbing,
And I am going all cuckoo,
For I can’t take my hands off
A game of Sudoku.

In the morning, I’m yawning,
But my fingers are all glued,
To a pen on a Daily,
Immersed in Sudoku.

A passion, an obsession —
With numbers just a few,
Oh I can’t get enough,
Of this wretched Sudoku.

One to nine, how I pine,
For these numbers in a queue,
On my phone all I see is,
A game of Sudoku.

I run late, miss my date,
In a mess through and through,
My heart full of digits.
And head, of Sudoku.

An attraction, a distraction,
I sigh and sob and rue,
To be so in love,
With a game of Sudoku.

It gets worse, now a verse,
Such a long poem too—
Oh me, oh my,
All for Sudoku.

Your tenor can't quite
     land pitch right. Feckless warbles.
The songbirds' been choked.—

Clutching at thin straws of sanity
Swirling in a sea of madness
I dog paddle with all my might
Towards a shore that seems too far
To offer any hope of safe arrival
         ljm

[email protected]
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…”

I owe, I owe it's off to work I go
The debt is piling up the dollars come so slow

It looks like I took a turn for the worse
I hit a fork in the road and come down with
some kind of voodoo curse

These monetary blues I do detest
They've taken away my happy-go-lucky
and put me under house-arrest

My muse she flew out the door and is on-the-run
Screaming over her shoulder, it ain't a crime to be unhappy
but it isn't any fun

I owe, I owe, it's off to work I go
The debt is piling up and the dollars come so slow

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]
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!)