Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Oscars 2026 – Specimens in a Glass Cage
After watching for a few minutes of given time
Their clumsy humor and predictable set-pieces
Subsuming souls into their toxic clime
One realizes
That these unhappy creatures are not our species
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's
Journal of Life, Literature and Love
“Just for Fun”
Now someday when those demented old men
Are guided each to his courtroom seat
To account again for terror and sin
And face the judgements the magistrates may mete
Smoke, vultures, and lies will still stain the skies
Over rotting blood shed from the shallow-buried dead
While unseeing eyes echo stricken Rachel’s cries
(“An excursion,” and “just for fun,” one of them pled)
But we will share the shame in that docket too
When the Almighty asks of each of us
“What did YOU
do?”
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Napoleon Surveys His Split-Screen Image of Moscow and Teheran
I.
Operation Roar of the lion Epic Fury
Little Excursion Art of the Dignified Transfer
II.
The war is very complete beginning, middle, or end
Four to five weeks unconditional surrender
Four to six weeks very soon short term short term
We’re winning the war by a lot pretty much
It’s not protracted this is not endless
Some time to achieve whatever the time is
Substantially ahead of our time projections
III.
I will receive the surrender delegation now
Whaddaya mean there’s no surrender delegation?
Someone’s smoking. Someone’s smoking. Stop it!
Is there a little touch of frost in the air?
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's
Journal of Life, Literature and Love
I Admire You
I admire you – because, you see, you argue with me
Because
You give your neighbors cookies instead
of suspicion
You nudge verbs against nouns and find
truth
You listen for music I can never hear
I admire you – because you play in the
garden with words
Because
You’re
having a love affair with the world
You
help people who will never like you
You
make the sun rise each day with your song
I admire you – because you, see, you argue with me
(Even though you
know I am soooooooooo right!)
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's
Journal of Life, Literature and Love
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Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Unknown Saint – 25 Cents
A little plastic statue of a saint
(In context, am I permitted to say “tchotchke?”)
A woman in white with a flowered crown
And a tiny crucifix in her tiny hand
She stood between a broken-bladed pocketknife
And an HO gauge caboose without wheels
There was a Barbie with her arms ripped off
And an I LIKE IKE button from 1952
The little saint now stands upon my shelf
Gently to remind me of my better self
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's
Journal of Life, Literature and Love
The Unnatural Abhor a
Vacuum
What Happens Now to Kristi Noem’s Warehouse Jails? - The
Atlantic
With their chatelaine gone all those warehouses
Sheeted in corrugated iron under the summer sun
And encircled, festooned, with razor wire
Stand empty in the desert, waiting for – you?
Their industrial disassembly lines
Scientifically designed to rip away lives
And lest they rust away from neglect and disuse
There must be bodies to feed into them
Starving on thin soup from stainless steel bowls
And pity the guards – who are starving their own
souls
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
He Could Have Bench-Pressed a Honda
In his youth he could have bench-pressed a Honda
He posed with cheerleaders whom he was quite fond of
One seated on each arm, his muscles to flout
In photographs their grandchildren now wonder about
On the field of sport he could do it all –
His forward passes like lightning would fall
Many a massive lineman fell to his block
And many a quarterback to his gentle knock
He was the class stud; I was the class fool
He’s now a janitor at our old school
(And I’m still a fool…)
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's
Journal of Life, Literature and Love
We Haven’t Seen Good Ol’ Charlie Brown
in a While
Schroeder tickles the ivories for easy-listenin’
In the Gold Room over at the Airport Inn
Linus is Teacher of the Year at the middle school
Marcie built a chain of prosperous boutiques
Lucy waits tables at Franklin’s Lounge DeLuxe
Carefully counting her tips and tattoos
Frieda’s Kuts ‘n’ Kurls features the best gossip
Peppermint Patty is a professor at Penn State
We haven’t seen good ol’ Charlie Brown
Not since the district court judge pronounced his sentence:
“Wah-wah-wah-wah-wah-wah-wah-wah-wah-WAH.”
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's
Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Kristi’s Deportation
Flight
The president decided that she
Is a clear and present pain
She needs to go away, said he
(But does she get to keep the plane?)
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Inertia, and It’s all
Your Fault
Draggy all through the sugar-cream-coffeed morning
Drowsing over a book while the lawnmower yawns
Idling over the news while the grass laughs at me
Ignored by the weeds in their insolent rows
Calvin and his work ethic haunt my idleness
Impatiently urging me to bestir myself
And accomplish something meaningful
In tending the Garden God has given
But
I think
I’ll doze in this lawn chair and dream of you -
After all, what else would you have me do?
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
About a Question Pontius Pilatus asks of Himself
The epistemology of epistemology
Folds back on itself with a supplemental twist
To lose itself for the first time again
As a collapsed inflation of nothingness
Artificial ignorance regards a void
Densely vacuumed in heavy light
And pronounces it the truth of lies
A dragon-bridge crossing nothing at all
It’s on the InterGossip; it must be true
Existence voided in a nonexistential coup
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's
Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Lunch
with My Daughter
If Cinderella had been an attorney
The Ellis County Courthouse would
have been her castle
A little stone Babel of balconies
and turrets
Swimming up to a Southwest Airlines
jet
We sat at an outdoor table across
the street
A small café’ - Butter & Grace –
The Mini
Which we renamed Beurre &
Grace – Le Mini
And savoured a light lunch and the
cool spring day
We savoured music, lunch, a busy
street
And watched the peoples of Texas en
paseo
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
The Modern Science of Imprisoned Sound
If thousands boo the vice-president
And NBC filters them out
Is there a sound?
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's
Journal of Life, Literature and Love
The 1970s
– When Lapels Roamed Wild
In the 1970s’ men’s lapels grew
wider and wider
And men’s neckties grew wider and
wider
And men’ sideburns grew wider and
wider
And they all got so wide that they blew
away
(Poof!)
And haven’t been seen since
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
And in the Darkness Bind Them
-from the ring-verse in Lord of the Rings
I.
I should pity a certain poor old man
But he has established for us concentration camps
Where pity is forbidden
II.
And why is Jeffrey Epstein’s ghost
Our fourth branch of government?
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's
Journal of Life, Literature and Love
A
Night Prayer for You
Thank you
For the prayers you offered over
your first cuppa
For the breakfast you made for
yourself and others
For singing along with the radio on
your way to work
For wearing your seatbelt and
stopping at the lights
Thank you
For going to work in the heat or the
dust or the snow
For tipping the overworked server at
a hurried lunch
For the jokes that made the workday better
for all
For minding your tongue when the
boss said something stupid
(something
really stupid)
Thank you
For the verse you wrote, the words
you read
For your little children whom you
tucked into bed
Thank you –
You made the world a better place
today
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
My Preferred Verb and Adverb
Grow up.
In other contexts “up” can be a preposition or adjective, but in “grow up” it is an adverb. As Pontius Pilate said, “what I have written I have written.”
Lawrence Hall
My Brother Lost His Wife
Which sounds as if he misplaced her, like car keys
But she has gone away, as must we all
Into those far-beyond mysteries beyond our poor knowing
And leaving us vacuums and vacancies
And he is sorting out bills to be paid
Her nursing license which will not be renewed
The bits and bobs to be given to the children
Daily remembances in all the little things
His days are mysteries
Filling in the great emptiness in his life
and all the small ones
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
A Boyhood
Friend Goes to the River
My soul has grown deep like the
rivers
-Langston Hughes
His son visited him in hospital
every day
The father told the son, “I need to
go to the river”
And so they left the hospital; they
sat on the bank
They watched the river, they talked
to the waters
They listened to the waters and the
winds
One more lesson from the river, the
eternal flow
The growing-up river, the teaching
river
The river, their father-and-son
river
One day, in silence, his spirit
slipped away
And crossed over the river forever
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
A Funeral is a Dress Rehearsal
“He looks so natural...”
Even among family, you feel alone
Because attendance at a funeral
Is a dress rehearsal for your own
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
The
Galaxy’s Guide to the Hitchhiker
A very, very, very, very weak attempt at the Thai Khlong
Suparb form
An idea suggested by Emily Johnson
On a topic suggested by an idea from Bulletcookie
(sic)
Gratitude
to Douglas Adams will be found
locked in a
filing cabinet in a disused room in the basement
We are all hitchhikers of the spirit
Thumbing a ride to the moon and stars
And we fall for a pause on Mars
On our tide of discovery
And then swing an orbit around
An errant earthling satellite
Sweetly sing to its blinking light
While riding along on a comet
Do the stars have a guide to us?
We study our home galaxy
But does our galaxy study you and
me?
We are all hitchhikers of the spirit!
