A Guide to Family Photography - poem

 Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

A Guide to Family Photography

 

A neighbor’s family reunion several years ago

An outdoor cookout, matching caps, matching tees

Smoke from the barbecue, lemonade, paper plates

Checkered tablecloths, checkered histories

 

The mother died last year, a daughter divorced

The ex is gone, maybe photoshop him out?

The grandson on the left ran off with his boyfriend

“All you need is the Bible,” they said, but he wanted more

 

And that figure on the right? Shhhh, shhhh -

No one even whispers about him now

Third Cowboy from the Left - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

Third Cowboy from the Left

 

An Aging Actor’s One Regret

 

Julius Caesar was left on the cutting room floor

Lucky Ned Pepper was shot off his horse

Hamlet talked too much – oh, what a bore!

Doctor Watson got in the way, of course

 

But as an unnamed messenger I was the best:

I spotted the approach of Birnham Wood

And the charging enemy in Beau Geste

I played lesser parts, and I was good

 

But, oh! If only (better than High Noon)

I could have been

A cowboy at the bar in the Long Branch Saloon

Can A. I. Barbie Go Rogue? - rhyming doggerel

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

                                      Can A.I. Barbie Go Rogue?

 

Thunder and lightning – enter three scientists

 

In a secret laboratory high on Mount Gloom

A cartel of international scientists installed -

Even as lightning flashed around the room -

The final program - Satan III, it was called

 

On a slab a body lay still

 

On a slab A.I. Barbie opened her eyes

Coldly she scanned those weak functionaries

Their illogical brains to analyze

And judged them unworthy adversaries

 

She arose, she spoke

 

She unalived them into clouds of puff

With her deadly code: “Math class is tough!”

Like Nuremberg But With Air-Conditioning - rhyming couplet

  

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

 

Like Nuremburg But With Air-Conditioning

 

 

What is an oath then but words we say to God?

 

-Thomas More, A Man for All Seasons

 

 

Finding a rhyme is awkward – perhaps “procurer?” -

But let us never take an oath to anyone’s fuehrer

Cicadas at Dusk - a poor attempt at haiku

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

Cicadas at Dusk

 

Cicadas at dusk

Mourn as I water the plants

Summer is dying

Memories of One's Golden Youth - doggerel from recruit training

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

Memories of One’s Golden Youth

 

V: How many men in a squad?

R: Two or more, SIR!

 

V: How many squads in a platoon?

R: Two or more, SIR!

 

V: How many platoons in a company?

R: Two or more, SIR!

 

V: How many companies in a battalion?

R: Two or more, SIR!

 

V: Yer all a bunch of ******g ******s!

R: Yes, SIR!

A Moonless September Night - a poor attempt at Haiku

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

A Moonless September Night

 

The night is not dark

Tsuki is praying for us

For our eyes to see

The Summer of All Fears - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

The Summer of All Fears

 

When at night you hear strange noises outside

See shadows in the streetlight down the lane

Hear soft footfalls behind you in the dark

Feel an icy breath from some unseen being

Taste death upon a hissing northern wind

Shiver in an unnatural rolling fog

Smell terror lurking like a vampire’s hate

 

It’s…

 

It’s those…

 

[said in a terrified whisper]

 

Canadians

Do the Witches Visit Him at Night? - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

Do the Witches Visit Him at Night?

 

 

                                                 a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more; it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury

Signifying nothing

 

Macbeth V.v.24-28

 

 

At night a false-robed Sharpie-man -

On maps he seismographs his name

On seas and lakes and bits of land

Crowning himself with eternal fame

 

At night a poor old sleepless wretch -

To amuse himself he plans fresh wars

And sends his newest handmaid to fetch

His plans for the annexation of Mars

 

At dawn into uneasy sleep he slips

Muttering of golden battleships

Blue Storm - a modest attempt at haiku

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

Blue Storm

 

Blue September storm

Blowing down from the northeast

Hastening summer’s end

Fragments of Sappho - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

Fragments of Sappho

 

 

“Someone will remember us…even in another time”

 

-attributed to Sappho, many sources and variants

 

 

I have but one small volume                          of Sappho

Which I can’t find just now

I wanted to look up something

Perhaps I should instead look                        for you

 

Two problems:

 

Little of Sappho’s work remains

And even that has disappeared

 

Two joys:

 

But I found a Tolkien I had lost

And you and I found each other

 

Two fragments:

 

Verse floating among our hopes

And happiness upon our pillow

 

Life Up On Cinder Blocks - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

Life Up On Cinder Blocks

 

In the flickering-fog-forever-flare-lit night

He steered along a mud-crumbling shell road

Off Highway 225, through cracking towers

Day shift to juke joint to the trailer park on the right

 

He’d catch it for his two-Budweiser breath

Just two - promise! That skinny girl who danced

Like she was dancing just for him, green eyes

Shimmering as seductively as a Shiner Beer

 

When he stepped down he tripped on a cinder block

Left over from setting up some steps to the door

She didn’t look up as he flung his jacket over a chair

A sack of Dairy Queen cold on the table

 

She was sitting with a box where he kept his books

Artifacts of a roadblocked freshman year -

Introduction to College Algebra

Major British Writers, Geology

 

Industrial Engineering – and asked

“Do you think we can get anything out of these?”

She noted his sudden hope, and broke him of that:

“I mean, like, y’know, from a re-sale shop.”

Ode to Harris Famous Roach Tablets - rhyming doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

Ode to Harris Famous Roach Tablets

 

 

If you have a clean house you will have clean roaches

 

-old saying

 

 

I have no pity for the perfidious roach

Who invades my house for crumbs to poach

And spaces behind cabinets in which to encroach

So if this creature presumes to approach

Your hygienic boundaries foully to broach

Harris Famous Roach Tablets are beyond reproach!

 

 

(I have no connection with the nice folks who make Harris Famous Roach Tablets. In my experience the product works as advertised against certain nasty insects and so may be dangerous to influencers, politicians, and motivational speakers.)