Mister, Are You Saved? - 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

 

Mister, Are You Saved?

 

She patrolled the sidewalk and yelled at pedestrians:

“You sinners! You’re all a bunch of HELL-ions!”

 

I couldn’t escape her, so I smiled and waved

“Mister!” she yelled, “Do you think you’re saved!”

 

“No,” I replied (might as well be specific)

“Oh,” she said, “Then you’re a Catholic.”

 

I still have her tract, somewhere around here loose

Assuring me

                    that the Rosary

                                             is actually Satan’s noose

 

May God bless and protect street evangelists; as for Hegseth and his Reichskirche, well, they can go (bless) themselves.

Primrose-Cat and the Circle of Lunch - 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

 

Primrose-Cat and the Circle of Lunch

 

Primrose is afraid of bluejays, and wisely so

She enjoys dining on the occasional cardinal, though!

Letters of Transit - 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

 

Letters of Transit

 

Thanks to an idea from Omni and friends,

“Humphrey Bogart Blues,” Hello Poetry

 

There are always distracting macguffins in life:

A missing cufflink, Chekhov’s rifle, Tintern Abbey

An anonymous message torn in half

Letters of transit signed by General Weygand

 

But better are the letters of transit she writes:

Coded soul-maps in her sighs

Secret signals in her eyes

Her dreams revealed as this surprise -

The only true letter of transit is

Her love

A Three-Part Educational Case Study - 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 Three-Part Educational Case Study

 

1.

 

I noted that he was ambidextrous

“You can’t call me that; I’m straight!

I’m gonna tell my daddy what you said!”

 

II.

 

At graduation he asked me to help him with his tie

A manly handshake; we wished each other well

He disappeared among the cheap plastic gowns

 

III.

 

Before he was thirty he died of a heart attack

 

A Celebration of Freedom and Our Flag - doggerel

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

y

 

A Celebration of Freedom and Our Flag – Gramps’ Champs

 

 

“’Cause the flag still stands for freedom”

 

-Lee Greenwood

 

 

Will the Flag Day bloodfest hosted by Gramps

In the name of freedom, with MMA champs

Be broadcast to America’s

 

                                     concentration camps?

The Boy Who Wasn't There - poem

Lawrence Hall

mhal46184@aol.com

The Boy Who Wasn’t There

 

He was tall and dark, dramatically handsome

I was a little bit afraid of him

In my skinny little freshman way

High school seniors are the coolest of the cool

 

And then he wasn’t there except as whispers

Whisper whisper whisper cancer whisper whisper

Algebra whisper pep rally whisper

Occasional whispers around an empty desk

 

One day

 

He returned to school on two crutches and one foot

He was tall and pale, ethereally handsome

 

And after that, like a wraith he disappeared

The Drum-Song of the Cicada - 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 Drum-Song of the Cicada

 

 

The cry of the cicada
Gives us no sign
That presently it will die

 

- Basho

 

 

Cicadas are living drums singing the summer

Self-rattling so fast that the beats become a buzz

A whining buzz that intensifies the midday heat

Through thin-throbbing tympanic hypnotism

 

Rising and falling, the leaf-borne chorus

In defiance shrills against the peace

The blessed peace of leaves and lawn and sky

That properly belongs to summer days

 

Even so, summer days, all summer long

Are not complete without the cicada’s song

A Response to Nat Lipstadt's "We are Transitory" - 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 Response to Nat Lipstadt’s “We are Transitory”

 

 

“Time goes by – or do we?”

 

- from Camelot / The Once and Future King

 

 

Your poem is forever

You are forever

This waiting room of a world (C. S. Lewis) – maybe not

You're the Best! - 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

 

You’re the Best!

 

 

                                                                    and love

                                                   with hope

                                our friends

                   lift up

When we

 

Then we are doing our proper job today

 

And knowing you, I am happy to say

You do even better, each bles’sed day

 

You’re the best

Love Must Be Held for Questioning - Senryu

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

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

Home - Hello Poetry

 

Love Must be Held for Questioning

  

He felt pity for those…whose love is bounded by the frontier of a nation. 

-“The Spiritual Power of Matter”, Teilhard de Chardin

Bombers cross borders

Easily enough, but love?

Held for questioning

Batter Our Hearts - 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

 

Batter Our Hearts

 

“Batter my heart, three-person’d God,” said Donne

And we’ve all of us agreed with that

So now, God

                             You can stop battering

Really. Stop it. It’s gone on long enough.

Technology is a Two-Edged Carrot Grater - 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

 

Technology is a Two-Edged Carrot Grater

 

A Meditation upon Computer Updates

 

After an update:

 

I cannot delete intrusions that should go away

I cannot save that knowledge which should stay

I cannot find the files that went astray

While codes and access are changing every day

 

People I don’t even know want me to pay

For services and tweaks they want me to play

My work-rhythm will go much faster, they say

Or else they’ll block my already-slow pathway

 

An update is litter on the information highway

A metaphorical carrot grater of existential decay