We are All Pretty Much Exiles, You Know - 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

 

We are All Pretty Much Exiles, You Know

 

We are all pretty much exiles, you know

We scribble verse to reconstruct our home

That half-remembered never-seen mystery

Within our hearts, sailing beyond the stars

 

Half-worlds threading from chewed-yellow-pencil leads

The sharpener says, “Now this may sting a little”

As cedar spirals down to the kitchen floor

Poor pairs of rhymes that never find each other

 

They’ve gone and closed the Main Street picture show

We are all pretty much exiles, you know

While Repairing a Widder-Woman's Door Locks - a weak 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

 

While Repairing a Widder-Woman’s Door Locks

 

A widder-woman

Drove her car (crash!) into mine

She doesn’t know why

A Certain Ancestor - 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 Certain Ancestor

 

Yes, sir,

When God made him

God broke the mold

Most angrily

Hugo Boss Swastikas Have Been Replaced - 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

 

Hugo Boss Swastikas Have Been Replaced

 

 

And I am one silent cry

over the many thousands of the buried

 

-Yevtushenko, “Babiy Yar,” in Yevtushenko: Selected Poems

Trans. Milner-Gulland and Levi, Penguin, 1963

 

 

The Hugo Boss swastikas have been replaced

By another bit of cloth with squiggles

But the torches are the same

The fashionable lies are the same

Grilled Mongolian at the Barber Shop - 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

 

Grilled Mongolian at the Barber Shop

 

An Overdue Haircut from Miss Tasha

 

While I was being shorn of excess hair

V: “Make me look like a young Robert Redford, please”

R: “We don’t do miracles here, Mr. Hall”

A lady enthroned a few chairs over

Mentioned the menu at The Mongolian Grill

“What the h*** is this?” she quoted herself

 

I thought I might ask if the plat du jour            

As served was a lightly grilled Mongolian

But Wednesday had already made that joke

About Girl Scout cookies and real Girl Scouts

 

So thoughts of topics carnivorous I let pass

And admired myself in Tasha’s looking-glass

An Execution for the Common Man - 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

 

An Execution for the Common Man

 

I will not watch the coming execution

But when the regime comes for me –

       I’ll catch that one

The Kid Who Won the Lottery - 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 Kid Who Won the Lottery

 

 

He always wanted to be an artist

 

In school he drew pictures of horses and trucks

In truth the same horse and the same truck too

On his book covers and his notebooks too

And on the margins of his papers and tests

 

He always wanted to be an artist

 

After graduation he worked around town

The Dairy Queen, and the Wal-Mart too

He swept the tire shop, and city hall too

His trailer-girl was pale with ketamine dreams

 

He always wanted to be an artist

 

The year he won the Louisiana lottery

They moved to Florida

                                    he came home alone

 

He always wanted to be an artist

An October Dusk After Everything Has Happened - poem

  Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

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

Home - Hello Poetry

 

An October Dusk After Everything Has Happened

Pasture gate at dusk

The last of the hay is gone

Stars await autumn

 

Stars await autumn

October’s mown fields are sweet

Mist upon the grass

 

Mist upon the grass

My old dog paws at my jeans

Pasture gate at night

The Secret of Dolly Parton’s Angel Wings - 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

 

The Secret of Dolly Parton’s Angel Wings

 

Some people give children transitory things

But Dolly still gives to children books as wings

Among Fog-Shrouded Ruins - 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

 

Among Fog-Shrouded Ruins

 

 

And here we are as on a darkling plain

 

-Matthew Arnold, “Dover Beach”

 

 

Wrapped in rags from The Creature Cantina

Their thin bare legs ending in chemical globs

They shuffled along with their hooded heads bowed

Deep-bent beneath Chaucerian pilgrims’ packs

 

Somewhat like roaming Jawas searching out scrap

But with deep-socketed eyes fixed on palantiri

Tiny Orwellian telescreens that guide

And guard them from the disturbance of thoughts

 

Sometimes Morlockian mechanical horns

Call them into pods of weakling Eloi

Obedient sacrifices rattling their chains

As the ogre-guarded dungeon they near

 

The lead Eloi approached in fear, his eyes all rheumy and red -

“Ah! you’re here for the chess club,” a welcoming Morlock said

The Poets Speak of American Elections - 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

 

The Poets Speak of American Elections

 

Democracy is based upon free selection

Not upon heredity or kin

But

The problem with an American election

Is that one of the candidates will win

 

What Kind of God Needs a Bullhorn? - 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

 

What Kind of God Needs a Bullhorn?

 

If a street-corner god needs a little man

Thrusting jackchickery into reluctant hands

 

Frightening children on their way to school

Bullhorn-bellowing at people and playing the fool

 

Then that god is no god

And that man is no man

I Will Bake You a Mooncake for the Autumn Festival - 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

 

I Will Bake You a Mooncake for the Autumn Festival

 

 

 

(Actually, I'll buy it at your favourite bakery)

 

And I will divide it with a four-part secret message

 

 

Will it be...

 

Lady Moon

 

Are

 

My

 

You?

 

 

No? Or maybe...

 

 

My

 

Are

 

Lady Moon

 

You?

 

 

Nope. How about

 

 

My

 

Are 

 

Lady Moon

 

You?

 

 

Oh, no! But now you can move the four pieces

Of your mooncake to read:

 

 

You

 

Are

 

My

 

Lady Moon!

 

 

Peace and happiness to you and all who are blessed in knowing you!

Autumn Equinox and a Lawn Chair - 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

 

Autumn Equinox and a Lawn Chair

 

Coffee on the lawn

Cool dawn wind, old man, old dog

A September song

The United Nations - or Not - rhyming quatrain

 

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 United Nations – Or Not

 

 

The United Nations…where all the world’s nations can gather together,

discuss common problems, and find shared solutions that benefit all of humanity.

 

-About Us | United Nations

 

 

From war’s disasters this lesson we learn:

Each nation to nation is as a sister or brother -

So why do the ambassadors all in their turn

Do little except to walk out on each other?

When I was God’s Latest and Best Creation - 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

 

When I was God’s Latest and Best Creation

 

When I was young I was God’s best creation

His latest and His best, the golden result

Of millions of years of evolution

And thousands of years of civilization

 

All of history led to glorious Me

For whom the Salvation story was but a preface

Shakespeare could only dream of being me

And Mr. de Mille was ready for my closeup

 

I was destined to be the world’s greatest…

(I wasn’t exactly clear about the greatest what) 

But I was going to be the greatest (something)

And all the peoples of the world would follow me

 

All wrongs would be righted, all failings addressed –

But as things turned out, no one

                   was much

                                           impressed