Lawrence Hall

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

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

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

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

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

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.)

Wednesday, September 2, 2026

A Spondee for Parents Who Complain About School Being Cancelled When a Tropical Storm Approaches - one spondaic foot

Lawrence Hall

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

A Spondee for Parents Who Complain About School Being Cancelled When a Tropical Storm Approaches

Shut up

Reading Basho on a Rainy Morning - a poor attempt at Haiku

Lawrence Hall

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

Reading Basho on a Rainy Morning

When I read Basho

I am properly chastened

For my ignorance

Basho: The Complete Haiku of Matsuo Basho

Translated and edited by Andrew Fitzsimons

Oakland: University of California Press, 2022, 2024

Tuesday, September 1, 2026

Civil Penalties for Mailing Anything Dangerous - poem

Lawrence Hall

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

“Civil Penalties for Mailing Anything Dangerous”

…our children will be ashamed…

remembering how in so strange a time

common integrity could look like courage

-Yevtushenko, “Talk,” in Selected Poems: Yevtushenko

The postmistress chants this as part of her list to us

Whenever a citizen sends a package by postal bus:

Civil penalties for mailing anything dangerous

Firearms, fireworks, a radioactive truss

Air bags - and why mail one? (just an aside)

Poisons, perishables, formaldehyde

The cremated ashes of your cousin Clyde

Or anything else on the weirdo side

Logical enough

But in these fearful days, under our mad regime

Mailing even a thoughtful letter is a dangerous scheme

Saturday, August 29, 2026

A Pinball Game with Some Come-to-Jesus Music - poem

Lawrence Hall

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

A Pinball Game with Some Come-to-Jesus Music

The ritual signing of a padded book

And then invisible paddles launch us into the game

Among electrical bumpers of whisperers

Clustered in their several corners and slots

Suspicious smiles that don’t conceal holy hate

As they repel outsiders through platitudes

Invisible daggers fly through the sacred air

The silent sibilant hisses are heard all the same

The dear departed in his old Sunday suit

Seems to smile in peaceful anticipation

of being rid of all of us

Ka-Ching!

Exit the Hurricane, 2017

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

a repost from 2017

Exit the Hurricane, 2017 (not the catchiest title, eh?)

What is that silence? It is the not-rain
The first not-rain since Friday this past week
Every loud frog gloats in unseemly song
As old, sour water recedes from the door

The whole house stinks; it stinks of damp and rot
Of clothes unwashed because the drains are dammed
Of smelly shoes and even smellier socks
Of refugee gear flung casually about

The whole house stinks; it stinks of damp and rot
Of too many people – and isn’t it wonderful!

Lunch Poems and an Olivetti - poem

Lawrence Hall

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

oz.Typewriter: Poet Frank O'Hara and the Olivetti Lettera 22 Portable Typewriter

Lunch Poems and an Olivetti

When Frank O’Hara poemed on an Olivetti

At a typewriter shop on Fifth Avenue

He pulled out a sheet of paper which did not read

Error 1101 Ray ID: a324930b6bd1e5a5 • 2026-08-28 16:08:24 UTC

Worker threw exception

Lunch Poems and a Subaru - poem

Lawrence Hall

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

Lunch Poems and a Subaru

“The world is full of people who want to tell you how to live…”

-attributed to Gus in Lonesome Dove

When I picked up a copy of Lunch Poems

I didn’t know I was required to be gay

And when I bought a fine new Subaru

I didn’t know I was required to be

a feminist lesbian professor with big round glasses and short grey hair

The World's Tallest Wooden Skyscraper - a poem written on a matchstick

Lawrence Hall

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

The flat-pack skyscraper: how wood can shape the cities of the future | Green building | The Guardian

The World’s Tallest Wooden Skyscraper

Anybody got

A match?

Thursday, August 27, 2026

After the Drought: Living Water - a modest attempt at Haiku

Lawrence Hall

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

After the Drought: Living Water

Sweet rain greens the grass

Like baptism or mikvah

Making the world new

Today Lake America, Tomorrow the World! - intemperate political poem

Lawrence Hall

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

Today Lake America, Tomorrow the World!

The USS Trump has departed the Straits of America

And is sailing across the South Trump America Sea

Enroute to ThaiTrumpland, His fifty-fifth state

For a Trumptorious port call at Trumpkok

From thence across the Trump America Ocean

The bigliest Trump ship the world has ever seen

Helmed by General Admiral Trump, Our Trump

Who declares victory over loser Canada

And awards each sailor and Marine

The Golden Order of the Reflecting Pool

Good for discounts at the catering truck

Thank you for your attention to this matter

I Hadn't Realized How Young We Are - poem

Lawrence Hall

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

I Hadn’t Realized How Young We Are

Instructions for living a life:

Pay attention.

Be astonished.

Tell about it.

-Mary Oliver, "Sometimes"

I hadn’t realized how young we are

As through this field we stroll, your hand in mine

But love has seen us safely through this far

With hearts in time with each other, with eyes that shine

We were young once, and how wonderful to be

Still young in the promises we made

And in our long togetherness thus free

To love as one in this moonlit summer glade

As through this field we stroll, beneath the evening star

I realize how wonderfully young we are

Tuesday, August 25, 2026

"Just One More Thing..." - for Peter Falk

Lawrence Hall

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

“Just One More Thing…”

For Peter Falk

Of Happy Memory

A well-chewed cigar

A seven-years’ rumpled coat

A fine-tailored heart

Monday, August 24, 2026

The U.S.S. Doris Miller - a Tall Ship for a Tall Man

Lawrence Hall

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

The U.S.S. Doris Miller – a Tall Ship for a Tall Man

"And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by"

-John Masefield, “Sea Fever

Iron and Steel

For now she is only numbered heaps of steel

Laid out in structure-order at Newport News

Muscled into being through thought and power

Strong craftsmen of the builders’ brotherhood

CVN 81

The lifts, the links, the wirings, the welds, the works

Plans, bolts, tools, heat, sweat, pain, maybe some blood

A touch of salty language for motivation

And then someday

“God bless this ship and all who sail in her”

The Soul of a Ship

The Doris Miller will sail, will range wide and far -

And Doris Miller himself will be her star

An Idyll of the Decorator-in-Chief - intemperate political doggerel

Lawrence Hall

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