When I Was a Child I Saw a Dinosaur - 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 a Child I Saw a Dinosaur

 

 

There are not going to be many more dinosaurs

 

-C. S. Lewis, “De Descriptione Temporum,” 1955

 

 

When I was a child I saw a dinosaur

A dinosaur at the end of the lane

Rearing its head high above the pasture gate

It might want to eat little boys, I feared

 

So I held really still, and closed my eyes

And closed my eyes, so tightly closed my eyes

And closed my eyes, and then…opened my eyes –

The dinosaur (it didn’t roar) was still there!

 

When I was a child I saw a dinosaur

A real-life little-boy-hungry carnivore!

 

I wish I could see it again

A Typewriter Maps the Battlefield of the Mind - 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 Typewriter Maps the Battlefield of the Mind

 

Everyone who survived began a book

In basements, cheap apartments, or rented rooms

Underwoods clattering in anger, in rage

For corpses floating down the Vam Co Tay

 

Coffee cups, beer rings, stolen motel ashtrays

Cigarette smoke wreath around the keys

While muses watched from the crumbling plaster wall

Maybe a crucifix, maybe Miss March

 

Cheap typing paper from the corner store

A sandwich falling apart along with life

A last assault through a paragraph

Before rushing to the bus stop for the night shift

 

“Y’all wasn’t in a real war,” the old men said

But the memories and the typewriter keys

                                                          Still bled

A Critical Topic in Jewish-Catholic Interfaith Dialogue - 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

 

A Critical Topic in Jewish-Catholic Interfaith Dialogue

 

When eating hot dogs made with Hebrew National franks

Do we say grace with “Toda”

                                            “Grates”

                                                           or

                                                                “Thanks?”

Cute Little Biological Markers - poor attempts at 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

 

Cute Little Biological Markers

 

For our Emily

Who set a thoughtful challenge

To define the term

 

The lives of our frogs

Biological markers

Tell us of toxins

 

If frogs have clean air

And fresh clean water and bugs

We will have clean frogs

 

Healthy little frogs

To celebrate our health too

They give us great joy!

"They Knew What They Signed Up For" - 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

 

“They Knew What They Signed Up For”

 

That cruel dismissal is from some keyboard commando

Who memorized every line from Patton

But never volunteered for anything himself

Except for a two-layered two-fer at McDonald’s

Tom Swift of I.C.E. and His Electric Gloves - 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

 

Tom Swift and His Bully Electric Gloves

 

 

The G.L.O.V.E. — CD3 Compliance Tool | Compliant Technologies

 

 

Compliant Technologies of Kentucky

Makes gloves for you – “low voltage” electric love

To hurt your face better than mace (if you’re lucky)

So be Compliant, or else

                                           - Your Loving Gov

The End of August, and the Dragon is Here - 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 End of August, and the Dragon is Here

 

We are taught in science class that heat rises

Because molecules bash each other

And thus thinned are lifted by denser air -

Raise your convections if you believe it is so!

 

The month of August persuades us otherwise

Late-summer molecules are dragon-hot

Ssssssteam-blooded reptiliansssss ssssssucking our sssssssouls

While hisssssing their sssssibilant sssssssatanic hymnsssss

 

Heat rises, we are taught in science class -

But in August it slithers lowwwww in the grass

A Summer Processional in Honor of Structured Poetry - 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 Summer Processional in Honor of Structured Poetry

 

 

[I]ambic pentameter…is the very breath of English verse.

 

-Stephen Fry, The Ode Less Travelled

 

 

Wind August heat drought grass shade lawn tree crows ‘possum headache mourning doves clouds and sun blue jays humidity cardinals longings for autumn egrets unseen airplanes lawn chairs heat-shimmering hayfield early acorns bees grapevines trumpet vines porch fans spinning in futility just any old way  

 

Bolts and locks in chaos waving and rushing up against and to and into our exiled poetic minds

 

Ahem! Order and method, please, poet ¹

 

Who amid the alien Saint Augustine grass ²

Sets fading roses in order serviceable ³

Sets the sky aright, above the oaks

Sets meter, orderly and elegant

 

Sets doves in chortling chorus to coo the hours

Sets flowers about in casual good taste

Sets lawn chairs in English here-and-there-ness

Those thrones from whence we serve rather than rule

 

And the days, bearing blessings as vexilla

Process among us with quiet dignity

Singing the verses we write from nature

Until all manner of things shall be made well ⁴

 

 

¹ “Order and method,” Agatha Christie’s Poirot

² “Amid the alien corn,” biblical book of Ruth and numerous other sources

³ “On the Eve of Christ’s Nativity,” Milton

⁴ “Showings,” St. Julian of Norwich

The Leader of the Free World Aboard His Chariot of the Gods - doggerel, but no dog

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 Leader of the Free World Aboard His Chariot of the Gods

 

When the food truck speeds off, making a run

Just think of it as our majestic Air Force One

Poets Speak of Hay - 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

 

Poets Speak of Hay

 

For Nat Lipstadt, Ken Pepiton, VerseBuster, and Billy Collins

 

I was raised on a farm

Which did me no harm

But bales of hay

And stacks of hay

Pitching hay

Filling the old pickup with hay

And a trailer of hay

Hay and hay and more hay

In the heat of each midsummer day

Day after day after day

(You may channel Coleridge's Ancient Mariner here)

The old barn full of hay Hot, musty, fusty, allergenic hay

Day after musty, fusty, allergenic day

Hot day, hot, hot, hot every da®ned day

You may

Have my hay

As Dimitri Karamazov did not say

 "A ticket for hay? I herewith return my ticket!"

Night of the Murdered Poets, 12 August 1952

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

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

Home - Hello Poetry

 

Night of the Murdered Poets, 12 August 1952

 

Not a poem, just a plea:

 

 

Of your mercy please pray for the repose of the souls

of all people murdered for their witness to truth

 

The Night of the Murdered Poets – For Reading Addicts

Night of the Murdered Poets - Wikipedia

night of the murdered poets book - Search