Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life,
Literature and Love
Why is the Priest
Yelling at Me?
I cannot tell you of the gospel today
My attention span was at its bottom
The priest chose to yell instead of say
And thus most reverently
I bowed my head over Keats’ “Ode to Autumn”
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
When You Were a Little Child with a Crayon
When first your hand, your little hand, picked up
A crayon, a brush, a pencil, a marker, a pen
And with your hand, your little hand, your pen
You flung your thoughts onto a paper pad
(Or onto your parents’ freshly painted walls)
You introduced your words into the world
You introduced yourself, your words, your soul
And Eden was happy again, with your poems
Running barefoot among the singing trees
(Perhaps God smiled and asked)
Whose are these hands, these little hands
Making fresh new words for my young and growing world?
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life,
Literature and Love
Fang, Wild Dog of
the North
Good
things of day begin to droop and drowse
Whiles
night’s black agents to their prey do rouse
Macbeth III.ii.58-59
When at night the ravenous timberwolves sing
Terrifying each lesser living thing
And the great horned owl is on the wing
Even brave men to their prayers do cling
My carnivorous dachshund is ready to spring
Her blood-lust stirred by the microwave’s ping!
(Stand back, everyone! No sudden moves…!)
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
The Goddess and the Chainsaw
“Do not human spirits look out at you from every leaf and stem?”
-Firs, the loyal old servant who has been dismissed
Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard
Chekhov wrote his farewell to a cherry orchard
And I speak a valedictory to my apple trees
Sweet Anna apples who gave good service for years
Apples and love for family, neighbors, and friends
We were all young, the apple trees and I
I petted them with pruning and pesticide
And sat under them on hot summer days
As they sang in the soft, susurrant breeze
The goddess Pomona approved our endeavors
And breathed upon us blessings and bees and birds
To swarm us with the ancient loves of Latium
When youths and maidens embraced beneath the leaves
The last tree died this summer
I had to chainsaw the remembered joys
and Pomona is no longer here
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia
Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
An Elderly Woman Screaming Obscenities
into her MePhone
in the Parking Lot of Saint
Elizabeth’s Hospital
“Where the
**** are you!? Did you sneak away!?”
Might
serve as an existential question
Addressed
to a patient saint, to God
To the
silent spheres of Creation
“What is
this ****!? Did you ****ing leave me here!?”
We’ve all
asked that question: in a lonely bed
On a
blood-sodden gurney in an emergency room
In the
screaming-burning-gunfire streets
With the
courage and compassion which befits a man
I slipped
around her rage, and avoided her eyes
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
“The Man with the Spanish Helmet” on the Barracks Wall
Hospital Corps Barracks, Naval Hospital San Diego,
ca. January 1970
A barracks wall is a studio wall:
Miss April, smokin’ hot sin on a dead bear’s skin
Miss October, tall (in need of a shawl)
Miss January, thin, an aethereal djinn
But among these beauties (grandmothers now)
A Spanish helmet and a stern old man
A white-haired don still strong in chin and brow
Like yours, his eyes for truth and wisdom scan
So then who wears that dreamer’s helmet? Who?
Why, the Dreamer with the Spanish Helmet is
you
Variant ending:
“The Man with the Spanish Helmet” on a
Barracks Wall
Hospital Corps
Barracks, Naval Hospital San Diego,
ca. January 1970
A barracks
wall is a studio wall:
Miss April,
smokin’ hot sin on a dead bear’s skin
Miss
October, tall (in need of a shawl)
Miss
January, thin, an aethereal djinn
But among
these beauties (grandmothers now)
A Spanish helmet
and a stern old man
A
white-haired don still strong in chin and brow
Like yours,
his eyes for truth and wisdom scan
So then
who wears that dreamer’s helmet? Who?
And why is
he looking not at me but at
you?
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Do ICE Agents
Teach Sunday School?
A furore monstrorum glaciei libera nos Domine
Now I lay me down to sleep
But in the night the ICEmen creep
I cannot sleep; I’m still awake -
I fear the ICEmen will come and take…
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia
Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
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
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
While Repairing a Widder-Woman’s Door Locks
A widder-woman
Drove her car (crash!) into mine
She doesn’t know why
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia
Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
A Certain Ancestor
Yes, sir,
When God
made him
God broke
the mold
Most angrily
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia
Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
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
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
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
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
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
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
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
