Where Do Our Dreams Go? - 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

 

Where Do Our Dreams Go?

 

We wake up every morning, still adrift

From night and dreams and fog and hazy dawn

Unless we work the night shift down at the plant

For then we rise to the evening news

 

When we wake up where do our pale dreams go?

Maybe the first flush makes them disappear

Maybe daylight fades them into non-being

Or they’re put out with the dog for the dawn patrol

 

And never allowed back in

 

It’s really okay

                             if nightmares go away -

I just wish the happy dreams would stay

Artificial Intelligence on the Assembly Line - 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

 

Artificial Intelligence on the Assembly Line

 

Artificial intelligence can no more displace poetry

Than the Model T Ford can displace the dance

Three Times in the Heart - 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

 

Three Times in the Heart

 

It’s on the InterGossip so it must be true

 

Some years ago a poet shot himself

A Young poet shot himself in the heart

Three times

Three times

Three times

 

He shot himself in the heart three times

And the county coroner agreed that it was so

Three times

Three times

Three times

 

The county coroner did not say if he shot himself

In the back, in the back, in the back-back

Three times

Three times

Three times

 

Well, hey, what do I know; I wasn’t there

 

But it’s on the InterGossip; it must be true

Negative Capability and Stuff - 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

 

Negative Capability and Stuff

 

For Nat Lipstadt

 

Exactly inexactly that sheet of paper

A blank sheet of paper rich in its blankness

Because there is nothing there and so

The possibilities of being are without limits

 

Except for that 8.5 x 11” thing

Which the writer is free to repudiate

And see beyond it a spectrum of beauty and truth

Which is not there except in seeing it so

 

Letting go too can make imaginings new

(But still, my very dear friends, the rent is due!)

A Cruel Tease - a poor attempt at Haiku

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

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

 

A Cruel Tease

 

The wind turned, leaves flew

But then stillness, more summer heat -

Where are you, autumn?

Fear and Anger Down at the Post Office - 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

 

Fear and Anger Down at the Post Office

 

I wouldn’t mind running errands in town

If there were a town, but there isn’t

Only isolated remnants among the ruins

The tin-barn tattoo joint, gas stations, a vape shop

 

Sometimes in the post office a drunk sleeps on the floor

Beneath the table with a cheap pen on a chain

You can be fined for stealing that federal pen

But double-tap-bombing other nations is cool

 

Outside the post office loom larger signs:

 

VEHICLES AND THEIR

CONTENTS ARE SUBJECT

TO INSPECTION WHEN

ENTERING, LEAVING, OR

WHILE PARKED WITHIN

THIS RESTRICTED AREA.

 

ENTERING INTO THIS AREA

CONSTITUTES CONSENT TO

THE INSPECTION.

(39 C.F.R. PART 232.1 (b)(2)

 

And

 

U.S. PROPERTY

NO

TRESPASSING

 

In a patriotic red, white and blue color scheme

With super-high testosterone levels

 

Once upon a time visiting the post office

For letters and newspapers and Christmas stamps

Did not make a government fearful of its people

Or a people fearful of their government

 

The drunk snores peacefully

Third Cowboy from the Left - 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

 

Third Cowboy from the Left

 

An Ageing Actor’s One Regret

 

Julius Caesar was left on the cutting room floor

Lucky Ned Pepper was shot off his horse

Hamlet talked too much – oh, what a bore!

Doctor Watson got in the way, of course

 

As an unnamed messenger I was the best:

I spotted the approach of Birnham Wood

And the charging enemy in Beau Geste

I played lesser parts, and I was good

 

But, oh! If only (better than High Noon)

I could have been

A cowboy at the bar in the Long Branch Saloon

Ever England - annual repost for Battle of Britain Day

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Ever England

 

For Battle of Britain Day

 

Brave Hurricanes and Spits still claw and climb

Far up into the English summer sky

At the lingering end of a golden time

As wild young lads and aging empires die

 

The Hood and the Rodney still the Channel guard

Against the strident Men of Destiny

Then shellfire falls; the helm is over hard

But the brave old ships keep the Narrow Sea

 

Dear Grandpa and the boys sport thin tin hats

In Sunday afternoon’s invasion drill

Gram says he’s too damned old for all of that

But she too smells the smoke of Abbeville

 

Faith does not pass with ephemeral time:

Brave Hurricanes and Spits still claw and climb

 

Barbie's Slide Rule - Sine, Cosine, Barbie!

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

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

Home - Hello Poetry

 

Barbie’s Slide Rule

 

for VB

 

I will believe in progress when Mattel

Produces for little children a working slide rule

In Barbie pink

Go Forth and Be Surprised - 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

 

“Go Forth and Be Surprised”

 

24^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

 

The dismissal from Mass as it was

As it should be

As it will be again

 

(Your scribbler mutters “Harrumph!” at this point

Like the cranky old man he is):

 

Celebrant:   Dominus vobiscum

The people: Et cum spiritu tuo

Celebrant:   Ite, missa est

The people: Deo gratias

 

A typical modern variant:

 

The Lord be with you

And with thy spirit

Go forth to love and serve the Lord

Thanks be to God

 

But today I heard it as:

 

The Lord be with you

And with thy spirit

Go forth and be surprised

 

“And be surprised”

 

 

I don’t think the priest actually said that; if he did then Miz Busy was on her Orwellian telescreen buzzing to the bishop immediately.

A Guide to Family Photography - 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 Guide to Family Photography

 

A neighbor’s family reunion several years ago

An outdoor cookout, matching caps, matching tees

Smoke from the barbecue, lemonade, paper plates

Checkered tablecloths, checkered histories

 

The mother died last year, a daughter divorced

The ex is gone, maybe photoshop him out?

The grandson on the left ran off with his boyfriend

“All you need is the Bible,” they said, but he wanted more

 

And that figure on the right? Shhhh, shhhh -

No one even whispers about him now

Third Cowboy from the Left - 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

 

Third Cowboy from the Left

 

An Aging Actor’s One Regret

 

Julius Caesar was left on the cutting room floor

Lucky Ned Pepper was shot off his horse

Hamlet talked too much – oh, what a bore!

Doctor Watson got in the way, of course

 

But as an unnamed messenger I was the best:

I spotted the approach of Birnham Wood

And the charging enemy in Beau Geste

I played lesser parts, and I was good

 

But, oh! If only (better than High Noon)

I could have been

A cowboy at the bar in the Long Branch Saloon

Can A. I. Barbie Go Rogue? - 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

                                      Can A.I. Barbie Go Rogue?

 

Thunder and lightning – enter three scientists

 

In a secret laboratory high on Mount Gloom

A cartel of international scientists installed -

Even as lightning flashed around the room -

The final program - Satan III, it was called

 

On a slab a body lay still

 

On a slab A.I. Barbie opened her eyes

Coldly she scanned those weak functionaries

Their illogical brains to analyze

And judged them unworthy adversaries

 

She arose, she spoke

 

She unalived them into clouds of puff

With her deadly code: “Math class is tough!”

Like Nuremberg But With Air-Conditioning - 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

 

 

Like Nuremburg But With Air-Conditioning

 

 

What is an oath then but words we say to God?

 

-Thomas More, A Man for All Seasons

 

 

Finding a rhyme is awkward – perhaps “procurer?” -

But let us never take an oath to anyone’s fuehrer

Cicadas at Dusk - a 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

 

Cicadas at Dusk

 

Cicadas at dusk

Mourn as I water the plants

Summer is dying

Memories of One's Golden Youth - doggerel from recruit training

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

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

Home - Hello Poetry

 

Memories of One’s Golden Youth

 

V: How many men in a squad?

R: Two or more, SIR!

 

V: How many squads in a platoon?

R: Two or more, SIR!

 

V: How many platoons in a company?

R: Two or more, SIR!

 

V: How many companies in a battalion?

R: Two or more, SIR!

 

V: Yer all a bunch of ******g ******s!

R: Yes, SIR!

A Moonless September Night - a 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

 

A Moonless September Night

 

The night is not dark

Tsuki is praying for us

For our eyes to see

The Summer of All Fears - 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 Summer of All Fears

 

When at night you hear strange noises outside

See shadows in the streetlight down the lane

Hear soft footfalls behind you in the dark

Feel an icy breath from some unseen being

Taste death upon a hissing northern wind

Shiver in an unnatural rolling fog

Smell terror lurking like a vampire’s hate

 

It’s…

 

It’s those…

 

[said in a terrified whisper]

 

Canadians

Do the Witches Visit Him at Night? - 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

 

Do the Witches Visit Him at Night?

 

 

                                                 a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more; it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury

Signifying nothing

 

Macbeth V.v.24-28

 

 

At night a false-robed Sharpie-man -

On maps he seismographs his name

On seas and lakes and bits of land

Crowning himself with eternal fame

 

At night a poor old sleepless wretch -

To amuse himself he plans fresh wars

And sends his newest handmaid to fetch

His plans for the annexation of Mars

 

At dawn into uneasy sleep he slips

Muttering of golden battleships

Blue Storm - a modest 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

 

Blue Storm

 

Blue September storm

Blowing down from the northeast

Hastening summer’s end

Fragments of Sappho - 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

 

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

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

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

Home - Hello Poetry

 

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

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

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

Home - Hello Poetry

 

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.)

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

  

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 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

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

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

Home - Hello Poetry

 

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

Civil Penalties for Mailing Anything Dangerous - 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

 

“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

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

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

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

Home - Hello Poetry

 

Lunch Poems and an Olivetti

 

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

 

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

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

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

Home - Hello Poetry

 

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

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

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

Home - Hello Poetry

 

The World’s Tallest Wooden Skyscraper

 

 

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

 

 

Anybody got

 

A match?

After the Drought: Living Water - a modest 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

 

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

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

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

Home - Hello Poetry

 

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