Lawrence Hall
Dispatches
for the Colonial Office
Reading the Room
I don’t know to read a room, but look –
I’m still pretty good at reading a book
Friday, January 10, 2025
Reading the Room - doggerel
A Colonial project - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
A Colonial Project
Am I a victim of
A Colonial Project
Am I a perpetrator of
A Colonial Project
Am I a victim of
A Colonial Project
Or is it
THE Colonial Project
And whose?
I think I’ll make a pot of tea
If that’s not too colonial for anyone
And would you like a cup?
Thursday, January 9, 2025
May Our Children Live Long Enough to Invade Greenland - doggerel
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
May Our Children Live Long Enough to Invade Greenland
Man arrested entering the Capitol with a machete and three knives
-U. K. Daily Mail
No weapons in the Capitol; it’s a rule
The adults who work there must be safely bubbled
But when some pimply oaf brings a gun to school
No one in D.C. seems especially troubled
I am a Ptolemaic - poem
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the
Colonial Office
I am a Ptolemaic
There was a star danced, and under that I was
born
-Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing,
II.i.349
This
little world isn’t much, but it’s what we’ve got
Our
Narnia, our Middle-Earth; it’s green
It’s
green and blue and round, an almost-sphere
Fitted
with all the ancient conveniences
Let
the stars encircle us as a crown
And
who will dare to say it is not so?
For
we are commanded to grow this garden
By
the light of the sun, and of faith and love
As
Shakespeare might have said, this blessed plot -
This
little world isn’t much, but it’s what we’ve got
"LA Fires Bring Art to a Halt" - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
“LA Fires Bring Art to a Halt”
Hyperallergic: Sensitive to Art and Its Discontents
No.
A fire brings nothing to a halt
To the last respiration of the very last soul
And beyond: Art will live because Art lives -
A poet abandoning her car to flee for her life
Holds to her heart her notebooks in grocery-store bag
To the last respiration of the very last soul
And beyond: Art will live because Art lives
A trumpeter manages to save the mouthpiece at least
While carrying his child out to an ambulance
To the last respiration of the very last soul
And beyond: Art will live because Art lives
A sculptor’s eyes record a wall of windows
To be re-molded as life-filled windows of dreams
To the last respiration of the very last soul
And beyond: Art will live because Art lives
Firefighters wrestling a hose through smoke and heat
Are a choreograph of life against flaming death
To the last respiration of the very last soul
And beyond: Art will live because Art lives
An artist whose studio is now but smoke
Will stir ashes and water, and paint again
To the last respiration of the very last soul
And beyond: Art will live because Art lives
A little girl will write of her little dog
Her bestest pal whom she never saw again
To the last respiration of the very last soul
And beyond: Art will live because Art lives
In a shelter tonight an aging man
Will sing to himself the love songs of his youth
To the last respiration of the very last soul
And beyond: Art will live because Art lives
then patch
a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
-Mary Oliver, “Praying”
Wednesday, January 8, 2025
“Now, Therefore, Write for Yourselves This Song” - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches
for the Colonial Office
“Now, Therefore, Write
for Yourselves This Song”
-Deuteronomy
31:19 per Talmud at My Jewish Learning
<community@mail.myjewishlearning.com>
“Nunc itaque scribite vobis canticum istud.”
-Douay-Rheims
What song will you write for the people of God?
Something from the Prophets or the Laws
A hymn for Mary, dancing in the spring
Or maybe praise for patient and protective Joseph
What song will you write for your own true love?
Gentle rhyming for the music of her gentle laugh
Iambics and meters her intellect to please
Birdsong sweet to limn her holiness
What song will you write for the world God made?
Matins for mist and mountain and flowered glade
Sunday, January 5, 2025
Epiphany Moved and Improved – The Magi Must Re-Schedule Their Arrival Time
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Epiphany Moved and Improved –
The Magi Must Re-Schedule Their Arrival Time
Whatever committee decides these things
Has chosen to shift ancient feasts about
For the convenience of the modern world
In scheduling meetings and interviews
Magi following a smart watch in the sky
The ostler wants the stable cleared by ten
King Herod tapping massacres on an app
Plough Monday must be reset to Tuesday next
Whatever committee decides these things
Is stricken deaf when the sacring bell rings
Saturday, January 4, 2025
Why Do They Say He was Tragically Murdered? - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches
for the Colonial Office
Why Do They Say He
was Tragically Murdered?
Was anyone ever joyfully murdered?
Happily murdered?
Humorously murdered?
Gloriously murdered?
When at dusk a mist begins to rise
A sinister mist from across the fields
And you seem to perceive a malevolent being
Peering at you from the tree line dark
Yes, something is watching you
It is not God-banished Grendel from Beowulf
Nor is it Nesferatu creeping up to you
Or a Haunt arising from a long-lost grave
It is something even more grotesque and obscene:
An Adverb
The Presumption in Wake-Up Calls - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches
for the Colonial Office
The Presumption in
Wake-Up Calls
A wake-up call is but a manifesto
Retro 1968 but less literate
Demanding that the world pay attention
To the temper-tantrums of some middle-aged guy
Who knows all about guns ‘n’ bombs ‘n’ stuff
While the rest of us know all about raising our kids
Working 12-hour shifts, paying our bills
Building our lives, and taking care of each other
The rest of us have grown-up things to do
The presumptuous waker-upper
Should ditch his childish ego and wake up himself
Activate Your Card Now! It's Easy! - doggerel
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Activate Your Card Now! It’s Easy!
‘Enry ‘Iggins, Tiffany in Calcutta, and my Cousins Down the Road
There even are places where English completely disappears -
Why, in America they haven't used it for years!
-Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady
California and council flats, aye, there’s the nexus
Great Britain taught the world English right and proper
But in hearing my cousins from Caney Head, Texas
I conclude that the Empire has come a cropper!
The Unit Not Labeled for Retail Sale - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the
Colonial Office
This Unit Not
Labeled for Retail Sale
You can’t break me apart, she said to me
This unit is not labeled for retail sale
And if you think that you like what you see
You can post your money for the emotional bail
A Christmas candy said “The
Unit Not Labeled for Retail Sale” so I had a little fun with that.
Friday, January 3, 2025
The Stray 'Possum Cafe - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
The Stray ‘Possum Café
The only comparisons in Western literature might be with the Romantics or the Beat Generation, but the Russian Silver Age poets outdazzled them in glamour and intrigue.
-Darran Anderson
We lay our scene not in Saint Petersburg
Where Anna Ahkmatova flirted and rhymed
With Gumilyov, Mandelstam, and Tsvetaeva
Among champagne, cigarettes, tears, and pearls
In the old and storied Stray Dog Café
But in a field on a December night
Where two opossums meet in quest of love
And wrangle in the leaves of intimacy
Poor strays making…art…without any fear
Of execution by the Kremlin Mountaineer
Saint Petersburg’s Stray Dog Café was a matrix for art, music, dance, and poetry from imperial Russia to the Soviet horror, and thence into the world. It almost serves as a sort of hinge between the 19th century and the 20th. Please read Darran Anderson’s professional and thus accessible article in City Journal: Anna Akhmatova’s Bravery.
I am having fun with intruding ‘possums among the Silver Age poets, but as for them, yes, they are essential. Their brilliance still shines for us and influences what we write even if we are unaware of them – and for that most of them were murdered by the mad tyranny of Communism.
Wednesday, January 1, 2025
So This is the New Year - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches
for the Colonial Office
So This is the New
Year
The road goes ever on and on…
-from at least three variations of a song in The Lord
of the Rings
About this new year – it doesn’t look so new
A metaphorical kick of the tires suggests
It’s been down many roads before
But then, so have we
About this new year – it doesn’t look so new
But the first sunlight in the bare oak trees
And upon last summer’s ground-shoaling leaves
Lead me to pull on my boots and step outside
Frost, sky, sunlight, cardinals, squirrels, life
About this new year – it looks pretty good now
Sunday, December 29, 2024
The Last American Westclox Baby Ben - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
The Last American Westclox Baby Ben
(Maybe)
It ticked into my heart at the Goodwill store
Two dollars’ worth of Americana
A charmer in a battered metal shell
Hiding behind a tired plastic face
The tick, the tock, the talk of Peru, Illinois
The clock that woke America each dawn
For work and study, and to meet the Chicago train
For a century until time ran out
It clicks and clanks and ticks and tocks and talks
All-day dutiful hands, a jangling bell -
How long will this old clock last?
Only time will tell
Saturday, December 28, 2024
Hanukkah is a Light That Always Gets In - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Hanukkah is a
Light That Always Gets In
There is a crack in everything.
That’s how the light gets in.
-Leonard Cohen, “Anthem”
Eight candles of the mind, then, of the soul
In a time of hooded pursuivants
Seeking for truth so that it might be suppressed
Seeking for light that it might be extinguished
There mustn’t be any candles, then, in the windows now
In this Abomination of Desolation
Where wrapped in reptilian rags from Amazon
Sullen illiterates screw their eyes against the light
If you are somewhat broken, read from the scroll
Beneath the lights of Hanukkah
Eight candles of the mind and of the soul
Note on the quotation:
Babblings on the InterGossip led me to verify the above quote, which is from
the poem “Anthem” published in Leonard Cohen, ed. Robert Faggen, Everyman’s
Pocket Poetry series.
Thursday, December 26, 2024
A Porch of Worms on the Feast of St. Stephen - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
A Porch of Worms on
the Feast of St. Stephen
These winter squalls are almost springtime rains
Warm days, cool nights, and windblown showers at dawn
And on the porch appear some curious stains
Dark squirming squiggles progressing up from the lawn
Up from the lawn, up from their earthen beds
In desperate trails of iridescent slime
As peristaltic tubes with wavery heads
Rhythmically marking out their march in time
But all too brief their escape, alas -
A feast for robins who will not let them pass
Did You Enjoy Your Christmas? - poem
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Did You Enjoy Your
Christmas?
Christmas Night
That merry little Christmas that they sing about –
Did you open your gifts around a tree
Tinsel and ornaments and a brilliant star
Pajamas and cocoa and merriment
Did you enjoy a dinner with someone special
Or with happy children and a few friends
Then coffee and cake and quiet memories
Everyone free from telescreens and devices
And now with a fire and soft candlelight
Is this another gentle silent night?
I hope it is so, dear friend
Monday, December 23, 2024
O Little Front Line of Bethlehem - for Christmas Eve
Lawrence Hall, HSG
O Little Front Line of Bethlehem
Stopped and questioned multiple checkpoints
A search of their persons and their vehicle
And a stern warning from the local patrol:
“You are not permitted to draw on public funds”
The Holy Family arrives at last at a no-tell inn
“I need to see two forms of identification
And a major credit card from any on this list
Fresh linens are extra; the ice machine is broken”
Surly men in grubby camouflage smoke cigarettes
Occasional gunfire lights up the noisy night
Sunday, December 22, 2024
Last Christmas I Gave You my Pancreas - a wheeze
(From The Saint Tibbs' Day Songbook)
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Last Christmas I
Gave You my Pancreas
I thought there was an idea here
But maybe not
Just
a few questions, ma’am
About the guy who received your heart and gave it away
Did he drop it off at a re-sale shop?
Giving a body part at Christmas is sing-able
Because
“Last Septuagesima Sunday I gave you my heart”
Is not something you can dance to easily
Especially if you have no cardio-pulmonary functions
I thought there was an idea here
Maybe it’s those Nyquil dreams again…
For Two Dear Children on Christmas - couplet
Lawrence Hall, HSG
For Cate and Jack
Or Jack and Cate?
On Christmas
Certain joys about Christmas are always true
For among the season’s constant blessings
Are you!
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
