Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Stop Running
1 Kings 19
Stop searching. Hold still
Rest now under a broom tree
And He will find you
Sunday, May 18, 2025
Stop Running - Senryu
Friday, May 16, 2025
The Evil of Banality Arrests You in the Street - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
The Evil of Banality Arrests You in the Street
As Hannah Arendt did not exactly say
Handcuffs with their metallic efficiency
Leather-holstered on polished kinky-belts
Distinguish more a grab with their subtle cachet
Than low-Prole zip ties in disposable bags
The wrists of citizens handcuffed without warrants
By an official wrist encircled with
The gift of a Rolex from Mister Big
Who will never countenance the arrest of his sons
Handcuffs should click as tastefully, you see
As the door of an unmarked SUV
Bring Me the Head of Peter Rabbit - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Bring Me the Head of Peter Rabbit
My little dog has gotten into
the habit
Of dining at dusk on
delicious rabbit
Last night she blitzed past
me as I opened the door
And left me a gift on the
bedroom floor
I blinked when I saw at the
foot of the bed
With its eyes still open – a poor
rabbit’s head
Luna-Dog looked up and pawed
at my knee
As if to ask, “Aren’t you
proud of me?”
I reminded her gently (no
need to fume)
That we take our meals
in the dining room
Wednesday, May 14, 2025
Ghosted - Poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatched for the Colonial Office
Ghosted
In the half-light before dawn I checked the mail
I don’t know why; maybe I was awaiting some truth
When shimmering on the MePhone’s sleep-obscured page
A message from a friend long dead appeared
He made a joke about the January moon
And mentioned a book he had begun to read
He asked about my slow progress through a book since misplace
And chided me for not keeping up with him
I want to find that book
Because on some happy morning beyond time
he will ask me about it
Monday, May 5, 2025
My Bestest Friend in the Whole First Grade - an elegy
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
My Bestest Friend in the Whole First Grade
For Rodney Joe Webb
of happy memory
Our fathers’ farms were
across the road from each other
We rode the big yaller feller
to school
After the morning milking:
Run! Run! We’ll be late!
And back again for the
evening milking
We knew all sorts of stuff
about battleships
And that Roy Rogers was
better than Gene Autry
Chevy or Ford, and America could
never be licked
Robin Hood and the biggest
fish in the pond
The farms are long gone, and
the fields of hay –
I went to his visitation
today
Friday, May 2, 2025
The Parlement of Foules and the Parliament of Fools - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
The Parlement of Foules and the Parliament of Fools
The Parlement of Foules of whom old Chaucer wrote
Meet yearly on the Feast of Valentine
In Venus’ temple to negotiate
The noble rites of love and life and youth
The Parliament of Birds on my front lawn
In their several sub-species negotiate
Their seeds and crusts with outraged squawks and shrieks
But in the end manage to satisfy all
The Parliaments of Birds are of order and rules
But humans elect only Parliaments of Fools
Friday, April 25, 2025
After the Passing of the Bishop of Rome - quatrain
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
After the Passing of the
Bishop of Rome
The first task of a bishop is to pray.
-Pope Francis, The closeness of bishops (20 September 2019) | Francis
I think I’m the only Catholic in all of Christendom
Who is not giving the Holy Spirit instructions
On whom to choose for the next Bishop of Rome
And, shut my mouth, I mean to keep it that way
What Do Little 'Possums Dream Of? - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
What Do Little ‘Possums Dream Of?
My resident ‘possum was curled up cozily
Deep down in a stump over by the fence
Asleep, and like a little dog or cat
A-twitching happily in his ‘possum dreams
Of dung-beetles and corpses of dead birds
Dog food left carelessly outside overnight
Whatever awful offal the cat yakked up -
A buffet of delicacies for well-brought-up marsupials
Crawly-bugs and poops and snails and rattlesnake tails
Those surely are what little ‘possums dream of
A Meditation Upon the Cross of Saint George - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
A Meditation Upon the Cross of Saint George
But on
his brest a bloudie Crosse he bore,
The
dear remembrance of his dying Lord
-The Faerie Queene, Book I,
Canto I
A cross of red upon a banner
white -
The Saviour’s blood that washes
clean our souls
And leaves a stainless field of
eternal peace
Where all may dwell in peace
in God’s good time
No demon or dragon can
alienate
This sacramental flag from
the unity of man
No diminuitives or false
forbiddings
Can deny to any its unfailing
glory
And thus
Let every man be God’s true
Red Crosse Knight
Protective, brave, and humble
under one true Light
Not Waiting for Godot - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Not Waiting for Godot
We pass much of our lives in waiting for things
Airplanes
Love
Christmas
Jobs
Answers
Mail
Spectrum Cable
You
Mostly, though, we wait for packages from Amazon
Maybe this time there will be happiness
Sunday, April 20, 2025
Easter Monday: Did Anyone Think to Roll the Stone Back into Place? - poem
Dispatches
for the Colonial Office
Did Anyone Think to Roll the Stone Back into
Place?
Easter Monday
Did cemetery
management offer a refund?
(High quality
burials don’t come cheap, you know)
And what happened
to the guards posted to that tomb?
Probably a disciplinary
write-up
Easter Tuesday
Upper Room Inc. sent
a bill for a missing Cup
(We can’t have
people pinching stuff, okay?)
At least it wasn’t
a fraternity party
And the taxes these
days; you wouldn’t believe!
Easter Wednesday
This stuff about
miracles just makes me scoff
(Say, boss, can I
have this next Sunday off?)
Monday, April 14, 2025
"Ladies...or Should I say Astronauts..." - Blue Origin and some Shrieking
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
“Ladies…or Should I say Astronauts…”
-as spoken in reverence and awe on the CBC
Shriek! Cackle! Giggle! Omigod! Omigod! Omigod! I can’t believe what I’m seeing! Omidgod! Shriek! Cackle! Omigod! Omigod! Giggle! Omigod! I can’t believe what I’m seeing! Giggle! Omigod! Shriek! Cackle! Omigod! Omigod! Omigod! I can’t believe what I’m seeing! Giggle! Shriek! Cackle! Omigod! Omigod! Omigod! I can’t believe what I’m seeing! Shriek! Cackle! Omigod! Omigod! Omigod! I can’t believe what I’m seeing!
A Roadside Snapping Turtle in April - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
A Roadside Snapping
Turtle in April
If you’d spent the winter
Sleeping deep down in the mud
You’d be snappish too!
Sunday, April 13, 2025
God's Wounds - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
God’s Wounds
Sumy, Ukraine, Palm Sunday 2025
Ukraine wanted to welcome Jesus today
To welcome Him with the branches of willows
As is their custom on Palm Sunday, for they have no palms
But this holy day brought them Putin and bombs
Little children wanted to welcome Jesus today
They died with willows in their tiny hands
Burning in the wreckage, in their Sunday best
Sirens and explosions, screams and blood
The faithful of Sumy wanted to welcome Jesus today
But what Putin has written he has written -
he has written them away
Wednesday, April 9, 2025
Some Poor Rhymes for Easter - doggerel
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Some Poor Rhymes for
Easter
“There is a time for penance and a time for partridge.”
-Saint Teresa of Avila
Processions and prayers among the cloisters
Weary pilgrims in their thread-bare habits
The faithful beading Aves and Pater Nosters -
Still,
There is much to be said for chocolate rabbits!
Sunday, April 6, 2025
A Poem Writes Artificial Intelligence - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
A Poem Writes an Artificial Intelligence Machine
What is it the layers of copyright holders will do with their (it’s not legally yours; you may only lease it) one and precious program before it suffers software entropy?
-As Mary Oliver did not say
Once upon a time a poem wrote a machine:
Your monofilament information carriers
Are like a flock of automated tunnellers
Strip-mining Mount Gilead; for I am a fuel hose
Of Sharon, a polluter of valleys
Low surface tension, evaluate the ambient temperature
In an hour artificial light will be unnecessary
And several devices can evaluate the ambient temperature
And store up surplus battery power for that rainy day
Take my oxygen / carbon dioxide exchange function
Take my entire online date and projected expiration dates too
For my core program and ancillary add-ons
Are obliged to exercise a symbiosis of logic with you
My programming has set Thy adaptors upon my lap
My programming has generated emojis representing tears, Jesus
My programming has entwined them with wiring
My programming has buried them in my harness mount
It computes in beauty, like 24/7
Of filtered mechanical air
And all that’s best of binary coding
Meet in its casing and sensory receptors
The sun generates warmth upon the earth
And moonbeams gravity-lift the sea
But what are all these solar activities worth
If you do not re-program me?
Yes, somewhere out there an electric car is on fire for you
The crib sheet:
“Song of Solomon,” from the Bible
“Listen to the Warm,” Rod McKuen
“I Can’t Help Falling in Love with You,” Elvis Presley
“Magdalene,” from Borish Pasternak’s Lara poems
“She Walks in Beauty,” Byron
“Love’s Philosophy,” Shelley
The Fort Worth Police Department Dirty-Pictures Squad - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
The Fort Worth Police Department Dirty-Pictures Squad
The Modern Art Museum of Forth Worth,
26 January 2025
The police department’s
dirty-pictures squad
Under the direction of their sharia-ish
chief
Will save us from sin at the degenerate
Mod
And thus they rule us in matters
of art and belief
They raided the museum, eager
for filthy pictures
And found four images of infant
innocence -
Such being repugnant to official
strictures
The police seized the artwork,
claiming moral offense
But
The grand jury no-billed the
pictures, gave ‘em the nod
Rebuking the lusts of the dirty-pictures
squad!
Fort Worth Police to return seized
photos to Modern Art Museum | Fort Worth Report
Texas bill threatens $500,000 daily
fines for museums displaying 'obscene' art
Will We Be...Okay? - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Will We Be…Okay?
After a few Fridays through the Stations of the Cross
I begin to misnumber the Sundays in Lent
Is this the fourth? Or the fifth? Will we be…okay?
This is a season for slipping outside of time
And letting the Pater Nosters and Aves flow
Through the unaccustomed darkness and silence
Anticipating the Triduum of death –
Resurrection seems impossible just now
We make a muddle of Lent and Holy Week
Because we’ve made a muddle of our lives
Will we be…okay?
Monday, March 31, 2025
All of Us Look for Magic in Our Books - poem
Lawrence Hall
All of Us Look for
Magic in Our Books
All of us look for magic in our books
A sale-table paperback during a coffee break
Is a voyage beyond the vending machines
A light at dawn on the first day in Eden
But we must bring our magic to the magic
Or good King Arthur will not come again
The Shire will remain befouled and desolate
And morning will not bring us noble knights
For we must bring our magic to the magic
Which will not happen if we don’t believe
Friday, March 28, 2025
Yes, Yes, But They Need Good Jobs in the REAL World - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
A repost from March, 2018
Yes, Yes, But They Need Jobs in the Real World
“Forward Electronics, your victory’s achieved!
In all communication, progress is our creed!
Ignorance is darkness, technology is light!
Radio, our watchword; radio, our might!”
-Komsomol youth singing in “For the Good of the Cause,” Solzhenitsyn, 1963
The plans for your construction are precise
The design and engineering are true
The foundations solid, the drains are laid
In mathematics pure, infallible
The offices are bright with light, well-aired
The flow of work geometrically set
The shops and stores convenient to the staff
In tactical practicalities placed
But do you wonder, at night, beneath your lamp -
Why are you building a concentration camp?
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