Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
“Just One More Thing”
His shabby raincoat
His rumply old suit and tie
His “Just one more thing…”
Wednesday, July 30, 2025
"Just One More Thing" - poem
Tuesday, July 29, 2025
Minefield and Altar - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Minefield and Altar
Approaching the Truth should be simple enough
But you can expect to lose a lot of pals
The maps you were given are unreliable
Because the chain of command keeps changing them
No matter what choices you make in the bush
Someone in authority will tell you you’re wrong
If you show initiative you will be wrong
If you follow orders you will still be wrong
If you survive you will be too late for chow
And the leaders steal your medals anyhow
A Point-and-Won't-Shoot Camera - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
A Point-and-Won’t-Shoot Camera
The concept of the point-and-shoot camera obtains
But a Me-‘Phone camera doesn’t see it that way
I stopped to watch a bug-grazing bird
Who approached me as if she wanted to visit
I took out my Me-‘Phone for a photograph
And it didn’t recognize my handsome face
And I had to tap a four-digit code
And the bird grew suspicious and flew away
O Egret, in your beautiful brown and white -
I truly understand your need for flight
Monday, July 28, 2025
High-Pressure Dome in a Coffee Cup - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
High-Pressure Dome in a Coffee Cup
Blue light - an illusion of comfort at dawn
The streaky windows frame a winter day
Illusions and delusions lying to us
For this is July, when hopes wither and die
The sun’s tentacles ripple across the fields
One of them slithers to your window and leers
Mocking the fantasies of your air-conditioned sleep
Beckoning you outside: come and be fried
The sun’s hot streakings, mortals seeking, they roam
As summer’s slithering death: a high-pressure dome
Sunday, July 27, 2025
A Three-Character-Group Code for Advancing Civilization
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
A Three-Character-Group Code for Advancing
Civilization
Learn. To. Dostoyevsky.
Saturday, July 26, 2025
They. Learned. To. Code. - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
They. Learned. To. Code.
14-year-old boy identified as victim in University of New Mexico dorm shooting
I call, therefore, a complete and generous education, that which fits a man to perform, justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war.
-John Milton, “Of Education,” 1644
Learn. To. Code. is the fashionable chant
Staccato’d in every callow response
Make. America. Great. through cliché’ and cant
To force a lath-and-plaster renaissance
The Great Conversation of books and thoughts
The Great Dialectic of civilization
Are now toys, guns, and video games, all for nought
Ferality within a generation
Within a generation, within a blink
They. Learned. To. Code.
They did not learn to think
Friday, July 25, 2025
The Apex Predator - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
The
Apex Predator
They…
Have watched me rise from the darkness of war
Dripping with my enemies’ blood
-Beowulf,
trans. Raffel, lines 151-153
The apex predator feeds upon the flesh
Of those who wanted desperately to
live
To hew and chew and gnaw and digest
and mesh
With those who died with no desire
to forgive
The apex predator feeds while
others starve
The sentient flee from him in grievous
fear
But he always wins, his victims then
to carve
In bloody fields and haunted forests
drear
War ends violently in drang und
sturm
And the apex predator is obviously
The
Worm
Wednesday, July 23, 2025
We Ask Everyone to Respect Our Family Privacy at This Time - a poem about the guy who bit the head off the bat
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
We Ask Everyone to Respect Our Family Privacy at This Time
“Our family privacy” – people keep saying that
A friend came over and mowed my rankling lawn
Because finding a lawnmower mechanic these days
Is like searching for a unicorn in a shopping mall
Their family privacy – I’m blessed with friends
But lawnmower mechanics seem to be extinct
The temp today was 98 at noon
Nobody chants “Learn. To. Code.” anymore
Their family privacy – chicken pot pies
Are on sale at Brookshire’s for 88 cents
I’ll mail all those bills this afternoon
That’s a really nice shirt you’re wearing today
Their family privacy – a middle-aged woman
Sheds tears upon an altar of VHS tapes
In privacy
Tuesday, July 22, 2025
A 5-7-5 About Listening to Your Body - yes, a 5-7-5 unworthy of a senryu
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
A 5-7-5 About Listening to Your Body
I listen to my body
All day, all night (Mary Ann)
If I eat too much
Piso Mojado Sounds Somewhat Vulgar - rhyming doggerel
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Piso Mojado Sounds Somewhat Vulgar
Piso mojado en Tejas y Colorado
Does not exactly trip from my English tongue
Cuidado that floor in El Dorado
For piso sounds slippily close to dung!
Monday, July 21, 2025
Loose Vowels - not really a poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Loose Vowels
A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes
Y – why?
(Asking for a dipthong)
The New Pastor Threatens the Congregation with Guitars - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
The New Pastor Threatens the Congregation with Guitars
Our new pastor has visions, dreams beyond the stars
At Mass last week he informally presented
This suggestion: a choir. And guitars
But peace will still obtain, tho’ that twanging jars -
Guitars in church are why ear plugs were invented
Sunday, July 20, 2025
Betrayed With a Kiss-Cam - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Betrayed With a Kiss-Cam
And the sunlight clasps
the earth
And the moonbeams kiss
the sea:
What is all this sweet
work worth
If thou kiss not me?
-Shelly, “Love’s Philosophy”
A kiss is just a kiss, as
Dooley Wilson sang
In a Casablanca that never
was
A kiss to give one’s life a
bit of tang
A kiss to set a lonely heart
abuzz
But great unwashed mobs stacked
in their masses
Close-looped in a failed sub-culture
of dust
Metal in their noses and tattoos
on their asses
Can never find truth without
a trace of trust
For love can never depend
upon
The vigilante cruelty of a
jumbo-tron
Tech company Astronomer launches investigation into
'kiss cam' moment at Coldplay concert - ABC News
The Crown of Rachel - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
The Crown of Rachel
From an idea inspired by Nat Lipstadt while we discussing something else
A dream about our teacher Akiva of Yavna
When the Romans took a respite from murdering us:
In our youth we approached a little house
Though we were tired from following the goats all day
Akiva was tired from tending his beans
And from Jacob-wrestling with great ideas
But he smiled and asked what he could do
Do for us little children bubbling with questions
“I am inventing the synagogue,” he might have said
“What is a synagogue? A new kind of Temple?”
“It is a machine for learning, a temple of the mind
A school, an altar upon we sacrifice our ignorance”
“But the Romans won’t let us sacrifice anything”
“Sometimes” said Akiva wryly, “they sacrifice us
But in the synagogue we will have a little light
Light and Torah and learning, always learning”
“We want to learn.”
“Oh? And what do you want to learn?” he asked of us
“We want to learn.”
He smiled and sat us at a table under his vines
“I learned to read when I was forty,” he said
As he took out a tablet and a stylus
One of us said, “I can’t imagine being that old!”
Our teacher smiled, smoothed the day from the wax
And instructed us to attend to the Word
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”
That is what he said, not what he wrote in the wax
Akiva prayed, he prayed for us, and wrote
And in the wax the letters formed as fire
As gold and fire:
“Bereshit Bara Elohim…”
Friday, July 18, 2025
A Cure for the Common Scold - doggerel (thinking of some of the cast in the Harry Potter films)
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
A Cure for the Common Scold
For
___________________________
With wisdom, age,
and experience a man
Comes to
appreciate that most useful tool
and the
entertainment value as part of the plan
In the sadly-neglected
ducking stool
1970 - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
1970
When I came home I was asked
by a boyhood friend
“I haven’t seen you lately;
where have you been?”
I’m still wondering about
that
Death Falls Apart in White - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Death Falls Apart in White
Snow does not fall in July,
and yet there is white
White falling like large snowflakes
or small flower petals
White scatterings across the
summer lawn
Ghostly among the leafy sheltering
oaks
The hawks are back
An egret about her business
of bugs and snakes
Sudden violence high up in
the gentle air
Flesh and life claw-ripped,
torn, and devoured
Unheard below, only feathers falling
like snow
The hawks are back
This artificial paradise of
feeders and seeders
And flower-bordered lawn is a
scape of death
From which the gentle
rabbits, birds, and squirrels
Withdraw in silent fear
The hawks are back
The Last Nights of Club Ozymandias - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
The Last Nights of Club Ozymandias in
San Diego
Shelley always makes
one think
(often about how to
pronounce his middle name)
I met a tout along
a darkening street
Who said –
“two trunkless legs of neon dance
There, upon
that wall, on neon feet
An electromechanical
contrivance to prance
In remnants,
but wiggling hips and pouty lips
Tell that the
artisan well caught the lust
Of lonely sailors
as a pretty girl strips -
In time those
young men and the dancer will be dust
These letters
appear, written in cold fire:
I am the
Queen of Club Ozymandias
Look upon me
with your hot desire
Look upon me,
and imagine us…
Tomorrow all
will be leveled
A housing
estate will arise, a planner’s scar
Nothing will
remain of laughter and drinks
Of sailors
flinging their pay upon the bar
For a dancing
girl now silent as the Sphinx”
Thursday, July 17, 2025
Highway Patrol - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Highway Patrol
An episode of Highway Patrol appears -
(With Broderick Crawford it should be widescreen)
Iron-jawed Bill Boyette as his sergeant
Today’s show features a passenger train
A man in a coat and tie, smoking a cigarette
Stops his DeSoto at a telephone booth
Wildly high fins (the DeSoto, not the telephone booth)
Inserts a dime and, turning a dial, he places a call
And Grandpa takes some time to explain
To his grandchild
The telephone, the tie, the passenger train
I Have the Epstein Files - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
I Have the Epstein Files
I carry the Epstein files in
my pocket
A paperback edition from City
Lights
You said you were going to
hitchhike to Big Sur
With a dude named Gautama. I
have the files
I thought you’d like to know
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