Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Some Adventure!
I
saw the sunrise glory of Pike’s Peak
From
the window of a car, for I was weak –
While
morning freed the mountain from fog and gloom
I
mostly saw the fluorescents in the emergency room!
(Many thanks to Dr. Lam and the
other kind and considerate professionals, including the helpful security guard,
at UC Memorial Hospital in Colorado Springs)
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Your Heart as a Tabernacle
From an idea by Blue Sapphire
The heart is a tabernacle upon the Altar
Within it reposes our hopes and dreams
We open it as sacrament, as sacrifice
A gift that in the end is given back to us
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Lady Macbeth and a
Luna Moth
A luna moth is elegant in her green
Like Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth
Beautiful and yet somehow sinister
Those wing’ed eyes – they seem to look at us
Eyes
That measure us for a dagger or a cup
She clings to a lichened brick wall at night
Wings pulsing against that wall, waiting, waiting…
Suddenly wild flutterings as she flees into the dark!
Exit, pursued by a cat
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Jesus and a Reference to Fowler’s Modern English Usage
“But who do you say that I am?”
“Whom!” boomed a voice from the back of the room
And St. Peter asked of him
“A community college graduate, I presume?”
(This is from an old joke by C. S. Lewis or in a book about him: "'Whom,' he said, for he had been to night school.")
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
I am not God
About
final judgement
Just
give it a rest -
God does salvation
We do our best
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
An Unhappy O. Henry Ending
His picture is on the telescreen tonight
Stepping onto a twin-engine executive jet
Then posed in an easy-street seat in the back
Uniformed crew, someone to bring him a snack
The same smug grin he had when he dropped out of school
“I’m tired of this nowhere town,” he sneered
“I’m gonna go somewhere and get me a life;
I don’t need you or any of this mess”
And life is what he got, and a suit in orange
And a free ride home to his nowhere town
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
For my Mother’s Funeral
For
my mother’s funeral
I
did not sell souvenir tees
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Never Carry a Rifle
Never
carry a rifle
For a
man
Who
never carried a rifle
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Everyone Has Advice for Writers
There is a man…hangs odes upon hawthorns and elegies on brambles…
-As You Like It, III.ii.377-380
Who
is your target audience, they ask
A
pair of clevers on the telescreen
Giving
their audience suggestions for publication
Ideas
for making it on the writing scene:
“Target
audience” is their incantation
Who
is your target audience?
Is
your target moving or stationary?
A
paper bullseye or something edible
An
enemy, a thing, an adversary
A
carnivore’s luncheon spreadable?
Who
is your target audience?
But
a reader is not a target
She
is not the object of your life -
She is the
subject of her own
Respect
your reader
Respect
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
The Leaker Demands Informers
Why do people
inform on others—including neighbors, family members, co-workers, friends,
lovers…in repressive societies?
-Informers:
secrets, truths, and dignity | OUPblog
Franklin
asked: what good shall I do today?
But
the current regime demands that you betray -
Whom
shall I report to the State today?
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Red Spider Lilies
For Max
Who Magicked Autumn in with the Spider Lilies
Red spider lilies – we were speaking of them
And why somehow they hadn’t yet appeared
To call the oak leaves down upon the lawn
To dance among their equinoctial blooms
Red spider lilies – suddenly they are here!
Perhaps they only waited to be invited
We spoke, and they arose, laughing at us
And waving happily in the afternoon breeze
Red spider lilies – now autumn has begun
In late September’s glowing tawny sun
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
The Brass-Elevator
Mountaineer
A weak imitation of
Osip Mandelstam
For whom we pray, “Memory eternal”
Our lives no longer sense truth around them
In our ewails we are afraid of each other’s words
But whenever there’s an eye-rolled whisper
It’s about the brass-elevator mountaineer
The ten tiny worms of his fingers
His words like mountains of loot
The waving tendrils atop his head
The glitter of his shiny Tesla
Wheels stained with a scum of groveling bosses
He toys with the tributes of his house pets:
One clenches his fisties
Another salutes
A third pledges eternal loyalty
He pokes out his fingers and grabs ‘em by their _______
He magic-markers mass deportations:
Three hundred or more for El Salvador
A hundred or so for Guantanamo
Uncounted hundreds to disappear
From routine check-ins here
“Your search has returned zero (0) matching records”
He rolls the possibilities of ____ __________ on his tongue like diet
sodas
He wishes he could deport his former best friends forever
Our
lives no longer sense truth around them
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
A Cup of Coffee Not to Go
APP ORDERS ONLY
APP ORDERS ONLY
APP ORDERS ONLY
APP ORDERS ONLY
APP ORDERS ONLY
APP ORDERS ONLY
OUT OF ORDER
OUT OF ORDER
DRIVE THRU CLOSED TODAY
EXIT
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Grandmama’s Methodist Bible
“For all find what they truly seek”
-Aslan in C. S. Lewis’ The Last
Battle
The
well-worn Bible my Methodist grandmother loved
Sunday
school pictures of Jesus, brave and kind
Chaplains
who suffered with us in Viet-Nam
Prison
pastors who bring Light into the dark
The
ministers and faithful in contested streets
The
priest who blessed my mother as she died
Those
sturdy Baptist friends who bless my days
The
Glorious Mysteries in the Rosary of being
I
love The Story in word and prayer and song -
But those
who force a Reichskirche upon us
are wrong
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Darwinianism Stalks the Suburbs
God giveth the earth the good green grass to grow
An unceasing samsara of life and death
Catalogues of life in their millions of forms
Work out their mandalas of being in that sea
Winds weave waving forests of tender blades
Chlorophyll makes magic from water and light
The apex predator is the lowly bacterium
Humbling at last great glorious carnivores
And there the eternal cycles of seed and sower
Are shredded on Saturdays by a suburban lawn mower
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
A Child Asked me a Reasonable Question about God
A
child -
She
asked of me
One day,
you see
A
question wise
For
one her size
It wasn’t odd:
“I believe in God
But then does He
Believe in me?”
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Because They are Young
For Those Who Have Lost Children
The good die young, our blessed children, our hope
Fresh to this world they wanted so much to explore
They wanted to explore everything – earth, air
Words, water, sky, ideas, music, art, love
All the joys of being; all Creation is their stupa
And they fly the eternal pradakshina
In fulfillment, enlightenment, and joy
Infinitely far, and yet still close to us
We are less because they have gone ahead
Along the happy pilgrimage of faith
But they are more, and they celebrate us too:
They love us and wait for us along the Way
The good die young, and because they are so good
We must strive to be worthy of them
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Where is Herod’s Father?
…lamentation,
and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children,
and
would not be comforted, because they are not.
-Saint Matthew
2:16-18
The Herod of today squats alone in his room
Alone, devoid of parenting or
purpose
Feverishly feeling sorry for
himself
His only friend is his Precious,
his glowing screen
(And where is his father?)
He scribbles screaming screeds and
manifestos
And draws cool pictures of army guns
‘n’ stuff
Mommy lets him do whatever he
wants
Maybe another weapon will calm him
down
(But where is his father?)
He counts the children in the
village school
He draws a floor plan of the
village church
He clutches his he-man tough guy
army gear
He sends his sulkings through the GossipNet
(Oh, where is his father?)
A naked AR fantasy hangs on his
wall
He takes him down, he wants to fondle
him
He feels, he doesn’t think, he
feels, he feels –
Maybe
Moloch wasn’t such a bad guy after all
(Now
where is Herod’s father?)
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
An Hour in Which Nothing Much Happened
The country talked quiet;
one human voice could drown it out…
Lonesome Dove, p. 26
No real mission; I just wanted a walk
Along the road, with work gloves and loppers in hand
Through the wavery heat on a late-summer day
To clear some windfall blocking much of the lane
Butterflies danced among bright yellow flowers
Mourning doves murmured in the underbrush
Wrens and buntings and sparrows up in the pines
A little snake wriggled for cover and shade
Their beauty and silence – those were their talk
No real mission; I just wanted a walk
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
The Eleventh Commandment Falls Upon Us
From the State Religion in Austin
“Schools not enjoined by ongoing litigation must abide by S.B. 10 and display the Ten Commandments.”
-Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton
25 August 2025
“It denies us the right of worshipping the Almighty according to the dictates of our own conscience, by the support of a national religion…”
-Texas Declaration of Independence
2 March 1836
Our attorney
general elects himself God
And imposes upon
us his government church
To rule us,
perhaps, by a religion squad
Subjecting
us all to seizure and search
For under
his high-tech inquisition
One’s
conscience must obey his moods and rages
This Torquemada
on his punitive mission
He’ll ponder
our punishment – maybe the cages?
Our attorney
general elects himself God
And Texans
famous for freedom submit to his rod
