Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
A Window on the Century
Pasternak is said to have raised a window
On a sunny winter day to ask
“Children, what century is it outside?”
A logical question
Saturday, December 6, 2025
A Window on the Century - poem
Restricted Area - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Restricted Area
No public or media access
Cameras and recording devices prohibited without prior authorization
Whoever our government orders beaten or shot is not our business
God bless America
The Voices are Talking about Nat - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
The Voices are Talking about Nat
The Voices slither about like Lady Macbeth
Claiming arcane knowledge of life and death
Hissing subtly with their smoky breath
Their business manager is a dude named Seth
(Seth attends art school at night and says his instructors don’t understand his depth of existential being-ness and, like, stuff.)
They (The Voices, not Seth) visit me nightly when I’m asleep
Approaching me in crouch and crawl and creep
Desiring to drag my soul down into the deep
Piling my vanities onto a vermiculous heap
(The Voices took my evening class at Cinder Block Community College and slouched sullenly in the back wearing their Grateful Dead baseball caps on the few occasions they bothered to show up. They filed a complaint against me for dropping them.)
They usually lurk in my right parietal
So, shhhhh! - they’re rather anti-societal
(They’re all The Office fans and are looking for affordable housing in Scranton if you know someone with a deal.)
Plato's Alligator of the Cave - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Plato’s Alligator of the Cave
The real reason Plato missed Socrates’
execution
Plato, in a moment
famously historical
In that scary cave
had a philosophical hunch
He took an alligator
for allegorical
The alligator, alas,
took him for lunch
Tuesday, December 2, 2025
'Flu Jab at the Supermarket with Rotisserie Chicken and Anaphylactic Shock - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
‘Flu Jabs at the Supermarket
To the supermarket with a shopping list:
1 Brookshire Brothers rotisserie chicken
1 bag of Purina dog chow
2 pints of Coffee Mate for this low, low price
A half-gallon of No Pulp Florida’s Natural
A Farmer’s Cooperative Since 1933
100% Premium Orange Juice from Concentrate
Owned by Florida Farmers
And a ‘flu jab. Not by Florida farmers
Next week my nurse practitioner has a special on butter
Which will be, as always, country farm fresh
Monday, December 1, 2025
League Tables for the Lovelorn - doggerel
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
League Tables for the Lovelorn
V: Give her up, old
man; she’s out of your league.
R: Impossible; I
never joined a league.
Wednesday, November 26, 2025
A Homily Idling in Neutral Just off the Four-Lane to Emmaus - a poem about long sermons
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
A Homily Idling in Neutral Just off the Four-Lane to Emmaus
This is a warm Sunday in November
But we still watch for I.C.E. in the parking lot
And for a cold front promised but not delivered
Through the almanacs and weather distorts
Just now the celebrant, too, seems to be stalled
Chocked up at Luke 18 with his mutter running
The same illustrations repeated over and over
Like that same old cactus in a Road Runner short
Dear Lord
I pray for your priest while he is rebuking sin -
Please help him bring his homily to an end!
A Child’s Thanksgiving…WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY, YOUNG MAN!? - rhyming doggere.
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
A Child’s Thanksgiving…
WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY, YOUNG MAN!?
Sort of like
Christmas, with its own small joys
Turkey and dressing,
but not any toys
Grandpa at dinner babbles
about his bowels
With a chorus of
most dramatic vowels
Grandma discourses
on her surgeries
The latest ones implanted
mechanical knees
Mother and Big Sis
are busy in the kitchen
With a whole lotta
hissin’ and (rhymes with kitchen)
“WHAT DID YOU JUST
SAY, YOUNG MAN!?
DO YOU WANT TO FEEL THE
SWIPE OF MY HAND!?”
“They get it from
those app things today -
I think you need to
take his ‘phone away”
The uncles thunder
on about politics
And any who disagree
are Bolsheviks
The aunts all
painted like marionettes
Escape to the lawn for
their cigarettes
And I am exiled to
the children’s table
With snotty little cousins,
like unclean elves
And eye-brow-warned
to behave ourselves -
And that’s the end
of this Thanksgiving fable
Saturday, November 22, 2025
Remembrance of Poetry Magazines Past - poem (fancy that)
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Remembrance of Poetry Magazines Past
Our intellectual Marines,
Landing in little magazines
Capture a trend.
-Auden
UP THE REVOLUTION
A travel-back-in-time wish for me might be
ECOLOGY NOW
To those hippie book shops in San Diego
//// THE PIGS
Mimeographed little poetry magazines
GIVE PEACE A CHANCE
With their mimeographed art-class covers
MAKE LOVE NOT WAR
TUNE IN TURN ON DROP OUT
Posters for the protest in Balboa Park
DROP ACID NOT BOMBS
Sunlit little tables and cigarettes
//// NO WE WON’T GO
Chipped cups of Jamaica Blue Mountain
POWER TO THE PEOPLE
Percolating The Revolution in CAPS
DON’T TRUST ANYONE OVER THIRTY
PEACE LOVE AND HARMONY
Hippie chicks in turtlenecks and berets
FLOWER POWER
Their delicate laughter scorning the Proletariat
NEED RIDE TO SAN FRANCISCO COOL PEOPLE ONLY
And, like, do you dig Yevtushenko?
Cats, Coffee, Choices, Autumn Leaves, Friends - short poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Cats, Coffee, Choices, Autumn Leaves, Friends
I sat outside this
golden autumn day
Thinking about
things, as old people do
And about the
thoughts you send my way –
I
thought
About choices. And
Coffee. And cats. And leaves.
And
you.
Northern Lights and a Little Magic - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Northern Lights and a Little Magic
I walked out to the hayfield under the stars
To see the Northern Lights that weren’t there
But the grasses whispered in the autumn night
And then best of all
I heard you singing
Cranky Old Aunt Robert - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Cranky Old Aunt Robert
“I just don’t go to funerals anymore,” he said
Oh, he was all right, the town’s bachelor lawyer
He was just like that, as everyone agreed
A bookish old lawyer and the town eccentric
When we were young, he and I read Paradise Lost,
Along with Friend Tod, of happy memory
But with time he recused himself from life
And had me ‘phone him about the town doins’
“I just don’t go to funerals anymore,” he said
But a week or two later
he did
Your Words, Your Way - poem
Your Words, Your Way
At the end of the day, your words, your way
Now healing and sealing the wounds of your friends
Giving grace and peace to the Vespers hour -
We open your book and look, and read your joy
At the beginning of night, your words, your light
Through your verse rehearse the teachings of peace -
They are to us a healing waterfall of dreams
And then a covering warm with autumn-night stars
Now you sleep too; this soft blanket is for you
For your happy dreams, sweet and true, all night through
We See Stories as We Walk - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
As I was a-walking One Morning for Pleasure –
We See Stories
as We Walk
From “Git Along, Little Dogies”
-American, traditional
The road doesn’t end
here, but something did
In the lonely dark,
with a cigarette and beer
A can of Miller Lite
drained out last night
And a cigarette end,
to mark an end
An end to love, now faded
in the sun
One of each, not
two, an empty man
Going home alone,
stopping here a while
And wondering why his
everything went wrong
The road doesn’t end
here, but something did -
And maybe there’s a
job waiting in Wyoming
Is There a Thai Army Knife? - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Is There a Thai Army Knife?
“A man’s not dressed without his pocketknife”
-my father, and surely yours
At Christmas friends give me Swiss Army Knives
Precisely engineered with all those nifty tools
A most useful adjunct in all men’s lives
For camp and work, this little gadget rules
Most days I carry my British Army Knife
Rough and tough; it’ll take it on the chin
The workman’s friend both in peace and strife
(Oh, golly-gosh, the hinge is broken again!)
What knife is carried by a Thai G.I.?
Does the Garuda or Elephant adorn its grip?
When guarding a great nation’s land and sky
A soldier needs a blade of fine craftsmanship
And in peace, too:
It’s true of every worker, all through his life -
A man’s not dressed without his pocketknife
(Just ask your father)
He was a Cute Little Boy - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
He was a Cute Little Boy
And on occasion he
was told no
“One…”
Sometimes he was
yelled no
“Two…!”
Sometimes he was yelled
no again
“Twooooo…!”
And again
“Twooooooooo…this time I mean it!”
Sometimes he was
screamed no
“Twwwwwwwwwoooo! DON’T MAKE ME GO TO THREE!”
And again
“Threeeeeeeeeeee! I SAID THREE! YOU
KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS!”
But then
“Okay, one…”
And then
“Two,
if you’ll tell your sister you’re sorry…”
And then
“OKAY, MISTER, THREE! AND I MEAN IT
THIS TIME!”
And then
(“Honey, don’t you think you’re being
a little rough? Now you’ve made him cry.”)
And then years later
the state superior court told him no
And they didn’t yell.
And they didn’t say “one”
And they didn’t say “two”
And they didn’t say “three”
What Does an I.C.E. Agent Do on His Day Off? - doggerel
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
What Does an I.C.E. Agent Do on His Day Off?
He might want to pause and meditate
Upon the 4th and 5th Amendments (they’re in the file)
And the children he locked behind a barbed-wire gate
Or
He might prepare his defense for his Nuremburg trial
[The pronouns “he” and “his” are gender-neutral. This certificate of pronoun compliance is provided for Dr. Karen, Ms. Grundy, and the alligator-shoe boys at Target corporate.]
A Crude Review of my TV Service Provider - doggerel
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
A Crude Review of my TV Service Provider
Unplug and re-set, wait
for the blue light
And wait and wait –
and now the controller’s not right
Our TV service is
known as Spectrum
Which, as you know,
rhymes with r****m
Ennui at the Gas Pumps - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Ennui at the Gas Pumps
You Have Been Approved
Please Remove Card Now
Select Product
Remove Nozzle
Begin Fueling
Did you bring the fuel ticket?
This number is unclear; why is that?
The boss wants to see you.
Welcome to Another 16-Hour Day
Yep
Yep
Yep
(Sigh)
Monday, November 17, 2025
Give a Man a Fish or a Bucket Truck - short poem
Give a Man a Fish or a Bucket Truck
Give
a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day
Give
a man a bucket truck and he’ll
Block
Every blind corner
Every rural road
Every lane
Every driveway
Every intersection
Every pasture access
Every field gate
In
the county
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