Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Cicadas at Dusk
Cicadas at dusk
Mourn as I water the plants
Summer is dying
Thursday, September 10, 2026
Cicadas at Dusk - a poor attempt at haiku
Wednesday, September 9, 2026
Memories of One's Golden Youth - doggerel from recruit training
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia
Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Memories of One’s Golden Youth
V: How
many men in a squad?
R: Two
or more, SIR!
V: How
many squads in a platoon?
R: Two
or more, SIR!
V: How
many platoons in a company?
R: Two
or more, SIR!
V: How
many companies in a battalion?
R: Two
or more, SIR!
V: Yer
all a bunch of ******g ******s!
R:
Yes, SIR!
A Moonless September Night - a poor attempt at Haiku
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia
Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
A Moonless September Night
The night
is not dark
Tsuki is praying for us
For our
eyes to see
The Summer of All Fears - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
The Summer of All Fears
When at night you hear strange noises outside
See shadows in the streetlight down the lane
Hear soft footfalls behind you in the dark
Feel an icy breath from some unseen being
Taste death upon a hissing northern wind
Shiver in an unnatural rolling fog
Smell terror lurking like a vampire’s hate
It’s…
It’s those…
[said in a terrified whisper]
Canadians
Monday, September 7, 2026
Do the Witches Visit Him at Night? - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life,
Literature and Love
Do the Witches Visit Him at Night?
a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing
Macbeth V.v.24-28
At night a
false-robed Sharpie-man -
On maps he
seismographs his name
On seas
and lakes and bits of land
Crowning
himself with eternal fame
At night a
poor old sleepless wretch -
To amuse
himself he plans fresh wars
And sends
his newest handmaid to fetch
His plans
for the annexation of Mars
At dawn into
uneasy sleep he slips
Muttering
of golden battleships
Sunday, September 6, 2026
Blue Storm - a modest attempt at haiku
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Blue Storm
Blue September storm
Blowing down from the northeast
Hastening summer’s end
Friday, September 4, 2026
Fragments of Sappho - poem
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Fragments of Sappho
“Someone will remember us…even in another time”
-attributed to Sappho, many sources and variants
I have but one small volume of Sappho
Which I can’t find just now
I wanted to look up something
Perhaps I should instead look for you
Two problems:
Little of Sappho’s work remains
And even that has disappeared
Two joys:
But I found a Tolkien I had lost
And you and I found each other
Two fragments:
Verse floating among our hopes
And happiness upon our pillow
Life Up On Cinder Blocks - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Life Up On Cinder Blocks
In the flickering-fog-forever-flare-lit night
He steered along a mud-crumbling shell road
Off Highway 225, through cracking towers
Day shift to juke joint to the trailer park on the right
He’d catch it for his two-Budweiser breath
Just two - promise! That skinny girl who danced
Like she was dancing just for him, green eyes
Shimmering as seductively as a Shiner Beer
When he stepped down he tripped on a cinder block
Left over from setting up some steps to the door
She didn’t look up as he flung his jacket over a chair
A sack of Dairy Queen cold on the table
She was sitting with a box where he kept his books
Artifacts of a roadblocked freshman year -
Introduction to College Algebra
Major British Writers, Geology
Industrial Engineering – and asked
“Do you think we can get anything out of these?”
She noted his sudden hope, and broke him of that:
“I mean, like, y’know, from a re-sale shop.”
Ode to Harris Famous Roach Tablets - rhyming doggerel
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life,
Literature and Love
Ode to Harris Famous
Roach Tablets
If you have a clean house you will have clean roaches
-old saying
I have no pity for the perfidious roach
Who invades my house for crumbs to poach
And spaces behind cabinets in which to encroach
So if this creature presumes to approach
Your hygienic boundaries foully to broach
Harris Famous Roach Tablets are beyond reproach!
(I
have no connection with the nice folks who make Harris Famous Roach Tablets. In
my experience the product works as advertised against certain nasty insects and
so may be dangerous to influencers, politicians, and motivational speakers.)
Wednesday, September 2, 2026
A Spondee for Parents Who Complain About School Being Cancelled When a Tropical Storm Approaches - one spondaic foot
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
A Spondee for Parents Who Complain About School Being Cancelled When a Tropical Storm Approaches
Shut up
Reading Basho on a Rainy Morning - a poor attempt at Haiku
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Reading Basho on a Rainy Morning
When I read Basho
I am properly chastened
For my ignorance
Basho: The Complete Haiku of Matsuo Basho
Translated and edited by Andrew Fitzsimons
Oakland: University of California Press, 2022, 2024
Tuesday, September 1, 2026
Civil Penalties for Mailing Anything Dangerous - poem
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
“Civil Penalties
for Mailing Anything Dangerous”
…our children will be ashamed…
remembering
how in so strange a time
common
integrity could look like courage
-Yevtushenko, “Talk,” in Selected Poems: Yevtushenko
The postmistress chants this as part of her list to us
Whenever a citizen sends a package by postal bus:
Civil penalties for mailing anything dangerous
Firearms, fireworks, a radioactive truss
Air bags - and why mail one? (just an aside)
Poisons, perishables, formaldehyde
The cremated ashes of your cousin Clyde
Or anything else on the weirdo side
Logical enough
But in these fearful days, under our mad regime
Mailing even a thoughtful letter is a dangerous scheme
Saturday, August 29, 2026
A Pinball Game with Some Come-to-Jesus Music - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
A Pinball Game with Some Come-to-Jesus Music
The ritual signing of a padded book
And then invisible paddles launch us into the game
Among electrical bumpers of whisperers
Clustered in their several corners and slots
Suspicious smiles that don’t conceal holy hate
As they repel outsiders through platitudes
Invisible daggers fly through the sacred air
The silent sibilant hisses are heard all the same
The dear departed in his old Sunday suit
Seems to smile in peaceful anticipation
of being rid of all of us
Ka-Ching!
Exit the Hurricane, 2017
Lawrence
Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
a repost from 2017
Exit the Hurricane, 2017 (not the
catchiest title, eh?)
What is that silence? It is the not-rain
The first not-rain since Friday this past week
Every loud frog gloats in unseemly song
As old, sour water recedes from the door
The whole house stinks; it stinks of damp and rot
Of clothes unwashed because the drains are dammed
Of smelly shoes and even smellier socks
Of refugee gear flung casually about
The whole house stinks; it stinks of damp and rot
Of too many people – and isn’t it wonderful!
Lunch Poems and an Olivetti - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Lunch Poems and an Olivetti
oz.Typewriter: Poet Frank O'Hara and the Olivetti Lettera 22 Portable Typewriter
When Frank O’Hara poemed on an Olivetti
At a typewriter shop on Fifth Avenue
He pulled out a sheet of paper which did not read
Error 1101 Ray ID: a324930b6bd1e5a5 • 2026-08-28 16:08:24 UTC
Worker threw exception
Lunch Poems and a Subaru - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia
Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Lunch Poems and a Subaru
“The world is full of
people who want to tell you how to live…”
-attributed to Gus in
Lonesome Dove
When I
picked up a copy of Lunch Poems
I didn’t
know I was required to be gay
And when I
bought a fine new Subaru
I didn’t
know I was required to be
a feminist lesbian professor with big round glasses and short grey hair
The World's Tallest Wooden Skyscraper - a poem written on a matchstick
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
The World’s Tallest Wooden Skyscraper
Anybody got
A match?
Thursday, August 27, 2026
After the Drought: Living Water - a modest attempt at Haiku
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
After the Drought:
Living Water
Sweet rain greens the grass
Like baptism or mikvah
Making the world new
Today Lake America, Tomorrow the World! - intemperate political poem
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Today Lake
America, Tomorrow the World!
The USS Trump has departed the Straits of America
And is sailing across the South Trump America Sea
Enroute to ThaiTrumpland, His fifty-fifth state
For a Trumptorious port call at Trumpkok
From thence across the Trump America Ocean
The bigliest Trump ship the world has ever seen
Helmed by General Admiral Trump, Our Trump
Who declares victory over loser Canada
And awards each sailor and Marine
The Golden Order of the Reflecting Pool
Good for discounts at the catering truck
Thank you for your attention to this matter
I Hadn't Realized How Young We Are - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
I Hadn’t Realized How Young We Are
Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
-Mary Oliver, "Sometimes"
I hadn’t realized how young we are
As through this field we stroll, your hand in mine
But love has seen us safely through this far
With hearts in time with each other, with eyes that shine
We were young once, and how wonderful to be
Still young in the promises we made
And in our long togetherness thus free
To love as one in this moonlit summer glade
As through this field we stroll, beneath the evening star
I realize how wonderfully young we are
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