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
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
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
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
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?)
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!
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!
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
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!
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
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
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?
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
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?
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial
Office
Who is the Third
Murderer in Macbeth?
But who did bid thee join with us?
-Macbeth III.iii.1
Two murderers are hired; a third one joins
The false lady, perhaps, or the tempter himself
As light and love both thicken near the rooky wood
“But who did bid thee join…?” Maybe we did
We have drooped and drowsed through civilization
Scorning the sacred texts of our several faiths
Approaching the Altar as a drive-through concession
The Body of Christ and maybe an order of fries
Who is the Third Murderer?
Rabbi,
is it I?
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Did Civilians Write Poetry Back in the Day?
A medical professional, while taking my pulse
Asked me what I was reading
Poetry, I replied
Poetry of suffering in the Second World War
Most of it by civilians who were there
She asked:
Did civilians write poetry back in th’ day?
I changed the topic to my blood pressure
Second World War Poems
Ed. Hugh Haughton
London: Faber and Faber, 2004
This anthology is brilliant, with poems by soldiers, civilians, concentration camp prisoners, and prisoners of war from many nations. Several of the poems are anonymous, written on scraps of paper found on the bodies of the murdered. There is much fashionable babble about my voice / our voices / authentic voices / my people’s voices, and so on, but here is a fine collection by people whose voices were desperate to tell the truth, not indulge in self-pity, and find beauty among the horror
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
A Tom Bombadil Day
“How bright your garden looks!”
-Gandalf, The Lord of the Rings, Book I
Tomato seedlings from the hardware store
Happy little things, six of ‘em to a pack
I sing to them as I drive them home
They seem amused: I am no Tom Bombadil!
I sing to them more nonsense songs
(If no sniffy old Lobelias are listening)
As I gently, gently transfer them
With a pat and a prayer into the earth
And I sing to them; you will understand
For you too have lived in the dear old Shire
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial
Office
Reality
Will See You Now
I am a student of medical waiting rooms
The same Motel 6 paintings and decor
Receptionists giggling behind rippled glass
About weekends and boyfriends and inadequate husbands
Patients waiting as patiently as Russians
Tattoos and ball-caps lined up in plastic-chairs
Clutching bills and lab reports in nervous hands
Or greasy, year-old copies of Reader’s Digest
Or bending over their MePhones in a servile bow -
“Mr. Hall? The doctor will see you now…”
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
A Desk Blotter and the Meanings of Life
Optometrist 17 March 0845 Netgear DirecTV Viasat Verizon Spectrum Xumo? Xuumo? Carlos 1775 1812 PSA Eliot Cohen BRING PLANTS UNDER COVER computer paper brekker c Max 0800 Tuesday find quote from Doctor Zhivago When is Gonculator Day? Intek 10.5 “Did civilians write poetry back in the day?” Subaru password username amazon apple Christus patient portal HUMMINGBIRDS! Astrid-the-Wonder-Dachshund visitation Sat 5-7 funeral Sun 2 1030 St. Elizabeth’s Refresh+ or Lumify water co-op board meeting Kirk Santiago de Compostella breakfast singles orange juice cheese creamer cat food detergent pods taco shells 0900 dentist Epiphany prison at 1700 cancel DirecTV cancel Viasat Mary Oliver OXFORD BOOK OF ENGLISH VERSE Q EDITION LONESOME DOVE as DIGENES AKRITAS life is the meaning of what? Jaw-dropping breaking silence breaking cover breaking bombshells shocking bombshells the shell of a bomb the Alien and Sedition Acts and Frodo
Nazis wear ball caps
The building has left Elvis
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches
for the Colonial Office
William Ernest Henley Never Owned a Snapper Lawnmower
Unsparkus
Out of the oil that covers me
Black as the pit of a president’s soul
I resent whatever flawed
designs may be
With my unmechanical soul
In the fell clutch of a
slippery clutch
I have often winced and cried aloud
Under the bludgeonings of
that son-of-a-Dutch
“I’ll junk this [mess]!” I have avowed
Beyond this place of wrath
and tears
Looms but the horror of engine-part prices
And yet the promise of a case
of cold beers
Finds me hammering again at these devices
It matters not how high the
grass
How charged with prices the hardware store bill
I am going to whip this foul
machine’s [self]
Or bury the [buzzard] in the nearest landfill!
