Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Dragon in July
A fallen dragon
Collapses on burning fields
Children breathe its heat
Thursday, July 9, 2026
Dragon in July - an attempt at haiku
You are Now Leaving the ******** Sector - poem
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
You are Now Leaving the ********
Sector
Please have your passport ready
Your proof of return
Your proof of financial responsibility
Your testimony of undying loyalty to the regime
Take off your shoes
Empty your pockets and place the contents in the plastic
tray
Don’t make any jokes
What is the purpose of your trip?
When were you last out of the country?
For what purpose?
Have you ever traveled to any of the following countries…?
Are you related to anyone in your country of destination?
How?
Are you carrying more than $100,000 in currency or negotiable
securities?
Step into the curious machine
Step out of the curious machine
Please take off your belt and step back into the machine
Please step out of the machine and hold your arms high
Do you have a pacemaker or other electronic medical device?
Do you have a heart?
The wand is not intrusive
Stand on one foot
Now stand on the other foot
The patdown is not intrusive
You may proceed
When we stepped outside the ******** sector
We looked back and realized how small it is
If a Senryu Goes Bad - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
If a Senryu Goes Bad
Would a poem about
Committing an injustice
Be a SINryu?
(Apologies. I blame the heat. And fluoride. And jabs. And mysterious lights from Mars.)
Goodwill is my Couturier - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Goodwill is my Bond Street
Joe Bidens for $2.50 at Goodwill
1950s happenin’ Foster Grants
I’m as cool as the former president
Hey, chicks and babes, check out my Subaru
A nautical blazer with buttons of brass
I’m as svelte as Patrick McGoohan
Okay, I’m twice the man he ever was
My secret agent waist is a danger, man
My couturier’s a thrill not on Blueberry Hill
But ‘way downtown, at the good old Goodwill
Tuesday, July 7, 2026
A Red Card? - poem
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
A Red Card?
We will never give each other red cards
But how about a red maple leaf from Canada?
We could walk through Bowring Park in St. John’s
And watch the children play around Peter Pan
We will never give each other red cards
But like monarchs under bright red parasols
We could be the sovereigns of each other’s hearts
Along the Chao Phraya, the River of Kings
We will never give each other red cards –
But would you like a mischievous red balloon
And a morning in Paris?
Music: “Le Ballon Rouge,” Maurice Leroux
Monday, July 6, 2026
Humans - They're What's for Dinner! - doggerel
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Humans – They’re What’s for Dinner!
I lay me down to sleep tonight
I pray the Lord that mosquitoes won’t bite
I fear that my brand new bug light
Will draw them near without harm or fright
They’re free to dance and mock and buzz –
A live-and-let-live attitude
Is all that my new bug light does!
Saturday, July 4, 2026
A Complicated Affair of the Heart - poem for Independence Day
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
A Complicated Affair of the Heart
“‘My country, right or
wrong,’ is a thing that no patriot would think of saying.
It is like saying, ‘My
mother, drunk or sober.'”
-G.
K. Chesterton, The Defendant, 1901
At midday I finally posted the flag
After many hours of reflection and guilt
The bloody tyrant will think it is there for him -
But he cannot command our faithful hearts
His soldiers occupy our capital’s streets
Arresting citizens for crimes that never were
He wars against the nations while our Congress cowers -
But he cannot command our faithful hearts
That is not his flag over our still-standing ramparts -
For he cannot command our faithful hearts
4 July 2026
Criminally Made Algae - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Criminally Made Algae
“The Reflecting Pool is now in full use after suffering great damage from Criminal, Radical Left Vandals, people that truly hate our Country…the criminally made algae is gone”
The President, 28 June 2026, numerous sources
A dripping-damp alley off a sinister street
Among the garbage cans and omnivorous rats
A series of coded knocks on an obscure door
“Psssst! Neville the Liberal Arts Graduate sent me”
Sinister doings in a dimly-lit lab
Chemicals and curious machinery
“We can’t get the chlorophyl balanced, Boss”
“The gamete-producing cells must be shipped at dawn”
“Algae, comrades, remember our purpose, our goal!
Algae, comrades, for the president’s toilet bowl!”
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
I Caught the Sun - poem
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
I Caught the Sun
I’ll catch the sun,
and never give it back again
-Rod McKuen, “I’ll
Catch the Sun”
I caught the sun, but have to give it back
Always in memories, sometimes in bits of flesh
Once by square inches, now by centimeters
In the modern measurements of loss
We often caught the sun, shirtless and sunburnt
In the golden summers of our glorious youth
When solar radiation was good for us
While building bob-wire fences and working the fields
I once showed off my tan to pretty girls
But
now only to dermatologists
“Bob wire” is the sweat-stained vernacular; “barbed wire”
is the usage of people who never built fence.
The Empire of the Snail - haiku
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
The Empire of the Snail
Pepper-climbing snail
Is grasped by the gardener’s glove
And then flung away
Thursday, July 2, 2026
Goslings and Quislings - haiku
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Goslings and Quislings
Goslings and Quislings
Die in a reflecting pool
Goslings have no choice
Sunday, June 28, 2026
Who Taught You How to Tie Your Shoes? - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Who Taught You How to Tie Your Shoes?
(a rabbit and a cousin help)
Now when we learn to count our fingers and toes
Learn about laundry hampers and feeding the dog
Eat with a spoon, pick up our toys and clothes
And gently, gently touch the little tree frog
We must then teach another child
To laugh when she counts her fingers and toes
Learn about laundry hampers and feeding the dog
Eat with a spoon, pick up her toys and clothes
And gently, gently touch the little tree frog
Civilization is generational
Pass it on
Saturday, June 27, 2026
Is Life an Open Road or a Blind Alley? - short poem
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
“Is Life an Open Road or a Blind Alley?”
-de Chardin, Pensee
33
You can tell it’s an open road because
Someone has crow-barred the rusty lock and chain
You can tell it’s a blind alley because
Of your dark glasses and your tapped-out white cane
If We are a School of Poetry, Then When is Recess? - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
If We are a School of Poetry, Then When is Recess?
…what we mean to establish is a school for the Lord’s service
-St. Benedict’s prologue to his Rule
1997 English edition, Ampleforth Abbey
When a poet consecrates a poem
(Which is in the nature of what poets do)
And a soul-friend breathes beauty into it
Then they have formed a school of poetry
Which is not a school for the Lord’s service
Except that it is – all this shifting of words
From chaos into meaning and purpose and love
Is a school of life, only without the home-room pledge
(or morning Mass or a chemistry lab)
We write in procession through cloisters of hope
To elevate each other as presentations of truth
Thursday, June 25, 2026
Envision a World Without Mission Statements - rhyming couplet
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Envision a World Without Mission
Statements
Your Thinking has Been
Edited for Time and Format
Let us propose a series of abatements -
Deliver us, O Lord, from mission statements
Wednesday, June 24, 2026
How Big is Our Universe? - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
How Big is Our Universe?
Time goes by – or do we?
- The Once and Future King / Camelot
How big is our universe? How deep? How far?
In youth we learn of planets, orbits, and stars
Of the infinite Great Dance of the Spheres
And God, before forever, Who created all
But meditate upon this pilgrimage -
Will we shrink it into a transient Now
Which with death and dust and ruin and rot
Seems to go away even before the next hour?
Let us stand on this cusp of Creation
And together we will consider the Beyond
Monday, June 22, 2026
Basho's Frog for for Our Time - haiku
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Basho’s Frog for Our Time
An old roadside ditch
A frog leaps into the lane
‘Neath Subaru tires
I suppose I had better apologize to Basho,
his frog, the Japanese people, Subaru, the pretty little tree frog glaring
at me through my bedroom window, and all
lovers of Haiku!
Later: a dear friend reminds me that I have
touched on this topic before:
Flat Frog Floogie
The silent carport
A frog croaks under a tire
Then silence resumes
Pinched from Basho’s
famous pond poem
Music: “Flat Foot
Floogie,” 1938
Saturday, June 20, 2026
A Memorandum of Understanding for Dead Children - short poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
A Memorandum of Understanding
And a Contemplation of the FIFA Peace Prize
The tiny hands of schoolchildren on fire
The tiny hands of schoolchildren sobbing for life
The old men on both sides claiming victory
Over
The ashes of schoolchildren at Shajareh Tayyebeh
The Great Riding Lawnmower Chase - rhyming doggerel
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
The Great Riding Lawnmower Chase
A Song of My People
In the dust beside the highway
Wide ol’ Texas four-lane highway
Ran a fat man in his anger
In his white shorts, in his anger
To another man just like him
Mower-mounted on a lawn
On a John Deere painted green
But this was not a peaceful scene
Like angry Pillsbury Doughboys
Or like dropouts from a Sumo school
They grappled in the roadside dust
In fleshy fury (not in lust)
The mower-man finally thought it best
To steer his steed into the west
Across the highway, a running fight
Dodging traffic in the morning light
The foot-man circled, the mower-man turned
The shrieking brakes of a big truck burned
Combat resumed in the turning lane
Beeps and honks again and again
I never saw the end of this chase
Who won the day, who won the race
Of if by the beginning of the next day’s dawn
Someone had finished mowing that lawn
In this I played with the Longfellow /
Hiawatha meter, which is far more appropriate for serious long poetry, not a short
frivolity. Longfellow sent me a note from the beyond advising me not to do this
again.
Wednesday, June 17, 2026
Mister, Are You Saved? - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Mister, Are You Saved?
She patrolled the sidewalk and yelled at pedestrians:
“You sinners! You’re all a bunch of HELL-ions!”
I couldn’t escape her, so I smiled and waved
“Mister!” she yelled, “Do you think you’re saved!”
“No,” I replied (might as well be specific)
“Oh,” she said, “Then you’re a Catholic.”
I still have her tract, somewhere around here loose
Assuring me
that the Rosary
is actually Satan’s noose
May God bless and protect street evangelists; as for Hegseth and his Reichskirche, well, they can go (bless) themselves.
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