Wednesday, July 29, 2026
Nonsense Rhymes for Nonsense Times - a poor attempt at senryu
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Nonsense Rhymes for Nonsense Times
Literary chat:
Basho’s frog, Schrodinger’s cat
There’s truth in all that
A Comma-nist Manifesto - poem about commas
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
A Comma-nist Manifesto
Like tiny little tadpoles, commas are fun
Randomly swimming in a pool of words
Feeding on microscopic organisms -
They might grow up to be dictionaries
Unless they are devoured by an A.I.
Do Oxford commas wear tiny Cambridge shoes?
Or do they simply float about, separating clauses
As commanded by Fowler1, but not by a fisher
Commas will mend a certain grammatical flaw
Lest “Let’s eat, Grandma!” become “Let’s eat Grandma!”2
1 Fowler’s Modern English Usage, Oxford University Press, many editions
2 Possibly every language teacher has employed this old wheeze.
Everyone Has a Dream - not really a poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Everyone Has a Dream
He wants his head set atop Mount Rushmore1
I think that’s a fine idea
1 Six Grandfathers Mountain
The Gospel According to the Ladies' Altar Society - poem
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
The Gospel According to the Ladies’
Altar Society
The announcement
for and the exposition of
The
Ladies’ Altar Society Craft Fair and Sale
Should not
last longer than the homily
A Full Moon at Goodwill - rhyming couplet
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
A Full Moon at Goodwill
As I was giving the housewares a pass
A fat man dropped his shorts to scratch his ***
A Dignified Transfer - poem
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
A Dignified Transfer
Shocky and
stunned, ears ringing in the sudden silence
Trembly
hands scooping up meaty body parts
Meaty body
parts, sticky blood, greedy flies
All into a
baggy, a zippered body bag
A dignified
transfer
A curvy fragment
of skull, some kid’s curly hair
Is that…? yes…he
was so funny…don’t think about it
The living
already dusted off, the dead remain
Can we get
them out tonight? I dunno, man
A dignified
transfer
The
president will execute his practiced salute
In a
dignified transfer
after the 18th hole
Shimmering Summer Sun - a poor attempt at haiku
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Shimmering Summer Sun
Tired earth
gasps for breath
Beneath this
mid-summer sun
Bees buzz
for a breeze
Hands without a Watch - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia
Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Hands without a
Watch
Thanks
to Mike Hauser for his idea about a watch without hands
Hands without a watch have nowhere to point
They are neither formless nor void, but still
But they cannot describe an orbit of time
Nor convey structure to a seeker of order
Hands without a watch have nowhere to go
Unloved they float without meaning or being
In desolate freedom without meaning or being
In emptiness without meaning or being
Hands without a watch cannot frame the ordinals
Or quantify the hours in ordered cardinals
Sunday, July 26, 2026
An Existential Bus Ride on the Periphery of Heaven - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
An Existential Bus Ride on the Periphery of Heaven
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious bus ticket?
-As Mary Oliver did not say in “The Summer Day”
Is this the right bus? Where are you going?
I boarded the bus outside Balboa Park
With Tolkien and Lewis smoking their pipes
Missed a stop along University Boulevard
Because I was listening to Pasternak
Got off the bus at Horton Plaza (there was no Hoo)
Because McKuen wanted to roam the rainy streets
Boarded again a few hours later, but
Spenser refused to sit next to a Catholic
I told him I really enjoyed The Faerie Queene anyway
He thanked me and autographed my death sentence
McMurtry said, “This ain’t Texas, you know;
You can’t even see Texas from the back of the bus”
Frankl replied, “But there is meaning in a bus”
De Chardin suggested that all bus-ness is coming together
Yevtushenko declared that the bus was all about him
Eliot thought there might not be a bus at all
My ticket ran out at Mission Beach, and so did I
Outside a bikini shop where the loungers ask
Not about the meaning of life, but rather
“Spare change? Spare change?”
When You and Your Server are From Different Centuries - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
When You and Your Server are from Different Centuries
Diner: Coffee with sugar and cream. What’s your major?
Server: Finance. I plan to be a CPA.
Diner: That’s wonderful! I have trouble balancing my checkbook.
Server: Fresh coffee coming right up. What’s a checkbook?
Sitting by an Escape Hatch During the Funeral - poem (of sorts...)
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Sitting by an Escape Hatch During the Funeral
“The
dead without charity enclosed in craziness”
-As Henry V did not say
“Now let’s all take turns sharing our favorite
memories of Daddy”
Y’all
don’t know me but I’m his wife and I don’t drank and y’all know I don’t approve
of drankin’ and I was married to somebody else when we met and he asked me for
my phone number and I gave him a disconnected one but he wouldn’t give up and
he asked my uncle for my number and my uncle asked my daddy and he said it was
okay and I said I ain’t interested in you I’m married to the love of my life we
was separated but I had them kids and he had his kids and Jesus knows the way
and so we got married for forty seven years when we got married we had both
been married so we asked if we was going to live just as brother and sister
because of the kids and Lord knows we tried but Jesus knows the way and after a
month we was really together and we was married forty-seven years and there’s a
hell of an angel in heaven now yessir a hell of an angel in Heaven tonight and
if anyone don’t like how I say it you know what you can do about it cause he
was the best man ever and Jesus wanted us together…
And
that is why you should sit in the back
By
the door, ready to escape
Saturday, July 25, 2026
A Black-Tie Dinner in Pandaemonium - White House Correspondents' Dinner
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
A Black-Tie Dinner in Pandaemonium
A dismal universal hiss, the sound
Of public scorn
-Paradise Lost, Book IX.508-509
Submissive and obedient they came to sup
With weak applause for their glowering chief
(Whose courtiers listed those who did not show up)
Each quivered in fear like a trembling leaf
For a Friend on His Pilgrimage - a poor attempt at a Senryu
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
For a Friend on His Pilgrimage
As you walk your path
Your Narrow Road to the North
May you find Heiwa
Sunday, July 19, 2026
Schrodinger's Constitution - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Schrodinger’s Constitution
US military launches new airstrikes to
'punish' Iran for deaths of US troops | AP News
We cannot
know how many of our young,
Our
soldiers young, were killed today because
Our
president’s words are ashes and lies
Blown
about in the desert’s desolation
That mad
old man plays with his golden trinkets
While his
Secretary for Blood fondles testosterone
Around a reflecting
pool that reflects little more
Than
immigration officers shooting people in the streets
Benjamin
Franklin warned us, “A republic - if you can keep it” –
God
forgive us; we did not keep it
Saturday, July 18, 2026
A Back-to-School Shopping Fantasy - poem
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
A Back-to-School Shopping Fantasy
Dialogue Log Log
Between Two High School Students
“From my summer job I saved and searched and bought
This Keuffel & Esser 4081-3 Log Log
Duplex Decitrig Slide Rule -
Now I control the numbers, touch the numbers
Bend the numbers to my purposes; numbers mind me”
“That is so old school!” He chewing-gummed in scorn
In adolescent scorn
“All I need is a calculator from Shanghai
It tells me what it wants me to know
And, hey, check out my new autograph sneakers!”
Ten Years Later
When she bid the engineering for the next Airbus
She did not hire him
Friday, July 17, 2026
"The Intoxicating Poetry of Belief" - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
“The Intoxicating Poetry of Belief”1
From an idea by a fellow
scrivener
And for the fellowship
of these electric pages
Ad Deum qui
laetificat juventutem meam
The liturgy is a poem
A hymn of the universe 1
That was
And is
And forever will be
Spoken and sung
Sometimes we get lost in a volta
But it all comes together in the Consecration
And again in the L’envoi
We are the poem
We don’t have to get it right
Or know all the words
We are loved and sung
All the way to the end
And if we’re sometimes inattentive
Well
That’s okay too
The liturgy is not a got’cha
The liturgy is a gift
1 cf. Anais Vionet
2 Teilhard de Chardin
Is Your Life No More Than a Login [sic] Code? - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Is Your Life No More Than a Login Code?
Login code: 209455 Your login code is 145180 Login code: 653777 Login code: 409641 Sorry, we were unable to deliver your message to the following address. 550: 5.1.1 The email account that you tried to reach does not exist. Please try 5.1.1 double-checking the recipient's email address for typos or 5.1.1 unnecessary spaces. For more information, go to
5.1.1 https://support.google.com/mail/?p=NoSuchUser 586e51a60fabf-4044bd73886si3150986fac.144 - gsmtp
Thursday, July 16, 2026
Do I.C.E. Waiting Rooms Feature Coffee Machines and Kitsch? - poem
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Do I.C.E. Waiting Rooms Feature Coffee
Machines and Kitsch?
Plastic Herbs in
Physicians’ Waiting Rooms
Those photographs and paintings of bicycles
Leaning against sunlit Italian curbs
Are no more – now doctors’ offices
Are all about ceramic pots of plastic herbs
And coffee machines that pierce cute little cups
And brew up coffee with a soft low hiss
To serve you freshly-brewed pick-me-ups
That go so well with your diagnosis
New decorations, same old fluorescent lights
While scribbling out ideas for your funeral rites
Monday, July 13, 2026
Exit the Hurricane - Hurricane Harvey, 30 August 2017
30 August 2017
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Exit the Hurricane (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
The 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!
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