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 ******s!
R: Yes, SIR!
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
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
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
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
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
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.”
