Monday, September 7, 2026

Do the Witches Visit Him at Night? - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

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

Friday, September 4, 2026

Fragments of Sappho - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

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

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

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

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

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.)

Do the Witches Visit Him at Night? - poem

   Lawrence Hall Mhall46184@aol.com Dispatches for the Colonial Office LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and...