A Carpenter's Pencil - 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

 

A Carpenter’s Pencil

 

 

For Gary Kirbow and The Guys,

 

Brent, Jeff, and Sam

 

 

A carpenter’s pencil – a marvelous magical wand!

With a mystical mark, a thoughtful touch

Of the master craftsman’s weathered hands

It wondrously works visions into being:

 

Transoms, beams, joists, joins, rafters, cabinetry

Trestles, trusses, uprights, piers, stringers, walls,

Timbers, cornices, doors, lintels, moldings, mullions

Trim, frames, laths, panels, planks, sills, and studs

 

The master shapes them with an artist’s utensil -

The marvelous, magical carpenter’s pencil

 

(At this point Kirbow will tell a naughty joke)

Death Comes for the Cardinal - 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

 

Death Comes for the  Cardinal

 

While tending the tomatoes and peppers and such

I found the corpse of a cardinal – too much!

 

And my sweet little cat with a grin on her mug

Licking her paw with a ‘tude all smug

 

I’ve told all the birds to watch out for the cat

But they will dive-bomb her – rat-a-tat-tat!

                                                                    

And thus a brave cardinal or insolent bluejay

Will be snatched to its death on a sunny day

 

O, bold birdies, soaring down from the sky

Mind the claws lest you dive and die

 

Or as is said in Iberia, by every don and dona

Always remember - leave that cat alone, ya!

 

                                          (Apologies to everyone in Catalonia)

A play on Death Comes for the Archbishop

The Drudge (POPUP) Report is (POPUP) Crushin’ (POPUP) Itself - not exactly a 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

 

The Drudge (POPUP) Report is (POPUP) Crushin’ (POPUP) Itself

 

Ad with rotten teeth Ad popup with a tattooed lady (so to speak) Ad with a skeleton and muscles exposed popup Hancock Whitney Jos. A. Bank HP Smart popup Tank Lane Bryant Walking shoes for elderly with poor balance Explore Dental Implant popup Prices HP Smart Tank Again popup Metal Barns The wooden popup hummingbird is taking by storm! [Taking what? And why take a hummingbird popup house by storm? Are they Nazi popup hummingbirds?] Logo Sportswear Relieves Shoulder Pain for Good Jos. A. Bank again I Found Out Exactly What popup My Dental Hygienist Uses to Whiten popup Her Teeth Garden Saving on TEMU Ad with rotten teeth Ad with a popup tattooed lady (so to speak) Ad with a skeleton and muscles exposed Hancock Whitney Jos. A. Bank HP Smart Tank Lane Bryant Walking shoes for elderly with poor balance Explore Den[I think the content is squashed in about here…]tal Implant Prices HP Smart popu Tank Again Metal Barns The wooden hummingbird is taking by storm! [Taking what? Popup And why take a hummingbird house by storm? Popup Are they Nazi hummingbirds?] Logo Sportswear Relieves Shoulder Pain for Good Jos. A. Bank again I Found Out Exactly What My popup Dental Hygienist Uses to Whiten Her Teeth Garden popup Saving on TEMU

Upon Finding My Old Copy of PARADISE LOST - 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

 

Upon Finding My Old Copy of Paradise Lost

 

 

Sacred to the memory of Tod Mixson, Robert Conn, and Dr. Huston Diehl

 

 

Time will run back, and fetch the age of gold

 

-Milton, “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity”

 

 

With notes by Dr. Diehl, of happy memory

And my poor scribbles in the hand of callow youth

As memories of Thursday nights with Robert and Tod

Fetch back a golden age when we were young

 

Styrofoamed coffee (and sometimes Scotch)

We fogged the air with our pipes and thoughts

“Umbrageous grots” and “snaky sorceress”

Became our private jokes in public places

 

But now

 

I pray that we will laugh again at “dismal universal hiss”

When someday all are freed from this silence cold

 

 

They hand in hand with wand’ring steps and slow,

Through Eden took thir solitary way.

 

-PL XII.648-649

 

If Everyone is Thinking Alike We Could Be Correct - 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

 

If Everyone is Thinking Alike We Could be Correct

 

If you’re not taking target you’re not over the flak

It isn’t what it isn’t, the ice of the tipberg

You can’t pick your family but you can pick your nose

The early bird hops over to Cracker Barrel

 

What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker

We have an inactive shooter off scene

From an abundance of irresponsibility

The situation is fluid because, hey, it’s a drowning

 

Despite the dozens of dead it’s not terrorism

And, really, sometimes the room should read you

Indicted for the Treasonous Positioning of Seashells - 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

 

Indicted For the Treasonous Positioning of Seashells

 

Be careful, child, if you go down to the beach today

You’re a serious threat with your pail and spade

The Secret Service might come and drag you away

To their Star Chamber court where charges are laid

 

Your Minnie Mouse goggles make you look like a spy

Hiding torpedoes in your Little Mermaid float

You might be taken down by the F.B.I.

So all your fellow Commies had better take note

 

Thus for your freedom’s sake, don’t touch a pebble!

Lest you be imprisoned as a murderous rebel

Where my Parents were on 29 April 1944 - 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

 

 

Where my Parents were on 29 April 1944

 

"...and the war will be forgotten..."

 

Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

 

 

My mother was a young war widow in Kingsville, Texas

Raising a child with no assistance from the state

For her husband was only missing, you see

And a Merchant Marine, and so didn’t count 

 

My father was breeching the gates of Dachau

His tank destroyer was the “Razzle Dazzle”

With a naked lady painted on the side

Among the stench and smoke, the dying, the dead

 

My father told me that someday there would be people

Who would deny that such things ever were

 

 

Cf. 

 

602^nd Tank Destroyer Battalion

SS Muskogee

 

Some years ago whatever authorities see to such things worked to remedy the neglect of our Merchant Marine widows and so they received some small assistance at last.