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.)

A Spondee for Parents Who Complain About School Being Cancelled When a Tropical Storm Approaches - one spondaic foot

 

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 Spondee for Parents Who Complain About School Being Cancelled When a Tropical Storm Approaches

 

 

Shut up

Reading Basho on a Rainy Morning - a poor attempt at Haiku

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

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

Home - Hello Poetry

 

Reading Basho on a Rainy Morning

 

When I read Basho

I am properly chastened

For my ignorance

 

 

Basho: The Complete Haiku of Matsuo Basho

Translated and edited by Andrew Fitzsimons

Oakland: University of California Press, 2022, 2024

Civil Penalties for Mailing Anything Dangerous - 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

 

“Civil Penalties for Mailing Anything Dangerous”

 

 

        …our children will be ashamed…

remembering how in so strange a time

common integrity could look like courage

                                            -Yevtushenko, “Talk,” in Selected Poems: Yevtushenko

 

 

The postmistress chants this as part of her list to us

Whenever a citizen sends a package by postal bus:

Civil penalties for mailing anything dangerous

Firearms, fireworks, a radioactive truss

 

Air bags - and why mail one? (just an aside)

Poisons, perishables, formaldehyde

The cremated ashes of your cousin Clyde

Or anything else on the weirdo side

 

Logical enough

 

But in these fearful days, under our mad regime

Mailing even a thoughtful letter is a dangerous scheme

A Pinball Game with Some Come-to-Jesus Music - 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 Pinball Game with Some Come-to-Jesus Music

 

The ritual signing of a padded book

And then invisible paddles launch us into the game

Among electrical bumpers of whisperers

Clustered in their several corners and slots

 

Suspicious smiles that don’t conceal holy hate

As they repel outsiders through platitudes

Invisible daggers fly through the sacred air

The silent sibilant hisses are heard all the same

 

The dear departed in his old Sunday suit

Seems to smile in peaceful anticipation

of being rid of all of us

 

Ka-Ching!