Lawrence Hall
All of Us Look for Magic in Our Books
All of us look for magic in our books
A sale-table paperback during a coffee break
Is a voyage beyond the vending machines
A light at dawn on the first day in Eden
But we must bring our magic to the magic
Or good King Arthur will not come again
The Shire will remain befouled and desolate
And morning will not bring us noble knights
For we must bring our magic to the magic
Which will not happen if we don’t believe
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
A
repost from March, 2018
Yes, Yes, But They Need Jobs in the Real
World
“Forward Electronics,
your victory’s achieved!
In all communication,
progress is our creed!
Ignorance is darkness,
technology is light!
Radio, our watchword;
radio, our might!”
-Komsomol youth singing
in “For the Good of the Cause,” Solzhenitsyn, 1963
The plans for your construction are precise
The design and engineering are true
The foundations solid, the drains are laid
In mathematics pure, infallible
The offices are bright with light, well-aired
The flow of work geometrically set
The shops and stores convenient to the staff
In tactical practicalities placed
But do you wonder, at night, beneath your lamp -
Why are you building a concentration camp?
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Who is the Third Murderer in Macbeth?
But who did bid thee join with us?
-Macbeth III.iii.1
Two murderers are hired; a third one joins
The false lady, perhaps, or the tempter himself
As light and love both thicken near the rooky wood
“But who did bid thee join…?” Maybe we did
We have drooped and drowsed through civilization
Scorning the sacred texts of our several faiths
Approaching the Altar as a drive-through concession
The Body of Christ and maybe an order of fries
Who is the Third Murderer?
Rabbi, is it I?
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial
Office
Did Civilians Write Poetry Back in the Day?
A medical
professional, while taking my pulse
Asked me what I was
reading
Poetry,
I replied
Poetry of suffering
in the Second World War
Most of it by civilians
who were there
She asked:
Did civilians write
poetry back in th’ day?
I changed the topic
to my blood pressure
Second World War Poems
Ed. Hugh Haughton
London: Faber and Faber, 2004
This anthology is brilliant, with poems by soldiers, civilians, concentration
camp prisoners, and prisoners of war from many nations. Several of the poems
are anonymous, written on scraps of paper found on the bodies of the murdered.
There is much fashionable babble about my voice / our voices / authentic voices
/ my people’s voices, and so on, but here is a fine collection by people whose
voices were desperate to tell the truth, not indulge in self-pity, and find
beauty among the horror
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
A Tom Bombadil Day
“How bright your garden looks!”
-Gandalf, The Lord of the Rings, Book I
Tomato seedlings from the hardware store
Happy little things, six of ‘em to a pack
I sing to them as I drive them home
They seem amused: I am no Tom Bombadil!
I sing to them more nonsense songs
(If no sniffy old Lobelias are listening)
As I gently, gently transfer them
With a pat and a prayer into the earth
And I sing to them; you will understand
For you too have lived in the dear old Shire
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial
Office
Reality
Will See You Now
I am a student of medical waiting rooms
The same Motel 6 paintings and decor
Receptionists giggling behind rippled glass
About weekends and boyfriends and inadequate husbands
Patients waiting as patiently as Russians
Tattoos and ball-caps lined up in plastic-chairs
Clutching bills and lab reports in nervous hands
Or greasy, year-old copies of Reader’s Digest
Or bending over their MePhones in a servile bow -
“Mr. Hall? The doctor will see you now…”
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial
Office
A Desk Blotter and the Meanings of Life
Optometrist
17 March 0845 Netgear DirecTV Viasat Verizon Spectrum Xumo? Xuumo? Carlos 1775
1812 PSA Eliot Cohen BRING PLANTS UNDER COVER computer paper brekker c Max 0800
Tuesday find quote from Doctor Zhivago When is Gonculator Day? Intek
10.5 “Did civilians write poetry back in the day?” Subaru password username
amazon apple Christus patient portal HUMMINGBIRDS! Astrid-the-Wonder-Dachshund
visitation Sat 5-7 funeral Sun 2 1030 St. Elizabeth’s Refresh+ or Lumify water
co-op board meeting Kirk Santiago de Compostella breakfast singles orange juice
cheese creamer cat food detergent pods taco shells 0900 dentist Epiphany prison
at 1700 cancel DirecTV cancel Viasat Mary Oliver OXFORD BOOK OF ENGLISH VERSE Q
EDITION LONESOME DOVE as DIGENES AKRITAS life is the meaning of what? Jaw-dropping
breaking silence breaking cover breaking bombshells shocking bombshells the shell
of a bomb the Alien and Sedition Acts and Frodo
Nazis
wear ball caps
The
building has left Elvis
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
William Ernest Henley Never Owned a Snapper Lawnmower
Unsparkus
Out of the oil that covers me
Black as the pit of a president’s soul
I resent whatever flawed designs may be
With my unmechanical soul
In the fell clutch of a slippery clutch
I have often winced and cried aloud
Under the bludgeonings of that son-of-a-Dutch
“I’ll junk this [mess]!” I have avowed
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of engine-part prices
And yet the promise of a case of cold beers
Finds me hammering again at these devices
It matters not how high the grass
How charged with prices the hardware store bill
I am going to whip this foul machine’s [self]
Or bury the [buzzard] in the nearest landfill!
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the
Colonial Office
The Curse of the – Dramatic - Dash
The dash for – dramatic pause
– infests
Almost every – essay – these
days
Such errant usages - have
become pests
And thoughtful writers - might
want to mend - their ways
A clear English sentence - is tight - and terse
A model of - artistic -
clarity
But all those pointless - dashes
- just make it worse
Compromising its - structural
- harmony
If in re-writing you find –
you’ve placed a dash
Just rip that sucker - out –
and toss it in –
the trash!
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
That Old Loudmouth at Every Meeting
You know him well, that untucked-shirttail old man
Booming his gassy voice at every meeting
Whatever the topic he leads the van
Interrupting with his self-obsessed bleating
He was a banker, he tells us repeatedly
He knows about finance, more than the treasurer
And he was a cop, too, he yells out heatedly
And arguing the reports gives him much pleasurer
You know him well, that untucked-shirttail old gent
He doesn’t know Jacques Merde, but he will always vent!
(He’s not unlike our current president)
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches
for the Colonial Office
A Somewhat Whiny Morning Prayer
If only the day
Will live up to the promise
Of this golden dawn
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Flight of the Lawn Chairs
The Lion-Winds of March
Wild winds now rise to a Valkyrie’s strength
And dark clouds roar to the hammer of Thor
While lightning traverses the poor earth’s length
As if our Nordic gods have gone to war
As if our Nordic gods have gone to war
The walls and windows rattle against the rain
Foul enemies batter against the door
The wrath of Grendel, the hatred of Cain
The wrath of Grendel, the hatred of Cain
Have set my old lawn chairs to flying again!
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches
for the Colonial Office
A Ghost Road Through the Marsh
The days are gone
When the kingdoms of
earth flourished in glory;
-“The Seafarer”, Burton Raffel translation
Water ran in rivulets among the weeds
The wind was lowering, the rain had stopped, the sky
Was low and grey over a landscape bleak
With wreckage and windfall from the passing storm
An old man slowly worked to clear the road
While the young impatiently hooted and honked
Their displeasure that the world they hadn’t worked
Wasn’t working quite right for them today
The old man sometimes spoke with the ghosts of Rome
Who had built and marched their roads until
The egos and angerings of emperors and kings
Abandoned all good work to slow decay
The young one-fingered past him among the brome
And disappeared forever into the gloam
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Soups as a Medium of Exchange
In today’s trading soups were generally down
Although vegetable beef found a brisk trade
Potato soup was bullish in Block D
And each minestrone was five cigarettes
The market closed slightly up at evening count
But this could not compensate for the day’s fall
Naked-lady tats are expected to go high this week
Ten soups for an inked image of yo’ mama
The morning market will open in this metal hell
When some dumb **** rings that ****ing bell
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches
for the Colonial Office
The List is Death
There is said to be a list –
but whose?
Who wrote it? Where is it?
Where has it been?
On what teakwood desk does it
now repose
Around which names and lives
are negotiated
The matter is not that names
are being removed
But that your name might be
written in
Because your attitude has
been noticed
The hand that once shook
yours signs away your life
Someone pencils your name
upon The List
That’s your loyalty reward (you
won’t be missed)
Thoughts ‘n’ prayers as in
Two Corinthians
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches
for the Colonial Office
Authority Over Everything on the Earth
Sirach 17:1-15
You can’t be authority over
all the earth
If in the end you are buried
under it
What are man’s honors and dignity
worth
When man is nobly dropped
into a pit
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Prancing Chainsaw Dude
Prancing chainsaw dude
Humiliates all of us
But we obey him
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches
for the Colonial Office
The Seven Seeing-Stones
Good Tolkien writes of spring
far better than we
With layered allusions to
Celtic and Nordic myths
His Fairy Folk sing clearly
in rainbow rhymes
Among the crocuses abloom ‘round
ancient trees
My crocuses bloom ‘round a
shaggy lawn
With garden furniture in need
of paint
And morning coffee in a
Tupperware cup
To serve as a greeting to the
rising sun
Friend Tolkien writes of
spring for you and me
And through his Seven Seeing-Stones
– we see!
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Scriptural Textual Analysis Applied to Act II of Macbeth
The Book of Steve Jobs 43:13-16
“Oh, no, Mr. Hall!
It’s right here in the Bible!” she exclaimed
Standing up suddenly from her desk
Eagerly waving her MePhone aloft
And then she paused
Appeared to be slightly embarrassed
Laughed
Took a selfie
And laughed some more
As did we all
Happiness
