Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Music for Biology Class
According to the curriculum code
This week we are in dissection mode
Each waving a tiny knife and prick and goad
Let us now sing “Song of the Open Toad”
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Hot Scrambled
Verse Comin’ Right Up!
Too hot to read
Too hot to write
Too hot to think coherently
Too hot to sort an iamb from an iambnot
(Gasp!)
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
When I was a Child I Saw a Dinosaur
There are not going to be many more dinosaurs
-C. S. Lewis, “De Descriptione Temporum,” 1955
When I was a child I saw a dinosaur
A dinosaur at the end of the lane
Rearing its head high above the pasture gate
It might want to eat little boys, I feared
So I held really still, and closed my eyes
And closed my eyes, so tightly closed my eyes
And closed my eyes, and then…opened my eyes –
The dinosaur (it didn’t roar) was still there!
When I was a child I saw a dinosaur
A real-life little-boy-hungry carnivore!
I wish I could see it again
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
A Typewriter Maps the Battlefield of the Mind
Everyone
who survived began a book
In
basements, cheap apartments, or rented rooms
Underwoods
clattering in anger, in rage
For
corpses floating down the Vam Co Tay
Coffee
cups, beer rings, stolen motel ashtrays
Cigarette
smoke wreath around the keys
While
muses watched from the crumbling plaster wall
Maybe
a crucifix, maybe Miss March
Cheap
typing paper from the corner store
A
sandwich falling apart along with life
A
last assault through a paragraph
Before
rushing to the bus stop for the night shift
“Y’all
wasn’t in a real war,” the old men said
But
the memories and the typewriter keys
Still bled
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
A Critical Topic in Jewish-Catholic Interfaith Dialogue
When eating hot dogs made with Hebrew National franks
Do we say grace with “Toda”
“Grates”
or
“Thanks?”
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Cute Little Biological Markers
For
our Emily
Who
set a thoughtful challenge
To
define the term
The
lives of our frogs
Biological
markers
Tell
us of toxins
If frogs
have clean air
And
fresh clean water and bugs
We
will have clean frogs
Healthy
little frogs
To
celebrate our health too
They
give us great joy!
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
“They Knew What They Signed Up For”
That cruel dismissal is from some keyboard commando
Who memorized every line from Patton
But never volunteered for anything himself
Except for a two-layered two-fer at McDonald’s
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Tom Swift and His Bully Electric Gloves
The
G.L.O.V.E. — CD3 Compliance Tool | Compliant Technologies
Compliant
Technologies of Kentucky
Makes
gloves for you – “low voltage” electric love
To hurt
your face better than mace (if you’re lucky)
So
be Compliant, or else
- Your Loving
Gov
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
The End of August, and the Dragon is Here
We are taught in science class that heat rises
Because molecules bash each other
And thus thinned are lifted by denser air -
Raise your convections if you believe it is so!
The month of August persuades us otherwise
Late-summer molecules are dragon-hot
Ssssssteam-blooded reptiliansssss ssssssucking our sssssssouls
While hisssssing their sssssibilant sssssssatanic hymnsssss
Heat rises, we are taught in science class -
But in August it slithers lowwwww in the grass
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
A Summer Processional in Honor of Structured Poetry
[I]ambic
pentameter…is the very breath of English verse.
-Stephen
Fry, The Ode Less Travelled
Wind
August heat drought grass shade lawn tree crows ‘possum headache mourning doves
clouds and sun blue jays humidity cardinals longings for autumn egrets unseen
airplanes lawn chairs heat-shimmering hayfield early acorns bees grapevines
trumpet vines porch fans spinning in futility just any old way
Bolts
and locks in chaos waving and rushing up against and to and into our exiled poetic
minds
Ahem!
Order and method, please, poet 1
Who
amid the alien Saint Augustine grass 2
Sets
fading roses in order serviceable 3
Sets
the sky aright, above the oaks
Sets
meter, orderly and elegant
Sets
doves in chortling chorus to coo the hours
Sets
flowers about in casual good taste
Sets
lawn chairs in English here-and-there-ness
Those
thrones from whence we serve rather than rule
And
the days, bearing blessings as vexilla
Process
among us with quiet dignity
Singing
the verses we write from nature
Until
all manner of things shall be made well 4
1 “Order and method,” Agatha Christie’s Poirot
2 “Amid the alien corn,” biblical book of Ruth and numerous other sources
3 “On the Eve of Christ’s Nativity,” Milton
4 “Showings,” St. Julian of Norwich
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
The Leader of the Free World Aboard His Chariot of the Gods
When the food truck speeds off, making a run
Just think of it as our majestic Air Force One
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Poets Speak of Hay
For Nat Lipstadt, Ken Pepiton, VerseBuster, and Billy
Collins
I was raised on a farm
Which did me no harm
But bales of hay
And stacks of hay
Pitching hay
Filling the old pickup
with hay
And a trailer of hay
Hay and hay and more
hay
In the heat of each midsummer
day
Day after day after
day
(You may channel
Coleridge's Ancient Mariner here)
The old barn full of
hay Hot, musty, fusty, allergenic hay
Day after musty,
fusty, allergenic day
Hot day, hot, hot, hot
every da®ned day
You may
Have my hay
As Dimitri Karamazov
did not say
"A ticket for hay? I herewith return my
ticket!"
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Night of the Murdered Poets, 12 August 1952
Not a poem, just a plea:
Of your mercy please pray for the repose of the souls
of all people murdered for their witness to truth
The Night of the Murdered Poets – For Reading Addicts
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
The Girl with the Pearl Nose Ring
Not from Vermeer
“Girls purty as me
Shouldn’t have to work for a livin’
That’s what men are for”
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
That Famous
Participation Trophy
One hears of that participation trophy-trope
A theme, a meme, mostly by cranky old men
Withered gaffer-gossips condemning the young
For being rewarded simply for showing up
Like Santa Claus it might be a good idea
I still listen for sleigh bells every Christmas
And yet – I have never seen a participation trophy
If you find one, call; you have my number
And, speaking of unearned rewards,
We’re presented a trophy each morning, just for fun
When God gives each of us a golden sun!
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
For the Feast of Saint Lawrence
Today
is the Feast of Saint Lawrence
His
faith and martyrdom we already knew
We remember
his death with a sense of abhorrence -
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
When Biologists Fall in Love
There are many things that a frog doesn’t know:
That he is a biological marker
That he doesn’t sing as well as Chevalier
That green is not appropriate evening wear
But he knows the bugs are tasty on my window screen
That he feels froggy this warm summer night
That he sings well enough for m’lady frog
That she admires him in his cool green coat
And now the stars are brighter and the evening is darker:
Will you be my sweet biological marker?
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Happy Little Raindrops for Children and Liberal Arts Graduates
Do you suppose a raindrop laughs as it falls?
Water vapor floating in the sky
Condenses one little molecule at a time
Wrapping around a particle of dust
Can you say, “condensation nuclei?”
And why would you?
And all these tiny droplets join to form
A larger droplet now too heavy for the air
Which playfully sends it sailing back to earth
Where it seeks for a safe place to land
“Hooray!” it cries as down-down-down it goes
To land at last upon your little nose!
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
All My Neat School Stuff for the First Day of Term
The
Trapper Keeper is a fun retro thing
I
wonder if anyone else will have one
I
might start a trend with this ‘way-back look
I
wonder if that cute girl will notice me
This
new graphing calculator is the best
I
like the smell of new pencils and paper
And
I’m going to rock the opening assembly
In
my happenin’ new light hoodie and baggy jeans
There
won’t be a second day, so on the first
Which
of my daddy’s guns should I pack?
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
You’re Okay, Buddy; You're Gonna be Okay
An encouraging smile is a battle dressing
We apply to the wounds of others
A cigarette while waiting for the dust-off
Within a collapsing perimeter
You’re okay, buddy; you're gonna be okay
I’m not sure I believe in God anymore
It’s okay, buddy; He believes in you
Oh, God, it hurts; why does He hurt me like this
I need a cigarette / I gave you one
You’re okay, buddy; you're gonna be okay
It’s so loud; everything’s loud; make it stop
I can’t breathe; why can’t I breathe…oh, God
You’re okay, buddy
You're gonna be
Okay…
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Three Little Friends Who Spent the Day
Playing in my Garden
Good Night, Brother
‘Possum
Dear Brother ‘Possum
Take supper at the cats’ bowl
Then waddle to bed
(Opossums are generally
nocturnal, but this fuzzy little guy loves the sunny hours.)
Good Night, Sister
Bee
You love my flowers
You work among them all day
At dusk fly away
Good Night, Sister
Butterfly
You were up early
Floating among the zinnias
See you tomorrow!
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
I Met a Girl in Newfoundland
‘Twas in St. John’s on a cold and rainy day
Because most days in St. John’s are rainy and cold
Even in July, when I met a girl clerking in a store
Shivering in a parka as she rang up my purchases
“Oh, it’s not all that cold…” I began to jest
When I saw that she was almost in tears
“I’ve never been warm in my life,” she sighed
“I’ve never been off this island
And I’ve never been warm”
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
This is not About a Casual Acquaintance Named Mohammed
I really like
him, and I would like to ask him
Why some of his
co-religionists hate Jews
But we’re not
really friends, and so I won’t
Because he might
ask me about the Inquisition
Or about my
great-grandfather, taken prisoner
At Saylor’s
Creek (he was on the wrong side, you see)
A docent at
Grand Pre’ asked me about my Acadian ancestors
“Not mine” I said;
“mine would have been wearing red coats”
“Well,” she
replied wryly, “Someone had to.”
But maybe these
things won’t always be so
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Remember the Sabbath –
Praying with the Reicheskirche
Bombs across the
sea
Still winning
the hearts and minds
Of all the nations
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Don’t Phone Your Mom
US military may require some troops in Mideast to surrender cell phones, sources say
The Admiralissimo has ruled and rendered
That since our forces are low on ammunition
Our soldiers’ phones might soon be surrendered
Which will bring our victory to fruition
So fight without those unsupplied supplies
The Commies stole through your Apple phone
It’s medals for us officers when an enlisted dies
Now attack with just your testosterone!
No phone will record the truth the moment you splatter -
Thank you for your attention to this matter
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Hearts and Minds and Books Open to the Autumn Air
The Dreaming Water Towers of State
University
-As Shakespeare did not say
Math
students whose favorite dessert was always pi
Engineering
students with leather scabbards at their belts
Ready
to charge into battle with their Kueffel and Essers
Against
heretics who believed in “It’s close enough”
Historians
who made the acorns drop
With
their thunderous defenses of Pirenne
And
measured Turner’s western frontier thesis
Against
the Czarist empire’s eastern lands
English
majors (and maybe French lieutenants)
Free-versifiers
arguing against disciplined meter
The
next Rod Mckuen with his guitar
Biologists
considering an ant’s nutritional needs
And
hearts and minds and books, books everywhere -
All
open to thought and the autumn air
It wasn’t that dreamy; I worked the night shift seven
nights each week and often double shifts on the weekends in order to live and
study, and so was constantly tired. But there were indeed golden moments…
