Dispatches for the Colonial Office

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

That Which was Mandatory is Now Forbidden

Let no images

Be hung with Caesar’s trophies

-Flavius in Julius Caesar I.i.73-74

Now hidden are the statues of Cesar Chavez

His name, his fame, once celebrated everywhere

Were furtively cleansed in the dark of night

Lest any of his works live after him

He is closeted now in the basement of some museum

Playing poker with Abraham Lincoln and Columbus

While Mother Theresa and Winston Churchill

Exchange Shakespearean bon mots

The famous of the past are irrelevant, you see

Because

No one is as perfect as you and me

(Takeaway – from year to year I understand less and less)

If We Have to Evacuate Tonight - poem

Lawrence Hall

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

If We Have to Evacuate Tonight

If we have to evacuate tonight

Take to the roads in fear of an enemy

Take to the shelter in fear of bombs

What book would you stuff into your jump-bag?

(Along with your Tylenol, toothbrush, and cat)

The Oxford Book of English Verse for me -

Tho’ I would miss Mary Oliver and Pasternak

Hammarskjold, Li Bai, Cavafy, and Cohen

Akhmatova and vain Yevtushenko

(What book for you among your socks and thoughts?)

But all of us with our own cultures’ poets

In some new land beyond faraway hills

We will plant our verse and grow bright daffodils

Scorn not the Haiku (As Wordsworth did not Say) - two amateurish haikus

Lawrence Hall

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

Scorn not the Haiku

In simplicity - complex

Basho teaches us

We are Basho’s friends

Leaping into that old pond

The sound of laughter

Cf:

“The Old Pond,” Basho

“Scorn not the Sonnet,” Wordsworth

Monday, March 23, 2026

War Metaphor Guy - poem

This is a variant on an old poem and so possibly a re-post

Lawrence Hall

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

War Metaphor Guy

Does keyboard-war-guy truly mean that he

Will shoulder rifle, pack, and spares, and range

On blistered, bleeding feet into dead hell,

Obedient to an ill-considered oath

That calls upon his soul to deny itself?

How noble is his war -- upon the screen.

Does he intend to suffer sin-stained years

Of deprivation, lowest-bidder tins

Of surplus slime stored since some previous war,

Of murky water gassed with chemicals,

Of gasping, breathless, sodden, rotting heat?

How easy is his war -- upon the screen.

So does he really want a poor man’s soul

Ripped screaming, sh*tting, bleeding from his life,

Intestines flyblown in the devil’s sun?

Will he be satisfied with an eyeless corpse

Bloat-floating down another Vam Co Tay?

How glorious is his war -- upon the screen.

Now, keyboard war guy, march away, away

And how God wills, dispose the video games.

Sunday, March 22, 2026

Arnold Raced Out the Door - poem

Lawrence Hall

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

Arnold Raced Out the Door

“The typewriter is holy…”

-Allen Ginsberg

As the opening credits appeared each week

Jessica Fletcher typed on her old machine

“Arnold raced out the door” - but we don’t suppose

That we will ever learn who Arnold was

And why he was racing out a door

(Angela, we miss you!)

He Simply Won't Do - poem

Lawrence Hall

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

He Simply Won’t Do

Second of all, his name is Markwayne

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

That Which was Mandatory is Now Forbidden - poem

Lawrence Hall

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

That Which was Mandatory is Now Forbidden

Let no images

Be hung with Caesar’s trophies

-Flavius in Julius Caesar I.i.73-74

Now hidden are the statues of Cesar Chavez

His name, his fame, once celebrated everywhere

Were furtively cleansed in the dark of night

Lest any of his works live after him

He is closeted now in the basement of some museum

Playing poker with Abraham Lincoln and Columbus

While Mother Theresa and Winston Churchill

Exchange Shakespearean bon mots

The famous of the past are irrelevant, you see

Because

No one is as perfect as you and me

(Takeaway – from year to year I understand less and less)

The First Casualty of War - poem

Lawrence Hall

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

The First Casualty of War

Is a 19-year-old PFC

Coloring Outside the Lines - poem

Lawrence Hall

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

Coloring Outside the Lines

If everyone is coloring outside the lines

Except one child, who is defiantly following a grid

Among those crayon trees and tomato vines -

Who, then, is the most imaginative kid?

Thinking Outside the Box, Bag, or Other Sustainable Rain-Forest Ethically-Sourced Container - poem

Lawrence Hall

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

Thinking Outside the Box, Bag, or Other

Sustainable Rain-Forest Ethically-Sourced Container

If Everyone is Thinking Just Alike

They are Trump’s cabinet

Now let’s all go get tattoos

Tuesday, March 17, 2026

Oscars 2026 - Specimens in a Glass Cage: poem

Lawrence Hall

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

Oscars 2026 – Specimens in a Glass Cage

After watching for a few minutes of given time

Their clumsy humor and predictable set-pieces

Subsuming souls into their toxic clime

One realizes

That these unhappy creatures are not our species

"Just for Fun" - poem

Lawrence Hall

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

“Just for Fun”

Now someday when those demented old men

Are guided each to his courtroom seat

To account again for terror and sin

And face the judgements the magistrates may mete

Smoke, vultures, and lies will still stain the skies

Over rotting blood shed from the shallow-buried dead

While unseeing eyes echo stricken Rachel’s cries

(“An excursion,” and “just for fun,” one of them pled)

But we will share the shame in that docket too

When the Almighty asks of each of us

“What did YOU do?”

Napoleon Surveys His Split-Screen Image of Moscow and Teheran - poem

Lawrence Hall

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

Napoleon Surveys His Split-Screen Image of Moscow and Teheran

Operation Roar of the lion Epic Fury

Little Excursion Art of the Dignified Transfer

II.

The war is very complete beginning, middle, or end

Four to five weeks unconditional surrender

Four to six weeks very soon short term short term

We’re winning the war by a lot pretty much

It’s not protracted this is not endless

Some time to achieve whatever the time is

Substantially ahead of our time projections

III.

I will receive the surrender delegation now

Whaddaya mean there’s no surrender delegation?

Someone’s smoking. Someone’s smoking. Stop it!

Is there a little touch of frost in the air?

Dignified Transfer - poem

Lawrence Hall

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

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Except for the line breaks, verbatim from:

I Admire You - poem

Lawrence Hall

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

I Admire You

I admire you – because, you see, you argue with me

Because

You give your neighbors cookies instead of suspicion

You nudge verbs against nouns and find truth

You listen for music I can never hear

I admire you – because you play in the garden with words

Because

You’re having a love affair with the world

You help people who will never like you

You make the sun rise each day with your song

I admire you – because you, see, you argue with me

(Even though you know I am soooooooooo right!)

Unknown Saint - 25 Cents: poem

Lawrence Hall

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

Unknown Saint – 25 Cents

A little plastic statue of a saint

(In context, am I permitted to say “tchotchke?”)

A woman in white with a flowered crown

And a tiny crucifix in her tiny hand

She stood between a broken-bladed pocketknife

And an HO gauge caboose without wheels

There was a Barbie with her arms ripped off

And an I LIKE IKE button from 1952

The little saint now stands upon my shelf

Gently to remind me of my better self

The Unnatural Abhor a Vacuum - poem

Lawrence Hall

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

What Happens Now to Kristi Noem’s Warehouse Jails? - The Atlantic

The Unnatural Abhor a Vacuum

With their chatelaine gone all those warehouses

Sheeted in corrugated iron under the summer sun

And encircled, festooned, with razor wire

Stand empty in the desert, waiting for – you?

Their industrial disassembly lines

Scientifically designed to rip away lives

And lest they rust away from neglect and disuse

There must be bodies to feed into them

Starving on thin soup from stainless steel bowls

And pity the guards – who are starving their own souls

He Could Have Bench-Pressed a Honda - poem

Lawrence Hall

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

He Could Have Bench-Pressed a Honda

In his youth he could have bench-pressed a Honda

He posed with cheerleaders whom he was quite fond of

One seated on each arm, his muscles to flout

In photographs their grandchildren now wonder about

On the field of sport he could do it all –

His forward passes like lightning would fall

Many a massive lineman fell to his block

And many a quarterback to his gentle knock

He was the class stud; I was the class fool

He’s now a janitor at our old school

(And I’m still a fool…)

Saturday, March 7, 2026

We Haven’t Seen Good Ol’ Charlie Brown in a While - poem

Lawrence Hall

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

We Haven’t Seen Good Ol’ Charlie Brown in a While

Schroeder tickles the ivories for easy-listenin’

In the Gold Room over at the Airport Inn

Linus is Teacher of the Year at the middle school

Marcie built a chain of prosperous boutiques

Lucy waits tables at Franklin’s Lounge DeLuxe

Carefully counting her tips and tattoos

Frieda’s Kuts ‘n’ Kurls features the best gossip

Peppermint Patty is a professor at Penn State

We haven’t seen good ol’ Charlie Brown

Not since the district court judge pronounced his sentence:

“Wah-wah-wah-wah-wah-wah-wah-wah-wah-WAH.”

Kristi Noem's Deportation Flight - doggerel

Lawrence Hall

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