Cats Creep in on Measurable Meter - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

 

Cats Creep in on Measurable Meter

 

Having Coffee with Carl Sandburg

 

Little cats do not creep as the sleepy fog creeps

But rather in a so-soft measurable meter -

Besides, the fog does not wear little bells

Or an electronic tracker to beep its creep

 

In the foggy hours of the untimed night

Dear cat pads silently across my face

And mews her gentle let-me-out song

To join the sacred mysteries on misty fields

 

At dawn I ask her what strange worlds she has spanned -

She sweetly purrs to me, “you wouldn’t understand”

A Window on the Century - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

A Window on the Century

 

Pasternak is said to have raised a window

On a sunny winter day to ask

“Children, what century is it outside?”

A logical question

Restricted Area - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Restricted Area

 

No public or media access

 

Cameras and recording devices prohibited without prior authorization

 

Whoever our government orders beaten or shot is not our business

 

God bless America

The Voices are Talking about Nat - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

The Voices are Talking about Nat

The Voices slither about like Lady Macbeth

Claiming arcane knowledge of life and death

Hissing subtly with their smoky breath

Their business manager is a dude named Seth

 

(Seth attends art school at night and says his instructors don’t understand his depth of existential being-ness and, like, stuff.)

 

They (The Voices, not Seth) visit me nightly when I’m asleep

Approaching me in crouch and crawl and creep

Desiring to drag my soul down into the deep

Piling my vanities onto a vermiculous heap

 

(The Voices took my evening class at Cinder Block Community College and slouched sullenly in the back wearing their Grateful Dead baseball caps on the few occasions they bothered to show up. They filed a complaint against me for dropping them.)

 

They usually lurk in my right parietal

So, shhhhh! - they’re rather anti-societal

 

(They’re all The Office fans and are looking for affordable housing in Scranton if you know someone with a deal.)

Plato's Alligator of the Cave - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Plato’s Alligator of the Cave

 

The real reason Plato missed Socrates’ execution

 

Plato, in a moment famously historical

In that scary cave had a philosophical hunch

He took an alligator for allegorical

The alligator, alas, took him for lunch

'Flu Jabs at the Supermarket with Rotisserie Chicken and Anaphylactic Shock - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

‘Flu Jabs at the Supermarket

 

To the supermarket with a shopping list:

 

1 Brookshire Brothers rotisserie chicken

 

1 bag of Purina dog chow

 

2 pints of Coffee Mate for this low, low price

 

A half-gallon of No Pulp Florida’s Natural

A Farmer’s Cooperative Since 1933

100% Premium Orange Juice from Concentrate

Owned by Florida Farmers

 

And a ‘flu jab. Not by Florida farmers

 

Next week my nurse practitioner has a special on butter

Which will be, as always, country farm fresh

League Tables for the Lovelorn - doggerel

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

League Tables for the Lovelorn

 

V: Give her up, old man; she’s out of your league.

 

R: Impossible; I never joined a league.

A Homily Idling in Neutral Just off the Four-Lane to Emmaus - poem about long sermons

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

A Homily Idling in Neutral Just off the Four-Lane to Emmaus

 

This is a warm Sunday in November

But we still watch for I.C.E. in the parking lot

And for a cold front promised but not delivered

Through the almanacs and weather distorts

 

Just now the celebrant, too, seems to be stalled

Chocked up at Luke 18 with his mutter running

The same illustrations repeated over and over

Like that same old cactus in a Road Runner short

 

Dear Lord

 

I pray for your priest while he is rebuking sin -

Please help him bring his homily to an end!

A Child’s Thanksgiving… WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY, YOUNG MAN!? - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

A Child’s Thanksgiving…

WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY, YOUNG MAN!?

 

Sort of like Christmas, with its own small joys

Turkey and dressing, but not any toys

 

Grandpa at dinner babbles about his bowels

With a chorus of most dramatic vowels

 

Grandma discourses on her surgeries

The latest ones implanted mechanical knees

 

Mother and Big Sis are busy in the kitchen

With a whole lotta hissin’ and (rhymes with kitchen)

 

“WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY, YOUNG MAN!?

DO YOU WANT TO FEEL THE SWIPE OF MY HAND!?”

 

“They get it from those app things today -

I think you need to take his ‘phone away”

 

The uncles thunder on about politics

And any who disagree are Bolsheviks

 

The aunts all painted like marionettes

Escape to the lawn for their cigarettes

 

And I am exiled to the children’s table

With snotty little cousins, like unclean elves

And eye-brow-warned to behave ourselves -

And that’s the end of this Thanksgiving fable

Remembrance of Poetry Magazines past - poem (fancy that)

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

                               Remembrance of Poetry Magazines Past

 

 

Our intellectual Marines,

Landing in little magazines

      Capture a trend.

 

-Auden

 

 

          UP THE REVOLUTION

A travel-back-in-time wish for me might be

          ECOLOGY NOW

To those hippie book shops in San Diego

          //// THE PIGS

Mimeographed little poetry magazines

          GIVE PEACE A CHANCE

With their mimeographed art-class covers

MAKE LOVE NOT WAR

 

TUNE IN TURN ON DROP OUT

Posters for the protest in Balboa Park

          DROP ACID NOT BOMBS

Sunlit little tables and cigarettes

          //// NO WE WON’T GO

Chipped cups of Jamaica Blue Mountain

          POWER TO THE PEOPLE

Percolating The Revolution in CAPS

          DON’T TRUST ANYONE OVER THIRTY

 

          PEACE LOVE AND HARMONY

Hippie chicks in turtlenecks and berets

          FLOWER POWER

Their delicate laughter scorning the Proletariat

          NEED RIDE TO SAN FRANCISCO COOL PEOPLE ONLY

 

And, like, do you dig Yevtushenko?

Cats, Coffee, Choices, Autumn Leaves, Friends - short poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Cats, Coffee, Choices, Autumn Leaves, Friends

 

I sat outside this golden autumn day

Thinking about things, as old people do

And about the thoughts you send my way –

I thought

About choices. And Coffee. And cats. And leaves.

And you.

Northern Lights and a Little Magic - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Northern Lights and a Little Magic

 

I walked out to the hayfield under the stars

To see the Northern Lights that weren’t there

But the grasses whispered in the autumn night

And then best of all

I heard you singing

Cranky Old Aunt Robert - poem

  

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Cranky Old Aunt Robert

 

“I just don’t go to funerals anymore,” he said

Oh, he was all right, the town’s bachelor lawyer

He was just like that, as everyone agreed

A bookish old lawyer and the town eccentric

 

When we were young, he and I read Paradise Lost,

Along with Friend Tod, of happy memory

But with time he recused himself from life

And had me ‘phone him about the town doins’

 

“I just don’t go to funerals anymore,” he said

But a week or two later

                                            he did

Your Words, Your Way - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Your Words, Your Way

 

At the end of the day, your words, your way

Now healing and sealing the wounds of your friends

Giving grace and peace to the Vespers hour -

We open your book and look, and read your joy

 

At the beginning of night, your words, your light

Through your verse rehearse the teachings of peace -

They are to us a healing waterfall of dreams

And then a covering warm with autumn-night stars

 

Now you sleep too; this soft blanket is for you

For your happy dreams, sweet and true, all night through

We See Stories as We Walk - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

As I was a-walking One Morning for Pleasure – 

We See Stories as We Walk

 

 

From “Git Along, Little Dogies”

-American, traditional

 

 

The road doesn’t end here, but something did

In the lonely dark, with a cigarette and beer

A can of Miller Lite drained out last night

And a cigarette end, to mark an end

 

An end to love, now faded in the sun

One of each, not two, an empty man

Going home alone, stopping here a while

And wondering why his everything went wrong

 

The road doesn’t end here, but something did -

And maybe there’s a job waiting in Wyoming

Is There a Thai Army Knife? - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Is There a Thai Army Knife?

 

 

“A man’s not dressed without his pocketknife”

 

-my father, and surely yours

 

 

At Christmas friends give me Swiss Army Knives

Precisely engineered with all those nifty tools

A most useful adjunct in all men’s lives

For camp and work, this little gadget rules

 

Most days I carry my British Army Knife

Rough and tough; it’ll take it on the chin

The workman’s friend both in peace and strife

(Oh, golly-gosh, the hinge is broken again!)

 

What knife is carried by a Thai G.I.?

Does the Garuda or Elephant adorn its grip?

When guarding a great nation’s land and sky

A soldier needs a blade of fine craftsmanship

 

And in peace, too:

 

It’s true of every worker, all through his life -

A man’s not dressed without his pocketknife

 

(Just ask your father)

He was a Cute Little Boy - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

He was a Cute Little Boy

 

And on occasion he was told no

          “One…”

Sometimes he was yelled no

          “Two…!”

Sometimes he was yelled no again

          “Twooooo…!”

And again

          “Twooooooooo…this time I mean it!”

Sometimes he was screamed no

          “Twwwwwwwwwoooo!  DON’T MAKE ME GO TO THREE!”

And again

          “Threeeeeeeeeeee! I SAID THREE! YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS!”

But then

          “Okay, one…”

And then    

“Two, if you’ll tell your sister you’re sorry…”

And then

          “OKAY, MISTER, THREE! AND I MEAN IT THIS TIME!”

And then

          (“Honey, don’t you think you’re being a little rough? Now you’ve made him cry.”)

 

And then years later the state superior court told him no

          And they didn’t yell.

          And they didn’t say “one”

          And they didn’t say “two”

          And they didn’t say “three”

What Does an I.C.E. Agent Do on His Day Off? - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

What Does an I.C.E. Agent Do on His Day Off?

 

He might want to pause and meditate

Upon the 4^th and 5^th Amendments (they’re in the file)

And the children he locked behind a barbed-wire gate

 

Or

 

He might prepare his defense for his Nuremburg trial

 

[The pronouns “he” and “his” are gender-neutral. This certificate of pronoun compliance is provided for Dr. Karen, Ms. Grundy, and the alligator-shoe boys at Target corporate.]

A Crude Review of my TV Service Provider - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

A Crude Review of my TV Service Provider

 

Unplug and re-set, wait for the blue light

And wait and wait – and now the controller’s not right

Our TV service is known as Spectrum

Which, as you know, rhymes with r****m

Ennui at the Gas Pumps - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Ennui at the Gas Pumps

 

You Have Been Approved

 

Please Remove Card Now

 

Select Product

 

Remove Nozzle

 

Begin Fueling

 

Did you bring the fuel ticket?

 

This number is unclear; why is that?

 

The boss wants to see you.

 

Welcome to Another 16-Hour Day

 

Yep

 

Yep

 

Yep

 

(Sigh)