Showing posts with label Lawrence Hall. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lawrence Hall. Show all posts

Thursday, July 31, 2025

I Am Spartacus! (Okay, Maybe Not) - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

I Am Spartacus! (Okay, Maybe Not)

 

I am not Spartacus!

I don’t wanna die!

No, really, let’s discuss

The death of some other guy!

A Variation on the Privacy Tour - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

A Variation on the Privacy Tour

 

We Ask Everyone to Respect Our Family’s Privacy

Except for the Go Fund Me everyone will see

And the reception at the Something Hall, date and time

And the Go Fund Me everyone will see

 

And the visitation, date and time

And the Go Fund Me everyone will see

And the services at Our Lady of Something, date and time

And the Go Fund Me everyone will see

 

And the interment at Something Cemetery, date and time

And the Go Fund Me everyone will see

And the scholarship fundraiser

And the Go Fund Me everyone will see

The Strange Adventure of Tarzan, the Epsteinian Files, and The Burn-Bags of Opar - perfectly awful doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

The Strange Adventure of Tarzan, the Epsteinian Files,

and The Burn-Bags of Opar

 

I am not at liberty to lay before the inquiring minds of an objective public the manner in which the curious document and chilling testimony below came into my possession except that this was through the offices of a mysterious midnight visitor on business from Porlock with a wooden leg and an ivory eye of curious and antique design – or was that an ivory leg and a wooden eye? – and I must assure the reader that it was the visitor from Porlock who made do with a tapping ivory eye and a sightless wooden leg or sightless eye and tapping artificial leg, not the pleasant village of Porlock, because English villages are possessed of streets and lanes, not eyes and legs, on a stormy night at the time of the equinoctial gales when ships put to sea knowing that they (the crews, not the ships) must place their lives into the hands of our merciful and loving God who knoweth all things and disposeth all things and so now pray take a seat and light your pipe while I set my spectacles aright and read to you this strange narrative entrusted to my discretion and, like, stuff:

 

The Strange Adventure of Tarzan, The Epsteinian Files,

 and The Burn-Bags of Opar

 

In search of The Lost Epsteinian Files

Tarzan slipped into a city ruinous and far

And in a secret tunnel that ran for miles

Stumbled onto The Burn-Bags of Opar

 

Queen Kristi of Opar, long in love with Tarzan

Sacrificed to her gods a dog and a goat

Then in an armored golf cart chased him as far as she can

          (Okay, then, you try to rhyme “Tarzan”)

To the edge of the Alligator Alcatraz moat

 

Tarzan, exhausted, thought he was a doomer

Kristi was sharpening her sacrificial knife

          (or loading her thirty-thirty; the records are unclear)

But she was death-whispered by Laura Loomer

Thus saving the burn-bags and our hero’s life

 

And The Epsteinian Files?  The mystery no longer abodes -

The scripts for Gilligan’s Island, the lost episodes

Wednesday, July 30, 2025

"Just One More Thing" - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

“Just One More Thing”

 

His shabby raincoat

His rumply old suit and tie

His “Just one more thing…”

Tuesday, July 29, 2025

Minefield and Altar - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Minefield and Altar

 

Approaching the Truth should be simple enough

But you can expect to lose a lot of pals

The maps you were given are unreliable

Because the chain of command keeps changing them

 

No matter what choices you make in the bush

Someone in authority will tell you you’re wrong

If you show initiative you will be wrong

If you follow orders you will still be wrong

 

If you survive you will be too late for chow

And the leaders steal your medals anyhow

A Point-and-Won't-Shoot Camera - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

A Point-and-Won’t-Shoot Camera

 

The concept of the point-and-shoot camera obtains

But a Me-‘Phone camera doesn’t see it that way

I stopped to watch a bug-grazing bird

Who approached me as if she wanted to visit

 

I took out my Me-‘Phone for a photograph

And it didn’t recognize my handsome face

And I had to tap a four-digit code

And the bird grew suspicious and flew away

 

O Egret, in your beautiful brown and white -

I truly understand your need for flight

Monday, July 28, 2025

High-Pressure Dome in a Coffee Cup - poem about summer heat

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

High-Pressure Dome in a Coffee Cup

 

Blue light - an illusion of comfort at dawn

The streaky windows frame a winter day

Illusions and delusions lying to us

For this is July, when hopes wither and die

 

The sun’s tentacles ripple across the fields

One of them slithers to your window and leers

Mocking the fantasies of your air-conditioned sleep

Beckoning you outside: come and be fried

 

The sun’s hot streakings, mortals seeking, they roam

As summer’s slithering death: a high-pressure dome

Saturday, July 26, 2025

They. Learned. To. Code. - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

They. Learned. To. Code.

 

14-year-old boy identified as victim in University of New Mexico dorm shooting

 

 

I call, therefore, a complete and generous education, that which fits a man to perform, justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war.

 

-John Milton, “Of Education,” 1644

 

 

Learn. To. Code. is the fashionable chant

Staccato’d in every callow response

Make. America. Great. through cliché’ and cant

To force a lath-and-plaster renaissance

 

The Great Conversation of books and thoughts

The Great Dialectic of civilization

Are now toys, guns, and video games, all for nought

Ferality within a generation

 

Within a generation, within a blink

They. Learned. To. Code.

                                       They did not learn to think

Friday, July 25, 2025

The Apex Predator - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

The Apex Predator

 

They…

Have watched me rise from the darkness of war

Dripping with my enemies’ blood

 

-Beowulf, trans. Raffel, lines 151-153

 

 

The apex predator feeds upon the flesh

Of those who wanted desperately to live

To hew and chew and gnaw and digest and mesh

With those who died with no desire to forgive

 

The apex predator feeds while others starve

The sentient flee from him in grievous fear

But he always wins, his victims then to carve

In bloody fields and haunted forests drear

 

War ends violently in drang und sturm

And the apex predator is obviously

                                                          The Worm

Wednesday, July 23, 2025

We Ask Everyone to Respect Our Family Privacy at This Time - poem about the guy who bit the head off a bat

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

We Ask Everyone to Respect Our Family Privacy at This Time

 

“Our family privacy” – people keep saying that

A friend came over and mowed my rankling lawn

Because finding a lawnmower mechanic these days

Is like searching for a unicorn in a shopping mall

 

Their family privacy – I’m blessed with friends

But lawnmower mechanics seem to be extinct

The temp today was 98 at noon

Nobody chants “Learn. To. Code.” anymore

 

Their family privacy – chicken pot pies

Are on sale at Brookshire’s for 88 cents

I’ll mail all those bills this afternoon

That’s a really nice shirt you’re wearing today

 

Their family privacy – a middle-aged woman

Sheds tears upon an altar of VHS tapes

 

In privacy

Tuesday, July 22, 2025

A 5-7-5 About Listening to Your Body - yes, a 5-7-5, unworthy of a senryu

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

A 5-7-5 About Listening to Your Body

 

I listen to my body

All day, all night (Mary Ann)

If I eat too much

Piso Mojado Sounds Somewhat Vulgar - rhyming doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Piso Mojado Sounds Somewhat Vulgar

 

Piso mojado en Tejas y Colorado

Does not exactly trip from my English tongue

Cuidado that floor in El Dorado

For piso sounds slippily close to dung!

Monday, July 21, 2025

Loose Vowels - not really a poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Loose Vowels

 

A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y – why?

(Asking for a dipthong)

The New Pastor Threatens the Congregation with Guitars - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

The New Pastor Threatens the Congregation with Guitars

 

Our new pastor has visions, dreams beyond the stars

At Mass last week he informally presented

This suggestion: a choir. And guitars

But peace will still obtain, tho’ that twanging jars -

Guitars in church are why ear plugs were invented

Sunday, July 20, 2025

Betrayed With a Kiss-Cam - poem

  

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Betrayed With a Kiss-Cam

 

 

And the sunlight clasps the earth

And the moonbeams kiss the sea:

What is all this sweet work worth

If thou kiss not me?

 

-Shelly, “Love’s Philosophy”

 

 

A kiss is just a kiss, as Dooley Wilson sang

In a Casablanca that never was

A kiss to give one’s life a bit of tang

A kiss to set a lonely heart abuzz

 

But great unwashed mobs stacked in their masses

Close-looped in a failed sub-culture of dust

Metal in their noses and tattoos on their asses

Can never find truth without a trace of trust

 

For love can never depend upon

The vigilante cruelty of a jumbo-tron

 

 

Tech company Astronomer launches investigation into 'kiss cam' moment at Coldplay concert - ABC News

The Crown of Rachel - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

The Crown of Rachel

 

 

From an idea inspired by Nat Lipstadt while we discussing something else

 

 

A dream about our teacher Akiva of Yavna

When the Romans took a respite from murdering us:

In our youth we approached a little house

Though we were tired from following the goats all day

 

Akiva was tired from tending his beans

And from Jacob-wrestling with great ideas

But he smiled and asked what he could do

Do for us little children bubbling with questions

 

“I am inventing the synagogue,” he might have said

“What is a synagogue? A new kind of Temple?”

“It is a machine for learning, a temple of the mind

A school, an altar upon we sacrifice our ignorance”

 

“But the Romans won’t let us sacrifice anything”

“Sometimes” said Akiva wryly, “they sacrifice us

But in the synagogue we will have a little light

Light and Torah and learning, always learning”

 

“We want to learn.”

 

“Oh? And what do you want to learn?” he asked of us

 

“We want to learn.”

 

He smiled and sat us at a table under his vines

“I learned to read when I was forty,” he said

As he took out a tablet and a stylus

One of us said, “I can’t imagine being that old!”

 

Our teacher smiled, smoothed the day from the wax

And instructed us to attend to the Word

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”

That is what he said, not what he wrote in the wax

 

Akiva prayed, he prayed for us, and wrote

And in the wax the letters formed as fire

As gold and fire:

 

Bereshit Bara Elohim…”

Friday, July 18, 2025

A Cure for the Common Scold -doggerel (thinking of the cast of the Harry Potter films)

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

A Cure for the Common Scold

 

For ___________________________

 

With wisdom, age, and experience a man

Comes to appreciate that most useful tool

and the entertainment value as part of the plan

In the sadly-neglected ducking stool

1970 - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

1970

 

When I came home I was asked by a boyhood friend

“I haven’t seen you lately; where have you been?”

 

I’m still wondering about that

Death Falls Apart in White - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Death Falls Apart in White

 

Snow does not fall in July, and yet there is white

White falling like large snowflakes or small flower petals

White scatterings across the summer lawn

Ghostly among the leafy sheltering oaks

 

The hawks are back

 

An egret about her business of bugs and snakes

Sudden violence high up in the gentle air

Flesh and life claw-ripped, torn, and devoured

Unheard below, only feathers falling like snow

 

The hawks are back

 

This artificial paradise of feeders and seeders

And flower-bordered lawn is a scape of death

From which the gentle rabbits, birds, and squirrels

Withdraw in silent fear

 

The hawks are back

I Am Spartacus! (Okay, Maybe Not) - doggerel

  Lawrence Hall Mhall46184@aol.com Dispatches for the Colonial Office   I Am Spartacus! (Okay, Maybe Not)   I am not Spartacus! ...