Tomatoes and Midday Cicadas - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Tomatoes and Midday Cicadas

 

 

Where are the songs of Spring?

 

-Keats

 

 

The tomatoes are split and discolored in the heat

Like bathing beauties who have beached too long

And gathering up the past totter home at dusk

Surprised to be all burnt and wrinkled with age

 

The sun of April who was a lusty lover

Caressing and warming their soft young skin

Is now a middle-aged man baring his chest

And seeking love in other vegetable beds

 

The cicadas of noon mourn in the withering heat

In remembrance of spring, youthful and sweet

Surgery in Three Parts - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Surgery in Three Parts

 

 

1 - Fear for Tomorrow

 

I don’t know what will happen to her tomorrow -

The anaesthesia and the surgical trauma

Invading all those organs compromised

Compromised by age and failing health

 

There’s a contract coffee bar in the lobby main

One could savour a coffee and a croissant

While waiting for a messenger of life or death

Does anyone know where the chapel is?

 

A marriage should not end in ICU

In the echoing chants of “Code Blue…Code Blue…”

 

2 - Fear for Today

 

Morning is filled with possibilities

But today…

Morning is fraught with possibilities

 

3 – Deo Gratias

 

The surgeon and the RN visit me

In a cold-as-a-morgue fluorescent-lit room

With their masks loose about their necks

To report that all went well

 

 

Bombs on the First Sunday in Summer - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Bombs – All Sizes

 

-As Jack Kerouac did not say

 

 

If we are all going to be destroyed…let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.

 

-C.S. Lewis, “On Living in an Atomic Age,” 1948

 

 

Bombs fall tonight, but then they fall every night

Conceived over single-malt, born of the generals

Suffering not at all as their electronics systems

Guide them in the ways the Bible salesman deems

 

Bombs fall tonight, on a nuclear facility, they say

We can only ask the ashes and winds

While in our triumphalist Ozymandian presumption

We fancy that bombs will never fall on us

 

Bombs fall tonight – and have we been doing

Sensible and human things?

Chopsticks International - Rhyming Couplet

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Chopsticks International

 

Forgive me for any insensitive remarks

But do piano students in China practice “Forks?”

Will He Borrow Augusto Pinochet's Old Uniform? - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Will He Borrow Augusto Pinochet’s Old Uniform?

 

While reviewing his troops from his high platform

          Hup! Toop! Threep! Fourp!

Will Our Leader stand tall in uniform

          Right shoulder HARMS!

Glittery with medals and a shiny firearm

          Boom! Tiddy! Boom! Tiddy! Boom-Boom-Boom!

Swelling with pride in his goosestepping swarm

          Ta-ra-ra-BOOM-dee-ay!

Let Us Celebrate NO TYRANTS DAY - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Let Us Celebrate No Tyrants Day

 

 

“We have no king but Caesar!”

 

-A long-ago mob as written in St. John 19:15

 

 

Even the King of Kings is under the Law

And too, since Magna Carta, our earthly King -

From the people and their voices he can only draw

Such powers as their assemblies vote to bring

 

But may God protect us from a Common Man

Slithering to supremacy through serpentine speech

Emboldened by the power of cabal, club, and clan

Mobs chanting for their master, a soul-sucking leech

 

God gives us His grace in a King and Queen

Republics just give us the guillotine

Pushing the Envelope - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Pushing the Envelope

 

What envelope is being pushed?

From whom to whom – across the room?

And why should it be pushed at all?

Is the envelope an English A-1?

An American business-size?

A birthday check for someone to steal?

Pushing a broom, pushing a sale

Pushing a pen – some sense in those

But what is the purpose in pushing

An envelope?

                             And did you stamp it?

Blueberry Portal - poem

 

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Blueberry Portal

 

 

“In dreams the fool is free from scorning voices”

 

-C. S. Lewis, “Dymer”

 

 

In the drowsy, bee-sy afternoon

Picking blueberries in the white-sun heat

Voices. Conversation. But it’s only the bees

While the blueberries dance and spin and whirl

 

What do bees talk about? They don’t tell me

And I don’t need to know – but we’re all friends

And the dancing blueberries – they’re having fun

They welcome me into another world

 

The leaves write me little love-letters that say

How happy to have you home for an hour today!

They’ll Be Kissing Someone Else’s Boots Next Year - rhyming couplet

 Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

They’ll Be Kissing Someone Else’s Boots Next Year

 

I saw a cleaner landscape as I traveled today:

All the TRUMP flags have mysteriously gone away

Garish On-Your-Face In-Your-Face Makeup at Twenty Paces - a poem of sorts

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Garish On-Your-Face In-Your-Face Makeup at Twenty Paces

 

There are several forms of government:

 

Monarchy

Kakistocracy

Oligarchy

Autocracy

Democracy

Anarchy

 

But Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk have given us

A new form of government via online spat

We’re ruled by cheerleader moms who shriek and cuss

So what is the scholarly Greek word for that?

 

 

Hey, red-caps, don’t start all-capping “WE’RE A REPUBLIC”; there is no pure democracy and no pure republic, and in common usage they are synonymous. Don’t just chant stuff you hear on the InterGossip. Read an ordinary high school textbook on government (maybe not an Oklahoma adoption, though).

Pushkin the Poetic Cat - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Pushkin-Cat

 

Long, lean, and lanky, he slithers like a snake

With blue-grey fur; he makes the mousies quake

 

But I haven’t seen him in several days

He roams the woods and fields, he hunts, he strays

 

He’s proud and brave, my handsome Russian Blue -

Did he cross claws with a treacherous Chartreux?

 

Did they exchange hisses at just ten paces

Does his little corpse lie in wild snowy spaces?

 

I hope his life hasn’t ended like that

For I very much miss my dear little cat

Bishops Who Roar Like Lions - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Bishops Who Roar Like Lions

 

Your Grace:

 

There have been bishops who have roared like lions

But your demeanor is that of a house pet

Please rise from your couch in Caesar’s triclinium

And return to the streets to serve God’s people

What Did He Say? - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

What Did He Say?

 

She sat on the porch with her big orange cat

All cuddled up happily in her lap

When we arrived to drive her to an appointment

In a large building in the center of town

 

 

The doctor said something about stage 2

 

 

She had little to say as we drove away

And when we left her at her home again

She sat on the porch with her big orange cat

All cuddled up happily in her lap

The New Poets of England and America - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

The New Poets of England and America

 

 

Young poetry is the breath of parted lips.

 

-Robert Frost, introduction

The New Poets of England and America

 

 

They’re no longer new; they’re not even alive

Those post-war young voices of strength and hope

Working through the wastelands after men of destiny

Blitzed beauty with bullets, bombers, and barbed wire

 

Some of them soldiers, and war-weary all

They were worn out, but determined and young

Digging out the words they had hidden away

Cleaning them up for service to humanity

 

They were young; they were very much like you

Doing their duty as artists and poets must do

 

 

The New Poets of England and America

Ed. Donald Hall et al

Introduction by Robert Frost

New York: Meridian Books, 1957

The Texas Sanhedrin - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

The Texas Sanhedrin

 

 

Sponsored by Sen. Phil King, a Republican from Weatherford, the bill requires every classroom to visibly display a poster [of The Ten Commandments] sized at least 16 by 20 inches. The poster can’t include any text other than the language laid out in the bill, and no other similar posters may be displayed.

-Ten Commandments in every classroom: Texas bill nearing law | The Texas Tribune

 

Our legislature suppresses the pilgrims’ way

They’ve established a government church; we must obey

And from its edicts free Texans dare not stray

(Though the lawmakers work on the Sabbath day!)

When Teachers Fold Their Leathery Wings and Sleep - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

When Teachers Fold Their Leathery Wings and Sleep

 

“This is the day the Lord hath made…”

 

When teachers fold their leathery wings and sleep

Hidden away in their bat-cave deep

In the darkness where foul things lurk and creep -

Only then may children freely laugh and leap

 

No more tiresome lessons about “lie” and “lay’

A child may lie in the glass or lay in the hay

Run out to the lawns and fields to play

And joy in the freedom of each summer day

 

The 20^th of June? A fallacious rule -

Summer begins on the last day of school!

I Miss Kosher Sam's - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

I Miss Kosher Sam’s

 

Wish I could remember what street it was on

It’s been so long ago, when Kosher Sam’s

Was my coffee shop, and I was young

One day I also ordered a slice of cake

 

The cheerful waitress asked me how it tasted

I suggested that maybe it was a little bit dry

She grabbed it up and rushed it to the kitchen

She and another waitress and The Sam Himself

 

They took clean forks and tasted and talked about it

They took more forks and tasted and talked again

And appeared to come to a mishpat at last

Sam brought to me what was left of the cake

 

“There’s nothing wrong with this,” he firmly ruled

I took and ate (tho’ it really was a little dry)

On an evil day I left San Diego

I wish I’d stopped to say goodbye to Kosher Sam’s

"At the Barracks Gate" - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

At the Barracks Gate

 

 

“Underneath the lantern by the barracks gate”

 

-Lili Marlene

 

 

There were two lanterns at our barracks gate

After standing inspection for Cinderella Liberty

We passed beneath them to catch the Number 7 bus

Past Balboa’s eucalyptus trees, into downtown

 

Where sins of the flesh awaited our E-1 fantasies

But instead we went to Mass, found a coffee shop

Nervously walked along Lower Broadway

Tried desperately to look like old salts

 

Carefully stayed away from Lili Marlene

And ‘phoned our parents from the lobby of the U. S. Grant

"And the Moonbeams Kiss the Sea" - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

“And the Moonbeams Kiss the Sea”

 

 

For A.V on the Happy Occasion of Her Graduation

 

 

I hope and believe that at Harvard still

In the springtime of their golden youth

Lovers sit upon the lawn’s green morning grass

Before class

       and read Shelley to each other

At Mass the Young Again are Crowned with Mantillas - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

At Mass the Young Again are Crowned with Mantillas

 

A mantilla in its elegance and lace

Frames forth the beauty of a lady’s noble face

A gentlemen steps back a courtly pace

Giving honour to his lady and her crown of grace