Cuddled up with Cold Medicine and a Warm Dachshund - poem

 

Lawrence Hall & Nyquil ™

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Cuddled up with Cold Medicine and a Warm Dachshund

 

A January lawn is a desert of desiccated leaves

Winter winds driving them as desolate dunes

Shoaling against the oaks who gave them life

Then in the autumn watched them fall to their deaths

 

Croakery crows almost seem to splash among them

Searching out seeds and corn and kitchen scraps

In beak to nose confrontations with squirrels

Darwinians struggling upon the sleeping earth

 

A January lawn is a desert of desiccated leaves

As winter winds batter my window eaves

 

Addendum:

 

(Each line is framed with a cough or a sneeze

And fever one minute followed by a freeze

And a wheeze!)

Meditation upon a Starlit Northern Sea - poem

 

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Meditation upon a Starlit Northern Sea

 

The sea is black, the sky is midnight blue

The crowning moon and her cold, pendant stars

Call color to fall upon the shoreline sand and snow

And too upon a silent Dreamer who stands

 

A silent Dreamer privileged to view this scene

Who stands upon this mysterious Arctic shore

To place for us our hopes beneath the stars

And yield them to the mysteries of the night

 

The sea is black, the sky is midnight blue

And the silent Dreamer is who else but…?

If This Were Your Real Life Your Would Have Been Given Better Instructions - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

If This Were Your Real Life 

You Would Have Been Given Better Instructions

 

 

This is only a test -

if this were your real life you would have been given better instructions

 

-seen on a bumper sticker

 

 

I took my cough to a plastic plaque

My wheezing and sneezing and headache too

My unaccountably rigidy back

And sputum that reeked like a witches’ brew

 

I waved the little cotton probe all through

My nostrils where the wicked virus lurked

And then I thoughtfully dropped five drops unto

A window in the plaque, and, lo! It worked!

 

I don’t have the covid and I don’t have the ‘flu

So why do I feel so blown-out blue!

(N.B. I take my medical advice from my brilliant nurse practitioner, not from the InterGossip nor from Robert Kennedy.)

Not Herod's Household Calvary This Time - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Not Herod’s Household Cavalry This time

 

 

The Holy Innocents

 

 

Not Herod’s household cavalry this time

His personal SS with their spears and swords

From screaming children ripping their sacred lives

And flinging the tiny fragments into the dust

 

Now Herod sends his tailored representatives

With silky-soft, serpentine promises

Would you like a dress as nice as this?

For only an hour or two of easy work

 

Softly now

 

Don’t worry; your parents will never know -

Because they will never choose to know

Sneeze Across Texas - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Sneeze Across Texas

 

 

(widespread respiratory infections in Texas during Christmas 2025)

 

I would almost rather gnaw off an arm than endure what passes for contemporary country music. By the Grace of God we will always have the authentic work of Ernest Tubb. One of his best is “Waltz Across Texas.”

 

 

When we cough together under Texas skies

It’s rather a nightmare that has come true

And when you look at me, with those red, rheumy eyes

I could sneeze across Texas with you

 

Sneeze across Texas with you and our virus

Sneeze across Texas with you

Like a medical movie ending but with no one to admire us

I could sneeze across Texas with you

 

My rhinorrhea just won’t be gone
The moment that you come in view
And with our soggy hankies we could wheeze on and on
I could sneeze across Texas with you

 

Sneeze across Texas with you in my arms
Cough across Texas with you
Like a bad novel ending I'm semi-comatose in your charms
And I could sneeze across Texas with you

 

 

NB: “Waltz Across Texas” is the property of its several authors, musicians, and copyright holders. Respect.

Aeolian Wisdom - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Aeolian Wisdom

 

When I was taking my ‘versity courses

‘Twas my obsession to cite my sources

To assume without knowing was an academic sin

But now that I am old

I learn much wisdom from the westering wind

The Back of the Wardrobe - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

The Back of the Wardrobe

 

If you invite me to your house one day

And if in a spare room you have a wardrobe

Then will you let me open it? I pray

And reach far in, and touch and tap and probe

 

Old coats, old shoes, old dreams, your MeeMaw’s old hats

Someone’s uniform from a long-ago war

Boxes of Christmas ornaments stacked on some mats

Some surprisingly cold mothballs rolling on the floor

 

Because your wardrobe might be an Advent itself

With Narnia on the other side

Eight Lamps to Give Us Light - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Eight Lamps to Give Us Light

 

For the Martyrs of Bondi Beach

 

Hanukkah, 5786

 

 

For all the boots of the tramping warriors
    and all the garments rolled in blood
    shall be burned as fuel for the fire.

 

-Isaiah 9:5

 

 

The Temple in Jerusalem cannot be destroyed -

For all the bloody-booted conquerors

Who swagger and clatter and rattle over the Stair

Defile and burn and pillage only their own souls

 

Wherever a candle is lit, the Temple is there

Wherever the yad touches a davar, the Temple is there

Wherever Truth is honored, the Temple is there

Wherever children sing, the Temple is there

 

Temple and Torah, poet and prayer

Poetry, prayer, eight lamps, and love, and care – 

                                           the Temple is there

The Hate in Orwell’s 1984 was only Two Minutes - poem, sort of

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

The Hate in Orwell’s 1984 was only Two Minutes

 

Progressive, Progressivist, Culture warrior

Boomer, GenX, GenZ, Millennial

Liberal, Conservative, Neo-con

RadTrad, Fascist, Neo-Fascist

Socialist, Neo-Socialist, Marxist

Communist, Trotskyite, Colonialist

Neo-colonialist, Imperialist, Neo-imperialist

Occupier, Bourgeois, Petite bourgeois

Libertarian, MAGA, Capitalist

Nazi, Neo-Nazi, Invader

Zionist, Settler, Sexist, Neo-sexist

Denier, Neo-denier, Reactionary

GenY, GenY-inian, Neo-GenY-inian

Social Parasite, Sheeple, Feminazi

Limousine liberal, Champagne Socialist

Counterrevolutionary, RINO

Low-information voter, Elitist

Republicrat, Democrap, MAGA-tista

Social justice warrior, Garbage people

Low-IQ voter, racist, Leftist

Cracker and Queer, and maybe Cracker-Queer

People-Who-Don’t-Look-Like-Me-inian

Neo-People-Who-Don’t-Look-Like-Me-inian

 

All sorts of names we scream at each other

Abjectly obeying our Dear Leaders’ trends

So quick to condemn each sister and brother

But maybe we all could just try to be…friends?

Anthony's Pilgrimage in Nunavut - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Anthony’s Pilgrimage In Nunavut

 

 

“What went ye into the desert to see?”

 

-Saint Matthew II

 

 

What went ye among the Innu to see?

 

To see

To hear

To smell

To taste

To touch

 

Sedna and Qailertetang have given you fish

They have fed you. And now you must sit and learn

 

What went ye into the waters to see?

From the ice and the rocks the waters flow

Rippling in the light to delight the eye

The dancing, shimmering visions from Ignirtoq

 

What went ye among the whispering rocks to hear?

The Angakkuq of earth, water, and air

Whose teachings and songs the people memorise

The liturgies of good and ancient ways

 

What went ye into the waters to smell?

Healing vapours from the dawn of Creation

From Taimmani until now, forever

For The People, and for the stranger too

 

What went you into the deep North to taste?

There is truth in salmon, and salt in the air

You can taste the stories on the shifting winds -

(And on Sunday there’s lunch after Mass)

 

What went ye along the falling streams to touch?

If you touch the earth, the ice, the sea

You touch the Unipkaaqs, you touch their truths

And you will be healed by the touch of those truths

 

Malina passes, Aningan rises - tonight

The eternal dances of the spheres to light

This land of Nunavut, this realm in white

Be healed, and know that all is made aright

 

Sit

 

Sit before the fire

 

Sit in silence and learn from Nunavut

 

See

Hear

Smell

Taste

Touch

A Right Turn in Viet-Nam - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

A Right Turn in Viet-Nam

 

 

And whether we shall meet again, I know not.
Therefore our everlasting farewell take.
Forever and forever farewell…
If we do meet again, why we shall smile;
If not, why then this parting was well made.

 

Julius Caesar V.i.125-129

 

 

This is not a metaphor for anything

Only a memory of driving an ambulance

A clapped-out relic of the Second World War

On a street on the Tien Sha Peninsula

 

1969

 

For a left turn the driver extends his left hand

And waves

It’s okay to wave back, but that’s not the point

For a right turn the driver extends his right hand

And waves

It’s okay to wave back, but that’s not the point

If there’s a passenger, he extends his right hand

And waves

It’s okay to wave back, but that’s not the point

If there are two passengers, the one most to the right…

But you get the point

It’s okay to wave back – that’s the point

 

A Dodge ambulance, a Vietnamese Army Jeep, and a Renault

Meet at an intersection – and somehow miss each other

 

And I miss Viet-Nam.

                                                 If we do meet again…

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