Showing posts with label Lawrence Hall. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lawrence Hall. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 29, 2026
A Comma-nist Manifesto - poem about comma usage
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
A Comma-nist Manifesto
Like tiny
little tadpoles, commas are fun
Randomly swimming
in a pool of words
Feeding on
microscopic organisms -
They might
grow up to be dictionaries
Unless
they are devoured by an A.I.
Do Oxford
commas wear tiny Cambridge shoes?
Or do they
simply float about, separating clauses
As
commanded by Fowler1, but not by a fisher
Commas
will mend a certain grammatical flaw
Lest “Let’s
eat, Grandma!” become “Let’s eat Grandma!”2
1 Fowler’s Modern English Usage, Oxford University Press,
many editions
2 Possibly every language teacher has employed this old wheeze.
Everyone Has a Dream - not really a poem
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Everyone Has a Dream
He wants
his head set atop Mount Rushmore1
I think
that’s a fine idea
1 Six Grandfathers Mountain
The Gospel According to the Ladies' Altar Society - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
The Gospel According to the Ladies’ Altar Society
The announcement for and the exposition of
The Ladies’ Altar Society Craft Fair and Sale
Should not last longer than the homily
A Full Moon at Goodwill - rhyming couplet
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
A Full Moon at Goodwill
As I was
giving the housewares a pass
A fat man
dropped his shorts to scratch his ***
A Dignified Transfer - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
A Dignified Transfer
Shocky and stunned, ears ringing in the sudden silence
Trembly hands scooping up meaty body parts
Meaty body parts, sticky blood, greedy flies
All into a baggy, a zippered body bag
A dignified transfer
A curvy fragment of skull, some kid’s curly hair
Is that…? yes…he was so funny…don’t think about it
The living already dusted off, the dead remain
Can we get them out tonight? I dunno, man
A dignified transfer
The president will execute his practiced salute
In a dignified transfer
after the 18th hole
Shimmering Summer Sun - a poor attempt at haiku
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Shimmering Summer Sun
Tired earth
gasps for breath
Beneath this
mid-summer sun
Bees buzz
for a breeze
Hands without a Watch - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Hands without a Watch
Thanks to Mike Hauser for his idea about a watch without hands
Hands without a watch have nowhere to point
They are neither formless nor void, but still
But they cannot describe an orbit of time
Nor convey structure to a seeker of order
Hands without a watch have nowhere to go
Unloved they float without meaning or being
In desolate freedom without meaning or being
In emptiness without meaning or being
Hands without a watch cannot frame the ordinals
Or quantify the hours in ordered cardinals
Sunday, July 26, 2026
An Existential Bus Ride on the Periphery of Heaven - poem
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
An Existential Bus Ride on the Periphery of Heaven
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious bus ticket?
-As Mary Oliver did not say in “The
Summer Day”
Is
this the right bus? Where are you going?
I
boarded the bus outside Balboa Park
With
Tolkien and Lewis smoking their pipes
Missed
a stop along University Boulevard
Because
I was listening to Pasternak
Got
off the bus at Horton Plaza (there was no Hoo)
Because
McKuen wanted to roam the rainy streets
Boarded
again a few hours later, but
Spenser
refused to sit next to a Catholic
I
told him I really enjoyed The Faerie Queene anyway
He
thanked me and autographed my death sentence
McMurtry
said, “This ain’t Texas, you know;
You
can’t even see Texas from the back of the bus”
Frankl
replied, “But there is meaning in a bus”
De
Chardin suggested that all bus-ness is coming together
Yevtushenko
declared that the bus was all about him
Eliot
thought there might not be a bus at all
My
ticket ran out at Mission Beach, and so did I
Outside
a bikini shop where the loungers ask
Not
about the meaning of life, but rather
“Spare
change? Spare change?”
When You and Your Server are from Different Centuries - poem
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
When You and Your Server are from Different Centuries
Diner:
Coffee with sugar and cream. What’s your major?
Server:
Finance. I plan to be a CPA.
Diner:
That’s wonderful! I have trouble balancing my checkbook.
Server:
Fresh coffee coming right up. What’s a checkbook?
Sitting by an Escape Hatch During the funeral - poem (of a sort...)
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Sitting by an Escape Hatch During the Funeral
“The dead without charity enclosed in craziness”
-As Henry V did not say
“Now let’s all take turns sharing our favorite memories of Daddy”
Y’all don’t know me but I’m his wife and I don’t drank and y’all know I don’t approve of drankin’ and I was married to somebody else when we met and he asked me for my phone number and I gave him a disconnected one but he wouldn’t give up and he asked my uncle for my number and my uncle asked my daddy and he said it was okay and I said I ain’t interested in you I’m married to the love of my life we was separated but I had them kids and he had his kids and Jesus knows the way and so we got married for forty seven years when we got married we had both been married so we asked if we was going to live just as brother and sister because of the kids and Lord knows we tried but Jesus knows the way and after a month we was really together and we was married forty-seven years and there’s a hell of an angel in heaven now yessir a hell of an angel in Heaven tonight and if anyone don’t like how I say it you know what you can do about it cause he was the best man ever and Jesus wanted us together…
And that is why you should sit in the back
By the door, ready to escape
Saturday, July 25, 2026
A Black-Tie Dinner in Pandaemonium - White House Correspondents' Dinner
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
A Black-Tie Dinner in Pandaemonium
A dismal universal
hiss, the sound
Of
public scorn
-Paradise Lost, Book IX.508-509
Submissive
and obedient they came to sup
With
weak applause for their glowering chief
(Whose
courtiers listed those who did not show up)
Each
quivered in fear like a trembling leaf
For a Friend on His Pilgrimage - a poor attempt at a senryu
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
For a Friend on His Pilgrimage
As
you walk your path
Your
Narrow Road to the North
May
you find Heiwa
Sunday, July 19, 2026
Schrodinger's Constitution - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Schrodinger’s Constitution
US military launches new airstrikes to 'punish' Iran for deaths of US troops | AP News
We cannot know how many of our young,
Our soldiers young, were killed today because
Our president’s words are ashes and lies
Blown about in the desert’s desolation
That mad old man plays with his golden trinkets
While his Secretary for Blood fondles testosterone
Around a reflecting pool that reflects little more
Than immigration officers shooting people in the streets
Benjamin Franklin warned us, “A republic - if you can keep it” –
God forgive us; we did not keep it
Saturday, July 18, 2026
A Back-to-School Shopping Fantasy - poem
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
A Back-to-School Shopping Fantasy
Dialogue Log Log
Between Two High School Students
“From my summer job I saved and searched and bought
This Keuffel & Esser 4081-3 Log Log
Duplex Decitrig Slide Rule -
Now I control the numbers, touch the numbers
Bend the numbers to my purposes; numbers mind me”
“That is so old school!” He chewing-gummed in scorn
In adolescent scorn
“All I need is a calculator from Shanghai
It tells me what it wants me to know
And, hey, check out my new autograph sneakers!”
Ten Years Later
When she bid the engineering for the next Airbus
She did not hire him
Friday, July 17, 2026
"The Intoxicating Poetry of Belief" - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
“The Intoxicating Poetry of Belief”1
From an idea by a fellow scrivener
And for the fellowship of these electric pages
Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam
The liturgy is a poem
A hymn of the universe 1
That was
And is
And forever will be
Spoken and sung
Sometimes we get lost in a volta
But it all comes together in the Consecration
And again in the L’envoi
We are the poem
We don’t have to get it right
Or know all the words
We are loved and sung
All the way to the end
And if we’re sometimes inattentive
Well
That’s okay too
The liturgy is not a got’cha
The liturgy is a gift
1 cf. Anais Vionet
2 Teilhard de Chardin
Is Your Life No More Than a Login Code? - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life,
Literature and Love
Is Your Life No More Than a Login Code?
Login code: 209455 Your login code is 145180 Login code: 653777
Login code: 409641 Sorry, we were unable to deliver your message to the
following address. 550: 5.1.1 The email
account that you tried to reach does not exist. Please try 5.1.1
double-checking the recipient's email address for typos or 5.1.1 unnecessary
spaces. For more information, go to
5.1.1 https://support.google.com/mail/?p=NoSuchUser
586e51a60fabf-4044bd73886si3150986fac.144 - gsmtp
Thursday, July 16, 2026
Do I.C.E. Waiting Rooms Feature Coffee Machines and Kitsch? - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Do I.C.E. Waiting Rooms Feature Coffee Machines and Kitsch?
Plastic Herbs in Physicians’ Waiting Rooms
Those photographs and paintings of bicycles
Leaning against sunlit Italian curbs
Are no more – now doctors’ offices
Are all about ceramic pots of plastic herbs
And coffee machines that pierce cute little cups
And brew up coffee with a soft low hiss
To serve you freshly-brewed pick-me-ups
That go so well with your diagnosis
New decorations, same old fluorescent lights
While scribbling out ideas for your funeral rites
Monday, July 13, 2026
Exit the Hurricane - Hurricane Harvey, 2017
possibly a re-post
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.comExit the Hurricane (not the catchiest title, eh?)
What is that silence? It is the not-rain
The first not-rain since Friday this past week
Every loud frog gloats in unseemly song
The old, sour water recedes from the door
The whole house stinks; it stinks of damp and rot
Of clothes unwashed because the drains are dammed
Of smelly shoes and even smellier socks
Of refugee gear flung casually about
The whole house stinks; it stinks of damp and rot
Of too many people – and isn’t it wonderful!
Has Anyone Counted all the Senators Today? - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Has Anyone Counted all the Senators Today?
“Conspiracies Swirl”
Drudge, 13 July 2026
Conspiracies do not whirl
People swirl conspiracies
But has anyone counted
All the Senators today?
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