Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

A Children’s Bedtime Litany for 2026

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit

From the ICE-men who break into our homes and beat up our families

Deliver us, O Lord

From the anti-ICE who invade our churches on Sunday mornings

Deliver us, O Lord

From the ICE gunfire in our streets

Deliver us, O Lord

From the anti-ICE gunfire in our streets

Deliver us, O Lord

From the tear gas on our playgrounds

Deliver us, O Lord

From government-sponsored kidnappings

Deliver us, O Lord

From fires and looting

Deliver us, O Lord

From explosions in the night

Deliver us, O Lord

From strangers roaming around with guns

Deliver us, O Lord

From the unmarked SUVs that circle our block

Deliver us, O Lord

From the violence-pornographers who take our pictures

Deliver us, O Lord

Grant your children rest this night, O Lord

Or if we must be wakeful

Make the shooting stop

Amen

In the Name of…shhhhh!...they’re beating on the door…don’t let them hear you…

Tuesday, January 20, 2026

A Complimentary Tote - poem

Lawrence Hall

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

A Complimentary Tote

How very nice of you to check me out

Of all the things you could have bought today

You purchased a tote, which shows your good sense

And you picked me, which shows your good taste

Those are some great shoes you’re wearing

And your watch is a study in elegance

Proper dress is all about the accessories

I’m proud to be seen with such a classy lady

Wait – diapers? I gotta carry dirty diapers!?

And those dirty baby-bottom wipers!?

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Combat Patrol on the Borders of the Empire - poem

Lawrence Hall

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Combat Patrol on the Borders of the Empire

There were nasty people in the army; but…[e]very few days one seemed to meet a scholar, an original, a poet, a cheery buffoon, a raconteur, or at least a man of good will.

-C. S. Lewis, “Guns and Good Company,” Surprised by Joy

Muffle-armored like Heinlein’s starship troopers

What attributes of civilization

Can the soldiers of our armies carry

Carefully tucked into their pockets and packs:

Paperback poets, math reviews, Miss January

Letters from home, a Rosary, a Testament

A naughty little short-timer calendar

A creased photograph of someone special

What do young soldiers carry with them

When they are ordered to suppress

Their fellow Americans

Monday, January 19, 2026

Is There a "Board of Peace" for Minnesota? - poem

Lawrence Hall

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Is There a “Board of Peace” for Minnesota?

The president is mobilizing federal soldiers;

The governor, his state’s national guard

Sister and brother to war with each other

While citizens are scarred with bullet and shard

The chief of police makes stirring speeches

The several mobs lock lies into their ‘phones

ICE-men pull guns while a bullhorn screeches

Possibly next they will send up the drones

“We’re better than this,” some official will say –

More smoke to befoul Minnesota today

My Friends and Okra - rhyming couplet

Lawrence Hall

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

My Friends and Okra

Give my share to the cats, the sea-bass, and the seal!

I have a dear friend who loves her okra

But those rubbery things just make me choke-ra!

Evil is Afraid of You - poem

Lawrence Hall

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Evil is Afraid of You

That in the world which is evil despises you

Mostly because you never give up
Evil sends you hopeless dreams and despair

And leaves your pillow stained with sour tears

That in the world which is evil despises you

Because in the morning you wake up strong

Greet the new day with your own songs of hope

And work at your purposes with joyful intent

That in the world which is evil despises you

Because it can never be you

The Doomsday Clock and Watch Collection - poem

Lawrence Hall

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

The Doomsday Clock and Watch Collection

Since 1947 the image of a doomsday clock

Has haunted our dreams and possibilities

First nuclear war, then global cooling

Then global warming, and now A EYE

If we continue to date and time our doom

Let’s have it as an app, or a clever watch

Strapping the end of time to our wrists

Or entombed in an Orwellian telescreen

The Doomsday Clock has been frozen for eighty years -

Let’s wear as a fashion our existential fears

Poetry is an Uncommon God - poem

Lawrence Hall

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Poetry is an Uncommon Good

Thanks to Nat and Friends

Poetry is a common good

Like dreams and water and earth and air

What graces might bless us if we would

Be grateful for each as an answered prayer

Friday, January 9, 2026

Texas A & M University and Mickey Mouse's Dog - doggerel

Lawrence Hall

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Texas A & M University and Mickey Mouse’s Dog

Private Joe Gomez: “What you readin'?”

Private Marion Hotchkiss: “Plato.”

Joe: “You mean they wrote a whole big book about Mickey Mouse's dog?”

-Leon Uris, Battle Cry

Texas A & M has banished wise Plato

(Some colonel is shaking in his aiguilette)

Shoved philosophy out through the old North Gate-O

(Asking questions scares the admin soviet)

We mustn’t teach thinking on the Texas plains

Or read the books that our ancestors wrote

That kept us free from cruel tyrants’ chains -

No Plato, now, and maybe soon no vote

A university no more; that how it looks -

Their homecoming bonfire now is for burning books

NB: In the long-ago A & M rightly dropped my lazy (self) for skipping class. I wasn’t allowed to skip class in Viet-Nam, and that was a sterner lesson.

Texas A&M deems Plato unnecessary for approved thought

Texas A&M blocks readings on gender ideology in philosophy class: 'Plato has been censored'

Texas A&M flags parts of Plato readings as violations of new anti-gender theory policy

Texas A&M Warns Professor Not to Teach Plato Because of Gender Rules - The New York Times

Texas A&M Forbids A Plato Reading In An Intro Philosophy Course

Crawfish are not in the Bible - rhyming couplete

Lawrence Hall

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Crawfish are not in the Bible

…spawned in that slime

Conceived by a pair of those monsters

Born of Cain

-From Beowulf in Burton Raffel’s fine translation

Eating crawfish is seasonally lawful

But I tell you true, they’re simply offal!

Friday, January 2, 2026

Randolph Scott at the Saturday Matinee on my Birthday - poem

Lawrence Hall

Randolph Scott at the Saturday Matinee on my Birthday

…and life's rewards were chocolate bars and nickel bubble gum.

-Rod McKuen, “People on Their Birthdays”

At 78 I am old enough again

To play with my Mattel Dream Car on the lawn

Watch Randolph Scott at the Saturday matinee

And dream of catching a freight train out of town

My grandfather was 78 the summer I was six

He was born in a wagon; he never knew where

Manifest Destiny was an iron wheel over the bones

Of the First Nations, and of mothers who died young

We sat on the back steps while he whittled

And spit tobacco into the grass, and talked

And I don’t remember what he said

Or maybe what he said is in the wind

The passing of my dreaming barefoot summers

And of his life came as these things do -

We turn around and find that the gates of the past

Are shut against us and we don’t know why

I hope that on some shimmering summer day

Fishing poles on our shoulders

He’ll whistle up the dogs, and we’ll away

(There’s no rush – life is fun, and I haven’t yet visited the Kamakura Daibutsu!)

Thursday, January 1, 2026

Scenes from a Funeral Home Calendar Featuring a Decidedly English Jesus - poem

Lawrence Hall

Scenes from a Funeral Home Calendar Featuring a Decidedly English Jesus

“It’s pretty, but is it Art?”

-the Devil in Kipling’s “The Conundrum of the Workshops”

Jesus and his followers appear to be on sabbatical from Oxford

Strolling along in a peaceful English world

Among perfect climax-forest English oaks

Under a dreamy English summer sky

Young Mary plays with placid English lambs

In an English meadow all flowered and green

Anna and Simeon prophesy in an English temple

The Centurion is as English as a Grenadier Guard

For a child (me) who grew up on a farm in poverty

Realism in pastoral art just won’t do, you see!

(And, really, we can’t have young Jesus

Skipping among sheep droppings, now can we?)

Resolution for a New Year – or for a New Life: poem

Lawrence Hall

Resolution for a New Year – or for a New Life

Perhaps dear old Puddleglum, who burnt his feet

When stamping out the fires of wickedness

Made a fine new year’s resolution with

“I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can.”

A Little New Year's Magic - poem

Lawrence Hall

A Little New Year’s Magic for You

A far frosty field

Full fit for a fairies’ dance

‘Neath the New Year’s moon

Tuesday, December 30, 2025

Cuddled up with Cold Medicine and a Warm Dachshund - poem

Lawrence Hall & Nyquil ™

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

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…?

Sunday, December 28, 2025

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

Lawrence Hall

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

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

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.

Tuesday, December 16, 2025

Aeolian Wisdom - poem

Lawrence Hall