Your Changes Have Been Saved - poem

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Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

 

Your Changes Have Been Saved

 

 

Noticed the passive voice              the passive voice is to be noticed

 

You did not make changes             changes were not made by you

                                                        but changes were made

 

You did not save changes                 changes were not saved by you

                                                          but changes were saved

 

 

 

If you were relevant you might have been consulted

Imagine There's No "Imagine" - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Imagine There’s No “Imagine”

“Christendom has had a series of revolutions, and in each one of them Christianity has died. Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.”

-G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

Imagine a world without anthems that whine

It’s difficult if we try; the ‘seventies cry

Rockabilly tunes in the communion line

And fling fluorescents from a dropped-ceiling sky

 

The ‘seventies tell the Bible what to say

And dangling speakers program us with a primitive beat

Manifestos proclaim the ideology of the day

The Gospel is reduced to an electronic tweet

 

But, peace! 

 

The tie-dyed ‘seventies still croak and wail

But it is the Eternal that will prevail

 

Stand-to for Night Patrol - short poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Stand-To for Night Patrol

 

 

The Americans were said to believe that the Communists are on the defensive…

 

-New York Times, 11 January 1970

 

I keep seeing a boat’s black silhouette

Upon the red water, against the red sky

And the black-death tree-line along the shore

A dark, decaying scene, and I don’t know why

There is More Than One Book - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

There is More Than One Book

 

A civilization writes and reads its books

As poetry, pictures, prose, and glorious song

Of war and work and love and peaceful fields

Scholarship and courage and a people’s arts

 

But when unhappy men with an unhappy god

Maintain that their one book is all we’ll need

In submission to build an empire of death

The threat is clear: their god doesn’t want us

 

Reading and writing are civilization

From the very beginning of Creation

52 Hebrew Words - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

52 Hebrew Words

 

Max gave me a book: 52 Hebrew Words

For Christmas

Appreciate the irony that isn’t there –

If Judaism isn’t real, then neither are we

 

Words in Hebrew seem to be topped as flames

As Light - the light as truth, the light for truth

As flame for sacrifice, as flame for peace

As Torah unrolled, all Creation unrolled

 

Everything begins with a word, the Word

Today we will begin with Shema – Hear

 

With gratitude

 

 

52 Hebrew Words. Dave Adamson. Christian Art Gifts: Bloomington

Reading the Room - doggerel

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Reading the Room

 

I don’t know to read a room, but look –

I’m still pretty good at reading a book

A Colonial Project - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

A Colonial Project

 

Am I a victim of

 

A Colonial Project

 

Am I a perpetrator of

 

A Colonial Project

 

Am I a victim of

 

A Colonial Project

 

Or is it

 

THE Colonial Project

 

And whose?

 

I think I’ll make a pot of tea

 

If that’s not too colonial for anyone

 

And would you like a cup?