The Cold Has Gotten Old - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

The Cold Has Gotten Old

 

 

  For many years I was a self-appointed inspector of snow-storms...

 

-Thoreau, Walden

 

 

The cold has gotten old without Christmas trees

And little lights in all their vestmental tints

No longer counterpoint the dark northern breeze

No visions of spring, no dreamings, no hints

 

The happy lawns of summer are mud and frost

The path to the cowshed is a rattle of sleet

The trail to the fishing hole was yesterday lost

And our boots are too thin for our freezing feet

 

But after our chores boiling hot coffee, please -

The cold has gotten old without Christmas trees!

Nothing You Write is Confidential - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Your Poem’s Background Check

 

And above all, who is in power in that part of the country,

or, rather, who will be by the time we get there?

 

-Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

 

We don’t suffer a Soviet Writers’ Union

Except that we do – and what are you up to?

Have you written an ordinary adjective

That will be forbidden in a future place?

          You sound suspiciously colonialist

 

Last year DEI was mandatory

This year it will be a forbidden scheme

What guidelines for little magazines

Will be cleansed in the New Order to come?

          Harriet Monroe is a non-person now

 

Who will be in charge of your poetry and your life

Whenever you don’t get to wherever it was

           that you were going?

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