Tuesday, January 28, 2025

A Corporal Who Would Never Be a Sergeant - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

A Corporal Who Would Never Be a Sergeant

 

He was a corporal who would never be a sergeant

In a Palmach squad that would never be recognized

By the Palmach or by the Haganah.

He was a rabbi of the rocks and rubble and roads

 

He would never be recognized as a rabbi

He loved a curly-haired girl who would never marry him

And was friends with a little feral dog

Who crept out to him from behind the ruins

 

There was blood that called to him from Poland

In Yiddish and Hebrew; he didn’t remember why

He was a luftmensch, but dependable in his way

A littleness never admitted to staff meetings

 

He did what he was told to do, and then ignored

He delivered messages and curious packages

To obscure points forbidden to him and his kind

And the dog was shot dead for someone’s sport

 

With an old British rifle he cleared strongpoints

So that the officers could add to their resumes’

And he was told by the cooks that he was too late

As they laughed and closed the door on him

 

Confusion and smoke, and fighting in the streets

Burning corpses and armored cars, wild screams

There was little of him after the RPG hit

And children scurried out to mutilate and steal

 

He was posted as missing, possibly a deserter

Monday, January 27, 2025

Late January is a Time of Grey - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Late January is a Time of Grey

 

I read a little in Billy Collins just now

Because Tolkien is in the other room

Along with the laundry and an unmade bed

Late January is a time of grey

 

I just want to sit with my coffee awhile

And then I’ll stow the laundry and make the bed

The dishwasher can remain silent until tomorrow

Late January is a time of grey

 

I was nibbled to death by ducks today

Because

Late January is a time of grey

Saturday, January 25, 2025

Third Sunday in Extraordinary Time - very short poem

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Third Sunday in Extraordinary Time

 

Dear friends in Christ,

 

The divine liturgy will be delayed for a few minutes

While the new regime checks everyone’s papers


Monday, January 20, 2025

Tiny Artists of the Night - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Tiny Artists of the Night

 

Snowflakes by flashlight in the deepening dark

I left them to their night of proper tasks

They beamed down to the earth all over the park

And for the cold grey dawn they’ve made great masks

 

Plateaus of iridescent white to layer the lawn

Transcendent beauty in a transient medium

Still falling against the feeble all-day dawn

Little artists who form great truths from tedium

 

And then mysteriously they fly away

To shape the existentials some other day

The Dignity of the Office - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

The Dignity of the Office

 

Whatever the incoming president fancies

(One hopes to speak without fear of libel)

Ageing (entertainers) in chancy pantsies

And will he take his oaf on a Village People Bible?

 

20 January 2025

Sunday, January 19, 2025

The White House Inaugural Banquet and the Idle Dishwashing Machine - doggerel

  Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

The White House Inaugural Banquet

and the Idle Dishwashing Machine

 

 

Henry II: Fork?

 

Becket: It's for pronging meat and carrying it to the mouth. It saves you dirtying your fingers.

 

Henry II: But then you dirty the fork.


Becket: Yes, but it's washable.


Henry II: So are your fingers. I don't see the point.

 

-Becket (1964)

 

The White House dishwashing machine is idle, kids

Our leaders grub with fingers for their food

Cardboarded burgers as greasy pyramids

On mahogany Queen Anne tables strewed

 

The sycophants kiss their effendi’s (ring)

And fall to feeding at his soigne trough

No waiters are needed to pour and pass

The diners chortle and chew and choke and cough

 

The White House dishwashing machine is idle, guys

(Dessert is Velveeta oozing over French fries)


Comment is Freed 

From:samf@substack.com

To:mhall46184@aol.com

Image is from a previous occasion, not the 2025 Inauguration

Saturday, January 18, 2025

The Holy Bible as a Base for a Potted Plant - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

The Holy Bible as a Base for a Potted Plant

 

On a little shelf in our local pharmacy

A somewhat tattered Bible has reposed for years

And on that Bible is positioned a potted plant

And above them on the wall a cowboy cartoon

 

The iconography is elusive to me

One seeks for meaning in an assemblage:

So why this thing in this place at this time?

Existentially speaking (as we said in the ‘60s)

          Why?

 

A curious piece of iconography

On a little shelf in our local pharmacy

A Cure for the Common Scold -doggerel (thinking of the cast of the Harry Potter films)

   Lawrence Hall Mhall46184@aol.com Dispatches for the Colonial Office   A Cure for the Common Scold   For ___________________________   Wit...