Little Thoughts of God - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

 

Little Thoughts of God

 

We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.

 

-Papa Benedict, 24 April 2005

 

 

Our children play with little toy trucks and trains

Comb Barbie’s hair and then arrange Ken’s tie

They get fussed at for pulling the puppy’s tail

They cuddle up with kittens and Winnie-the-Pooh

 

Our children create worlds with construction paper

Discover Narnia in a new box of crayons

They get fussed at for writing on the wall

They squirm in church; they tickle Daddy’s beard

 

Our children love their chapter books (and us!)

“Is this a picture of a pirate ship?”

They get fussed at for asking soooooo many questions

“Daddy, will you read us a story now?”

 

Dear Lord –

 

Let our children grow up and make us proud

 

Dear Lord –

 

Let our children grow up

 

In 2022 firearms accounted for 30% of deaths in children 1 to 17

 

-Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health

Annual Firearm Violence Data | Center for Gun Violence Solutions

Exposition Kills Poetry - poem & Exposition

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Exposition Kills Poetry

 

Most exposition is an imposition

Like the supervisor who shadows you

Babbling incessantly needless admonition

Blocking your work so that nothing gets through

 

Respect your verse, how it dreams, how it flows

Your poetry is your will, your work, your way

But if you have to explain it in prose

Your verse is left with nothing at all to say

 

Your poem is in itself your exhibition

Of art – so ditch the cluttery exposition

 

Exposition: 

So, like, you know, what I’m saying here is don’t talk about your poetry because that’s talking about work instead of getting it done and if you have to explain to the reader what your poem means you’re not allowing the poem to be true to itself and so why attempt the discipline of meter, rhyme, metaphor, simile, narrative flow, and the many other elements of poesy if you’re just going to repeat in prose what the meter, rhyme, metaphor, simile, narrative flow, and the many other elements of poesy should be doing if you have crafted your work with artistry as well as imagination because exposition implies that either you don’t respect your work and your reader or that you have been deliberately obscure in your verse which in the event is pointless because a poem is itself, it is supposed to communicate an idea, a dream, a hope and not simply flounder about as a soup of disconnected words in a sort of the king’s new clothes of deception which is patronizing and not clever at all because if a reader who is reasonably well read and understands an age-appropriate catalogue of literary, cultural, historical, and artistic allusion to make connections then you have failed the reader and, worse, failed your own attempts at poetic art.

Jim Croce and a Rainy Morning - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Jim Croce and a Rainy Morning

 

When the plane went down that was the end

Of telephone operators and bottles of time

But the electronics are kind enough to send

Good memories of when coffee was a dime

 

You really could mess around with Jim

If you knew your way around a chord

And heard his lyrics as a workman’s hymn

That spoke of art offered to the Lord

 

He gave us good thoughts through his guitar’s strum -

And, yeah, a wild moustache to back away from!

Forming a Committee Around a Car That Wouldn’t Start - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Forming a Committee Around a Car That Wouldn’t Start

 

The engine wouldn’t turn over; the electrics were dead

We stood around the open hood, each scratching his head

 

1^st Member:

 

“It appears to me it’s the dead battery

There’s no indication of a charge, you see”

 

2^nd Member:

 

“I’m a college graduate, so I am smarter

Obviously the problem is with the starter”

 

3rd Member:

 

“There’s a smell in the engine, something tannic

And I should know; I’m a certified mechanic”

 

4^th Member:

 

“I’m a knight of the road; I drive a freighter

Just let me at that broken alternator”

 

 

But none of our skilled efforts came to pass

Because no one had bothered to check

 

                        the gas

The Bright Green Wheelie-Bin - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

The Bright Green Wheelie-Bin

 

(Much Superior to a Red Wheelbarrow)

 

The wheelie-bin is pretty in its own way

Thick plastic moulded in ecological green

To be rumbly-dragged on garbage day

To the end of lane to grace our suburban scene

 

Very little depends upon the wheelie-bin:

Unpleasant household garbage on its rounds

The really useful stuff has been well dug in

The loam – potato peels and coffee grounds

 

But note ye well - this garden plot thickens

For we have sparrows and crows

but no white chickens

No More Pronouns, Then? DEI, Mr. Trump, and Mr. Shakespeare

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

No More Pronouns, Then?

 

 

A version of Henry V, that, yea, verily, will offend neither the rightistas nor the leftistas

 

 

Few, happy few, band of brothers;
For to-day that sheds blood with
Shall be brother; be ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think accursed were not here,
And hold manhoods cheap while speaks
That fought with upon Saint Crispin’s day

 

Or better yet:

 

Few, happy few, band of siblings;
For to-day that contributes bodily fluid with
Shall be sibling; be ne’er so vile,
This day shall equalise even more equally an existing state of equality:
And persons in a subset of the United Rulerdom now a-bed
Shall think mildly disapproved were not here,
And hold personhoods cheap and so in need of therapy while speaks
That negotiated with upon the 25^th of October

Do Dreams Fade Away at Dawn? Or Do We? - short poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Do Dreams Fade Away at Dawn? Or Do We?

 

Do dreams beyond the dreamer dream

The imagined lands from deepest night

In which we live and seem to love -

Do they exist at morning’s light?