Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Has All the Gold Been Stolen from Fort
Knox?
Elon Musk encouraged to crack open Fort Knox and audit the gold reserves
-New York Post, 16
February 2025
President
Musk will now make an audit
Of the gold
in Fort Knox, down to the dime
But all he
will find (he may have already caught it)
Is the
missing TP from the covid time!
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches
for the Colonial Office
Go Ask Your Father
“Go ask your father.”
“Go ask your mother.”
“She said to ask you.”
“Go ask her anyway.”
“Go ask your father again.”
“He said to ask you.”
“Well I told you to ask him.”
“It’s your mother’s decision.”
“He says it’s your decision.”
“It’s okay with me if it’s
okay with your mother.”
“It’s okay with me if it’s
okay with your father.”
That was always
soooooooooooooooo annoying.
I wish I could be that
annoyed again.
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Portrait of Monsieur Gaudry and His
Daughter
For all Daughters and
Their Fathers
Monsieur is
dressed for a quiet evening at home
As is his daughter
in her cozy white wrap
Leaning
dutifully upon his shoulder as he predicts
With globe
and maps the empires of her mind
The empires
of her mind which she will rule
With subtle
wit and work instead of war
With armies
of thought and beauty and art and truth
To conquer
chaos and set the world aright
This guardian
of goodness in a little girl’s guise
(But inwardly,
I think, she’s rolling her eyes)
“The Geography
Lesson,” Louis-Leopold Boilly, 1812, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Each Kiss is a Distraction
While we weren’t watching
They might have declared war on Canada
We’d better check around
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Watching the Rain Without You
The rain is incomplete without you
If you were here we could sit on the couch
I’d put a Frank Sinatra on the machine
So he and the rain could sing to us
But especially to you
The rain is incomplete without you
If you were here we could lie on the floor
As I read the funny papers to you
And do you like good ol’ Charlie Brown?
But of course you do
The rain is incomplete without you
It misses you almost as much as I
Almost
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
The Graveyard Shift
At two in the
morning everything is old
The hours, the
work, the fluorescent lights
The air, the
night, flickering computer screens
Even the
freshly-made coffee in the break room
At two in the
morning everything is old
The way the
new guy snuffles his dripping nose
The cleaning
lady’s mop bucket and its rattling roll
The
snoopervisor’s totally fake good cheer
At two in the
morning everything is old
“You’ll love the
fellowship on graveyards,” I was told
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
A Penny Saved is a Worthless Zinc Disc Gathering Dust in a Drawer
“Feed the birds, tuppounds a bag…”
-as Mary Poppins did not sing
It seems that our last penny has been spent
We will miss the fakey copper glint
Our other pot-metal coinage should take the hint:
We do not have a stable governMINT
