Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
The New Pastor Threatens the
Congregation with Guitars
Our new
pastor has visions, dreams beyond the stars
At Mass last
week he informally presented
This
suggestion: a choir. And guitars
But peace
will still obtain, tho’ that twanging jars -
Guitars in
church are why ear plugs were invented
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Betrayed With a Kiss-Cam
And the sunlight clasps the earth
And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What is all this sweet work worth
If thou kiss not me?
-Shelly, “Love’s Philosophy”
A kiss is just a kiss, as Dooley Wilson sang
In a Casablanca that never was
A kiss to give one’s life a bit of tang
A kiss to set a lonely heart abuzz
But great unwashed mobs stacked in their masses
Close-looped in a failed sub-culture of dust
Metal in their noses and tattoos on their asses
Can never find truth without a trace of trust
For love can never depend upon
The vigilante cruelty of a jumbo-tron
Tech company Astronomer launches investigation into 'kiss cam' moment at Coldplay concert - ABC News
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
The Crown of Rachel
From an idea inspired by Nat Lipstadt
while we discussing something else
A dream about our teacher Akiva
of Yavna
When the Romans took a
respite from murdering us:
In our youth we approached a
little house
Though we were tired from
following the goats all day
Akiva was tired from tending
his beans
And from Jacob-wrestling with
great ideas
But he smiled and asked what
he could do
Do for us little children bubbling
with questions
“I am inventing the
synagogue,” he might have said
“What is a synagogue? A new
kind of Temple?”
“It is a machine for
learning, a temple of the mind
A school, an altar upon we sacrifice
our ignorance”
“But the Romans won’t let us
sacrifice anything”
“Sometimes” said Akiva wryly,
“they sacrifice us
But in the synagogue we will
have a little light
Light and Torah and learning,
always learning”
“We want to learn.”
“Oh? And what do you want to
learn?” he asked of us
“We want to learn.”
He smiled and sat us at a
table under his vines
“I learned to read when I was
forty,” he said
As he took out a tablet and a
stylus
One of us said, “I can’t imagine
being that old!”
Our teacher smiled, smoothed the
day from the wax
And instructed us to attend
to the Word
“The fear of the Lord is the
beginning of wisdom”
That is what he said, not
what he wrote in the wax
Akiva prayed, he prayed for
us, and wrote
And in the wax the letters
formed as fire
As gold and fire:
“Bereshit Bara Elohim…”
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
A Cure for the Common Scold
For ___________________________
With wisdom, age, and experience a man
Comes to appreciate that most useful tool
and the entertainment value as part of the plan
In the sadly-neglected ducking stool
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
1970
When I came home I was asked
by a boyhood friend
“I haven’t seen you lately;
where have you been?”
I’m still wondering about
that
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Death Falls Apart in White
Snow does not fall in July, and yet there is white
White falling like large snowflakes or small flower petals
White scatterings across the summer lawn
Ghostly among the leafy sheltering oaks
The hawks are back
An egret about her business of bugs and snakes
Sudden violence high up in the gentle air
Flesh and life claw-ripped, torn, and devoured
Unheard below, only feathers falling like snow
The hawks are back
This artificial paradise of feeders and seeders
And flower-bordered lawn is a scape of death
From which the gentle rabbits, birds, and squirrels
Withdraw in silent fear
The hawks are back
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
The Last Nights of Club Ozymandias in San Diego
Shelley always makes one think
(often about how to pronounce his middle name)
I met a tout along a darkening street
Who said – “two trunkless legs of neon dance
There, upon that wall, on neon feet
An electromechanical contrivance to prance
In remnants, but wiggling hips and pouty lips
Tell that the artisan well caught the lust
Of lonely sailors as a pretty girl strips -
In time those young men and the dancer will be dust
These letters appear, written in cold fire:
I am the Queen of Club Ozymandias
Look upon me with your hot desire
Look upon me, and imagine us…
Tomorrow all will be leveled
A housing estate will arise, a planner’s scar
Nothing will remain of laughter and drinks
Of sailors flinging their pay upon the bar
For a dancing girl now silent as the Sphinx”
