Tuesday, July 29, 2025

A Point-and-Won't-Shoot Camera - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

A Point-and-Won’t-Shoot Camera

 

The concept of the point-and-shoot camera obtains

But a Me-‘Phone camera doesn’t see it that way

I stopped to watch a bug-grazing bird

Who approached me as if she wanted to visit

 

I took out my Me-‘Phone for a photograph

And it didn’t recognize my handsome face

And I had to tap a four-digit code

And the bird grew suspicious and flew away

 

O Egret, in your beautiful brown and white -

I truly understand your need for flight

Monday, July 28, 2025

High-Pressure Dome in a Coffee Cup - poem about summer heat

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

High-Pressure Dome in a Coffee Cup

 

Blue light - an illusion of comfort at dawn

The streaky windows frame a winter day

Illusions and delusions lying to us

For this is July, when hopes wither and die

 

The sun’s tentacles ripple across the fields

One of them slithers to your window and leers

Mocking the fantasies of your air-conditioned sleep

Beckoning you outside: come and be fried

 

The sun’s hot streakings, mortals seeking, they roam

As summer’s slithering death: a high-pressure dome

Saturday, July 26, 2025

They. Learned. To. Code. - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

They. Learned. To. Code.

 

14-year-old boy identified as victim in University of New Mexico dorm shooting

 

 

I call, therefore, a complete and generous education, that which fits a man to perform, justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war.

 

-John Milton, “Of Education,” 1644

 

 

Learn. To. Code. is the fashionable chant

Staccato’d in every callow response

Make. America. Great. through cliché’ and cant

To force a lath-and-plaster renaissance

 

The Great Conversation of books and thoughts

The Great Dialectic of civilization

Are now toys, guns, and video games, all for nought

Ferality within a generation

 

Within a generation, within a blink

They. Learned. To. Code.

                                       They did not learn to think

Friday, July 25, 2025

The Apex Predator - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

The Apex Predator

 

They…

Have watched me rise from the darkness of war

Dripping with my enemies’ blood

 

-Beowulf, trans. Raffel, lines 151-153

 

 

The apex predator feeds upon the flesh

Of those who wanted desperately to live

To hew and chew and gnaw and digest and mesh

With those who died with no desire to forgive

 

The apex predator feeds while others starve

The sentient flee from him in grievous fear

But he always wins, his victims then to carve

In bloody fields and haunted forests drear

 

War ends violently in drang und sturm

And the apex predator is obviously

                                                          The Worm

Wednesday, July 23, 2025

We Ask Everyone to Respect Our Family Privacy at This Time - poem about the guy who bit the head off a bat

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

We Ask Everyone to Respect Our Family Privacy at This Time

 

“Our family privacy” – people keep saying that

A friend came over and mowed my rankling lawn

Because finding a lawnmower mechanic these days

Is like searching for a unicorn in a shopping mall

 

Their family privacy – I’m blessed with friends

But lawnmower mechanics seem to be extinct

The temp today was 98 at noon

Nobody chants “Learn. To. Code.” anymore

 

Their family privacy – chicken pot pies

Are on sale at Brookshire’s for 88 cents

I’ll mail all those bills this afternoon

That’s a really nice shirt you’re wearing today

 

Their family privacy – a middle-aged woman

Sheds tears upon an altar of VHS tapes

 

In privacy

Darwinianism Stalks the Suburbs - poem

  Lawrence Hall Mhall46184@aol.com Dispatches for the Colonial Office   Darwinianism Stalks the Suburbs   God giveth the earth t...