Thursday, July 31, 2025

The Strange Adventure of Tarzan, the Epsteinian Files, and The Burn-Bags of Opar - perfectly awful doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

The Strange Adventure of Tarzan, the Epsteinian Files,

and The Burn-Bags of Opar

 

I am not at liberty to lay before the inquiring minds of an objective public the manner in which the curious document and chilling testimony below came into my possession except that this was through the offices of a mysterious midnight visitor on business from Porlock with a wooden leg and an ivory eye of curious and antique design – or was that an ivory leg and a wooden eye? – and I must assure the reader that it was the visitor from Porlock who made do with a tapping ivory eye and a sightless wooden leg or sightless eye and tapping artificial leg, not the pleasant village of Porlock, because English villages are possessed of streets and lanes, not eyes and legs, on a stormy night at the time of the equinoctial gales when ships put to sea knowing that they (the crews, not the ships) must place their lives into the hands of our merciful and loving God who knoweth all things and disposeth all things and so now pray take a seat and light your pipe while I set my spectacles aright and read to you this strange narrative entrusted to my discretion and, like, stuff:

 

The Strange Adventure of Tarzan, The Epsteinian Files,

 and The Burn-Bags of Opar

 

In search of The Lost Epsteinian Files

Tarzan slipped into a city ruinous and far

And in a secret tunnel that ran for miles

Stumbled onto The Burn-Bags of Opar

 

Queen Kristi of Opar, long in love with Tarzan

Sacrificed to her gods a dog and a goat

Then in an armored golf cart chased him as far as she can

          (Okay, then, you try to rhyme “Tarzan”)

To the edge of the Alligator Alcatraz moat

 

Tarzan, exhausted, thought he was a doomer

Kristi was sharpening her sacrificial knife

          (or loading her thirty-thirty; the records are unclear)

But she was death-whispered by Laura Loomer

Thus saving the burn-bags and our hero’s life

 

And The Epsteinian Files?  The mystery no longer abodes -

The scripts for Gilligan’s Island, the lost episodes

Wednesday, July 30, 2025

"Just One More Thing" - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

“Just One More Thing”

 

His shabby raincoat

His rumply old suit and tie

His “Just one more thing…”

Tuesday, July 29, 2025

Minefield and Altar - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Minefield and Altar

 

Approaching the Truth should be simple enough

But you can expect to lose a lot of pals

The maps you were given are unreliable

Because the chain of command keeps changing them

 

No matter what choices you make in the bush

Someone in authority will tell you you’re wrong

If you show initiative you will be wrong

If you follow orders you will still be wrong

 

If you survive you will be too late for chow

And the leaders steal your medals anyhow

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

Darwinianism Stalks the Suburbs - poem

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