Cats Creep in on Measurable Meter - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

 

Cats Creep in on Measurable Meter

 

Having Coffee with Carl Sandburg

 

Little cats do not creep as the sleepy fog creeps

But rather in a so-soft measurable meter -

Besides, the fog does not wear little bells

Or an electronic tracker to beep its creep

 

In the foggy hours of the untimed night

Dear cat pads silently across my face

And mews her gentle let-me-out song

To join the sacred mysteries on misty fields

 

At dawn I ask her what strange worlds she has spanned -

She sweetly purrs to me, “you wouldn’t understand”

A Window on the Century - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

A Window on the Century

 

Pasternak is said to have raised a window

On a sunny winter day to ask

“Children, what century is it outside?”

A logical question

Restricted Area - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Restricted Area

 

No public or media access

 

Cameras and recording devices prohibited without prior authorization

 

Whoever our government orders beaten or shot is not our business

 

God bless America

The Voices are Talking about Nat - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

The Voices are Talking about Nat

The Voices slither about like Lady Macbeth

Claiming arcane knowledge of life and death

Hissing subtly with their smoky breath

Their business manager is a dude named Seth

 

(Seth attends art school at night and says his instructors don’t understand his depth of existential being-ness and, like, stuff.)

 

They (The Voices, not Seth) visit me nightly when I’m asleep

Approaching me in crouch and crawl and creep

Desiring to drag my soul down into the deep

Piling my vanities onto a vermiculous heap

 

(The Voices took my evening class at Cinder Block Community College and slouched sullenly in the back wearing their Grateful Dead baseball caps on the few occasions they bothered to show up. They filed a complaint against me for dropping them.)

 

They usually lurk in my right parietal

So, shhhhh! - they’re rather anti-societal

 

(They’re all The Office fans and are looking for affordable housing in Scranton if you know someone with a deal.)

Plato's Alligator of the Cave - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Plato’s Alligator of the Cave

 

The real reason Plato missed Socrates’ execution

 

Plato, in a moment famously historical

In that scary cave had a philosophical hunch

He took an alligator for allegorical

The alligator, alas, took him for lunch

'Flu Jabs at the Supermarket with Rotisserie Chicken and Anaphylactic Shock - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

‘Flu Jabs at the Supermarket

 

To the supermarket with a shopping list:

 

1 Brookshire Brothers rotisserie chicken

 

1 bag of Purina dog chow

 

2 pints of Coffee Mate for this low, low price

 

A half-gallon of No Pulp Florida’s Natural

A Farmer’s Cooperative Since 1933

100% Premium Orange Juice from Concentrate

Owned by Florida Farmers

 

And a ‘flu jab. Not by Florida farmers

 

Next week my nurse practitioner has a special on butter

Which will be, as always, country farm fresh

League Tables for the Lovelorn - doggerel

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

League Tables for the Lovelorn

 

V: Give her up, old man; she’s out of your league.

 

R: Impossible; I never joined a league.