Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Remember the Sabbath –
Praying with the Reicheskirche
Bombs across the
sea
Still winning
the hearts and minds
Of all the nations
Saturday, August 1, 2026
Remember the Sabbath - Praying with the Reicheskirche
Don't Phone Your Mom - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Don’t Phone Your Mom
US military may require some troops in Mideast to surrender cell phones, sources say
The Admiralissimo has ruled and rendered
That since our forces are low on ammunition
Our soldiers’ phones might soon be surrendered
Which will bring our victory to fruition
So fight without those unsupplied supplies
The Commies stole through your Apple phone
It’s medals for us officers when an enlisted dies
Now attack with just your testosterone!
No phone will record the truth the moment you splatter -
Thank you for your attention to this matter
Hearts and Minds and Books Open to the Autumn Air - poem
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Hearts and Minds and Books Open to the Autumn Air
The Dreaming Water Towers of State
University
-As Shakespeare did not say
Math
students whose favorite dessert was always pi
Engineering
students with leather scabbards at their belts
Ready
to charge into battle with their Kueffel and Essers
Against
heretics who believed in “It’s close enough”
Historians
who made the acorns drop
With
their thunderous defenses of Pirenne
And
measured Turner’s western frontier thesis
Against
the Czarist empire’s eastern lands
English
majors (and maybe French lieutenants)
Free-versifiers
arguing against disciplined meter
The
next Rod Mckuen with his guitar
Biologists
considering an ant’s nutritional needs
And
hearts and minds and books, books everywhere -
All
open to thought and the autumn air
It wasn’t that dreamy; I worked the night shift seven
nights each week and often double shifts on the weekends in order to live and
study, and so was constantly tired. But there were indeed golden moments…
Thursday, July 30, 2026
Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale as a Cabinet Meeting - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Chaucer’s Pardoner’s Tale as a Cabinet Meeting
A brotherhede of sworen conspiratours
Blody daggares, poysouned wyn, hepys of gold
Caroignes under an ok – a counseil of trecherie
And the scorneful laughter of Olde Man Deth
Wednesday, July 29, 2026
Nonsense Rhymes for Nonsense Times - a poor attempt at senryu
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Nonsense Rhymes for Nonsense Times
Literary chat:
Basho’s frog, Schrodinger’s cat
There’s truth in all that
A Comma-nist Manifesto - poem about comma usage
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
A Comma-nist Manifesto
Like tiny
little tadpoles, commas are fun
Randomly swimming
in a pool of words
Feeding on
microscopic organisms -
They might
grow up to be dictionaries
Unless
they are devoured by an A.I.
Do Oxford
commas wear tiny Cambridge shoes?
Or do they
simply float about, separating clauses
As
commanded by Fowler1, but not by a fisher
Commas
will mend a certain grammatical flaw
Lest “Let’s
eat, Grandma!” become “Let’s eat Grandma!”2
1 Fowler’s Modern English Usage, Oxford University Press,
many editions
2 Possibly every language teacher has employed this old wheeze.
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