There is More Than One Book - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

There is More Than One Book

 

A civilization writes and reads its books

As poetry, pictures, prose, and glorious song

Of war and work and love and peaceful fields

Scholarship and courage and a people’s arts

 

But when unhappy men with an unhappy god

Maintain that their one book is all we’ll need

In submission to build an empire of death

The threat is clear: their god doesn’t want us

 

Reading and writing are civilization

From the very beginning of Creation

52 Hebrew Words - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

52 Hebrew Words

 

Max gave me a book: 52 Hebrew Words

For Christmas

Appreciate the irony that isn’t there –

If Judaism isn’t real, then neither are we

 

Words in Hebrew seem to be topped as flames

As Light - the light as truth, the light for truth

As flame for sacrifice, as flame for peace

As Torah unrolled, all Creation unrolled

 

Everything begins with a word, the Word

Today we will begin with Shema – Hear

 

With gratitude

 

 

52 Hebrew Words. Dave Adamson. Christian Art Gifts: Bloomington

Reading the Room - doggerel

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Reading the Room

 

I don’t know to read a room, but look –

I’m still pretty good at reading a book

A Colonial Project - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

A Colonial Project

 

Am I a victim of

 

A Colonial Project

 

Am I a perpetrator of

 

A Colonial Project

 

Am I a victim of

 

A Colonial Project

 

Or is it

 

THE Colonial Project

 

And whose?

 

I think I’ll make a pot of tea

 

If that’s not too colonial for anyone

 

And would you like a cup?

 

May Our Children Live Long Enough to Invade Greenland - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

 

May Our Children Live Long Enough to Invade Greenland

 

Man arrested entering the Capitol with a machete and three knives

 

-U. K. Daily Mail

 

 

No weapons in the Capitol; it’s a rule

The adults who work there must be safely bubbled

But when some pimply oaf brings a gun to school

No one in D.C. seems especially troubled

I am a Ptolemaic - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

 

I am a Ptolemaic

 

 

There was a star danced, and under that I was born

 

-Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, II.i.349

 

 

This little world isn’t much, but it’s what we’ve got

Our Narnia, our Middle-Earth; it’s green

It’s green and blue and round, an almost-sphere

Fitted with all the ancient conveniences

 

Let the stars encircle us as a crown

And who will dare to say it is not so?

For we are commanded to grow this garden

By the light of the sun, and of faith and love

 

As Shakespeare might have said, this blessed plot -

This little world isn’t much, but it’s what we’ve got

"LA Fires Bring Art to a Halt" - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

“LA Fires Bring Art to a Halt”

 

Hyperallergic: Sensitive to Art and Its Discontents

 

No.

 

A fire brings nothing to a halt

 

To the last respiration of the very last soul

And beyond: Art will live because Art lives -

 

A poet abandoning her car to flee for her life

Holds to her heart her notebooks in grocery-store bag

 

To the last respiration of the very last soul

And beyond: Art will live because Art lives

 

A trumpeter manages to save the mouthpiece at least

While carrying his child out to an ambulance

 

To the last respiration of the very last soul

And beyond: Art will live because Art lives

 

A sculptor’s eyes record a wall of windows

To be re-molded as life-filled windows of dreams

 

To the last respiration of the very last soul

And beyond: Art will live because Art lives

 

Firefighters wrestling a hose through smoke and heat

Are a choreograph of life against flaming death

 

To the last respiration of the very last soul

And beyond: Art will live because Art lives

 

An artist whose studio is now but smoke

Will stir ashes and water, and paint again

 

To the last respiration of the very last soul

And beyond: Art will live because Art lives

 

A little girl will write of her little dog

Her bestest pal whom she never saw again

 

To the last respiration of the very last soul

And beyond: Art will live because Art lives

 

In a shelter tonight an aging man

Will sing to himself the love songs of his youth

 

To the last respiration of the very last soul

And beyond: Art will live because Art lives

 

 

 

                                   then patch

 

a few words together and don’t try

to make them elaborate, this isn’t

a contest but the doorway

 

-Mary Oliver, “Praying”