Lawrence Hall
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.
Monday, December 1, 2025
League Tables for the Lovelorn - doggerel
Wednesday, November 26, 2025
A Homily Idling in Neutral Just off the Four-Lane to Emmaus - poem about long sermons
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
A Homily Idling in Neutral Just off the Four-Lane to
Emmaus
This is
a warm Sunday in November
But we
still watch for I.C.E. in the parking lot
And for
a cold front promised but not delivered
Through
the almanacs and weather distorts
Just now
the celebrant, too, seems to be stalled
Chocked
up at Luke 18 with his mutter running
The same
illustrations repeated over and over
Like
that same old cactus in a Road Runner short
Dear
Lord
I pray
for your priest while he is rebuking sin -
Please
help him bring his homily to an end!
A Child’s Thanksgiving… WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY, YOUNG MAN!? - doggerel
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
A Child’s Thanksgiving…
WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY, YOUNG MAN!?
Sort of like Christmas, with its own small joys
Turkey and dressing, but not any toys
Grandpa at dinner babbles about his bowels
With a chorus of most dramatic vowels
Grandma discourses on her surgeries
The latest ones implanted mechanical knees
Mother and Big Sis are busy in the kitchen
With a whole lotta hissin’ and (rhymes with kitchen)
“WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY, YOUNG MAN!?
DO YOU WANT TO FEEL THE SWIPE OF MY HAND!?”
“They get it from those app things today -
I think you need to take his ‘phone away”
The uncles thunder on about politics
And any who disagree are Bolsheviks
The aunts all painted like marionettes
Escape to the lawn for their cigarettes
And I am exiled to the children’s table
With snotty little cousins, like unclean elves
And eye-brow-warned to behave ourselves -
And that’s the end of this Thanksgiving fable
Saturday, November 22, 2025
Remembrance of Poetry Magazines past - poem (fancy that)
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for
the Colonial Office
Remembrance
of Poetry Magazines Past
Our intellectual Marines,
Landing in little magazines
Capture a trend.
-Auden
UP THE REVOLUTION
A
travel-back-in-time wish for me might be
ECOLOGY NOW
To those hippie book
shops in San Diego
//// THE PIGS
Mimeographed little
poetry magazines
GIVE PEACE A CHANCE
With their
mimeographed art-class covers
MAKE
LOVE NOT WAR
TUNE
IN TURN ON DROP OUT
Posters for the
protest in Balboa Park
DROP ACID NOT BOMBS
Sunlit little tables
and cigarettes
//// NO WE WON’T GO
Chipped cups of
Jamaica Blue Mountain
POWER TO THE PEOPLE
Percolating The
Revolution in CAPS
DON’T TRUST ANYONE OVER THIRTY
PEACE LOVE AND HARMONY
Hippie chicks in
turtlenecks and berets
FLOWER POWER
Their delicate
laughter scorning the Proletariat
NEED RIDE TO SAN FRANCISCO COOL PEOPLE
ONLY
And, like, do you
dig Yevtushenko?
Cats, Coffee, Choices, Autumn Leaves, Friends - short poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Cats, Coffee, Choices, Autumn Leaves, Friends
I sat outside this golden autumn day
Thinking about things, as old people do
And about the thoughts you send my way –
I thought
About choices. And Coffee. And cats. And leaves.
And you.
Northern Lights and a Little Magic - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Northern Lights and a Little Magic
I walked out to the hayfield
under the stars
To see the Northern
Lights that weren’t there
But the grasses
whispered in the autumn night
And then best of all
I heard you singing
Cranky Old Aunt Robert - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Cranky Old Aunt Robert
“I just don’t go to funerals anymore,” he said
Oh, he was all right, the town’s bachelor lawyer
He was just like that, as everyone agreed
A bookish old lawyer and the town eccentric
When we were young, he and I read Paradise Lost,
Along with Friend Tod, of happy memory
But with time he recused himself from life
And had me ‘phone him about the town doins’
“I just don’t go to funerals anymore,” he said
But a week or two later
he did
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