Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
Lawrence Hall
[email protected]
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                        What Could be More American than
                    Masked Secret Police in Unmarked Cars?

Perhaps the suggestion has already been made:
ICE’s Black Marias could lead the parade
14 June 2025 - our Stasi handcuffed an 87-year-old man today:

https://x.com/CarolinaLumetta/status/1933669206114898254/video/3
Bigotedly, I held the same view,
Pacing a tank domestic and half-full
As the airbag now sprung from the hemisphere of my lungs,
Stone-hard and hysteric in the cradle of your palms.
You gild my haunted mind like Carnegie's ghost
A shining parenthesis for brass-poisoned dreaming.
I wish I could reach my rhizomes through time like you do--
          or space, even!
I want to watch you do anything.
  Fill a Passchendaele shell-hole with
  your triumphant tears; heal it, like it's easy.
I want to watch you do anything
  Stretch your Mud & Slush smile from the Esplanade-Riel
  across Minnesota and then right through me.

Reframe my failings, won't you?
(If that's what you think they are)
Or rewire my frowning night times, at least?
Spread me thin across your time, if you like;
but let me have some.

Find some worth, won't you?, in my fraying wires
  my decaying lines of code,
  my fear of success?

I have only my vagueness, and banks of bad metaphors
to measure against the tradewinds you blow across my minute bow.
You are such victory, such mighty reaching.
     Don't fault me my anxiety.
I found him late;
beautiful voice,
handsome face,
every sound I ever wanted
already sung.

He seemed kind.
Alive.

Then I read the ending.
So young.
So long ago.

And I just sat there,
stupid,
like it still mattered.
if you can guess who this is about you win a cookie
I’m getting greys
at an alarming rate,
I already pulled at my hair.
“It’s normal” he says
I swear just to debate,
cause he doesn’t seem to care.

And I’m bleeding through
my scar tissued skin,
the layers only grew
still I find a way in.

I’m getting greys
at an alarming rate,
I’ll be down to the last strand.
Check or fold the plays,
the cards aren’t that great
I’ll be down the my last hand.

And I’m bleeding through
my thick nice sweater.
It’s a shame as it’s new
and we’re reaching the cold weather.
It will stain the soft fabric
I may just grab the bleach,
but I always made it a habit
to always keep it just out of reach.

I’m getting greys
at an alarming rate
pretty soon I’ll be bald.
On hot coals she stays,
though she shifts her weight
and watches her soles scald.

And I’m bleeding through
my clogged and blocked pores,
and the remaining few
are becoming septic sores.
I’ll shed another layer
of a non-protective bubble,
and my hair will continue to get greyer,
I think I’m now in some trouble.
Starting to feel my age…
I was contemplating the interlude of breathing
the tease of the jasmine perfume
a wind without insight was resting in the hammock
a solitude round like the moon
the song of birds was inviting a blue exuberance  when
I had this dream... I dreamt streets flooded by blood
they seemed so real, like the amnesia of mercy
the intensity of red an amplifier for pain
violence this enclave of the soul hidden in plain sight
we watch wars on tv in the stillness of sofas
newborn tears claim the redemption of dawn
but we turn our back to the questions of time
no body line of thought but raw nerves,
blind tongues: as if our body is a world full of nothing
sometimes I have nowhere to hide from this feeling:
my blood is his/her/their blood
Next page