Something About Life

                                      “Live.  Just live.”

                               -Yuri in Doctor Zhivago

The plane lifted, and the cheering was wild
And then pretty quickly the pilot said
“We are now clear of Vietnamese
Territorial waters.”  There was joy,
Even wilder cheering for most, and quiet
Joy for a few.  For me, Karamazov
To hand, peace, and infinite gratitude.
“I’m alive,” I said to myself and to God,
“Alive.  I will live, after all.”  To read, to write,
Simply to live.  Not for revolution,
Whose smoke poisons the air, not for the war,
Not to withdraw into that crippling self-pity
Which is the most evil lotus of all,
But to live.  To read, to write.
                                            But death comes,
Then up the Vam Co Tay, or now in bed,
Or bleeding in a frozen February ditch;
Death comes, scorning our frail, feeble, failing flesh,
But silent then at the edge of the grave,
For all graves will be empty, not in the end,
But in the very beginning of all.

When I think of those days, I only
remember gathering wood in the cold
in my black coat so I could get a fire going
in the cast iron of a gray early morning;
I dream what it is to be a man lying
beside a delicate woman, sad and quiet,
playing the mandolin, looking at her as
if she were a couple of plums together like
a cluster within reaching distance on the branch;
thinking of the lunar dust of her face, and how
her fingers were like feathers; I heard
the silence of the mill wheel not turning
in the stream and the wild turkeys not drinking;
I knew they had hypnotized themselves wide-
eyed and staring into the steel ax of the creek.

When I awaken, inevitably,
In the middle of the night, the black cat,
His slender, aged frame beneath my feet,
Accompanies me to the Frigidaire
Where his food sets waiting in a tin can
Outside of time and space and just beside
My next stop, the modest lavatory,
So good to have inside at three a.m.
On a winter's night, then comes to my chair,
Found outside on the sidewalk, improvement
On the one before, and sits on its arm,
My partner sleeping on the other side,
Stretched out on the sofa, infirm but loved,
As I graft another line on St. James.

When I was young
I slipped out of the tub
stinking clean as
the moon and the suds
in the crack of my ***
slipping out the back window
with my pants and boots
buck naked and brave
and my Daddy’s daddy’s
daddy’s knife tucked between
my teeth, but lonely and sad
because it’s all that I had
except for the twenty
that I’d saved
for the ten hour ride
from the bus station
to the recruiter, but alive
hoping my Mother, when shaking
my quilt out that morning
after my last night
remembered my down
in the sunlight
because I didn’t sleep there
and I remember thinking
if I don’t alight here again
take all that is left
of my memory out
and work it loose
from the bone with a thumb
the way you taught me to
clean a fish until all that remains
is a fleeting thought and toss it
in one motion the sad dance of fire.

Mom's in the kitchen
Weeping openly over the loss of a human life
For the first time in who knows when.

A solitary friend comes to visit;
Someone caught in the crossfire day in and day out.

We are a ****** of manipulators,
Parents and children quickly working to out think each other
In a game each one of us will lose.

There is a tension here.
I refuse to take care of you.

Your bullet eating daughter,
Your easily impressed son,
We do not flourish here any longer.

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

             An Old Man on a Balcony, Gasping for Breath

              Those he commands move only in command,
               Nothing in love

                                      -Macbeth V.ii.19-20

The city and the nation seem to ignore him
He stands irresolutely, heaving his shoulders
Twitching his lips, fidgeting with his coat
Behind his embalmers’ makeup seeking breath

There are no happy cheering crowds tonight
He waves only to a departing helicopter
And salutes the ghosts of what might have been
Before turning away, inside, to the silence

The people talk about him, but not to him
If they did, he would not listen - he is alone

Fear is a stingy businessman
who will sell you a plot
for your loved ones, little angels
for your children, copper coins
for their eyes while at night
a million thoughts will appear
at your window clear as day
like someone with a lamp
a sack, a clock and a map
in the darkness black as a bat
a boot, a cap with the insignia
of dreams that die in the palms
of your hands like a wound
that won’t heal and turns green
like a fish, like jade, wet moss
growing on stones above graves.

when she begins to tell me this
im sure ive known it all along
four tours as a tank commander
could be to blame for how he  changed
from someone who respected her
and taught two boys to say their prayers
to fists and angry eyes night moves
and never any more desire
she packed and left the army base
in a years old car with rusted
rear quarters and one headlight gone
victim to an aluminum
bat that once knocked two ***** over
the outfield fence as they looked on

Damnation's doing well this year,
Fine crop sprung up on city streets--
Or get it free online, I hear.
My reading list includes the beats,
My playlist too, Pop smoke in peace.
We park the ice cream trucks for morgues,
The unmasked emperor, his niece
Unveils; psycopathy, call out the guards.
This will go on, it could get worse.
The heat don't help, we're on our own-
The preacher's wife believes we're cursed,
Infested by the doubt we've shown--
I think of Dean, the railroad track,
With no one there to have his back.

Is it weak to say I don't know
What I am without you?  Can't think
How the sun will continue its
Illusion, or how the waters
Will divide for my safe passage?
How to make it through the minefield
Of memories, or the maze that
Starts sometime before the morning?
It's hard to wear an expression,
How to find one less unnerving
Than my own reflection.  I guess
That's why the followers of God
Make black the mirrors.  But I see
Nothing anywhere except you.