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

                                     ­ Disney’s Macbeth

                     Upon the release of Joel Coen’s version

I want to see Macbeth in Technicolor
Almost Disney-ish, in cheery pastels,
With bright-lit halls and sunny fields of flowers
And maybe Annette as Lady Macbeth

And let Macbeth be a comely youth
With muscular hands that wield both sword and pen
An honest merry face that smiles with ease
Sweet words and penitent Aves on his lips

The world is well-lit ever since the ark -
It is the human heart that lurks in the dark

My sisters and I jest
That men never get over us.
We have been named
Muses, angels, succubi, leanan sidhe
But we are les belles dames avec merci
And that is their undoing.
Our breath has left them gasping
With unfilled lungs
We never meant to be their oxygen
But they drink us in like drowning men.

We didn’t ask for this,
But disarming, we are soft enough
For them to float in
Belly up, eyes to distant stars
Singing the sirens song that stirs in our veins.

Behind our teeth rests the love
The world has failed to give them till now
There are holds in the knowledge
that our fingertips find the hollowed spaces,
mother wounds, clefts where trust was carved out,
And they clutch our palms to staunch the bleeding.

We never asked for this,
They cherish the brittle changelings of us
until they are crushed in the coals of our eyes
Eggshell ideals, fragile as egos.
Blown by the sea wind in the strands of our hair
they are scattered, undone.

The distance drifts between, inevitable
And full they turn away to starve
We cut the mooring line
After one too many storms,
And search
For safer
Harbor.

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

                                Abraham Lincoln and Macbeth

                           After life’s fitful fever, he sleeps well

                                              -Macbeth III.ii.23

To imagine a modern president
Having a favorite Shakespearean play
Is not to imagine a president at all

The rule of king is lonely
Assassination makes the deaths impartial
Leaving the road to glory ******
but the riches are monumental!

Witches say I'm invincible
Was all this premeditated?
Invincibility?the thought is laughable!
Maybe this was fated…

The secret had been discovered
The murders avenged
With the guilt leaving you feel smothered
Oh how I've been challenged

At least the kingdom is ruled by one better than I
Tis a shame that I had to die

My life may have been taken from me
My names just a shadow of another
But these hands can still hold a knife
And take a man’s life
I can crown myself
And become my own god
Of blood, of sacrifice, of vengeance
And if I fall
Let it be by my own hands
Let them them slit my throat
And let no man even think
Of touching me

The king was but livestock,
given to the next in line.
His death was a tragedy,
but another arose from it.
chaos uprooted justice,
and bit by corrupted bit,
the monarch transformed.

A demon came from the monarch,
just as a saint had come from the king.
However, since the king was ill livestock,
the monarch would drop like a rock.

Hail Macduff!
Hail the one who hath slain
a most fearsome demon!

Do i dare speak of him?
The fie which corrupted the soil of our Inverness?
T'was a dream conjured deep in my heart, darkened.
One might say, it was thy hand that grasped the dagger
Yet thy refuse to perceive it so.

Refrain me from the sweetness of Hope's spiteful tongue
Let not it take my naked frailities, my valour.
T'was not my vaulting ambition which o'erleaps itself and falls on th'other.
Though his eyes spoke of his intent, he could not bear the ****** dagger himself.
I pity his fragility, his virtues clear yet no more a man than i.
Too full is he of the milk of human kindness. I hath unsex myself, to therefore bear the fruit of Cawdor.
Unsex me i say? Strip me of this pity. Hie thee, sightless substances enter my home and make me fell, the golden round is merely a breath away.

The Sun shall not see me as it wakes, soon I will no longer be heat-oppressed.
Macbeth does ****** sleep, and so shall i.

Hurry, sweet equivocator.
The guilt spilt stains my skin, as does thine.
I had liv'd a blessed time, yet now there's nothing serious in mortality.
The hell-fire spits at my feet, yet never reaches my heart.
Oh, torture it is, hell-gates open not.
Must i stand by, licked by the flames of Beelzebub yet never truly entering?
Oh woe is me.

My mouth is bitter, the taste of my near'st of life cold.
I see no need to wail, alas the time has come for the devil to cast me.
Please't be readily and alight.
God plead for this to be my final night.