“O, who hath done this deed?”
        
“Nobody, I myself. Farewell./Commend me to my kind lord. O, farewell” ~ Othello V.ii
            
                                     *

The day my dad built my new bed, I cried for hours.
At last, a frame that will lift me up,
Not force me down.
At last, a frame that was fit for purpose.

No more hiding from the monster that lived underneath,
overhead and
in-between my sheets.

Somewhere to lie in without being lied to.

            (It’s just a bed, but it’s a safe place to rest my head.)

Somewhere to peacefully retire, not hastily retreat.

            (It’s just a bed, but it’s without him, so it’s without sin.)

There used to be so much silence after all the violence
          “And yet, she must die.”
You could use the very knife my life rested on to
Cut the tension in the room.

But now, Sweet Desdemona!
Now your rest is due.
He took your every breath away but
His chaos could not consume
Your famous last words.
He cannot reach you in your eternal sleep.

For months, I have thought you lucky, and envied your fate.
But now, at long last, I have found comfort in my own bed frame.

In the middle of midnight,
Night and morning kiss and part:
Parting is such sweet sorrow.

We're fishes in the internet
Caught in the catch of net the day.
The smartest smartphones place a bet
That some night soon you'll meet a gray.
A U.F.O. (or, as they say
In England Land, a yoofo) flies
From where sweet baby scarecrows play
And eye the stars with googly eyes.

While sweating drops of acid sweat,
A cyborg prays away the gay.
A covid sneeze that's extra wet
Is heading thine iambic way.
Tuberculariaceae......
Is the password!  You win the prize!!
Ride on a rocket to Mars, crochet,
And eye the stars with googly eyes.

If you should dance a minuet,
Throw in a twerk for Claude Monet.
I fly around a jumbo jet
While crying, "Climate change!  Obey!!"
Unqualified I fly (hooray!)
A plane that fails hardwarewise.  
Olympic athletes play croquet
And eye the stars with googly eyes.

Enjoy a ride in Santa's sleigh
Before you make your reindeer pies.
Shake thou the darling buds of May,
And eye the stars with googly eyes.

to be or not to be,
that is the question un
doing democracy
burdened by(what has been

the magic)8 ball knows
the answer,so do i
the magic answer is
better not tell you now

Across the years, 400 plus, my stories endlessly play out their parts.
I played not on painted stage, but I knew the human heart - 
I captured, with quill and scratch, the passions of laughter and tears.
I held up a mirror, in doublet and verse, to things unbound by years,
like the weight of grief, the lightness of love and the serpents of ambition.
The music of verse, the lilt and fall of words, hold a strange enchantment,
brief spells where fools, princes, witches and kings shared a selfsame planet.
Though my bones lay in hallowed ground, the stories I spun linger yet.
They've played out, in age after age, on a thousand, thousand stages.
It’s well done, if I say so myself, to live on, in millions of minds and bookshelves.
.
.
A song for this:
Just Like Romeo and Juliet by The Reflections

Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                For a Political Friend Who Politically Accused Me
            of Having My Apolitical Head in the Sand Politically


                     Our lives no longer feel ground under them

                           -Mandelstam, “The Stalin Epigram”


I have no illusions

I have no solutions

I have Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump

                    (And occasional basal cell carcinomas)

I can be silenced in fear

By their suicide sides

But I have a brain

                    (“…an ill-favoured thing, sir, but mine own.”)

And so to them

I am dangerous

If I am noticed at all

Wasn't it Shakespeare who said-
Shall I compare thee to a summers day?

And didn't the youth read that and think-
Lol, no. ***** gay asf pal. Get back to writing.