Tuning in
Tuning out
Not out of interest but for health and heart
The emotional girl and poet needs to care about herself more
When you are very caring and loving
Sometimes you get lost along the way
Useless to loved ones and friends
So learning balance and even keel
Second and thitd best is a not good idea
Focus changed
Quieter and listening
Debbie and Donny Downers stay away please
Just have no time for you and those like you
Your process does not compute
Listen carefully extraordinary people like the poets
Here

~
Tonight underneath debris
Family foreclosure
...
Heaven's legs dawn through window
Offer artificial hope
...
Employee to love
Dressed for escape
...
Pleasure town angel
A multi-colored pretty thing
...
Mom questions way
Daughter drives to parties
...
Empty lips talk
**** reflection patterns
...
Death inside mom and dad
Beautifully cold skin
...
War god kiss
Midnight blue people (at dinner table)
...
Young shadows flower
Final stars fire
...
Money born cloud
Raining on remnants of family
...
Is there nothing
Left to mortgage?
~

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                                             But, Hey, No King

The most lawless ruler is a Man of the People
Posturing upon some whited balcony
His pouting lips frozen in a perpetual sneer
While his toadies cheer their *******, and call it freedom

The semi-automatic rifle is their Bible
Barbed wire is their semi-automatic law
The Constitution is but the president’s whims
          (Let us now pray
          for his bowel movements today)

Congress and the Supreme Court with feet of clay
Await in fear, in disgrace, in moral decay
For a Murat to come and brush them away:

                                  “Citizens, you are dismissed.”

Mirror mirror on the wall
Reflect my sorrows reflect them all
And when I cry when I scream
Reflect the way I think of me

Mirror mirror on the wall
Reflect the way in which I fall
But catch my teary eyes in sight
My eyes of gold reflect the light

Yes. Ride up the Yukon in winter –
No one to stop you.

I can see your tracks threading northward
and, once you start, it won't take so long

to get there, to the end, if it matters.
They say starting’s the hard part,

to get ready, tighten the straps,
test all your gear, all the training.

The winters have come and gone,
but the frozen river waits for you

to pedal through the deep snow,
because you will, now that you've started;

covered in ice, squinting in the glare,
and it was enough to keep pumping the legs,

filling the lungs, singing a song, to follow
the river north in the winter. Happy

to be there, in that blinding light,
with feet too frozen to start for home.

I don't write when iam happy
Joy makes me dance,not think
It fills my hands with flowers
Not pens.

But sadness?
She sits me down,
Open my chest,
And spills the ink.

It didn't matter if it was
August, and the air felt like an
oven on broil, or if it was
February, and the dumpsters
were icecicles to the soul.
We needed *****, and since we
didn't have jobs, the cans, at
5 cents a piece were our
aluminum tickets to sweet relief.
The magic click.
Enough cans meant a bottle of
whiskey
*****
gin,
anything to dull the
sharp, vivid pain of life.

We sifted through
cat ****
catsup
***** diapers
discarded ***** mags,
and all the other
garbage from the
rich and the poor.

One winter morning,
I threw back a heavy metal lid,
and there was a fat
raccoon looking up at me.
If Bacchus or Dionysus were
smiling, we found a
full bottle.
It happened once in
a while during summer when
the college kids headed home.

Miles of walking,
freezing or burning up,
We were the aluminum
cowboys.

Down here by the Murray River,
where life swims all around;
above and beneath the surface,
in this heat, everything flows —
Beers, BBQs, budgie smugglers and babes in bikinis,
memories bobbing above ground
capturing freedom; post-pandemic and pre-celebrations.

Down by the Murray River,
watching things flow safely and soundly,
birthing new possibilities:
boyfriends, babies, businesses and brews?!
Endless possibilities abound,
prophecies realised; salvation.

Down by the Murray River,
with nature, our souls sing loudly,
simplicity is possible,
trusting and enjoying,
everything is allowed.