It’s never easy
starting midstream,
when your joints squeak like old vinyl.

Worse to end just as you begin,
editing hope into bullet points,
buffing your portfolio like a coffin lid.
You kneel to metadata while the holy algorithm decides
if you're human enough to be blessed.

Better to read old Nabokov,
nap in your robe
(the good one with pockets),
wait for the mail like it’s 1998
when catalogs still mattered.
Let purpose dissolve, like the vitamin
you dropped in the sink.

You failed to fail,
which sounds noble
but feels more like
accidentally surviving.

So drift toward the grocery by the newsstand,
nod to the pretty barista with the knife-edge bangs,
pretend the papayas mean something.

You’re the median of middle-aged.
Your knees, both traitors.
Your dreams, reruns.

These lines limp
like your fifth attempt
to rebrand the layoff as a sabbatical.
Don’t derail, just project
your better self on a screen.
Crop the hair, dim the lighting,
hide the existential dread
behind a well-placed emoji.

Let rhyme stutter
like a pull-string toy,
half-broken,
slightly too cheerful.
Feet unsure, eyes fogged
(by pollen, by memory, by news).

There’s no noir here,
no brooding detective,
no dame worth lighting a cigarette for.

Just this:
the echo of effort,
forms half-filled,
where even your name looks uncertain.

So let’s call it.
Let’s bury the draft,
archive the ambition,
delete the app.

End
where we never really
began.

At what stage does a poem become a short story? How many words can I squander or squash to fit a category?  
I think I know how to tell the difference between prose and doggerel but the rhythms change as pictures in my mind morph into another kind and thumb their nose at boundaries and realign themselves to squeeze just one more nuance in the dream - a poet's heavenly hell.

It feels like an unseen field.... a constant tension,  a rush of more tension, the acceleration of looking and seeing desire, the spiral of pulse, a void full of everything. as if I can sense with an imaginary skin some  thoughts screaming in your smile. they are blue riders on weightless nights, they roam the dunes of time. I think of you, hooked by a mystery that will never be solved

the new dark age
heart goes out
world goes up
all due to a love of concrete
and iron indignities

buildings grown in the heartland
steel your future
wrap your face in a foreign flag
make it medieval
so fear and superstition
can live on each floor

from above the cityscape
blueprints of a pinball machine
a train to nowhere
like candles on a cake
that will burn someday
when least expected

ladies against the glass
of morning commutes
show too much cleavage
to people on Sunday
gentlemen with their death sticks
conjure the factory smoke
poisoning a life of leisure
these infinite vistas
continue to rise
elevation well in hand
stitched together
but growing apart

the biomechanical soul
a species out of control
mother solitude and her
modern failures
take the stairs to the roof of her mouth
progress leaves an echo
her final words are
empty, foreboding
and full of lead

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                           High-Pressure Dome in a Coffee Cup

Blue light - an illusion of comfort at dawn
The streaky windows frame a winter day
Illusions and delusions lying to us
For this is July, when hopes wither and die

The sun’s tentacles ripple across the fields
One of them slithers to your window and leers
Mocking the fantasies of your air-conditioned sleep
Beckoning you outside: come and be fried

The sun’s hot streakings, mortals seeking, they roam
As summer’s slithering death: a high-pressure dome