As a kid, I know I saw air shows
although none specific stand out,
I know there were skies that
buzzed and thundered
the sound of determined direction

at each one I know there would be pilots
who threw small planes in tight loops

everyday, pulling back on the stick,
taunting gravity to notice and push,
barrelling to a zenith
of impossible weightlessness, momentary,
before the nauseous crush returned,
over and over in front of an audience

and I know I watched and thought
“That’ll be me one day.”

-


Momma died two decades ago,
she would have turned
seventy-eight to—day

i woke up and spoke with her
this morning, imagining her
with a long red Irish mane

about Daddy being laid up in a
nursing home, my brother and
i hoping to fix him before he
finally gives up

she said—  "nothing"

i think maybe this is because
she long ago saw the lights
up ahead, in a place where
human conversation would
be considered archaic

and birthdays rendered
as undefined

she is illuminated within it now,
there to later show the way for
the rest of us who continue
marking our calendars

as we persist here on Earth—
still enumerating yesterday,
to–day, and tomorrow...



s jones
30 Dec 2021


.

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

                         A Little Lady Smoking a Big Cigar

              In the drive-through line at Jenny’s Fried Chicken

Middle-aged, petite, wearing a pixie-cut
Dangly earrings and old blue overalls
And a frown on her face, she left her car
And walked around it disapprovingly

Her inspection complete, she stepped back in
But she still wasn’t happy with the world
Given the defiant angle of her cigar
A ****** against all importunities

Her smoke was a warning to all: you’d best keep clear
And I don’t know why (I didn’t dare ask)

A tenderhearted rage flows from my
pen, like the Mississippi river after six
months of a hard rain.  
Suffering released, I long
for peace, as I grab the pen like
a ****** grabs the syringe, like my
very life depends on it because it
probably does.

The passion that flows within
my veins give a voice to my
soul when the pen vomits
words on the paper, like a
drunk the morning after a
night on the town, trying to
drown the memory of her.

I'm bent on writing because the
world's dim lighting cast shadows on
everything that mattered to me.
I'm shattered you see by
circumstances beyond my control.
Life just seems to roll right over me,
but I take my plight with the fight of
a soldier, whose battle cry is:
furor scribendi, a rage to write; because
in the revealing comes the ultimate
healing and that ******* light will
never die.

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

                                            An Electric Light Bulb

An electric light bulb is a marvelous thing
A globe of glass and gas and wires within
You can almost hear the filaments sing
When light upon a page lets your reading begin

By what magic does this wonderful device
Receive invisible aethers from long wires
This strange glowing pearl beyond any price
As it relights from Sol its little fires

An electric light bulb is a poet’s delight
Framing pentameter all through the night

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

                   Even So, Someone’s Got to Milk the Cows

           U.S. Covid-19 Cases Set to Triple Pre-Omicron Record

                          -Wall Street Journal, 10 January 2022

The pharmacies have no more Covid tests
The supermarkets no paper for the loo
The people feel that masks and jabs are jests
The government replays each Fauci-boo-boo

The Qanons tell us it’s just the ‘flu
The sheeple, they say, are easily led
Others that horse paste is the thing to do
The hospitals haven’t another bed

The cynics assure us we have nothing to dread
But some use their stimulus checks to bury their dead

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

                                      Looking Back on the Day

Looking back on the day – did I give thanks?
I lazed over my coffee and the morning news
Noted the crows and the morning’s light frost
But that’s not good enough

I washed the dishes and a load of clothes
Looked into a novel and a poetry book
Sorted laundry and fed the squirrels and birds
And that’s not good enough

One give thanks for another day of life
By making that day what it should be