Claw to scratch
itches that you can’t identify,
as if I could ever stoop so low

Nobody told me so
is no excuse, buddy boy,
so stop playing the silly goose

I hate you, bambino,
your stupidity sticky
like sad celluloid
held too long in the gate

We’re through

#done #disappointment #end #humans

The problems with grilling
aren’t clear
until you choose to clean

Mystic lake, nestled in the kind of scenery
Landscape painters drive many miles to find.
Water. so clear you can see
Almost to creation and the rocks
A hundred feet below.
Cold but never frozen,
It’s water is the color of a Summer sky
Because it is so pure.

Recreation Paradise straddling two states-
Boating, hiking, swimming…
And on one side there’s gambling
Where you can exercise your fortune
With the spinning of a set of wheels
Or the rolling of the dice.
Such popularity has brought
A shadow to the pristine shoreline.

Development and overuse
Are sullying the waters
Once a vivid cerulean,
But now a dimmer version of the color
With a mistiness as depths increase.
Is it too late to stop the damage
Can people yet be made to care
And turn around the gradual fading
Of one if God’s most premier jewels
ljm

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

              The Great Canadian Dairy / Diary Dispute of 2022

         "Canada must now do the right thing and come into full
           compliance with its obligations on diary [sic].”

   Brady: Canadian Dairy Dispute Settlement Achieved Thanks to
  USMCA’s Improved Enforcement | U.S. House of Representatives

How many nights have Americans lost sleep
Through fear and righteous anger that in the darkness
An illegal liter of perfidious Canadian milk
Might sneak across the 49th Parallel

The lights burn late in the Pentagon tonight
While border guards watch the wicked north
Lest a stick of malicious Canadian butter
Attempt to overthrow our Constitution

We watch all our borders constantly now
Against Canadians hiding in a Trojan cow

A sideline:
Nomark stands on a horizon
governed by others
and has no fingers of his own to point

Every misbegotten instinct
tells him to run
from these verbose prigs,
but instincts are felt
not read or heard

Nomark squints as there is sun rising,
in colours that chafe
like eighties underwear
that didn’t breathe

He tries breathing
on his own awhile

The traditional pattern
of a set to for Nomark is this:
against the backdrop of the giant grift
perpetrated by the grand smug *****
he firmly grasps the wrong end of the stick
which, to be fair, is waved at him enough

A poster child for impotent rage
he’ll berate the checkout staff
about a voucher that’s either expired
or, mired in labyrinthine small print,
doesn’t amount to a free diddly squat

Without the words, the means,
the agency to upbraid the bosses
he huffs home on an overcrowded bus
where not a single other ****** wears a mask

Have you considered the owl?
Excluded from days
like a diabetic warned off fudge

Is the carob of night enough?
Sure, it’s dark, possibly smooth
and those tasty rodents move there

But look at the day
with a head that can turn right round
you’d see every rotten thing

Every bad stroke and selfishness,
every creaky knee and thumb
in clarity, loud

Oh to be the owl

"And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not." -John 1:5

I find whisky grammar in the cold sluices,
in the curve of the thickened glass-ash.

The bourbon cask gave its woody soul
to the barley spirit, to the amber shadow.

The New Year comes but I reject it;
the sun-ball drifts yellowing like an old page,

the moon rises like a bleached skull.
Ireland came and went, full of green iron secrets.

My life was full, but now it is empty.
I live in a high room full of guitars,

full of alcohol, full of deathly ulcers,
full of Plath and her sweet ether.

The air is seared. The water boils.
The witch shakes her hazel wand,

& demons sigh in resignation - why bother?
Humans move the darkness in little pieces.

Somewhere in Sicily, in Silesia, in Kent,
my blood is moving without me. My blood -

it's loving another. It's never had a headache.
It actually lives a full life, somewhere else,

that good red life. But not here: Here,
I drink in the old cemetery, with the blurry pebbles.