If I state I’m going to do something
then don’t, as often happens,
then I’ve planted a ***** seed
that’ll grow into a choking vine,
not free, or wise

So dark January resolutions
might help Calvinists,
or masochists, or both,
but for the rest of us
comfort in our skins is better

I have no preach for you
to do this: just listen

Your own heart cries and sings
all day, every day
and you will beat yourself
far harder, over cheese and *****,
than anyone who loves you would

So go inward a while and think,
and even if your conclusions
don’t match the zeitgeist,
love you, as we do

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

                     A Time Capsule for our Noblest Soldier

                          “In war I do not like to take sides”

                                         -Sergeant Schultz

If there must be time capsules buried beneath
Statues of bold men wearing uniforms
As a remembrance of man’s noblest ideals
Let us have one for dear ol’ Sergeant Schultz

A recipe for Hans' apple strudel
A bottle of his favorite Pilsner beer
A Cuban cigar from Colonel Klink’s stash
And a menu from the Hofbrau House

But especially the strudel

If we must honor soldiers, as some assert
Then let us include their favorite dessert

I feel it all collapse
and wrap around like normal
with a wire wool hug

the chafe is on

Some poets write in captious verse
With  meanings hidden and often terse
Making readers want to curse
Through lips that they in anger purse
With thoughts of mayhem that they nurse
Of poets carried in a hearse
To fates that go from bad to worse
       ljm

I was given Carte Blanche
To fail spectacularly
At unlimited endeavors
And I utilized that perquisite
With determined concentration
To the maximum that it allowed.
I’m waiting for my banquet.
And the silver plate award.
ljm

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

                               A Child’s Garden of Worse(s)

                   Some poets wrote verses which were not meant
                   to charm the reader but to get them a Stalin prize.

                  -Yevtushenko, A Precocious Autobiography, 1963

The children who are permitted to live
Are not permitted to read what they want
When they ask for adventures our censors give
Ideology, instead of a jaunt

The children who are not submissive to the code
Not following this week’s fashions in science
Or who presume to kick against the goad
Will be inclusively loved into compliance

And from the Hippocrene a taste, a drink?
Oh, no! Children are now forbidden to dream or think

What’s in your glass, huh?

What’s your poison
with the noise and the noise
in and out of the head?

What swirls, has legs
and kicks like a mule?

Fool juice, nana called it,

but **** me
I could use some fooling

You know that noise
they like to use in the movies
right now?
The one that sounds like
discordant foghorns falling
bwaaaarmmm
as the big bad arrives?
That’s 2022 that is,
bring the popcorn and watch

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

                                     The Stupidest Metaphor

                         Do these camouflage knee-pantsies
                       make my 250-pound *** look too big?

He never formed up with a skirmish line
To **** and snoop to some distant trees
Across a death-hot field of weeds and mud
With some idiot yelling, “Dress it up!”

He never feared that a 40-mike-mike
Would blow his guts and spine into ****** rags
Which would get his air-conditioned C/O
In Saigon another medal and promotion

His PTSD is from watching TV
But he is pleased to claim that he is a
                                                                ­      *warrior