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

                All Power to the People’s Soviet of Gadgetry

1.

The servile arts teach us to plan
Wars for sending our children to die
Barbed wire for penning our fellow man
Computers to sneak and snoop and spy

2.

The liberal arts teach us to ask

                                                  Why?

Oh, now I feel my topmost greatness lies in my topmost grief. -Ahab, Moby ****, Hermann Melville.

The winter's body shakes in little slops
that beat against the window, sloping
upward out of the dead-leaf carousel
into the black sheet-fold of cares.

I shaped my life around someone who is gone.
Therefore I have no shape - I am a vapor,
a bolting-breeze, a formless sherd of glass
freed from the vandalized car window.

Every breath is glassy, an anesthetic
that numbs me to the next one.
Every beer and scotch liberated from the cabinet
helps me drift toward a wet oblivion...

What now? What now?
I don't struggle with dollars or dolls,
preferring instead the silence of the studio,
the slow march of ink across the face of it;

it snowed this morning.
My heart gave way. I opened the window
& let the frost enter the bed:
the scent of bitter coffee floods the air.

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

                        Las Vegas, Geographically Speaking

                    Upon watching the 1960 Ocean’s Eleven

That oasis of Cool no longer exists
Except as road markers and artifacts
All else is gone: cigarette girls, ashtrays
Rotary telephones, Ford Galaxies

The glamour of cocktail dresses and tailored suits
Xanadu with electric lights and Scotch
Heliopolis with showgirls and cards
So Cool that no one ever called it Cool

And like those fragments of Ozymandias
All of that Cool is lost among the sands

The day crept by; we all held
our breaths. Tip Toeing on
egg shells, doing our collective
best. Attempting only forced
politeness and meaningless
small chat.

While avoiding the family elephant in
the room, our father's painful history
of attacking his kid's perceived many
faults and failings, with his long history
of nasty aggressive verbal abuse.

The tree was lighted, the room gaily
decorated with all the colorful Christmas
props of our childhood. Mom cooked her
best guess of each of our, once adolescent
favorite foods. My two sisters, my older
and younger brother and me too.

While Dad bit his tongue and tried to stay
hushed, as Mom had pleaded for days that
he should do.

Halfway through dinner and a few Hot
Buttered Rums, the small talk turned serious,
and just like that, we were all truly back
home again.

Grown adults quickly reduced to sniveling
petty children sitting at their curl and
domineering Father's dinner table.

Old wounds opened and bleed upon Mom's
best-treasured tablecloth. Food grew cold
for lack of interest, eyes flared and oaths of
profanity mingled with cheery Holiday Music
on the stereo.  Belligerence ensued and the old
man raged as one by one he verbally listed his
disappointments, at each of our many collective
faults. A string of loud insults and accusation
were exchanged and flung liberally about in
all directions.

Judy's new husband took a swing at Jason for
reasons unknown, and the women protesting
their loutish behavior, separated them.

Earl and his small clan fled out the door and
drove straight back to Emeryville with not one
word of goodbye having been uttered, leaving
his kids Presents, behind unopened.

In tears, Sandy ran back up to her old room as she
had always done to escape, only to discover, that
it had been turned into a "Home Office/Sewing Den."
All her things gone to the Goodwill or garbage bin.

Dad went to the cupboard and got his bottle of
Scotch and the rest of us all quickly adjourned.

Mom started to cry and never quit.

The Dog Days of Christmas had recommenced,
and all the Kings horses and all the Kings men
could never put our broken Castle together again.

I donned my helmet, swung a leg over my Hog
and headed for the mountains, leaving Christmas
and all of them in my rear-view mirrors.  

Just maybe, next year we will all try this again.

She never refused my assistance.
She never refused my checks.
She never refused my loving her.
She only refused my sharing
Any small part of her life.
I wasn’t to know of her feelings.
I wasn’t to meet any friends.
I never got told her ambitions
Or shared when she met a new love.

She never said to get out of her life-
Not in so many blunt words-
Just ever too busy to meet me.
And only Voice Mail on her phone.
I’m strictly forbidden web browsing
And everything possible’s blocked.

I own nothing I that I can give her
That didn’t come from my exe’s mom,
The only mother she seems to admire.
My treasures will go to my sister’s kids
And their children, who don’t even know me.
Her windup of my earthly affairs
Will be quick and “Call One Eight Hundred”.

For someone who tried so desperately hard
And never gave up for a second
It seems life’s given me so little back
It almost was not worth my efforts.

She never will change - it’s too late for that.
There’s naught I can do to repair things.
My life’s ended up in a very dark corner
And that’s where I’ll finish my days.
ljm

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

                    A Man and His Dog at Sunday Mass

                        And in what landscape of disaster
                        Has your unhappy spirit lost its road?

                                   -Thomas Merton,
             “For my Brother - Missing in Action 1943”

His pilgrimage on earth is in his van
His clapped-out van, his one-man caravan
With an air-conditioner duct-taped in back
And his old dog next to him in the seat

At Mass he sits in back with his good old dog
His clothes are warm, he gets enough to eat
And, sure, a man and dog who approach their God
Together are good and faithful servants indeed

His pilgrimage on earth is in his van
His clapped-out van, his one-man caravan

And there is a dog

These words will have no life,
Unless you take them in,
Revive them with your breath ,
Allow their lingering.
Abandoned letters
Have no aspiration,
No strength to move feathers,
Approach explanation,
Coerce your lips to move,
As one possessed or cursed--
Hell finds a way to shove
Its wages in your purse.
And when it's all been said,
Give praise for what you've heard.

Please excuse the boundary
of my sadness;
it's not normal, I'm aware,
maybe, even maddening.

But, the horses need hay.
They are hungry.

Long evenings
full of shadows,
surround my blood
stained lazy bed.

The horses need hay.

Let's gather our
senses, and get to
the fields.
Make-believe we
have purpose and
direction.

Isn't that
the mindset we need
to overcome the largest
lie of them all.

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

                    Thanksgiving Essentials are out of Stock

                                     -Thus saith the news

A house, a book, a dog, a good warm coat
A job, a ride, a friend, someone to love
A dream, a hope, a plan, coffee with you
A family around the table, something to eat

And gratitude - all the essentials are in stock