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

                                     ­          Generation Whatever

             I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed,
             debriefed, or numbered. My life is my own.

                                 -Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner

Be not defined by dates and stereotypes
The endless clutter of cliches and cant
Generating generic generations
Of worthless weasel words of wanton waste

WHO are you?
Who ARE you?
Who are YOU?

That’s usually no one’s concern but yours
(The cop writing you a ticket gets to ask)



Thanks to Patty M at patty m - Hello Poetry  for lending me the consonant “W.”

I watch the flash of their eyes,
the inhabitants of this mansion
who sometimes hear the rats
rushing downward in the walls.

Perhaps they pause for a moment.
Perhaps they have an upsetting second.
But they make their way back to the bar cart
& pour another grocery store *****.

Then there are those of us, my reader,
who step into the dark below the basement,
into the hewn room with the odd altar
covered in very old stains...

There are even those among us
who find the unfortunate stair
that leads down into the bleak bowels
where subconscious reigns,

where the sins of the father
are visited upon the children,
where faces are married to the pit,
where you can only stumble forward

until, at least, you reach the black lake.
Looking down, having eaten yourself
with a red smile and the knives of love,
you see your own face in the still water.

Sgailc-nide - the first morning drink, taken while still laying flat on your back

A caustic belt of autumn sun
flings itself through the glass,
yolk wasted across the blood-rug.

Last night's final slug
of scotch sits waiting
on the blackcloth nightstand.

I gather it into my fist,
take a look at the blue syrup
of morning light...

I will tell you all
that the first morning shot
glows like a new blind heart.

This future is mad with silence,
while the past asserts itself
in lost faces, so many lost faces.

I have a bruise on my face
that I can't recall getting.
I don't remember the evenings,

although last night I cut my hair
with a rattling metal hand
that sharped at the skull.

Each morning is a scrape.
I don't recognize this lonely man
in the acid sluice of mirror.

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

                      A Disembodied Hand Doomscrolling
                       on the Wall of Tia Maria’s Barbecue

                                       - not Daniel 5

Tiffany was treatin’ the girls to barbecue
The merry ol’ girls from her bowling league
(Dazzling team colors in pink and blue)
She had made herself captain through cruel intrigue

When suddenly a disembodied hand
Appeared with a smartphone by the restroom door
And keyed strange lines that in flickerings scanned:
“You’ll be sacked this evening - your team’s 0 to 4”

That very night Tiffany’s custom ball was taken
And she cried in her trailer, her heart a-breakin’

****** wine-light crawls
the window ledge in Chelsea.
From our hotel room we can see
a blond wig fall to the floor
in an orange room across West 28th.
Out on the street, brown beer stains
spread across the peculiar night cloth.

People who can forget can let go;
the rest of us will remember
the way the moon rolled over
the highrises in Little Italy
by Gelso and Grand,
& got stuck in her eye;
I died more than a little.

For my mother friends:
my good gosh you are amazing.

Kids in general spew and hurl,
flail utter ******* at you
and forget the next day

boys stink,
think in straight lines ‘til they don’t,
girls twist all sorts of hate
and then hug your very soul

you are the world to them
forgoing all others
to be kicked and kissed equally

which is why you have my envy x

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

                            Our Lady of the Perpetual Garbage Sale

It’s for the youth

Our parish hall is now a re-sale shop
All full of junk that never goes away
Boxes of videotapes and castoff slop
And smelly clothes that have had their day

It’s for the youth

The Mass no longer ends with “Ite, missa est”
But rather, “After Mass would some of the men…”
Shift the same old debris without let or rest
Sisyphean labors for original sin

It’s for the youth

Fellowship after Mass is tired and pale -
The one eternal is the garbage sale

But it’s for the youth