To each a body temple,
crated temple earth!

Two homes therefor each..
One head lay with one heart...

And offer one another the bed
of forgiveness each day,
magnificently,

Bold

Ebb beat,
Beat breathe,
Flow beat

Beat
   r
     e
       a
         t
           h
             e
                :
Birthing as we see
Indeed, we be    

Understand

Within

Bless

Love be
love See

Out
ward's

Utter
Ing's
Rx's

Truly
Free

'That
is all'

Lord's
o
r
d
e
s
s
'
s

Now can you see the monument? It is of wood
built somewhat like a box. No. Built
like several boxes in descending sizes
one above the other.
Each is turned half-way round so that
its corners point toward the sides
of the one below and the angles alternate.
Then on the topmost cube is set
a sort of fleur-de-lys of weathered wood,
long petals of board, pierced with odd holes,
four-sided, stiff, ecclesiastical.
From it four thin, warped poles spring out,
(slanted like fishing-poles or flag-poles)
and from them jig-saw work hangs down,
four lines of vaguely whittled ornament
over the edges of the boxes
to the ground.
The monument is one-third set against
a sea; two-thirds against a sky.
The view is geared
(that is, the view's perspective)
so low there is no "far away,"
and we are far away within the view.
A sea of narrow, horizontal boards
lies out behind our lonely monument,
its long grains alternating right and left
like floor-boards--spotted, swarming-still,
and motionless.  A sky runs parallel,
and it is palings, coarser than the sea's:
splintery sunlight and long-fibred clouds.
"Why does the strange sea make no sound?
Is it because we're far away?
Where are we? Are we in Asia Minor,
or in Mongolia?"
                            An ancient promontory,
an ancient principality whose artist-prince
might have wanted to build a monument
to mark a tomb or boundary, or make
a melancholy or romantic scene of it...
"But that queer sea looks made of wood,
half-shining, like a driftwood, sea.
And the sky looks wooden, grained with cloud.
It's like a stage-set; it is all so flat!
Those clouds are full of glistening splinters!
What is that?"
                        It is the monument.
"It's piled-up boxes,
outlined with shoddy fret-work, half-fallen off,
cracked and unpainted.  It looks old."
--The strong sunlight, the wind from the sea,
all the conditions of its existence,
may have flaked off the paint, if ever it was painted,
and made it homelier than it was.
"Why did you bring me here to see it?
A temple of crates in cramped and crated scenery,
what can it prove?
I am tired of breathing this eroded air,
this dryness in which the monument is cracking."

It is an artifact
of wood.  Wood holds together better
than sea or cloud or and could by itself,
much better than real sea or sand or cloud.
It chose that way to grow and not to move.
The monument's an object, yet those decorations,
carelessly nailed, looking like nothing at all,
give it away as having life, and wishing;
wanting to be a monument, to cherish something.
The crudest scroll-work says "commemorate,"
while once each day the light goes around it
like a prowling animal,
or the rain falls on it, or the wind blows into it.
It may be solid, may be hollow.
The bones of the artist-prince may be inside
or far away on even drier soil.
But roughly but adequately it can shelter
what is within (which after all
cannot have been intended to be seen).
It is the beginning of a painting,
a piece of sculpture, or poem, or monument,
and all of wood.  Watch it closely.

Music was my way to drown out what I would feel,
trying to deny that it was real.
My skin would suffer from what I would do to myself
I couldn't take my mind off the silver object hidden on my shelf.

The silence of my bedroom
ultimately crated violence.
The things that left me horrified,
I saw constantly glorified.

While the most beautiful things can be birthed from pain,
The pain was not what was to be desired, the constant drain.
No one should ever think that the fear of gain makes you strong,
It should not be the subject in a song.

Blood stained wrists are not romantic,
It is caused by pain overly titanic.
Don't try to relate self horror,
With being an explorer.
                                                    Beauty is Beautiful,
                                                        Pain is Painful.

enormous elephant in the room
his fat *** blocking the shrooms
i can't see the ******* moon
ahh this is that
finger that tap taps at the scaled skins
on the shapely layered fins
of the crated barreled tins
of my dainty figured limbs

that cross bows into the muscle
that beats a hollow hustle
a rhythmic monotonic tussle

that in which keeps this alive
this thing i call the enigmatic tide
this wussy like mind
this funk-du-funky found
that that idiotic lice that lied

in which I figure is the only thing left to ****
the mind that is not the vicarious blinds
that cover the truth in various skills
to which I cannot shallnot reveal in lines

starting fires in alleyways and watching flames lick across brick
rubbing damp clay dolls across palms to chase warmth in winter
picking fake leaves off of plastic plants and flicking fern on floor
crouching next to walnut pots and standing to the doorway sides
grazing static on the television as pearl teeth knock across the pane
kissing knuckles and letting silver spikes snake between your teeth

breaking might be like running my fingers through the fields of your hair
sowing flowers in the empty crevices that separate the folds of my skin
walking by your crated white-picked house in the brisk afternoon
laying a hollowed hand over the denim jacket before my upticked heart
pressing lips to letters hoping that they'll be ripped open tomorrow
plunging eyes inside the envelope waiting to read what i write

when i look in the mirror
i can't appreciate what i see
i'm no work of art
i'm not beautiful
or special
i'm just a girl
who is overlooked
because i'm not the Mona Lisa
i'm just a ****** sidewalk chalk drawing
that was crated by the 8 year old that lives next door
i'm just ugly scribbles on the old concrete sidewalk
no one bothers to look
or to say "hello"
i'm just there
with cracks and flaws in my foundation
that no one bothers to repair
i'm a mediocre piece of art
if i even qualify as that much
and when the rain comes to wash me away i will be gone
but i won't be sad
because i know that even though i wasn't beautiful
or mesmerizing
or enchanting
i had a purpose
i was significant
and hopefully i meant something to someone
and for once in my life
i am happy

No hugs no kisses that's not a males way
Listen to what your daddy say
Is what I've been told
Ever since I days old
They say kids are your blessings
I guess i was curse
Without me life would be better
Guess I made worse
Being committed and young
You said that life was dumb
Overrated it seem like my smile you hated
Tho it was the face you crated
I'm pround of you ones in my life
A moment life felt right
Hes Speaking from experience
That give me no convenience
I Try to see right When I see wrong
Me and father well never get alone

crated to an imperfection
the moon and her's reflection.
Glowing back at her in the lakes surface
she wasn't nervous.
She came here for a purpose.
She sank her feet into the sand
felt the water with her hands
looked up at the moon
thought of your face
quickened her pace
lowered her head underwater
and never came back up to the lakes surface.

Injured from the outside..
Bleeding from the inside...
I'm touched and my body wants to suicide..
Got so far and all I have is the desire to die..
I lost my human side..
Searching for a therapy that can heal my mind..

Under the moon light...
I stayed awake overnight...
Crying and praying with a broken heart....
Waiting for the daylight....
Wishing and hoping something goes right...
I've started what I cannot restart...

I was a dead body for a long..
And from now wish just nothing goes wrong..
I've been waiting a long....
With a frozen blood and painful song..

Candle faith becomes less in length...
And fire flare started losing it's magic strength...

I've gone away with no words to say....

I've been where none have seen...

My precious poor heart is crated...
Beats very slowly and confused for what i've created..

My tongue attached in a deeply closed cell..
In a range of concerns with nothing left to tell..

Winds of past began to chase...
Searching for a memory was lost in the spacious space...

I'm dying..I'm done..
Suffering on my own..
Forever alone and entirely unknown..

Every breath I take..I get more pain...
Tied with an unbroken grief cursed chain...
But something keeping me alive..
Something giving me power..
Such a bright shine flower..
something telling me : You got the key and im gonna set you free..
stop grumbling and complaining cuz you're not the only broken tree..

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

                   Keats Helps Carry a Cat to the Veterinarian

          [I]f Poetry comes not as naturally as the Leaves to a tree
                                 it had better not come at all

             -John Keats, Letter to John Taylor, February 27, 1818 1

The leaves come naturally from the trees today
As autumn floats away, onto the pages of life
Memories set down, one word at a time
Or phrases scribbled in heart-leaping haste

But in humility the poor poet perceives
That lines often don’t come naturally at all
Resisting as fiercely as hissing cats
Being crated for a trip to the vet

No

Poetry doesn’t come as easily as all that -
Come, Mr. Keats, and help me with this cat!


1 John Keats – "Keats's Axioms" -- Letter to John Taylor, February 27, 1818 | Genius

Or, in other words my Thoughts are to inferior for you,
You who proudly takes the Teachers seal upon you,
and swears non judgement, you who taught me Poetry was
something to be loved, crated, and cherished no matter the subject or the look. Such are arbitrary to my message I attempt to convey,
and the feelings I try to display.
You don't like what I write?
I, frankly, Don't like you.

the dog, crated, waits patiently for the coming of morning:
and with it, breakfast.
still in her red jacket
delivered today
she lies somewhat uncomfortably in it. but not
angrily, as before.

the dishes pile up in the kitchen: not caught up from the week_
they will remain too, sleeping until dawn
standing as evidence of time passing
and of bodies being fed.

minds will wander to other things
but bodies have been fed
and they push into tomorrows (because of it.)
[.    ]

The days are boiling down
aren't they
or are they?

Your shield is in place
neck hunch
I don't know?

I come b"??*?"ing time
moments
all crated hot

And I hold back stuff
no trust
scalding u

You read that wrong
I think
looking out

perhaps as much as the goldberg variation
    BWV 988 aria is some sort of cliche...
           and somehow... there aren't any tinges
of plagiarism in tchaikovsky's 1812 overture
plagiarisms of la marseillaise?
             well of course there would be tinges
of it: how did it manage to stay up
in classic.fm's hall of fame chart for several
years at no. 1 -
          does listening to it somehow imbue
more imagination than a tolstoy epic:
or one is more inclined to listen to the overture...
than read war and peace for
  15 minutes? if one is after a russian romance
theme:
prokofiev: alexander nevsky -
                                        battle of the ice...
the tchaikovsky answer to la marseillaise is...
sorry... where is the mass appeal?
                  it's like something penderecki would
compose for: an orchestra of pots and pans...
but that's just me...
and as for easter?
     "good news" is: i drank my way through
it... like a cobbler -
  having said the most obscene things on good friday:
apparently not necessary in the end -
the "problem" involved switching something
off... then switching something on...
never mind...
             easter... historically:
it must have happened sometime mid-august...
in that fateful year of circa 33a.d. -
   probably happened in mid-august...
while all life was apparently happening elsewhere:
it wasn't going to be a congregational
event to occupy a calendar year of:
let's say: a third of the globe...
                                 size or population...
if it's a celebration of "something" and it doesn't
have to come back to me:
kneeling and taking things: a little bit too
literally...
    i crucified winter on a friday...
              and lo and behold:
         the same annum winter to come by
december...
although: reborn... is it the third day...
from the day of the execution: to the hour...
does the resurrection come on a sunday or
on a monday?
     well... if you'd consider the sabbath...
   it doesn't happen... on the morning of waking up:
like a saturday...
         or a sunday...
and it ends upon going to bed...
  so if the crucifixion / sabbath... happened on...
the 6th hour of the afternoon:
or whatever time a crucifixion would
be most agonising and draw the most crowd
and would giving a wine soaked sponge
on the end of a lance up to that...
   crown of myrrh: why just call it "a crown of thorns"?
oh i'm pretty sure they'd dig up
all those gifts... the gold... with judas:
but seeing that they were needy times...
the rabbis didn't operate with the gold standard...
silver would have to suffice...
seems probably that the crown was crated
from myrrh:
and the frankinscenes?
  it wasn't just a crucifixion... was it?
by striping (slashing the bark) and
letting the exuded resin bleed out and harden -
eventually his body did transform
into carvings from both wood and of
various stones...
      over the matter of not celebrating easter
as a good catholic should:
because it is the tradition...
because "i am": but i am an atheist...
because your father is... because my mother
and my father and my grandmother was...
i was called irreverent...
   and from my own mother's mouth...
                            you're just an 'antichrist'...
but i do have these serious questions to ponder...
and i'm sure that to "spread the message"
i have to do it now...
because if it did happen mid-august at noon...
and even if it was a friday...
but to spread the message...
it has to happen so that...
                         i nail winter to the cross...
and three days later she comes back
              smelling of cherry tree blossoms!
i also have to stop drinking and writing...
and sitting up late...
and take great lessons in w.h. auden's words:
only the hitlers of humanity write
at night...
     no more antics with hopes of:
an easy 'abbit to be chased after with 'ookovski...
mind the B...
back to classical music...
         and more to the point...
national anthems...
sorry... what does the anthem: god save the queen
spring to mind?
contempt... irreverence...
the shortest anthem in all of history...
now... if you gave me...
   de Lisle's la marseillaise: it's an anthem you
want to sing! you want to sing it!
    now...
       whether it's john playford's
1728 'the new bath'
or it's edward nowell's 'delight'...
     hell: another suggestion...
    william of orange (the third):
        wilhelmus von nassau...
          as henry grattan flood suggested...
but of course... changing the words...
merry ol' england... merry ol' england...
   god given right to an eternal queen
and a people that will never
       fade with a whimper...
i dunno...
but anything beside that ghastly:
baroque burp and **** of an anthem...
or maybe not...
  but at least true feelings can be met
with an uninhibited pen and...
                  a matter of musical taste...
in the end.
                             at least... tchaikovsky's
1812 overture didn't make it to the number 1
place in the classic fm hall of fame chart...
and i crucified winter and out popped spring.

p.s. if you can sing auld lang syne...
come the end of the year...
i do admit: singing god save the queen
must sometimes feel like a funeral for the heart...
it's hardly the fife and drum;
but it could be!

1.
Framed by a well-worn,
wooden windowsill,
we peer down on Purgatory
from our hotel perch
high above the restless shores
of Lake Como.

Behemoth slabs of marble
hang in limbo: rough-hewn
bodies awaiting their savior —
the divinely appointed sculptor
to chisel away the sins of their world.

Reflected in the window’s wavy glass,
the ghost of Michelangelo
glides past — an aging slave to beauty —
humming an Italian hymn to Venus
in syncopated rhythms.

He whispers that the stone
comes from Carrara,
carved out of ragged mountainsides,
carried down muddy, makeshift roads,  
crated onto misshapen barges,
then barreled down the Arno River.

Last stop: Firenze.

2.
In his hands, marble beams
as the body of the beloved,
draped in splendor and light,
draped in radiant form — form
of the sculptor, not the sculpture;
of the master, not the slave.

Beneath the rock-rough surface
of his métier, his soul
struggles to emerge from stone,
rising in rapture toward the divine,
rising on wings of beauty,
rising on wings of desire.

In his hands, marble melds into a mirror
of the making mind.
He levitates, an embodied ideal,
rising higher, ever higher,
toward his immortal beloved —
yearning to be made real,
to be made flesh,
the “coarse and savage bark”
of the artist’s first art.

3.
We come late to all
high lofty things,
he wrote.

And so we peer at the pit of Purgatory,
into its dissonant, disturbing discovery
that art cannot save,
that art cannot rightfully claim the artist’s life,
that art cannot breach the infinite reach
of divine love.

What happens is what is real;
but what is real is what we make happen.

The only choice, then: to go down, down, down into stone;
down into the blood-stained marble;
down into the rough-cut corners of regret.
Inconsolable, sculpture crumples into dust.

First, the patina falls away,
then appendages and organs —
everything but the sightless sea-surge
of skin, the seamless sanctuary
of pagan heroes and gods.

4.
The ideal — immensity, enormity, infinity —
ignites in unrequited desire. The heart strains in vain
to bear the weight of stone.

In Purgatory’s pit,
the master stumbles:
art cannot save him.
The body of his beloved crumbles.

Chiseled above his tomb:
Ripeness is all.