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

                          Upon Finding a Long-Lost Pocketknife

                      A man’s not dressed without his pocketknife.

                                 -my father, and probably yours

Deep-diving into the sofa and its depths
In quest of the elusive tv remote
A shiny treasure gleamed in the musty dark:
My long-lost British Army pocketknife

O, beloved opener of tins and envelopes
Dear sharer-out of slices of summer apples
The gardener and mechanic’s most useful tool
The philosopher’s most thoughtful instrument

In all one’s studies and adventures in life
A man’s not dressed without his pocketknife

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

                      A Dog, a Pocketknife, a Twenty-Two

               For Jared Allen Brandon, of Happy Memory

                             And Jared Walker Bess

A dog, a pocketknife, a twenty-two
The rightful possessions of every Texas lad
For working out the values he must live up to
The virtues that he learned from his solid ol’ Dad

A dog, a pocketknife, a twenty-two
Self-discipline, honest friends, a manly stride
A quiet voice that’s sturdy, firm, and true
A man of accomplishment and quiet pride

For you remember your own boyhood, yes, you do -
A dog, a pocketknife, a twenty-two

I'm in an airport. The walls are dark, burnt orange. The floors are grey. It's dimly lit, almost dark. It looks like a school. But it's an airport...but it's a school...
Everyone's here. There she is, and her, her, him...they're all here. All of them. Where are we going?
There? We're going there? "It's a class trip." But I don't have class with everyone here.
We're just friends.
What time is it? It's dark.
There you are. I was looking for you. Wait...who's that? Haven't I seen her before? Why are your legs covered? Your face looks mad...are you okay?
___

I'm in a hallway. A bedroom? My old bedroom? No, the airport, a hallway. Who are you? No, I know you, but what's your name? I forget.
You're kind. You smile, I smile, I know what you want to say.
We're in a hallway, on the floor. By the wall. There's a book, it's your book. "Read it." But when I look I can't see, the letters are blurry, the words are mixed up across the paper. Where are my glasses? There. They don't help anyway.
You kiss my forehead. I'm happy. I lay on your shoulder, leaning against this wall. A wall or a dresser, are we really in a hallway, and airport hallway?
You kiss me. You really kissed me, on my lips.
I'm sad. No, not angry...disappointed.
Not yet, I'm still with her. I want to be with her.
"You shouldn't."
I know. I don't want to. But I do, don't I? I look down.
I start to feel okay, I start to know what I want.
I look at you...
___

It's definitely a hallway now. This airport hallway. You're there. Where did you come from?
Don't get mad.
I know you're mad, please don't be.
Fine, be mad. At least he kisses my forehead.
Your legs are fine, you use them to walk away.
___

I'm still in this airport, only where everyone is.
We're leaving. We're on our way. Wait, my pocketknife. I can't take my pocketknife on the plane.
Where can I put it?
You're here again. She is too. You have crutches, I thought your legs were fine.
Can you hold my pocketknife? I can't bring it with me.
You looks so annoyed.
I'm sorry....
am I?
___

We're alone. We must be on the bridge, boarding the plane.
You look mad.
I'm confused. She left. Can we read the book again?
"I gave you a chance, you wouldn't."
No, I couldn't, couldn't.
You board the plane. I turn around.
___

My bedroom. My bedroom now.
It's light.

Funny the things we recall.
Images that flash through our brain.
Some most vivid for me were of an old man.
Skin like creased parchment paper,
Lined and yellowed with age.
The veins visible just below the surface,
of a thin nearly transparent veneer.
Liver spotted flecks of red,
Charted paths from the toil of many years,
Palms callused forever from a life time of labor.
Big fingers knotted and misshapen,
The two inch tip of one gone missing,
Saw taken, at age sixteen.

Looking at those old hands, one could hardly guess
That still there remained gentleness in their caress.
For an old dog, or a little grandson in need of some
Companionable affection or parental love.

Those aged hands could also make things,
Toy sailboats, and wooden trains,
complete with caboose,
And guard cow catcher.
A cool flute whistle that actually worked,
He said it was like the Indian’s made,
Out Oklahoma way.
And he would know,
He cowboyed there.

His hands taught me to tie my shoes,
Open and close my first pocketknife.
Those same hands could become birds,
rabbits, butterfly's, all sorts of things.
When projected up on the wall,
Silhouetted by a naked back light.
His hands knew magic too,
Pluck silver coins right out of my ears.

His tired face matched his hands,
visual weathered, creased and
wrinkled road maps,
Of 89 years of rugged roads traveled.

Yet, his lively pale green eyes remained
forever fraudulently youthful prisms,
Eyes and spirit of a much younger man within.

But it is his hands most of all I shall remember,
Their imposing look and their reassuring
touches of tenderness.

I shall never forget my grandfather’s hands.

I have saved a grand total of 3 lives... maybe.

2 lives probably.

1 life definitely.

I have saved the same life multiple times. Once from suffocation, once in a runaway situation.

I have saved myself numerous times. Twice from suicide... almost. And countless times over from personal trauma and pain.

I think I like pain too much. Yeah, I think I like pain a lot.
I think I like pain because it makes me feel human.

Because if I'm suffering, then the body is working, and if the body is working, nothing is wrong on the outside.

And by outside, I simply mean, the side that people ignore the easiest.

So when I get no reaction from anyone, it's okay. I know what it's like to get ******* over every day by everyone.

It's cool. No big deal.

I like weapons way too much, I like really cool blades and badass guns that for some reason are attached to electric guitars.

I'm a martial arts teacher. Which means that I am responsible for teaching young lives to survive until they are old lives.

I've never had to bare scars on my forearms. But I would like to bare tattoos... but only if you'll sign it with:

"Remember when I was here? Because I don't".

Hahaha... You're funny like that.

You seem to like knives too, you've made my back a knife block out of my back. You like to cook, don't you? Slice me up like one of your best works of art and I will scream how genius you are.

No.

There is no more room for me on a plate for you to serve up!

I...

I would constantly wash dishes after cooking in class. And I would always make sure I picked up some of your plates if I could because doing good things in secret was the closest I ever got to you.

And you went and replaced me with a seemingly nicer, shorter, pretty blonde who was everything that I was... but more

But it killed me that she wasn't me. Or maybe that I wasn't her.

Because she matters to you and that just cuts me up. One day I'll brandish a pocketknife with your name on it.

And every time I want to **** myself over what happened, I have to remember that no matter how many knives are in my back...

I have to keep this one in my pocket.

My boyhood pocketknife
Sits in the bottom of my bedside table
My skin is healing
But I still feel a little cut
I thank God every time I leave
Say goodbye to flat land
the long stretches of road
I forget the peonies
but they still bloom in me
My old backyard is littered
with noise and ***** snow
Cold trickles into the lungs
Slowly, like it's afraid to let go
Each exhale is proof we're alive
A cloud of condensation
curling away from mouths
Small, sleeping dragons
in an even smaller city
where all the jewels are gone

Fissures cut through thick mocha fur, saturating
The forest floor with stark crimson. The deer flails,
Broken, knees buckled, breath shallow and emerging
As vanishing steam in frosty November air.
He falls on a bed of sugar maple leaves, illuminated
In dappled sunlight and fulvous hues.

“Must’ve been the coyotes,” my brother whispers,
As my pocketknife meets the stag’s throat. Gentle
Auburn clouds and freezes time, the body falls still.

My father says, “Sacrifice is a form of worship, but it is only through
Mercy that we may show passion for what we believe.”

Coyote bites prevent carvings from going to Buxton’s General Store,
But what nature produces it also receives.
Ants forage along the split underbelly,
And a red-tailed hawk carries away the entrails.

History defines the antlers of deer as symbols of the Gods,
And men would wear them atop their heads.
I collect only them, still draped with threads of velvet,
Knowing that years from now, nestled inside the perimeter
Of wind-beaten fences around the family farm, beyond
Moss-covered slopes and the Wishing Rock,
Will be the bones of a solitary stag.

I lost my first
wedding ring
that summer

we floated
on inner tubes
coupled together,
drinking ice-cold
beer in the sun.

A flash of gold
and it was gone.

I lost the boots
my father wore
in Vietnam.

I lost the first
pocketknife
I ever owned.

I lost my mother.

I lost my way
in college once,
watching heavy snow
smother the foothills
and switchbacks,
watching mountain
birds turn wide circles
above rough canyons.

I lost track of time but
found my father’s gun.

Winter will always
sound like the whir
of a cylinder spun in
an unfurnished room.

He Has it All - 1

An entire floor of a building he owns
The Great Room illuminated by soft lights
A perfect fireplace row of red oak flames
Beneath a mantel of carven German work

One wall is paneled with leatherbound great books
The seatings are a find from Finland last year
Champagne is set out in Romanov crystal flutes
His guests in evening wear wait silently

And as he is rolled away in funeral home wraps
His family are scrambling for the scraps


He Has it All - 2

An entire bunk in a shabby rented room
Illuminated by a dangling bare bulb
His plastic coffee mug, a sink full of dishes
Beneath a dusty window on the alley

A plywood shelf bears a television for cheap
From Goodwill, illegally wired to the cable
After pocketing his pal’s pocketknife
His roommate waits silently, and weeps

A pack of cigarettes, a Bic, a comb
And angels vying for the honor of bearing him Home

each day lasts forever.but the weeks are forcibly torn out.crumpled into the void like unwanted notebook pages-the years are the most frightening-just to slide by them.folded over like the rolled edge of a dull pocketknife. imprecisely honed. imperfectly lived. [memoirs of a boy scout drop out]there's something suffering (in the way you do those things) stumbling into the musky, razor-blade winters of jack london's finest fantasies.like a ghost seen walking in circles around the perfect spaces in-between the empty moments of gentle speech.mumbling softly over the warm murmurs of crackling embers delicately pacing distance between themselves(so as not to burn so quickly.)the hot tangy slurs of blood dripping from downward facing fingertips.teeth gnashed together, translucent grey flint-wheel sparks springing from the shadows-flaring nostrils coupled with rapidly expanding lungs.breathing in the ferrous red-a single hammerfallpulsation. arms interacting with the bitter indifference of the cold that snaps open the veins throbbing wildly in clumsy hands-letting the animal spirits trickle out unrhythmically-into jackson ******* droplets.
onto the pristine snow.

():
you've taken up too many characters,
a placeholder, 0, is all i attribute to you.

(I):
i lack recall enough
to call back when
we first reacted--
science fair, maybe,
mâche volcanoes
from wet bits--
(too little base,
a surplus of vinegar)
the only magma
with measurable
pH

(II):
made cattle to caffeine,
the pastures we frequented
have gone out of business
by now

(III):
spoke and wrote
with silly string,
messy, childish,
hard to clean up--
impossible to pick
every adhesive trace
from tweed coat fibers--
i draped it around you
and left quietly without
apologizing

(IV):
number four, morphine drip,
corruption (with a caramel center),
you took me to a courtyard where
you had scrawled your number
with a gold safety pin stuck
in the grain--
didn't matter as long as they
brought you plain grain beverages--
i can't say how long i must have
been unconscious for you to
have been able to fully affix
trusses, crossbars and artificial joints
between prostheses--
you made a marionette of me
in a grubby alley operating room,
with an empty bottle
across the occipital for anesthesia,
and a patchwork of phone numbers
staring down from the scratched
portrait in the wood walls
of office buildings surrounding--
keep your cloths on a little longer
keep yourself closed from now on
keep yourself close from now on


[V]:
think of whichever oath you hold
gravely, and think of me, promising
i felt just as illusory as you before--
saved a letter from you i read sometimes
to remind myself how first real loves
can be, so as not to lose faith to cynicism,
and cynicism/stomach lining to coffee grounds.
thank you

[VI]:
i met you only once,
it was enough.
i didn't make out your
last name as you introduced
yourself between zipping up
your fly and cinching your belt,
and even while you walked
inside, between dry heaves,
i could think only of
your Texan-tinsel-town namesake--
good luck streaming the past like
mother's ashes from the back of
your lake boat so many miles from home,
it's all anyone could ask

(VII):
i took that polaroid of you;
you had your hand over
a candle flame and the
shadows dancing between
your fingers illuminated
the spare patches of snow
remaining on the playground.
there was no mistaking
the draining of my swimming
pool of ego as i witnessed
you staring out from each
ice crystal reflection in awe:
your smile tumbled down
the slide and spilled into laughter
while
your voice lilted up the rock wall
and sang in triumph at the top --
i miss you, ganges girl

[VIII]/[IX]:
first time i knew,
second time i suspected,
finally broke me down,
now we laugh about it,
or preferably, don't bring
it up anymore

[X]:
i might still be in love with you
first and foremost, if that's how
things worked, but virginity
isn't a collateral asset, you did
me no favors,
but share in sunshine shoves
and pushes-- a beer down,
3g 'til the bottom of the bag,
alice and wonderland--
i can't watch that movie
without thinking of long hair,
self-destruction, self-deceit,
and naïveté--
you made me grow up with you,
and while you've been in college
i've been rotting.

[XI]:
i've whiled away a year of slacking words
in favor of those spouting from you torrentially.
a placeholder, for people i've written too much about already:
11.

[XII]:
unnerved me in the best of ways,
but you were always ****** up
and emptied of scruples--
had me once at your favorite album,
fooled me twice when you came back,
but you won't get another chance to
touch me

[XIII]:
snow-flakey,
corn comfort,
corn snake.
solid, supple,
untrustworthy.

[moscow]:
you spent a year abroad
so i had only one thing to call you,
and even though I brought my black
camo S&W; pocketknife,
when you told me ******
was cheaper than marijuana
in the motherland,
i knew i shouldn't
have soothed myself
into confident
complacency,
and instead
leapt from
the subaru
piled high,
tobacco-strewn,
littered by cremations
of victims before me.

[XV]:
i yawn and jaws part,
droop down lids,
the realist rendering
of a singularity in film
can't even keep me awake--
but when we get home,
and crawl into the satin
cascade of your mother's
sheets, god, i can't
even think of sleeping.
the moon was also full--
it wanes for awhile now

From your Father,
When I grew up I lived in a small brick house that was cold in the morning no matter how many times your grandfather yelled at the fireplace, the world never let him dream, he had to earn it.
You will never meet him.
You will never be the small reminders and the soft tug on the bottom of my sternum helping me sleep at night, I will give you string and yarn asking you to weave silk and save me from the winter.
Your hands will be overflowing with apologies, the sink will always be filled with water that looks like it is pulsing at an open wound, and the gauze from your mother's gentle throat is never going to stop you from leaking out how sorry you are.
I was not raised to be what you need.
I am not going to love you the right way.
When you are 7 I am going to tell you that the way you carry yourself isn't tall enough, for your 9th birthday I will give you a mustard seed and a pocketknife and will ask you to grow cherry blossom trees throughout our back yard and in all the pastures of the city, and cut each of them down the very next day, and THEN I will tell you how to be a man.
When you are 17 you are going to cry so hard that God mistakes your mouth for the trumpets that were used to tear down Jericho and when your walls come apart I am going to color your heart with footsteps leaving the room.
I will show you how to miss a warm shower, how to pretend so hard your head cracks and your skull looks
like the coldest bowl of tomato soup I ever gave you.
You will not see that this whole time I have been staining your windows to see things in a better light, even if it is not clearer in the afternoon.
This is my blessing.
From your Mother,
I was raised with ***** hands and the only person who I ever looked at in the morning and loved back was the sun.
Your grandfather taught me how to ride a horse, and cover up a bruise, how to scrub blood stains out of my white blouses, and a whiter conscious, and how to grieve.
Oh how he taught me to grieve.
You will never meet him.
When you are 10, I am going to write down all the sins of your father on a piece of paper, slit your throat with it, and tell you that it's just a papercut, I will show you that faith does not move mountains, it simply makes them smaller.
You will stand up, shake the dust off your knees, and learn to clench your fists without worrying who will hear you.
I will try, but I will not love you correctly.
When you are 13 I am going to show you that what you see is not always on your side, you can love someone harder than you can stab them, but people are going to worry about ****** knuckles before they take a second look at a bruised heart, they're going to forget which one is more important.
I am going to tell you to forgive them, and I will never truly mean it.
Maybe I am sorry.
I am going to flirt with death until it blushes so hard that the blood from it's cheeks flows down to it's chest and gives it a heartbeat.
I am going to make you understand that GOD needs you just as much as you need Him, and there is power in prayer, in the way God might not be worth as much when people aren't giving Him their attention.
I am going to help you need less of the world, but a little more from people.
Your words will be full and deep, but never your pockets.
This is my blessing.

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

My Friend Joined the NRA and Received a Communist Pocketknife

To prove your patriotism there’s nothing finer
Than to sport an NRA knife made in China

i.
no love songs, now...no lost, no forlorn
no love songs to the mourn
awake (too late) mind racing,
words floating images roiling...
a poet's heart made empty,
boxing shadows in the dark,

a broken dreams club
a bell echoes

ii.
(like a boxer past his prime
sitting in his corner head hung, bowed,
slips his gloves and examines taped knuckles
as though they, too, have defeated him)

a bell echos
a broken dreams club

iii.
the muse abides, and, perhaps, at least
the poet may regain his voice but for now -
no love songs, now...
no laments, no elegy

a bell echos
a broken dreams club

iv.
every poets' muse -
fall in love, absolutely, true love is, for him,
the embodiment of his muse, indistinguishable,
the goddess, manifest in her absolute glory
and the woman, made her instrument -

a bell echos
a broken dreams club

v.
*what do i see?
a bowl with a quarter and a pocketknife
a lamp
a clock with dull red numbers glowing
a book of verse
and in the distance

a bell echoes
a broken dreams club

i think to myself death take me
take me away from this ugly world
all i get is silence
i flick open my pocketknife
the cold sharp blade is a relief
death please
i start to cut my skin
death take my soul
blood starts to drip deep red
death take my heart
press deeper with the blade
death take my life
with a clink of metal on the tiled floor
the ****** knife came to rest
death
departing from this world i thanked death
and said goodbye to everyone
death why are you so simply complicated?

19 jan

He is the opening cords of every song.
He is the sound "sh."
He is the tree held up by stakes,
  He is the stakes being whittled down to size.
He is inside the rough, back-and-forth motions of the pocketknife as it scratches off the bark.
He is the red, callous hands of the blade-wielding woodsman.
He is the brown,
     the deer,
          the drowning,
                the dirt.
He never leaves footprints,
but he always leaves early--
He is the soft light of dawn,
                              never here for very long.
We remember him but we do not
  yearn for him, we do not live for him.

He is the dead, brown shrubbery pushing through the melting snow,
                         all bent, no direction,
                                  no preconceived intent.
Oh, but he's reawakening, it's almost spring,
                   he's growing above everything.
We take out the stakes and he does just fine.

I walk old and gaunt
Floating ghostlike down old haunts
Martinelli
And Washington
And East Lake
I return
Far flung from a prodigal son.

Empty streets reflected in empty eyes
Power lines buzz in futile rebellion
To the silent black night.
I pull my jacket tight.

Stop at the Villager
In search of an old friend.
Security shakes me down
“Do you have a pocketknife?”
I laugh.
Look in at the eager faces.
They hail the old demon
I ran down in futile chases.
See Charlie and Sarge.
They’ve forgotten who I am
And shouldn’t remember
Anyway.

Turn back to the dark,
To the dim streetlights
Glowing exhausted and pale
Like me.
Light up,
And fill my lungs
With deathly relief.
Traffic lights mist
In cold colors
Where shadowed roads meet.

Something here died.
Something close,
Something warm.
I walk on,
Old and gaunt,
Floating ghostlike down old haunts.

I watched a young
boy beat his
chest and scream at
the dawn until
the liquid sky drove
him away.
He chased thunder
and
butterflies with the
same enthusiasm;
oozing a lust for
living in his chasm
of youth.
Ten years full of
questions and scabbed
up knees, freckled dreams
running across green fields
and sunlit meadows.
Golden little life,
resting beneath a
willow tree to sip the
sweetness
from the clover and
honeysuckle flowers.
Hours full of pocketknife
afternoons, whittling sticks
into arrows to
shoot at the moon.
And after the rain
oh sweet green youth,
run barefoot with the
wind
toward a sinless
sky.
And live, live
live, for tomorrow
will come with a sigh.

How to remember a past year.
How to,
commemorate citrus burns and
the use of a pocketknife to cut pineapple,
and cutting pineapple,
and eating it on sunny, uneven brick paths.  
How to--

channel the extravagance of buying blue moons
from a local, local bar on a strictly dishroom paycheck.
How to

describe, being in the backseat, amidst new faces
amidst familiar songs and then stopping to observe
obscure insects that glow.
How to!

be without, pure two-wheeled freedom
on a path, proudly engineered and purring
toward a destination, marked by green.
Being alone,
so happy and so sweet.
How to?

The same "sweet relief" with honey,
on the same, quiet deck-porch-room.
Even when it rains.
How now?

Eyes, and oxytocin.
Late, late meetings.
Early morning greetings
and taking a liking to.

so,

i saw a piece of you
the other day.
i found you out in the yard.

and. i used to find you
                everyday,
but,

we are the inside of a silverware drawer when the lights go out.
We are an old can of soda
we are the underside of a frying pan.the hinges of medicine cabinet mirror.the back of a fake hand gun

a pocketfull of chemical hand warmers

The washing label on shrunken, favorite, sweatshirt-
storeboughtstarmarketpumpkinpie.
Brooding at the breakfast table.
a telephone that rings when you don’t want it to.
we are nylon down vest- reversible-  tucked inbetween
arm and
oilskin hat.
We are dead houseplants.

homemade radiator covers,
feet under the covers
we are  waking up
we are slacking off in class.hating other people.wading into bathtubwater. I. hurt her daughter

polished like a powderhorn.hurting like a can of vegetarian baked beans.
like an old pocketknife.

we are
pantsless in the hallway. we are backyard garden. we are tripping over the recyclables on a sunday.    
we are good radio song.
we wanted garlic.butter we got hotdogs instead.
That’s supermarket poetry. It hit us.
golden and radiant-
as the smiles in the   cereal aisle.
And it was cold outside.

the milk froze in the car

I knew I was in "purgatory"
I couldn't make up  all the grade/s
Didn't really matter much
My pocketknife had a  broken blade

The "I's" are ever on you
No one hears or cares to understand
The questions put before them
Are lost to time by sand

So fling the words before me
My pearls before the swine
The path placed as pure adjectively
While you sit and mull your time

There was my life before me
In the parking lot of life
A beat up old "63" Rambler
With the "Club" attached  to the steering wheel of strife

Because there is a swell of pain inside me, and it is beginning to compromise the structural integrity of my emotional skeleton. Because hope feels like something that was discontinued due to safety concerns. Because I can't make love to the billboards but am compelled to try anyway. Because when I wake up I resent that I have to go on living. Because when I try to tell people how I feel, they say, "That reminds me of a very funny television commercial I just saw." Because everything i touch-the ottoman, the remote, the shoes, the coffee table, the collectible flatware, the books, the friendships, the interior of my car, the clothing, the records, my wife, the CDs (and the ****** plastic cases they come in), the old letters from friends I met at summer camp thirty years ago the pocketknife that belonged to my grandfather, the flowers I cut and put in water, the finger paintings the slow kid that lives next door gave to me, the house plants, the sunsets, the secrets I am afraid to share, the angry letters to my congressperson, the children I will never have, my marriage, my job, everything and every other thing-fades or crumbles into broken parts that I can never reassemble.

Why are you so sad? By James Porter, page 139.

she didn't see him slithering.
her heart was pounding,
but everything seemed fine
until she felt him
coiling around her
tighter and tighter
until she couldn't breathe.

she clutched a pocketknife.
with the last drop of
strength she had,
she slashed him
and he slithered away.
after she caught her breath,
she realized he was a snake.

Upon entering the foyer he was struck
with a foreboding sense of dawning comprehension.
The light switch felt significant under his finger tips and the
illuminated room made his dilated irises contract
with such force that he shut his eyelids against the
sudden death of darkness before him.

When his eyes adjusted to the harsh electric lights
he recognized the reason for the brief feeling of
understanding that grabbed him when he first walked in,
for in the far corner, adjacent to the spiral staircase, sat
the slumped-over body of his father in a winged-back chair.

The pocketknife protruding from it's neck bore the initials
'JSW' in small white lettering on the plastic handle, and the pool
of blood beneath the cadaver matched perfectly the color of the skin
on his hands. Like the skin of his ex-lovers lips.

Then he remembered what day it was, and how the serendipity of
the situation just tasted so very sweet upon his mind's tongue.

Happy Father's Day!

The memory of
that night on
the pier, when
we scrawled our
names onto the floor
with a pocketknife,
and dreamed of when
we might show
our children,
but the children we
never had will
never know,
and the scratches
on the wood will
fade, stepped on
by countless people
who will never know of
our love.

"we're going to
sarah's church
this sunday"
you said.

"you're
going to sarah's
church this sunday"
i said.

and you gave
me that fishy
look you've been
giving me every
saturday night
for the last month
"why don't you
want to go to church?"

well i have my reasons
tucked up with abstracted
pushpin waves on
bible class corkboards
and poked into the corners
of empty white rooms
where abrasive carpet wore
my feet into odd patterns

sitting on my splintered
windowsill and listening to
things i wasn't invited to
something with singing and all i
really recall was sawing off warts
with a pocketknife while i listened

those early days
before the roof was
fixed were when the
trouble started.

"because
i'm not."

that's not much
of an explanation
but neither is
the truth
which by the way
i didn't mention

i didn't mention the
way i felt last night
when i looked at
year old photo effects
or the hitch in my chest
the last time i listened
to dan's cds
the way i ***** shut my eyes
and try to keep breathing
every time you drive by
what used to be woods or
someone else's welcome sign

"i like this song"
you said in the car
and i felt the bloodied swallow
of mismarked communion wine
like my first taste of hate
so many years gone now
surging down my
closed and slit throat

tim mcgraw was wrong
don't go to church because
your mama says to
don't go to church because
anybody says to
it won't get you into heaven
but it might get you
anxiety and a hospital bill.

(maybe i'm so critical
of christians because
christians were
critical of me
but hey that's just
a random thought)

and i don't talk about
how when i see the faces
of strangers that i
memorized between
the lost references of
out-of-context verses
all i see are reflections
of white words i typed
into their irises
i typed too fast.

and i was just too
tired to say that
large-scale screens
drive me over the edge
too tired to imply
once more that i
have turned into a
college-student statistic

one who has
more behind her
motives than
pure apathy.

so having thought all this
i repeated myself
"you're going to
sarah's church this week"
and wished you could
understand my reasons.

Paterfamilias

For Eldon Edge

An empty chair beside the fireplace waits,
And lamplight falls upon an open book,
Pen, pocketknife, keys for the pasture gates,
Dad’s barn coat hanging from its accustomed hook.

But he will not return; his duties now
Transcend the mists of the pale world we know,
And you in grief must carry on, somehow;
Your duty is here, for God will have it so

The good man takes that chair reluctantly;
It is a throne of sorts, and one imposed,
Not taken as a prize, triumphantly,
But in love’s service, and in love disposed.

An empty chair beside the fireplace waits
For you, whom doleful duty consecrates.

On a Morning in June – a Doctor Seuss-Free Graduation Poem

The earth is all before me: with a heart
Joyous, nor scar’d at its own liberty,
I look about, and should the guide I chuse
Be nothing better than a wandering cloud,
I cannot miss my way.

- Wordsworth, Prelude, I.15-19

Soon you’ll depart for your own pilgrimage,
Seafaring through the life God has given you,
To the golden Canterbury of your heart,
Along the sunlit road you’ve chosen to walk,
A pilgrimage, perhaps, to Orwell’s dusty room,
Or deep into the mind of Thomas More
Or far-off Saint James of the Field of Stars,
Or sea-passages swift to Denmark’s shores,
Or fields of sonnets singing in the dawn -
All these you’ll find along your pilgrim road.

Take then, your haversack, and neatly pack
Your book, your song, your dream, a change of clothes
(Your dreams are happier when you wear dry socks)
A prayer that your parsoun will write for you
A cup, a bowl, a pocketknife, a pen;
And do take care to pack those useful words
Learned, shaped, and sharpened, polished from your youth:
The baby-sounds for supper, sandwich, cat,
The childhood sounds for play and your best friend,
Then words from Mom and words from books - and words from you.

Words flown by you in dreams like sunlit sails
Then shaped again in pencil or in ink
And flung in hope upon a waiting leaf
Words made by you for honest purposes
And never employed in wicked deceit,
For thieves might steal your book, your song, your hopes,
And time decay your purposes and strength
But your own words, oh, yes, your good, strong words,
Like an old pair of boots will see you through
To your heart’s desire at your journey’s end.

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

               The Men of the Bible Class Pose for a Photograph
                   on the Steps of the Methodist Church in 1968

My grandfather once threatened some other old man
With his pocketknife just before the ten o’clock
Maybe it was over a point of theology
That’s surely as exciting as Bible class ever got

The Baptist men were the city council
And most of the school’s board of trustees too
But the Methodists somehow had more self-assurance
You can see it in their bearing and their suits

They seem to be their fathers in 1898
With railroads and sawmills – great times ahead

every time i hit rock bottom
someone digs a little deeper
now these walls are too steep
i’ve not enough grip
slip and slip and slip and slip
pickup and pack up perpetual bags
start the process over
with new characters
and settings
and expectations
but the same feelings
and probably meanings
and letdowns and stained cheeks
should i cut or burn this time?
there’s one thing i control
another:
where shall i take these scissors
to my forehead or my closest ties?
that are holding me together
but all too tight
well
is it weak to wither away
at the hands of something
i can’t see?
my demons are only metaphors
just like those bags and ties
i used to think depression pains
were the same
but they’re as literal as can be
not just tears but pangs
broken hearts bleed faster
and tarnished lungs take shallow breaths
the past took a pocketknife to my skin
carved and scooped me out
and turned my body to a little tease
that won’t give me the real mortal thing

wish that you could be
her.
wish that you could be
a piece
of someone beautiful and
undesiring
of a new life

that you could be
a flower
and grow into your
own blossoming
self hatred.

wish that you
could be
the name that melts
in the mouths
of every lover
you never
had.

wish that you
could be
needed
(if only for a
moment)

like the last lost
flashlight
during a storm
or a steady breath of fresh,
open
air
after a long afternoon or
after an even longer
tea-stained night of
this and this and
that
or a good paint brush when
you realize
you broke your last one but
you cannot
contain
the jitters in your fingertips that
reach
for the canvas
or the wall
at the back
of your closet.


wish that you
could be
needed.

like a good kiss or
a 1:30 am walk
to the front steps of the
library
with a
pocketknife
for a sense of false
security and
independence-

or hell
for all of the above.