My hands sighed as
They held my head—
The weight of my tears
Crawled along the skin,
Making them weaker
And weaker until they
Settled into resolve.

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office


                                          And Your Word Is…?


                                          “The word is given!”

                  -John Derek as Joshua in The Ten Commandments


When all have gone to bed

You slip quietly into your room
And sit at a table bare of everything
Except for a solitary candle
A pen, a sheet of paper, a bottle of ink

You then write down your day, your acta diurnalis
Every action and thought, every glance and breath
Every hope, every failure, every fear
Every little victory savoured with delight

In only a word, a word, a glowing word –
What is that Word?

The amount of time it takes
to traverse the distance between two points regulates the definition of our concept of time

The shorter the distance the faster time flys
The greater the distance a moment in time takes becomes eternal unless it encounters an obstruction
It takes light years to measure the time between the stars
It's instant from eye to nose
In a black hole time stands still held by the immense gravational pull .
We see time measured in the distance by light
Without light would there be any time ?
Only God knows
Let there be light .

Not as eloquent
as a fountain pen,
not as artistic
as a sketching pencil,
not even as bright as a magic marker,
but one smart cookie to your kids.
We have cool names like
Cotton Candy, Manatee,
Razzmatazz and Inchworm,
and are non-toxic sticks of joy
to those little imaginations.

Yes, we sometimes look like
clumps of colored wax
smashed into tissue paper,
and we do break easily
or lose our wrappers at the drop of a hat,
then get tossed in a bag
or worse, become homeless.
And horror of horrors!
We’re reinvented as candles
or reheated into twisted zombies
of our former selves.

And neither do our achievements
reside in a museum or gallery,
why they're not even framed
and proudly displayed on a wall.
No, they're slapped on ***** refrigerators
and kept there by plastic alphabet
magnets that loosely spell
such mundane things
as ‘milk’, ‘cheese’ or ‘daddy is dumb,'
until they fall to the floor
or end up in the trash.

But hey man,
give us a break!
This is our plight,
it’s a harsh existence!
Perhaps we should organize,
form a union for children’s
writing and drawing utensils,
and thus ensure equality
for us crayons?

We realize, more than likely,
this poem's title will cause
some backlash by those
who insist it be called
‘Return of the Crayon,’
because we 'happy sticks', you see,
supposedly don’t take revenge.

Nonetheless, we stand by it.
It is what it is!
Your children love us
and so should you!

I hum the quiet melodies of life,
each note bending toward your name.
You moved closer—effortless, inevitable—
as dusk leans into the arms of night.

Love is simple to define,
but your heart remains a cipher,
its rhythm shifting beneath my hands,
a tide I could never hold.

Once, I was your horizon,
the place where every journey ended.
Your gaze, weightless as stardust,
unraveled me in the hush of a smile.
From a distance, you watched—
like the evening sun kissing the sea,
departing, yet aching to remain.

When I stood at the edge of myself,
wavering between gravity and sky,
you pulled me back. But if love is a fall,
then let me descend into you.

Let me collide with your quiet ruin,
where even the breaking feels like flight.