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

                                           Lenin in Petrograd


               They're at it again! I wish they'd decide once and for all
                which gang of hooligans constitutes the government of
                this country!

                          -Uncle Alex reacting to fighting in the streets
                                         in Doctor Zhivago (1965)


More men in masks, and wearing scruffy clothes
Roaming the streets and waving rifles about
And which side they are on, nobody knows
Our capital is now all fear and doubt

Some demand my papers, and others my life
Some challenge my accent and exam my skin
Some threaten with a gun and others a knife
And some an unmarked car to throw me in

“Here, sir, the people govern,” Alexander Hamilton said -
No longer, alas; the people’s laws are dead

BROKEN ABRACADABRA

My uncle shimmers
as he walks

as if the sun has got him
and shakes him

until he walks
like waves.

His gait all
heat haze.

He's a walking
reflection

as if the air
were water.

He looks like
he's a dream

made of summer

but he is the real thing
a solid Uncle Michael.

I expect his voice
to waver with the heat

but his words
stay steady

whittled out of love
like wood.

I am up a tree.

He can't see me.

The branch below me has sn-
-apped

and I am wondering like a cat
how in hell I am

going to get down.

Up here in the air
the farm is the map

of itself.

I share a branch with a bird
and a small cloud.

Uncle goes on looking for me
his voice searching the everywhere

but I am a nowhere.

His voice trying to pull me
out of thin air

like a magician would
but it's not good.

I am half sky half tree half child
...do the maths.

I feel like a white rabbit
lost inside a top hat.

He died one sunny Sunday
******* a sweet in the blue van.

I still see him
walking out of the sun

his body shivering
with the heat

as if he is a dream
calling my name

like an abracadabra.

I sit in the silence
in the middle of my sky

lost in that forever
summer

wondering how to get back
down on solid ground

calling his name
like a broken magic spell

always trying to find him
even though I can't

Dance with me, son
twin to my moon
center of my universe
blood of my blood.

My sweet boy,
what have you become?

I see you yearning for love,
yet burn everything
you touch with greed
desiring it be yours.  

I see you clinging to power
in your firm grip
nothing remains
that carries a soul.

I see a warrior, a fighter,
a wanderer, a lost soul
far away in foreign lands
of the mind.

Come back down
down to mother earth
the land of the living
where everything takes root.

Dance with me, son
naked and
barefoot
on ***** ground.