The blood-dimmed tide has loosed.
The hyenas bay for food; the sound
a cacophony of gibberish.
The ceremony of innocence long drowned.
The warlord takes his throne.
We know what beast this is, slouching
not toward Bethlehem.
Murderers are released from jail.
The only ones who had conviction--
among those who could have stemmed this tide--
were a band of perverts, selling fiction,
and a welcoming hand to trespassers.
What choice we had? Perverts and trespassers
on one side,
a warlord and hyenas on the other.

My talisman was destroyed
by a sorcerer, who, much annoyed,
bade me worship only him.
I worship not a lowly man
who lacks the power to understand
beauty beyond the realm of man.

Plato’s archetypes are real
in our creations and what we feel.

The innocence of childhood play
The setting sun at end of day
The work of every artist great
Brings me to a better fate

My talisman returned to me
Resurrected, in a different guise.
There is somewhere of no lies,
only adamantine ties.
Where love is indivisible from art
and only death tears us apart.

I love you.
I hate you.
I love you.
I hate you.
I love you.
I hate you...
oops. Have to get another daisy...

You're my whiskey sour,
my gin and tonic.
You've got the power
to make me crazy
for you.
Slurring my words,
I can't speak.
I'm feeling high;
no longer blue.
I'm walking funny;
I'm falling for you.
Falling down
that rabbit hole.
Take my broken pieces;
make me whole.
I'll take the hangover;
you're my aspirin, too.
****-faced drunk;
drunk with love for you.

I want to write a poem about Palestine
but I have no words.
The nouns are drenched in blood.
The verbs are obscene
and the adjectives unspeakable.
The sentences have no end
and there is no punctuation.
I am having trouble pronouncing
my own name.

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                         Atheist Chaplains Forging Mixed Metaphors

         “Atheist chaplains are forging a new path in a changing world”

                                    -CNN 7 November 2024

One seldom thinks of chaplains at a forge
Work-weary, work-stained from hours of smoke and sweat
With mighty hammer strokes bending hot iron
To the will of the artisan in useful things

Some writers forge nothing but metaphors tired
From overuse, and mixed as verbal soup
In music, art, literature, and life paths can be

Cleared
Paved
Traveled
Surveyed
explored
Followed
Noted
Marke­d
Mapped
Found

But it is not in the nature of paths to be forged

Atheist chaplains and metaphor soup
Are nothing more than an ouroborosian loop

(Look upon this fresh metaphor and neologism
And despair)