Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
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
Mhall46184@aol.com
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.

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

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.

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.

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.