Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

        Gearing Up for School Which is Just Around the Corner

School is forever gearing up or winding down
And if school is not around the corner
Then summer takes that very same turn instead
With back-to-school sales beginning in June

Children wheedle their moms for the coolest sneaks
And shopping carts are heavy with pens in packs
Yellow pencils, notebooks, scissors, and glue
Construction paper, adhesive tape, tissues

Lunchboxes, paper sacks, term calendars -
While in a lonely room
A pathetic little man fondles his Glock

No sooner through the door
than spider-legged anxiety
scurries back haphazard
like a frenemy whose cactus skin hug
begins in September and ends in July

Correlation does not imply causation.

Solid, strong, fact.

But when the month long grey veil
that smothered our holiday is hauled back
just as we return,
sun and fat heat to grill us in our ties and blazers,
I’m inclined, for once, to thumb my nose at science:

nature abhors term time

Aspiration? A tricky call.
I’m more than willing to give you a leg up,
but I can’t define where you’ll climb,
or I’ll be the *** who assumes

your *** might become an astronaut,
an assassin for hire,
or just gain enough cash to survive,
or be proudly working class,
or to clash with the establishment
and bring them crashing down
your *** might want to work
hard and fast
or be happy to rock up comfortably last
the amount of possibilities are vast
and equally valid and yours

I’ll lend a mind, some thoughts, some words to help
but for each self to realise themselves,
I’ll not assume,
we know what that would make us

How’s it going? Honestly?
C’mon, honest like 3 a.m. insomnia?

As the nights’ incremental dimming
draws us inwards,
how are you?

This idiot driven pantomime
of eighteen months
hit as hard as a guilt trip

So if you’re a little scarred,
a little scared,
it’s ok

They say that tomorrow is another day
which it is of course,
but the fear is it’ll send you
off course

But, my dears,
we’re all off course together

and who do I trust to help me
get back to happy paths?

Always, all ways
all of you x

Still loose, my mind drifts
over coppice, brook,
past fields left fallow
to heal
ragged with sedge, ragwort,
while crickets twitch defiance

Here is where I send myself
as the keyboard walls clatter in
and time returns to rigid
and gravity remembers to hold