Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                           The Empires That Might Have Been

            “The empires of the future will be empires of the mind.”

                            -attributed to Winston Churchill

Empires of the mind – what a glorious dream
A world of laboratories and libraries
Of beauty through truth, music, words, and art
The free exchange of ideas and discoveries

Ministers of state might have launched missives, not missiles
In polished meter instead of heavy prose
And the worst of enemies would have shared
Champagne and verse on a veranda at dusk

While their children scampered in search of fireflies
Then giggled secrets on the porch of St. Michael’s Church

In romantic relationships
You speak Latin
And your empire falls

In platonic relationships
You speak Greek
And think about caves

The Sphinx's riddle
Ended with a stick man holding a stick.
The cane.
Those Egyptians were on top of the chain.

What will Lady Liberty's Riddle be
For today's Empire.
After the machines, tubes and electronics
Have made us blade runners.

With a cane.

I find myself lingering more and more in the emptiness and because of this I awake in the chaos of a misplaced life. I am constantly forced to build an empire from the ruins of my mind, but the bricks never align the same each time.

                       I am
not doing
                          well. I’m
     not
                                 doing well
          at all.

My heart beating, my soul breathing
I found my life when I laid it down
Upward falling, spirit soaring
I touch the sky when my knees hit the ground