This was meant to be a haibun. After the
first sentence, I folded the list of rules into a sparrow.                   I go for a walk,
pass by the place where people write haiku
and roll juxtaposition into irony
as they eat their meals with the wrong
ends of their chopsticks.

he lifts gari with his left hand—
a slot machine jangles

A patron’s nearly full dish of wasabi sits amongst sushi platters that, except
for the left behind rice-explosions,
have been emptied. Around the corner,
a shaman stands near the clocktower
where the grass has died from a winter’s salting. The shadow of a ginkgo leaf flutters on his face like the wings of Buson’s moth. I want to turn off all the lights so that it can see.

The systems are broken. ****. The systems are failing.

Further up Beverly St., an autistic boy
plays with Lego on a front porch. I try to remember his true name, and hope that
he can help break down the foundations, raindance his mind around the blocks’
angles and lines to solve an equation with a variable that is the shaman understanding
why the boy pretends to not see us.

Turn off the lights so that we can see.

Every night, I lie in bed and think of her, her lost eyes

My heart cries as I see her sitting alone
   Staring vacantly out the window at the bird feeder
   The bitter truth is
   The things she forgets are the banal moments
   Her days have become groundhog, so is it so bad to not realise that she is in that cycle?
   The things that matter she still remembers
The time when she was 8 and had laughter with passing soldiers

Playing pranks on those same soldiers with the cheeky grin that’s never left her
When she nearly ended up in Canada to stay safe
Sharing sweets with the best friend she loved and lost

She remembers mum when she was just a foot tall
She remembers me when I could only utter the odd word
She remembers my brother when he had the cheekiest grin, and the brightest laugh
She may even remember better than we all do
Its funny how that works
Laughter is the best medicine she tells me
This is something I now believe wholeheartedly
As every time I see her I see it in action
She makes me laugh
She helps me understand life
She respects me
She builds me up

Strength, endless strength
Smile, the smile it never leaves her
Leaving her breaks me,
But seeing her break, hurts me.
Reality, she isn’t broken
Just stuck on the rewind button
She’s still here
She’s still with me
She’s one of the lucky ones
I’m one of the lucky ones
We’re one of the lucky ones


People ask how is she doing?
I simply answer she is in a battle against groundhog day, And get this she is winning.

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


                            The Presentation of the Rodent

          “The Feast of Candlemas…is perhaps the most
            ancient festival of Our Lady.”

                                    -Missale Romanum

The Catholic funeral home calendar
Prints “GROUNDHOG DAY (USA)” in generous type
“The Presentation of the Lord,” well, not so much
And “                                      ” 1 not at all

Perhaps one day we faithful will look out
From our dark-tunneled burrows of lost time
And gaze upon the morning shadows to ask
If there will be 2,000 more years of civilization

Because in the Temple

Our Lady presents unto our Lord the Child
But we present unto ourselves - a rat



1 The Purification of Our Lady

yet i stand again alone and cold
watching
an onslaught of angry wet bullets
pummel my peanut-shaped torso

if every midnight a new ghost
was born to loop again through my day
all my naked peanut-shaped torsos
would be standing here
too
all my red veiny feet burning a hole
through the white ceramic floor
and thousands of the same absent brown eyes
watching
– only a few
seeing

all my fingertips work in sync
rubbing face cream into
millions of layers of sticky skin
as our gurgling stomachs tie themselves into knots
and we record in our dejected minds like abused children
shivering in the corner of our skulls

the sickening feeling of
being both
perpetrator and victim

the alarm clock
in my childhood bedroom
has always been
fast by a minute or 2

every month or so i
realign the last digit
with Apple's universal truth

and every month it
slips
out of sync
again

it must be off by such a small fraction
of a second
i tried to calculate it once
0.00001 some-odd something
one brick so minimally out of place
causing the gradual collapse of a skyscraper

i havent found the energy lately
to practice this ritual
and today

my old clock
is fast by 3 minutes
neon green bars flickering silently
marching on
announcing fates to the unwilling and
making
rash judgements

there was nothing i planned to do
with those 3 minutes
and i knew it was
justified in its conviction

but i
realigned the last digit
and watched for 3 minutes
the green flickering rhythmically against
the black screen
climbing minute by minute
finalizing again
my execution

A lot has been written about monotony
Here I’m only trying it from my vision
It won’t differ much from yours
But even monotony comes in different flavors
Mine is bland. Unimaginably bland.
So much, that I fear the day I spit it out,
it will leave me bitter
I make feeble attempts to break it
A lot like a fifty year old couple argue & fight
They are not trying to spice things up
Just sorting the disagreements and inconveniences that crop up, further strengthening their bond
Each one is a proven pain in the other's ***
But it is familiar, comforting pain
Losing track of the days that I lost
The days they come and go so fast
I’m preparing myself better for the days to come
‘Every new day is an opportunity lost. So you’ve got to seize every opportunity.' I was advised..
It was 00 hours when I woke up
from my untimely slumber to start
this new day on this new note
Although I’m skeptical of the meaning of new day
I don't think they meant it in the technical sense
The day they were referring to probably begins
when the sun shines so bright that it is hard
to keep your eyes closed and pretend to be asleep
In a semi awakened state,
you clasp your genitals,
then scratch them,
stroke your stiffness,
wipe the drooling mouth
or partake in other preferred activities
in any order you deem fit
and thereby amass the requisite energy
to seize the day by the *****
Me,? I’m not really a morning person
It takes a couple of hours for nausea to subdue
After I spat all the toothpaste residue
So I take this to be the start of yet another day which has begun,
and will roll,
with reasonable certainty,
just the same way as did yesterday
Or the day before
Or a day the week before
But I wasn’t here since the beginning of time
I grew from a microbe to a maniac
So I know this is just a phase that will pass
But I can’t seem to place
the beginning or end of it
Shedding hairs, bloating with worries and fat
I came to the sudden realization
that this will soon end
Whether I like it or not
Whether I force it or not
It will come to an end
Like every other thing that started
Here I am, waiting for it to unfold
Like the spectator I’ve always been,
passive with fear and with justifiable cowardice

In deep winter’s chill a brief nudge
gets groundhogs, with barely a grudge,
to predict the season,
but I ask, with good reason,
if they differ, who will be the judge?

opening my chakra
feeling a little less darker
a couple of drinks is my marker
but its always just the starter

at the brink and then I'm past it
it was fun while it lasted
now I hand over to my master
from the poodle to the mastiff

screaming who wants war
blocked from the liquor store
my mind wants more
but my liver isn't sure

back to waking up at noon
soaked in bile like some cartoon
know that by the time I see the moon
I'll be singing the same tune

Next Sunday
When he leaves
The tomb,
And it's sunny,
Before noon,
Should his shadow
Fall on a sinner,
We've six more weeks
Of a Canadian winter.

depression set in
like the priest to sin
trying to hide it
when it all begins
the snow falls down
barring you underground
hell bent and heaven sent
who the **** knows were my mind went
no way to win
put on a grin
hide it again
your souls caves in
exploding imploding
like the shore life eroding
this should not be how time is spent