Click clack of train tracks.
Space.
Closing and creating.
Space.
Vision blurred by the translucency of my eyelids.
Space.
I proceed,
Blind, clawing at the warmth of the air that caresses my skin
Warmth that I want from elsewhere
Your warmth...
I must settle.

Anxiety builds.
I see nothing, hear nothing, still I proceed,
Blood pumping
Lub dub
I take a step
Lub dub
Another step
Lub dub
Hands still stretched, nothing. Silence. Space.

It’s coming.
I feel it, the initial throatiness
Converting to heat
****** heat,
Pressing into beads of fluid that trickle down my cheek

My arms follow suit, then my legs,
They become acquainted with the earth,
seeking comfort in its stability
and reveling in its tangibility

"I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor.
That's my dream. It's my nightmare. Crawling, slithering,
along the edge of a straight razor … and surviving."
–  Col. Kurtz, Apocalypse Now
~

Remember
the golden age, Wally ***?
And the songs
my mother taught me?

We sang about what was.
Or might never be.

Like permanency.
Distinction comes
out of stiff and frozen silences.
Take it with
a spoonful of disdain.
Take it in the eye.
Actors are like breakfast cereals.
They're obvious
and according to taste.
I stopped needing them
long ago.

Beautiful
Tallulah.
Beautiful,
"less to this than
meets the eye"
Tallulah,
dismiss me,
that I may be free
to find Tennessee.

Open windows
and closing doors.
Always a breeze,
but never a way out.
Right on cue
the cards shuffle.

Butter and cotton *****,
tricks of the trade.
I mumble to be heard.
I am legend
to disciples
of the Method.

I wear my friends to bed,
burn them like newspaper.
They call me "Bud"
—cigarettes at dawn
after devouring the night.
And now my song ebbs,
as the stylus hits the leadout groove.

Tomorrow, I'll be better.
Today, I'm just me.

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

                             The Man Who Delivered the Movies

The Saturday afternoon matinee
Outside the Palace Theatre in a line
Impatient for the hour, the man, John Wayne
Air-conditioning, popcorn, Coca-Cola, escape

Then riding to the rescue of the ranch
The man who delivered the reels of fun
Running up the steps with a big grey case
Of Rio Bravo – he brought us our dreams

And did he know, speeding to little towns
That he too was a hero of the Golden West?

That gibberish he talked was city speak,
Gutter talk near the Tannhäuser Gate:
Memories, you're talking about memories,
Moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain,
All I could do is sit there and watch him
die. Slow thing and he fought it all the way,
Where do I come from? Where am I going?
Go to Hell or go to Heaven, I'm afraid,
That's a little outside my jurisdiction,
Fiery the angels fell / deep thunder rolled,
Ships on fire off shoulder of Orion,
More human than human is our motto,
I watched him die all night. To have feelings,
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.

The idea had been growing in my brain,
Queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick, venal,
They are all animals anyway,
Become a person like other people,
Organization is necessary,
All the animals come out at night,
There never has been any choice for me,
Wash all this **** off the streets. My body fights,
There is no escape. I am God's lonely man,
Headaches that stay and never go away,
Thank God for the rain. Wash the garbage and
cannot put it back together again,
One day there will be a knock on the door,
and it will be me. What hope is there for (me?)

Watching the world
Pass me by,
Through the window of
A moving vehicle
I'm a passenger
But this imagery feels like the movies,
Where some serendipitous event happens
At this very moment,
When you are pondering over life
Through your little window
You wake up to realize that this is the real-life
A journey with random stops,
Varied stories,
Vivid dreams,
But unlike life, there's a fixed destination
To that journey
While life is more of an endless cesspool
Of unrelated chaos
The destination is not etched into your hands,
The destination is what you make of it
Well, maybe there is no point
In trying to get all the answers to my questions
It took me a while to figure out how
It ain't all that bad,
How I'm happy and glad
For the good times that I've had
Not all-in for always living in the moment,
Just trying to live more in the good ones
Destiny and life go hand-in-hand
Maybe I should not let my life go bland
I should take decisions and actions,
Rather than waiting for the signs that I can understand.

We will always take for granted
the unreal people
that filter through our lives
each and every day,
where motion pictures
show us to never give up.

The irony is that it's not faux people
that lead us to believe in magic,
it was the real people behind the fake
that chose to keep the music flowing.

Who knows who they really are;
it doesn't matter when it's about
life or living for nothing.

If there's something to learn -
it's to learn to take chances.

Doing nothing is simple and tedious.
Opportunity is purpose and effortless.

Risk less, chance more.