Reach out to me
And for me is what you’ll need
I’ll turn you away
For I can not relay

I shall not repeat my sins
My desperate cries held within
Withholding my self dignity
My sanity not in vicinity

I can’t write you a goodbye
But I can close the door to all your lies
To welcome a more sane version of my kind
For I to have more peace of mind

I whisper to nothing but silence
My voice you ripped with violence
Where I’ve learned to piece together what was left
One day this voice you’ll regret

Sulfur yellow a watery burn
Created in an alchemist's urn.
Water feeds fire as both evolve--
The formula of hates resolve.

You waver rights to be treated fair
Like Sampson selling locks of hair
Or selling age to a 95 year old--
Sheep follow only to die in
their fold.

Fiery seas begin as a rift
Water being the only gift.
But nothing, nothing is ever
free
once transmuted into this sea.

But logs do drift and beaches
claim
All that gave this sea its name.

I cared to be loved,
Loved the adoring.
He swore that he did.
Oh, the great deceiving!
Was it him or me— who's at fault?
For I felt nothing, not for him, not at all.
If I were him, I too would resent me.
Then why do I not feel guilty?
He was the first to **** me with his—
Words or gaze; his entire existence
Drove me mad. There was no escaping.
If hell was earth, I was in it,
Burned holes into my body every time his two eyes found me, the lovely gazing.
I still bear the scars of thirteen.

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                         Those Who Stereotype “These Professors”

                                                   Exodus 20:16

These professors

Dr. Moriarty was a PFC on certain Pacific islands
Who could bayonet an enemy
Clear a jammed machine gun under fire
See his pals blown to pieces next to him
And work out subtle textual analyses

These professors

Dr. Chambers was a retired colonel of Marines
A natty little man in blazer and bowtie
Who could bayonet an enemy
See his pals blown to pieces next to him
Deconstruct the minutiae of energy distribution
And toss a foul-mouthed football player out on his sorry ***

These professors

Dr. Dale was a butcher until his thirties
When he entered college for the first time
He knew your hamburger from the outside in
The economics of building a business
He probably could have bench-pressed a Ford Fiesta
And when he spoke of Wordsworth, Keats, and Coleridge
You could feel the air of The Lake Country

These professors

“These professors” were complete men
Strong in war and word and wisdom and work
Unlike envious Unferths who learn life only second-hand
                    From Fox News and John Wayne movies
                    And closed loops of echoing InterGossip sites

If I speak honestly,
What resentment should I harbor
For how words are received;
So long as you, too
Speak the truth, earnestly?
My commitment to honesty dies
At the prospect of a lie.
Brought as like a cat,
Planting at your feet
Dead mice

~
she's thunderstorms.
she's asphodel meadows.

I fall outside of her
into the suburbs of askew,
where she hides behind
happy occident, where she
lives with the afterlife of a man,
but is in love with a scientist.

a jaded thing, she likes
to drop anvils on her
husband's head and blame
her fragile scaffolding,
she wears the wreckage
on her face, it's far easier
than admit her own fallacies.

before the children came along
she was able to pour some
of her own frustrations
into these knotty tussles.

now the midwives have left.
now misadventures in her
own backyard commence.

no hiding place down
the front of her,
the remaining secrets
come from underneath.

but if you trust her
and go along, she knows exactly
where to lay her hands.
~

She’s waking, and she’s walking out the door

She leaves the glimmer of the red-brick,

In 2009, the first.

In 2023, the last.

The blood is on her hands, and she can feel a white blanket envelop her.

It is the first sensation she has felt in years.

Mercurial and self-loathing are those tears.

No more release in them.

Only release in that.

In this prison cell are mirrors; they glare back at her with such a hideous, emaciated, mortifying
Look on her face.
What she hears seems to salivate,
She, a ****** mouth of a teeth-grinder. Sore.
Did they see her face as the telephone rang?

The woman clothed in sun weeps with fury at her, with a mask of complete, deadly, damning indifference. It is so, so sorry; waves of anguished apologies flooded its lungs as he strangled it. The blade is for you, my dear girl.

As they came together, they came apart.

A hand, gloved in red;something in the way.

It’s a knell for this lady in red, and, oh! How she has been waiting so!

The troops of glares and deafening silence she cannot bear as she races towards them; they stampede over her.

She does not battle.

She does not cry.

She does not raise a finger.

She simply lets the curtains fall.

Ophelia drowns.

~
Are we all the same distance apart?
Are we nocturnal
because we buy into
rhythmic disturbance,
trying to find a memory
in a dark room?

In shadow of advancing myth,
there's evidence of hunters
in the glowlight,
with wings outstretched,
solitary and contrite,
we cut the night,
we cut the night.

From sticks to bitterness,
we cut the night,
we cut the night.
~