#contagion
Cast iron pipes
whisper beneath
the concrete necropolis.
A fever still humming
in the feral bloodstream
of our unfinished past.
San Quentin. Men in jumpsuits
fumigating the Northern rivers.
Depleted waters
holding the poison.
Old blood
finding the current again.
Neon syringes
planted in the gravel
under a hard California sun.
A mother working cooking oil
into a child’s feet,
tar coming away in streaks.
Below it all
the pipes answer back
a newborn variant crowning.
Stormwater finds
the weak seams first
pulling blackness to salt.
Then the tide
carries it back to us.
Mar 9
Mar 9, 2026 at 7:09 PM UTC
Lawrence Hall
[email protected]
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Contagious Disease Unit – Ward 20 Deck 2
Maybe my aptitude for throwing up
My ENT infections, fevers and chills
Hopeless motion sickness and fainting fits
Were the reasons why NavPers posted me there
All the diseases in the Fleet called it home:
Infections, syphilis, leprosy, the clap
(Let’s give him a hand), and for reasons not clear
A couple of crewmen from the Pueblo
Before I was sent to be sick in Indo-China -
And now they say there’s a virus going around
Dec 14, 2020
Dec 14, 2020 at 8:12 AM UTC
Holy salvation is an illness, born from the fear of death's inevitability.
Crave it, seek your next fix.
Fragile psyche. A rational thought away from shattering should you miss your next dosage of biblical pills.
Forgive us our doctor as we sin again. We must have our medicinal eucharist.
The doctor plans his psychological corruption meticulously. Join hands, spread the disease of fear. Become terrified sheep together. Become dependent on sanctified lies together. The mass mania contagion runs rampant.
Now the doctor begins his treatment. Gold for a weekly shot of sainted insanity. The destitute pay well, their hands tied in prayer as their pockets are plundered.
The church of St charlatans. Founded upon a rock of corruption. Preaching divine death as curable terror, blessing it with coin.
But holy salvation is the illness, and only the dead are cured.
Jul 15, 2020
Jul 15, 2020 at 3:56 PM UTC
In the last pandemic,
I fell in love with a sick person.
We didn’t stay 6 feet apart.
I pressed my head on his chest
and listened to his beating heart.
We shared our limbs and our breath,
and there was only one part
of him that threatened me with death.
I miss the days when we knew
what risks we were taking.
But we still measure love that’s true
by what we are willing
to do and to not do.
Apr 8, 2020
Apr 8, 2020 at 11:54 PM UTC
An isolation of poets.
A distancing of poets.
A contagion of poets.
A household of poets.
A necessity of poets.
Mar 30, 2020
Mar 30, 2020 at 6:39 AM UTC
Cut by a purple shard of glass,
Sprinkled eggnog just on top,
Cheesy yellow, a hint of gold;
May this serenade never stop !
In the clamour of breaking dawn,
Lifelines that just aren't there,
Nature, herself calms the soul
Nature, I breathe her in the air.
Loveless, as you roam about,
Hapless, and in spirits lost.
Won't the wind, sun and trees,
Save from this dire scare ?
Into yourself, as you retreat
Confined, in shapes of square
May you find a saving grace,
A meaning to this ordeal, rare.
Mar 30, 2020
Mar 30, 2020 at 1:22 AM UTC
Loneliness
is a contagion
of the mind
fueled by propaganda
from toxic allies
Believe it or not
we live and breathe
succeed and fail
together
Mar 23, 2017
Mar 23, 2017 at 2:36 PM UTC
What a crazy thing!
It is almost infectious.
Pulling at my insides,
Throwing my emotions out of wack.
It could be used as a form of torture.
It weasels its way into my mind,
my heart,
my bones.
Muscles are stretched in unfamiliar directions.
A burning, a yearning for more.
It builds in the pit of my stomach.
It is infectious.
This place breeds the infection.
It grows like a mad mans craze.
There is no place to run,
no place to hide from the contagion.
It surrounds me leaving no escape.
I wait for the infection to spread,
to take over my body.
The endless happiness envelopes me.
All that remains is a diseased body
left behind by the infectious World of Disney
Aug 19, 2016
Aug 19, 2016 at 5:13 PM UTC
angry men who do not know I do not have a dollar or a cig to spare. Ugly irrefutable contagion-handed howlers. Angry mischievous heathens that pantomime on 6:00a.m. sidewalk, Wicker Park gallow stop-sign, choreographed gutter-punk drunk walk. And of all he wants and could ever want splits down his gooey membrane brain in the outline of a noun shaped fragment of a clause, "Couldja spare 80¢ for the train," but of course I don't spare on the ellipsis or the period. Semi-colons I won't! My rubber-bottomed leather boots lash out, heavy scraping sounds trail this mirrored shadow half an angle behind me.
***** Blonde framed sunglasses from American Apparel, a gift from my sister in a folded Ray-Ban case is scattered on last nights bedroom floor, my girlfriend has certainly not noticed, the gloom-coated morning sun spray has not noticed; but I have unzipped a fissure in the ocular lens. My heart skips a beat. Her bedroom might as well have swallowed them whole. Now the house can halt and have the shade, swaying in Spring air in 10:22a.m. shadows. The aviator himself Howard Hughes would strike me with his 488 aircraft. Edwin Starr in his invincible sinister calypso of War would turn me round. I was sturdy as a rock until I began to forget my forgottens. These unknown unknowns I knew I needed. I'm over a quarter-century on to noon going nowhere- and quite blindly.
But then, still she could stand upright and find me. Her neck crooked, looking onward through the East, the gristly roots of rhubarb buried in her searching fingernails. She's threaded worse, and of course if I could just tell her- this is the kind of nursing which requires acute temperament and flexibility. I am thus on a journey to strike nonsense and fear from the idiotic vocabulary that put this nonsense in my head. Split through me like a butter knife into my apotropaic. Perhaps tar water could cure my ails. If not, certainly a sliver of vanilla would set me straight. Or if could just rain rain rain all day, then I'd make do without, but she is at school. My pistons are racked and nervous, and I'm not going anywhere but my rucksack stoop. I am camped in midwestern Spring soup. Fog, rain, and shade. The nightmare of day.
Apr 30, 2014
Apr 30, 2014 at 5:54 PM UTC