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Queso Nov 2012
Man had wept
as he watched the fall of Lucifer,
not so much due to the tragedy itself,
rather than the cutting, crystalline
beauty of the Icarian descent

After the absence of three hundred years
since the forgotten burning of Magdeburg(1),
when the Devil had returned to Europe
from the smoldering ashes of
South Africa(2),
Namibia(3),
and Congo Free State(4),
the soft hills of Picardy were
embroidered in gold
with roses and clematises

And since our girl had been fed with naught
but the shimmering positivism of Auguste Comte
from a silver spoon manufactured in Manchester,
beneath the charmingly moorish face of a lover
and a Prada he wore
quilted with railway, nation-state,
Art nouveau, electricity,
and liberal democracy,
never in her wildest, most horrendous nightmares,
-one of which was mere few dozen Jews dying in pogroms-
could she possibly imagine
His robust fingers,
so caressingly wrapped around her neck and cheek,
concealing the bayonet claws
of mustard gas and industrialized massacres

A god whose name we only knew
and whose warmth we only read of,
had called for the blood sacrifice of utmost purity,
to be fed to its altars for the promises of salvation

As the Devil ravaged her body frozen as the Siberian gulags
and her soul smoking away to the chimneys of Auschwitz,
he raked his nail to her cheek seized by the throat,
lasciviously whispering,
‘Here, this,
This is the kiss of progress
You have thrown so warmly your arms around’

Ninety-eight years had passed
since that fatal kiss of a lovesome late June,
though the summer days had returned in Picardy,
roses and clematises
no longer bloom on her hills
except as tributes for silenced youth
which petals lay as a civilization’s tears
as shroud over a massive bomb-crater of La Boisselle(5)

And never again, could she fall in love,
notwithstanding all the lover’s whispers
of the rational organization of human society
or the ultimate liberation of the working class,
for in her heart have always lingered,
the shadow of the Devil
whose chilling warmth of the Lubyanka cells
and the fiery dearth of the crematoriums of Poland
we had shared as whole, consummate days of youth

For there lies a tragic aestheticism
in deflowering of a rose just about to bloom,
for one delirious sense of snapping off the stem,
we had burned away all ardor of love for a century

---------
(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SackofMagdeburg
(2) Concentration camps were first used as means of civilian incarceration by the British against the Afrikaaners during the Second Boer War
(3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HereroandNamaquaGenocide
(4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congo
FreeState#Humanitariandisaster
(5) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lochnagar_Crater
Lawrence Hall Nov 2020
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                The Staff Cafeteria at the Lubyanka

Spaghetti again?

A busy day in the cellar.  Admin
Wants more cells cleared for Lenin’s birthday bash
They come along okay until we pass the offices
And then they know. Some of them cry. It’s rough

Put it on my tab

It’s pretty rough upstairs, too, meeting your quota
Of counter-revolutionaries and recidivists
You just drag them downstairs and then shoot them
Easy-peasey for you, but the paperwork…!

Two cups of tea

Shop-talk and gossip, who got a promotion
Budgets and schedules, and comradely devotion
A poem is itself.
Lawrence Hall Jul 2022
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                             An Armada of Black Escalades

              …detailed lists of disloyal government officials

             -Inside Trump '25: A radical plan for Trump’s
                              second term (axios.com)

A shadow government just like
The new government just like
The previous government -
And just whose names are inscribed on Schedule F?

Those black Escalades

Armored Mariahs carrying functionaries
And their lists to secret meetings in the night
The Party faithful planning a new Lubyanka
And cultural suicide through electronic noise

Those black Escalades

The escort has a warrant for your obedience
You can see Siberia from the passenger seat
Lawrence Hall Aug 11
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
11 August 2024

                          Night of the Murdered Jewish Poets

                                          12 August 1952

When a tyrant has completed his catalogue of hate
Sent thousands to the noose and millions to the pyre
He ponders fresh murders as he sits up late
Whom else can he summon to his satanic fire?

There is agony in his soul – someone must pay
Those scribblers of verse – now there is treason
Another list, a list, without delay!
Poets to the Lubyanka – I need no reason!

I listen, I hear my night-whispering muse:
“Death is upon you, death, but first, but first…
  
                                                                ­                                  the Jews.”
Lawrence Hall Aug 13
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                         Night of the Murdered Jewish Poets

                                               12 August 1952

When a tyrant has completed his catalogue of hate
Sent thousands to the noose and millions to the pyre
He ponders fresh murders as he sits up late
Whom else can he summon to his satanic fire?

There is agony in his soul – someone must pay
Those scribblers of verse – now there is treason
Another list, a list, without delay!
Poets to the Lubyanka – I need no reason!

I listen, I hear my night-whispering muse:
“Death is upon you, death, but first, but first…
  
                                                                                   the Jews.”

— The End —