The best thing about the English language is how you can say the most without even using it. And how the two things that make us most human, love, and the life that sits inside of us, can sometimes be switched and mean the same thing.
"I live here."
"I love here."
As in, this place, that came about more slowly than anyone could understand, holds any hope or goodness that was ever apart of me.
This place, the only moment in time where you can correctly lose parts of you that were never made to give away, keeps you there the rest of your life wether you know it or not, regardless if you ever choose to return to it.

But of course you will.
You go back almost every day, and listen for sounds no one could ever hear, you take in every beam of light which had no intention of sliding it'self into such a dark pool of hair that floats so gently above the spine, and yet how could it be anywhere else?
And how could you ever not notice such things?
The world itself is it's own piece of life, and every time we forgot to see it we come closer to being incomplete, we come closer to dying with so much left inside of us.
And if you must die, do so with no dreams left to speak of, with no life leftover to silently wither away in an eternal quiet, and with every word softly landed in every place it was meant to be.

A drab drop drips
Downed casualty
Down casually.

A sulfuric gust cycles
In three fly-by nights.
A gust hoping,
A breeze yearning to dab a wet tear off a moistened spring cheek.
Floating by on a wisp of breath,
Breathed once by the blessed. Now irreparably tainted, then incomprehensible anew:
Treated by the respirations of the perspiring, expending breath on czarist ears, aspiring;
Cured by the tongues of the insatiably dying
And by those primary soothe-ers, invisibly crying.
Alveoli gripping that sine qua non of civilization
Until they must release the once-oxygen into the hills of Kyivan Rus.

A first breath and second
As much as a penultimate and final.
And witness to the chronology that led to such a
Bloodbath-blessed blast
As this.

Burning pleasure with each swallow
I love the way you taste.
Eradicate the stress.
Numb the pain.

In search for freedom
Steps to intoxication I take
Consumed in reflection
With each swig memories fade.

No matter the quantity internally vacant I remain.
How many more sips
How many more shots
For the remnants to trail away?

Ethanol
My aching addiction
Course through my veins
Life is nil without you.

Unable to remember
Questioning what was said
Passively expelling secrets
Drunkenly fearless I am.

Drowsiness imminent
Slurred speech
Coordination weak
Emotions wavering

Artery pressure low
Heartbeat delayed
Thoughts sway
Respirations slow.

Inhibitions lessen
Concentration impaired
Reflexes diminish
Hangover in the distance

Another day
Another drink
Inevitably it happens.
I succumb again.

Time reverses the inebriated.
If only time could annul the loss in me.
Subdue the recollections.
Until then sobriety is not for me...

Socially Engaged Poetry

As an effective tool for advocacy
Creating partnerships and sharing skills
A voice to the voiceless, Split this Cliché
Empowerment to the empowermentless
Through bleats of provocation and witness
Copyrighted and stereotyped
In a World That is Forever 1968
Exploring and celebrating the many ways
We can score yet another guilt-grant
Asserting the centrality of the 501C3
Through bearing witness to diversity
As long as it behaves itself and thinks like us
Accessible and yet authentic
A n d l i k e d o s t u f f w i t h s p a c e l i k e u no

cause       spaces

                                 are authentic, and,
   like  


                 stuff
Poetry as a living, breathing art form
If you listen, you can hear its respirations
Gasping in the long, dark night of group-think
Obedient to a mission statement
And the careful construction of resumes
Committee integrate complexity
Formula dampens the authentic voice
Perform this vital work imagining
Personal and social responsibility
Revolutionary transformation
Write and perform this vital work support
Of human social justice experience
Grounded in holistic spirituality
Flouting the patriarchal something-ness
An act that requires community
If you love freedom, you dare not disobey
And let all the people say “Cogent!”

i heard my mom use the L word
when i was telling her
about my personally forbidden escapades
with the boy
my doctor
who i’ve let see
a framed picture of
an iota of my wounds
but still cannot bring myself to call
my boyfriend
as if the word is somehow poisoned
as i’ve convinced myself
in my loneliness
that the idea of that
feeling that most definitely isn’t love
was the stinging venom
burning through my veins
melting my skin to
waxy torrents coursing
from gaping wounds
butchered into my supple dermis
trying to escape my corporeal prison.

my body seizes at the utterance
of two syllables
because i am terrified that
the house of cards that
hold up that word on such an
unnatural pedestal
will crumble
evaporate into the
ether hanging around me
keeping me drunk on
that piquing ache churning
reaching deeper than
the bedrock of my stomach
that my incessant pepto can’t touch
a blowfly burrowing itself
into the mucosa of my abdominal cavity
that i know is filled with my
vital organs
but feels more like a vacuum.

he’s not my boyfriend
even though i tell him to turn over
in the darkness of our
shared slumber
so i can be the big spoon
and he can teach me how to breath
his respirations in his back
pressing my chest into
inhalation
just as my head on his chest
rises and falls
with him
my pectoral moon
pulling my tides
surrendering to the
inevitable turn and living
in that imperceptible moment
between inhalation and exhalation
a silence wherein
we are one
and i feel like his skin
could perhaps be mine.

I watched a man die from a distance the other night at work.  
He was a patient on my unit,
                                                    a BOP, a bedded outpatient.  
Came in for a routine procedure, it ran long, so they
stuck him in a bed overnight for observation and
discharged him the next afternoon.  

Came back three days later.  
Valve exploded in his chest.  
Transferred to CVICU.  
Coded twice.  

The first code was cancelled almost immediately.  
False alarm.  Critical condition, but not a code.  
The second code they called dragged on and on and on.  

I know this because someone pulled him up on the telemetry monitor by our nurse’s station, and we watched him flatline, watched him asystole, watched his heart at zero and zero and zero.  Watched them bag him, give manual respirations.  Watched the forced waves on his flat rhythm from each compression.  Every palm to sternum.  Every electric shock caused a wave and then fell flat.  Zero.  Zero.  Zero.  Absolute zero.  Like in space or whatever.  So cold.  No life, no movement.  Zero, just zero.  Flatline.  Asystole.  No life possible, no life attainable.  
I watched him die from a distance.  From two floors above on a computer monitor.  Secondhand death.

They stopped compressing,
                                                    stopped bagging,
                                                                                   and he stopped existing.  
Became stagnant, static.  No longer
held in the balance, in the limbo,
in the purgatory between life and death.  
                                                        ­                    He crossed over and
                                                             ­             stayed at absolute zero.  

I never met him, just knew of him, so
                                                              wh­at does that mean for me?  
                                                           ­   What am I supposed to do with
           the knowledge that many of the patients I come in contact with
                          die sometimes very soon after I meet them?  

Most things I touch die.  Plants, fish, hamsters, my mother.  
We can’t spare everyone, that’s stupid.  There is
a natural order to things.  Darwinism.  Survival of the fittest.  
                                        All that *******.  

When my mother landed herself in the ICU, we knew
                                                   where she wanted her money to go, but
                not what we were supposed to do with all this ******* grief.  
                Not what to do with her body.  
                Not if we should keep her on life support to
                                                                ­                  drag out the suffering.  
She gave no directions on how to live without a mother.  

(But how do you direct something like that?
An idea so big, so lofty that directions will always fall short.)

The grief cycle will
                                     always fall short.  
Most days I don’t think acceptance is truly possible.  

Some days I’m there, and others I’m not.  
                                                          ­          It’s not linear, it’s not stagnant.  
                                                     ­                       It’s not absolute zero.  
It moves back and forth and
                                               becomes the snake eating its own tail.  
                                                         ­           Ouroboros.  

Where do you go from here?  How do you truly move on?  

I’m falling through a gas giant.  Nothing keeps hold here,
                                                         nothing keeps score (but the body).  

It’s 5:27 in the morning and I’m thinking
                                                 about that man that flatlined again.
Zero on the telemetry monitors, no heart rhythm, asystole. Spike for compression.  Nothing, nothing, nothing.  The body gets cold when there is no more blood pumping, no more heartbeat, no more brain waves; nothing to keep it warm.  Blood slowly slinks down to the lowest bend.  Becomes a bruise on the skin.  Absolute zero is the coldest theoretical temperature. No movement possible.  So cold, atoms cannot move.  Electrons cannot hum.  
                                                        The body becomes this. No life possible.

open swinging door
oscillates gently in spring's
warm and moist respirations

hyacinth's odor
wafting in through the screen door
on reminiscence of you

I collect the death masks
of everyone I see,
many ready with their
mouths turned to  the earth,
eyes closed tight in hellish denial.

Except for L’Inconnue de la Siene
pulled from the river in utter peace,
lovely as Ophelia floating in the reeds,
the resuci Anne of two centuries
of death and resurrected respirations.

Her I grant the heaven she envisioned,
rescue her from the sterile pummel
of kisses and mechanical resurrections
for the body forever remembers its debt
to the devil’s dance of an aspiring life.

I am an exiled poet like Dante
finishing the Paradisio and Inferno
before the malarial last vision
and stone cold gasp reveals
the world and God as just a trick.

I witness the world pleading mercy
to the executioner before the beheading.
“No, no Madam you must die.  You must die”,
is the death mask maker’s answer before
the axe man takes his three swings.

I wonder, like Keats, before the wax
embalms his consumptive face
“How long is this posthumous
existence of mine to go on?”
The answer coming one year later.

I know the world will die, like John Dillinger
in a hale of bullets under a movie marquee,
its death mask ceremoniously displayed
next to its ***** pickled member
and the Sheep Child bleating for love.




Notes:
L’Inconnue de la Siene is a famous death mask created from a Parisian suicide.  Her death mask was a popular morbid collectible found in many French households of the late 1800’s and early 1900s. The Death Mask was also used as the face of a  popular CPR teaching mannequin known as resuci Anne.

The Sheep Child is a reference to the James Dickey poem about a creature that was the off spring of *******.

John Dillingers pickled ***** is rumored to be a part of the Smithsonian museum’s  hidden collection of oddities.

The soft sweetness of your taste is intoxicating to my soul.
You give me shivers, quivers, heart palpations, and lung respirations.
Your kisses are anointing and keep me grounded within your soul.
I melt in your arms as you hold me up on the wall, and ease the tip
of your tongue inside my mouth.
I hear music throughout my body when you kiss me with more than just meaning.
You kiss me and mean it, you kiss me to sustain my presence, in your life…and in your bed.
I get lost in your embrace and cover myself with your spirit alive.
I inhale the exile of your masculine charm and exhale the ten-star rating of your honey roasted kiss.
My deepest breath could never recover from the kiss you ease me into,
every night before we fall asleep.
I have never experienced a kiss like this!
You bob and weave inside of me, but it’s your kiss
that brings me…sweet divinity!

I watched a man die today.
It happened at the breakfast table;
he slumped over in his chair and started to convulse.
His lips turned white and I helped him from the chair to the floor.
He gasped for air and I grabbed his hand.
His chart clearly stated "DO NOT RESUSCITATE", so I didn't.
I kept calling his name, as if recognition of his existence would ward off death. It didn't.
Helpless, I sat there on the kitchen floor, with a man I took care of but didn't really know.
It was like trying to preform vitals on a mannequin. No pulse. No respirations.  No blood pressure. No air.
I pronounced his time of death "11:12h",
I told someone they should probably write that down.
I had never seen death before, not even at a funeral.
They made me clean his stiff body and we carried him from the kitchen to his room.
Now I understand the saying "dead weight".
I kept his jaw closed so the undertakers wouldn't have to break it.
They call this "rigor mortis", when the body stiffens.
Then everyone looked to me for guidance "you have an education, right? You know what to do."
They don't teach you this in school.
The undertakers came and hoisted him into the body bag.
Why did they take him like that? Cleanly zipped the black bag of doom from bottom to top.
There, ladies and gentlemen, was the grand finale of ninety-three years of existence.
I wasn't ready for him to leave.
How will he breathe? Wait-- right. Dead people don't breathe.
I wasn't ready for him to be dead.
They should've come later.
How do I move on from this? From something so absolute?
Maybe I should've chosen a different career.

Some narrow lilac, some feathered breath
some moment tread over with daylight,
with stamped cigarettes
The secret sanct of poets, intersect,  
*Sunset’s mother, cradling loosened
dandelions,
like Europa, sulfur ingénue,  hand woven clouds, tapestry *
I climb axe in hand like God’s mistake,
my dancing planet’s sands soaking wet
Time mishandling regret, respirations,
and Whiskey just takes and takes.

sunshine,
rain crisply tattering
on the gazebo wooden beams
where the moss grows tall
the daisies wither naught
and duo respirations
beating like a thunderous soar
of golden warmth
as two breathing souls
consume the tattering rain
and faint bleak sunshine
under a wooden beam
and moss-grown roof
waiting patiently for the
other to finally
speak

In the old French barracks, shelvings of cots
No ventilation – that was for officers
The night was hot, wet; sleep was difficult
No one knew anyone or anything

A siren. Life paused. Should we do something?
We barefooted outside in our skivvies
Hot. Silent. Still. Stuffy. Respirations
Is this a false alarm? Is it over now?

BLAM!
                                
Boom. BOOM! Boom-boom-boom-boom. BOOM!

And during a pause

a small voice said, “I don’t think they want us here.”

a blind master's

rainbow-respirations

cover a forest of bones.

overseeing future

incarnations.

he is highly reverenced

by where even space

cannot enter.

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

                  Be Still, and Bring Your Attention to Your Breath

And so we find ourselves obeying a watch:
Be still, and bring your attention to your breath
We do, and watch an aquamarine lotus
Glowing and growing and pulsing before our eyes

Now inhale

And ponder the mysteries of respirations
Breathe in the air that was always here
From Creation until now and beyond
A mystic stream through all living things

And exhale

Giving back to all that which was given
Knowing that it will be enriched and returned

Laying here in the silence.
Its dark but I am warm.
Lying here in bed.
Respirations and tears falling from my face are the only forms of sound I can hear.
How much can a heart take before goes into cardiac arrest?
I scream inside.
Painfully scream inside.
I feel trapped inside a empty box.
It's dark and lonely.
I'll be alright.
Always am.
Have no choice.
I'm mentally falling to my knees.
So hard that the knee caps I have burst from the fall I'm about to make.
Silent tears because I don't think I'm capable of letting the screams surface to the top.
Broken or bent?
Maybe a little bit of both.
Or maybe a lot of both.
So many thoughts and feelings inside this mind of mine.
Yet I can't seem to bring them to shore.

from time to time

i look in on the will--

she lie on her side.

back turned, pressing

and decompressing--

displaying the respirations

of sleep.

simulating peace.

though in sync, astir with

my every motion.

facing the wall, i know she's

awake--trying to be strong

on my behalf.