Drunk as drunk on turpentine
From your open kisses,
Your wet body wedged
Between my wet body and the strake
Of our boat that is made of flowers,
Feasted, we guide it - our fingers
Like tallows adorned with yellow metal -
Over the sky's hot rim,
The day's last breath in our sails.

Pinned by the sun between solstice
And equinox, drowsy and tangled together
We drifted for months and woke
With the bitter taste of land on our lips,
Eyelids all sticky, and we longed for lime
And the sound of a rope
Lowering a bucket down its well. Then,
We came by night to the Fortunate Isles,
And lay like fish
Under the net of our kisses.

Why do I care what you think
or how you feel about what I say or do?
Should I, especially at my age?
But is not interaction itself the mutual influencing of behavior?
So when I speak to you and you to me
we are changing each other
just as the morning breeze bends the young Chinese Tallows
shaking each spring leaf as if to say, “Wake up tree, its time to grow!”
and the Tallow whispers, "Blow winds blow."
Caring just means I am human
and in spite of everything
I am glad about that.

Who am I?
"How silly,"
the pond replies,
"Seems your eyes'd
see through your disguises
a sight better than mine."

But when I reach into the deep,
distorted ripples lull to sleep
the me I'd need
to really make
these murky waters shine.

"Then come inside,
the water's fine,
or at least
it's all you've got to drink."
But if I submerge,
Will I ever emerge?
Or drown myself
with liquid think?

What will I find
but fishing line
cast from some other
fisherman's rod?

Is anything mine,
swimming behind
the genes of history?
Perhaps I'll try...
But I may die.
"Oh, what a mystery........."

For who am I
to have this choice?
Just some noise,
a soulless voice
dawdling in the shallows.
"But would you become
A forgotten old crumb,
A bundle of bone and tallows?"

No, I'd wish not,
but what've I got?
This pond's no ocean,
that's sure.
"So return one day
when you've steeled your faith
or maybe obtained
a magic lure."

I recall now the reason
I love winter's season,
alone on my land dwelling
limbo.
While frozen you are
reflecting the stars
over schools of mindless
minnow.

by Pablo Neruda*

Drunk as drunk on turpentine
From your open kisses,
Your wet body wedged
Between my wet body and the strake
Of our boat that is made of flowers,
Feasted, we guide it - our fingers
Like tallows adorned with yellow metal -
Over the sky's hot rim,
The day's last breath in our sails.

Pinned by the sun between solstice
And equinox, drowsy and tangled together
We drifted for months and woke
With the bitter taste of land on our lips,
Eyelids all sticky, and we longed for lime
And the sound of a rope
Lowering a bucket down its well. Then,
We came by night to the Fortunate Isles,
And lay like fish
Under the net of our kisses.

the candle stick
beneath the flame
the wick burns bright
but all in vain
as shadows loom
behind the light
they hold their secrets
black as night
the brightness scathes
the tallows drip
the candle burns
it's one way trip
till wax has waned
and out it goes
the way once shown
only it now knows

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

                                        Summer on the Lake

Children slosh noisily about on a catamaran
While lovers in the shade sit with crosswords and drinks
Or barefoot stroll along the lakeside sand
Each wondering what the other thinks

Minnows hover in the amber shallows
Dragonflies search among bright waving flowers
Sheltered beneath wind-trembling Chinese tallows
Throughout the drowsy, dreamy summer hours

This is early July, soft winds in the dales -
Which means it’s time for back-to-school sales

Sailors tie your knots oh
How form the dew-dead day
With yawns, fill with yards
How long we long to see.

Polyglot plow yank the pullies up,
Dumb-mouthed in them foaming
Naught and naught not,
Want is feral need.

Peach of preacher's pitcher
Dally down there mince one would away
Oh docimer and dale how the summer's sum
Would taste of eden milk and sap-spring age.

Diamonds polish
Hear me as I wake
And shakes of the eruption gape
Typhoon tongue all luck god made of colors.

Versailles sails on gleaming wave,
Wails sun licked flowers
Ford bread and bread plumb thigh
Feather bald mark the mist
And text is bound in spinning
Spun pink lipped
on promised the Fruitfold heart.

Ampersand revere on fast the raft
AMpersand and apple
Eve and illum.

Discard your tear,
For flair and fear
You are the one and one only.

Fine-finned tune and tossel
Soil green and brick red beach
Pennies cross
And churchyard grave
Good faith forever.

Heal and heath the number pallette
Appetite and berry-bled
Thick as theft
Godspeed your merry-go-round go.

If men were meant to walk on ice,
If all the sane sea were it would that were itself and ours again as always.




Ninth Element; Life binge part 1 Act 1 Verse 2:

The dancing underclothed, and piped
Salted butter and comb-boxed bine.
The dabble dream with sand and shore,
Scold those lavender farms.
Safe as soul, iron-reed,
Stripped stolen, with fast forward VHS eyes
Of sin of the sin's sink
And Belfast brine.

Ah, steal away their suns
With hot and heavy come
By spool and seal
The halls of milk
Insert your pewter
Jade bats and caught blood bleeding.

Ah, Byron on the bay theology
And march your Caesars
In the polyglot pine
With feast of friends and wanton war
The bomb-teared turn of time.


Unresumed the Ninth Element, return to return form.



And burst your fruits the pelican bask the shells in your throats
The swapped peppered sang the day away
With savage swim! savage and starving, burst forth from nature's breast kindly;
Double-down locked in his feeling chains.

Faire hill and shawl of sheet,
Princess Victorian homes sunny swam in my dream dozing.

Aye, hap-hap and lazy, tribe of tallows we clink our glasses looking smug,
Windows 98 in the hours of our breezes.

Upon the barre of harbor, how the fishermen flung their catch
And wheels fish fast dancing babies in the stalled steam.

...And all these tidings oh, aren't they kind
that spill o'er from this unnatural chalice
white as milk my eyes are blind
to all the glinting swords waving in my mind
shred to pieces a cause resigned,
no more rebellion they will find...
and all those tidings from ribbons meant to bind

Gilded Sun show not your brilliant favor
shower warmth on a needy soul
let the loyal be rewarded, for we so often waver
shine a path up from the caverns, we can dig ourselves out of this hole
let us go, the plea of a flea circus, do not hurt us
I will walk your great and mighty beam
and every day await to awake from this daydream
all for the conviction, my sentence, the show
I'm nobody's savior, oh no, a willing sacrifice; alarmingly so,
only on one condition, let us go

Follow tomorrow, led by the nose
tunnel vision, directed away from sewers of sorrow
and where today stops, I don't even know where it goes
I plan nothing in advance on the off chance a spare moment may borrow
itself from my bones, a sparrow may pick flecks of my dust to share with crows
a ****** I witness and testify to begin this merry-go-round of macabre-pity-wallow
here to eternity and then back again, taking the elephant for a spin, never forget the basic woes
that years you spend, your poems, stories and life you upend, sharing deeper until your eyes adjust to depths and it's too bright in the shallows
the land is a foreign concept, all language and things upon it you handle inept, your behavior is strange and it shows
you remember your hallucinatory machinations of an insomniac's spell, burnt vulture candles from the tallows
that forbidden longing is now allowed inside, to backslide and consume all these connections, before anyone knows
this monster they love wears the skin of a friend and lurks in his shadows, a phantom life that follows

As with the limbs no longer here, but grasping, the organs gone, but pulsing, this intersection of two lives
one planted in my heart, and many more splintered off, phasing in and out as knives
a brain like a broken bone, a compounded fracture that never healed right
I stand on my own, a boot and no crutch, I face myself every night
spitting mad at the belief in destiny, my own cancer is me, it's hard to choose to fight
every waking moment there is the angry and driven and smarter voice who knows what he wants
almost asocial in demeanor, vicious and calculating with his moral mathematics, abusive with his taunts
and I have been him and so much more
he is only a step inside of an open door
to the quelled abomination,
somehow I keep this glass bottle that contains the note Tom running and happy
motivated, inspired, alive and in one piece, not at peace, not evil, not truly
with my frayed edges, shredding inward, toward tearing myself apart slowly
at bay enough to get far away enough that I will greet myself when I return with confetti

...And all these tidings oh, aren't they kind?