Poems need not be sad
Or angry or mad
With endless lines that go on and on and on and on and on about broken homes an broken hearts
And false starts
That painfully chart
The awkward writer
From darker to brighter...

No, instead they can start
With a poetry ****
Pure expression, release
Once out they bring peace
Just put words on a page
Don’t think, just engage
They don’t have to be long
And they don’t even have to be rhythmically strong
Short or ugly or loud,
Will do just fine, that’s allowed
As long as you write
With all of your might
Let go
Of the words
Let them flow!

Get rid of what’s stuck
In a head full of muck
Let them out and they’ll bake
You a metaphorical cake
That does what you need it to do
Even if it’s not good enough for a national poetry competition because the scansion’s all wrong

With generosity of time and care
He teaches her about the things he knows.
Such as a couplet is a rhyming pair
And how a sonnet ought to be composed.
Pentameter iambic is the key
With accents, syllables and scansion too.
It seems a huge and baffling mystery
But bit by bit he gives a hint. A clue.
“It helps to tap your fingers on the desk
To count the syllables and hear the beat.
For some this seems bizarre and quite grotesque
But listen hard and count along. It’s sweet!”
          A teacher true who cares for flawless rhyme
          I thank you friend for giving me your time.

"Caliban must have dinner."
Let him have first a bit of scansion
Of the vowels marooned to his feet
Along with the consonants washed ashore
By a called up mock storm
Inhabited by catalectic trochaic Trimeter, hexameter or pentameter
Name it !
This muse is his.
For his is the muse
This muse is his island
And every storm of hers is a beatitude
Passed on him by his  Sycorax.
So blessed is Caliban
For his is the musedom of light
This muse is a perfect antilabe
He has pampered her with caesurae
He has spoiled her with feminine
Stressed and unstressed syllables
Kissed her with iambic pentameter
Caressed her with hemistichs
A trochee here
A spondee there
Caliban is beatitude in scansion.
Blessed is Caliban
For his is the musedom of  light.

No matter how
You may attempt
To grow out
The container
Of your life
Which was provided for you.

There are others
Who weigh you down?
With the weight
Of their ideas.

Empty the bowl
Continue to reach
Through your roots depthless
In the soil of your speaking
And then from your hand.
May sprout the words
With green leaf script
Growing up the scansion
Of the stars.

For in the gleaning
Of bonsai
The tiny and insignificant
Are magnified
For burden’s elegance

Is Refinement
The smoothness of the soul.
For what is compact
Is always whole.

Laid now on his smooth bed
For the last time, watching dully
Through heavy eyelids the day's colour
Widow the sky, what can he say
Worthy of record, the books all open,
Pens ready, the faces, sad,
Waiting gravely for the tired lips
To move once -- what can he say?

His tongue wrestles to force one word
Past the thick phlegm; no speech, no phrases
For the day's news, just the one word ‘sorry';
Sorry for the lies, for the long failure
In the poet's war; that he preferred
The easier rhythms of the heart
To the mind's scansion; that now he dies
Intestate, having nothing to leave
But a few songs, cold as stones
In the thin hands that asked for bread.

the criminal element is lost
have you fought with your boss
each day is fraught with challenges
but that's what makes you stronger
all along the water's edge
the waves break and connect
like threads of poetry
lines of beauty
curving at the moon
luminous intrusions
before we are fallen
dreams seethe
with colorful landscapes
and i am a blade of grass

threads of astral fire
aspire for the sun
my magic is beyond recognition
it ignites the silence
and burns bright as day
words are living
breathing entities
families of sounds
consonants and vowels
are relatively harmless
unless you dare
to speak them out loud
control your tone
and let aspiration resonate
this assonance is rather transient
so lets embrace our scansion
mansions of impermanence
lands of intransigent transients
its tragic really
how the lead of vehemence
can spread so rapidly

sentient powers stake their claim
in soil that remains dutiful
despite your shame
have we gone insane
its quite likely
or are we still the same
that remains to be questioned
better to drop this game
and keep up your crazy vision quest

Freedom is existence, growth and persistence enacted through nonviolence such as passive resistance.

Freedom is expansion, past the bounds of your mind's mansion, to evolve with the environment like verses without scansion.

To revel in the expansion of your own spatial existence is like how treble leaves you dancing as the bass is Doppler shifting.

To enjoy the state of living in your temporal position is the very definition of the joy of manumission.

Lost in the scansion of a cool iron box
I struggle for air from the confines of metal that blocks all fresh of life from the cage
Bound in gagged suffocated reflexes
I utter muffled screams of my nights spent in lost days

Held in suspended motion, mid-flight to a descent
I train myself, my senses already know what comes next
meanwhile the art of stillness, in vivid stasis I contemplate.

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                            Your Poems as Love-Letters to God


          Gregariousness is always the refuge of mediocrities, whether
          they swear by Soloviev or Kant or Marx. Only individuals
          seek the truth, and they break with those who don’t love it
          sufficiently.

                 -Doctor Zhivago, p. 9 in the Pantheon edition


You live, you have lived, and you will live
And because you live you will engrave your life
In elegant scansion, in noble lines
That shape chaos into beauty and truth

Not into metal or rocks or wood
But flung into Creation in gratitude
For the sacred life you have been given
For the strength of your love and thoughts

Each little line is a gathering-gift to God
Baptized in the Jordan and in the Hippocrene
To God, and to the Muses who smile on you
And to great Mysteries beyond the stars

Each little line is a gathering-gift to all
To read in the light of seven sacred lamps
The wisdom of patience and pilgrimage
Beside the banks of the river you know

You live, and so you write, you must, you must:
For there is meaning in tumbling in the grass
On a summer day that will live forever
Helped along in your written remembrancing

You live an eternal meaning in the why
Of laughter and puppy-kissings and grass-stained jeans
And that is why you must write it all down
For others in intellectually-sharpened rhythms

You live an eternal meaning in the why
Of love, of deeper kissings in the dark
Emotional confusions gone crazy-wild
Until they are sensed through crafted verse

You live an eternal meaning in the why
Of recruit training and sometimes war
The joys of learning wisdom from great books
Tentatively shaping your own new knowledge worthily

You live an eternal meaning in the why
Of leafy springs and apple-green summers
Golden autumns and winters of blue
Writing them as hymns of gratitude

You live an eternal meaning in the why
Of children in a home modest in wealth
But rich and layered in love, work, and prayer
“Is this poem about me?!” Oh, yes, child

You live an eternal meaning in the why
Of lonely nights, hospital stays, mistakes
Disappearing dreams, disappointed hopes
Memories of friends buried in the dust

You live, you have lived, and you will live
And because you live you will engrave your life
Love-letters as your gift to Creation
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti

Brevity is the soul  of wit
parody is the spirit of zombie
or the lack thereof--
as they scratch through the scansion.

Parody arise from
its grave hungry
stalking  through  the letters of  trees
until it comes
to cabin isolated in the backwoods.

Batter through the three doors
of the stanza
and then eat the children
of another’s poem.

Ma Diva veut  être meublée de parenthèses
De ïambes de jade meuble aux couleurs de toutes les toques
Et manches et casaques de l 'arc-en-ciel
Toque blanche manches vertes et casaque noire,
Toque rose manches blanches et casaque verte.

A l'intérieur des petites lunes enchantées
Entre losanges, étoiles et petits pois
Ma diva, oh la vilaine,  a mis des accolades et des crochets
De jade blanc, digressions  ponctuées périodiquement
Par d'exquises parties de ïambes en l'air.

Qui dit ïambe dit trochée
(me suis-je permis de préciser)
Et qui dit ïambe et trochée dit scansion
Alternance dans le pied, donc dans la marche
Dans le pas cadencé, l 'amble, le trot  et le galop
De la respiration longue et brève des solipèdes.

A l 'intérieur des parenthèses enchantées
Entre une espace et l 'autre de l 'écurie
J'ai vu danser ainsi une diva de forte encolure
Revendiquée modèle de Botero
Embarquer en longe un soleil pas trop chaud
Pour égayer le paddock de son haras
De vieilles pierres et de prés, de sous-bois et de beaux paysages
De musées et de concerts et de galipettes
Au bras d'un cavalier épicurien
Dragon de paille, bon à tout faire :
Lad qui la sorte à la longe
En chemise polaire de luxe
Cavalier qui la monte
Au grand steeple-chase de l'immortalité
En cajolant ses flancs de liqueur de jade blanche
Et  en même temps  groom qui la soigne
En divaguant en elle au gré de ses envies
De pierre semi-précieuse en transe.