Where Words Matter More Than Noise - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

Where Words Matter More than Noise

 

As a wise friend says

 

“The unacknowledged legislators of the world” ¹

Do not assemble in chambers of marble and oak

With speakers’ maces, in ermine-collared robes

Their speeches taken down by The Guardian and The Times

 

But rather at corner tables at Kosher Sam’s ²

Café Zanzibar ³, The Stray Dog Café ⁴

With disposable pens, and in jeans and tees

Their speeches interrupted by each other

 

Ideas later sharpened into verse

And published in LogoSophia and Eliot’s HP ⁵

 

 

¹ Shelley, “A Defence of Poetry”

² San Diego

³ Nacogdoches (and can you spell “Nacogdoches?”)

⁴ St. Petersburg

⁵ LogoSophia and Hello, Poetry

The Last Nights of Club Ozymandias - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

The Last Nights of Club Ozymandias in San Diego

 

 

Shelley always makes one think

(often about how to pronounce his middle name)

 

 

I met a tout along a darkening street

Who said – “two trunkless legs of neon dance

There, upon that wall, on neon feet

An electromechanical contrivance to prance

 

In remnants, but wiggling hips and pouty lips

Tell that the artisan well caught the lust

Of lonely sailors as a pretty girl strips -

In time those young men and the dancer will be dust

 

These letters appear, written in cold fire:

I am the Queen of Club Ozymandias

Look upon me with your hot desire

Look upon me, and imagine us…

 

Tomorrow all will be leveled

 

A housing estate will arise, a planner’s scar

Nothing will remain of laughter and drinks

Of sailors flinging their pay upon the bar

For a dancing girl now silent as the Sphinx”