An Old Man Clinging to a Microphone - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

 

An Old Man Clinging to a Microphone

 

Those he commands move only in command,

Nothing in love…

 

-Macbeth V.ii.19-20

 

An old man bowed his head, maybe in prayer

Asking forgiveness for the massacre of innocents

Or maybe he was sorry only for himself

Because no one liked him anymore

 

His speech was as fragmented as the dead

He gobbled out words, poor scripted cliches’

Those in attendance felt little for him -

Pity, yes, and surely something of fear

 

For no one dared ask him, as he shuffled away,

“Mr. President, will you please resign today?”

Yet Another White Sahib Dismisses the Dead - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Yet Another White Sahib Dismisses the Dead

 

"This is not abandonment; this is not an evacuation.”

 

-State Department Spokesman Ned Price, 12 August 2021

 

While Afghan heads, like American guarantees

Roll in the dust of Kandahar’s grim streets

Our diplomats demonstrate their expertise

Executing again their skillful retreats

 

An elegant man at a microphone

Unctuously soothing the doubtful press

Denies that our client state has been overthrown

In a futile game of colonial chess

 

The dead cannot argue what Ned Price might say -

It seems their blood has blotted his resume

 

['Not an Evacuation,' Insists State Department as Pentagon Sends 3,000 Troops to Evacuate U.S. Personnel by Spencer Brown (townhall.com)]

Afghanistan, Graveyard of 19-Year-olds - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Afghanistan, Graveyard of 19-Year-Olds

 

“You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.”

 

-Holmes’ first words to Watson in

A Study in Scarlet, 1887

 

Ghosts shriek in the wind from the Hindu Kush

Falling upon the lowlands in despair

Of any reality beyond death

In the blood-sodden sands where sinks all good

 

Walls, monuments, souls, hopes – all blow away

In the wreckage of long-fallen empires

Their detritus trod upon by tired men

Whose graves will be the howling dust of time

 

And yet the empire masters will return

And leave fresh offerings of more young men:

A British Enfield, a Moghul’s lost shoe,

A cell phone silent beside the Great Khan’s skull

 

 

From The Road to Magdalena, Lawrence Hall, 2012, available via amazon.com

 

“Afghanistan, graveyard of empires” is a common saying whose source is unknown.