The Poetry of William Hammett

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Friday, March 20, 2026

Axles and Bones

The veteran sits in the glass waiting room,
his car undergoing surgery with solenoid sutures,
tires aligned and torqued and measured,
blood drained and replaced to lubricate
the valves of a piston heart and carburetor lungs.
“Gonna tighten up this gal,” the service guy says.
The old man watches the interstate twenty yards away,
cars sliding through arteries and headed for Texas,
but the sinus rhythm, like his own, is gone.
Traffic is erratic, not something to hang your hat on.
He scrolls through his phone, deletes contacts
that were dead and dying fifteen years ago.
Staring at the sky, eyes glazed,
he slips a little lower in the leather chair,
draws his shoulders closer to his ribs,
and the plaid shirt is suddenly two sizes too big.
His bones are compacting, shock absorbers
taking blows from sixty years ago.
He remembers the German he killed
with a bayonet on a beach in France,
and his memories are crowding in,
falling into a black hole because the cars
are moving too fast now, too fast,
and he doesn’t want to keep track anymore.
His vehicle is lowered on the rack, is compacted
by gravity and grease and hydraulic entropy.
The day is moving on, getting shorter,
and when the service guy comes looking
for the VFW hat here, there, and everywhere,
he finds a pile of clothes on the leather chair.

~William Hammett

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Friday, March 13, 2026

Lady Godiva Blue Eyes

Golden hair wrapping and overlapping
full breasts on the white steed, polishing
her stomach and thighs, the lady doth protest,
but not too much, the taxes of Coventry
as she, smiling and nude and tripping on sun,
sweeps the town bare of a husband’s small gun.
But why stop there, she thinks, as she squirms
with delight of the loping left and the lilting right.
Leofric’s an ass, and not one she can ride,
so she cantors into Max’s upstate meadow
goin’ up the country where water tastes like wine,
where canned heat is a long time coming
and fig leaves are unnecessary while people smoke the vine.
This is a town where the men can be appeased.
No one turns a head, and yet everyone is pleased.
Handsome Johnny is stamping on the stage,
and Country Joe follows the sweet blue eyes of Judy.
In tall grass the lady lays with lanky, ropey, hips,
ballin’ the jack and jackin’ the ball.
She’s tripping on orange sunshine again,
and there’s no tax because the promoters are taking a bath.
What’s that spell? What’s that spell?
She has lost the head count after three days of lovers
and the Fender bass beating back helicopter blades.
After a year and some days making candles and things,
she becomes some guy’s old lady with butterfly wings.
If you see her, say hello, but beware of the sassafras tea.
It can take from here to there, which is fine if you’re looking
for a one-way ticket to Wordsworth’s pleasant lea.

~William Hammett

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Wednesday, March 4, 2026

Saint Basil's Harmonica

Sitting on the bench in Central Park,
Basil blows blue notes into dusk,
serenades, wails, wanders over the stops
with a tongue that goddamns the damned.
Pigeons, robins, sparrows—all become
blackbirds in the jangle of metal jungle—
scatter like gunships shaving a tree line
at the sound of Saint Basil’s harmonica,
skimming rice paddies with evening-violet napalm.
His hands cup the organ with tremolo trim
polluting the air with staccato music,
bullets from a bandolier feeding the M60 Pig
to mow down joggers and the Cong.
Before long, the day dies.
Behind aviator lenses and olive drab shirt,
the shuffles to the Catholic church,
lights a candle to Our Lady of the Buddha,
whose temples ruled the heart of darkness
in Asia land, in Asia land.
He curls up on the last pew and sleeps,
and in his dream there is weeping
before crickets calm the convolutions of his brain.
A candle sputters, goes dark.
Hollow bamboo shoots, reeds to blow
a dirge or Mekong Delta blues,
grow in the night by the stained-glass window
on which Christ feeds a lamb not long for this world.

~William Hammett

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