I want to talk to you,

just like

we did in old times

over a beer, over the background music

in which we catch ourselves smiling

at each other, shyly as children,

hormones unwilling to commit

as adults.

I want that beer to turn to three or four,

a session in a pub garden in the middle

of an Oxfordshire abyss or quiet literary desert;

let that beer sink, dregs drained

another one ready at the bar…

…I miss the gap in the silence

of comfortable reproach, when you

and I would drown in tears

for our paths never truly crossing;

aside from that once as your lips

caressed mine, drunken stupor,

you are the girl who made me see

and too whom all but one failed

to pass muster, to pass the point

where even you were happy for me…

…I wish to be serenaded

by whisky breath and insane thought,

to be conquered at fourteen,

to fall in love with sepia memories at fifteen…

to be distanced by time as I near sleeping

death and the next great adventure…

…and remember that last remaining gulp

of fear and double entendre shot whisky

as we crawled

bitterly out of The Bear and into

the fading,

short lived

moon.

 

Ian D. Hall 2016