The multiple choice between Megadeth, Magnum, ‘Maiden or Metallica

T-shirts, crumpled to hell, beaten, seven shades of death

inside a second hand washing machine that dribbled

four star oil and council pop with regular ease

and threatened to catch fire whenever you weren’t looking,

locked horns with

the odd bit of your own valuable

spilled blood and redeemed soul,

imprinted forever, stained but unsullied and undefeated,

that always goes well with a great pair of jeans and trainers

that none of your well-meaning friends would be seen

dead in.

So was the agony of choice on a Saturday night in Costermongers

where in later years the shit that ran up the wall

replaced the crap that was forced down your ears as the

radio was always tuned in to what the boss’ daughter fancied

as she giggled her way from dawn to dusk

in a romantic unobtainable dream as she typed

letters of unrestrained, not always true, complaints

against the staff and their mocking of her incessant

high trilled voice that put to shame any caged bird

you could find in the pet store

up by the train station.

 

Our dream, the music of brothers and sisters,

the sound of the loud, beating heart of the tangible…

physical and definite screaming through the night like

a dragon chasing after sheep, their fluffy white clouds

going up in smoke,

or if you preferred the sweet taste of a Newquay Steam

with its white tempting top and need of degree in which to

open it for the first time before being guzzled

as it sweated away

the hours till the next time you proudly pushed back the door

to a music nirvana.

 

You would stare above the rented bed at several of the posters

that made way for the lack of wallpaper

the lack of paint, money, excuses, work, time…but not life

and would grin at the thought of some woman being impressed,

in your dreams, at the character of your small room

but filled with a thousand albums, a hundred knocked off

T- shirts and a wall

full of ticket stubs in which kept out the draft

and the noise of the nightmare of 80s excess.

To save money later, several nips of spirit,

filling your lungs with after vapour, the whiskey of choice…

whatever was cheap, whatever got the mind ready to roll,

to endure the 45 bus past the Edgebaston Cricket Ground…

baring heroes, but who the reverb of a drumstick on snare beat

the echo of leather on willow.

 

Your own fingers tapped, tapped out the rhythm

on the metal bar before

you

of a sound you had heard the week before and who

on the Monday you had sought out painstakingly

to hear again, the best way to find Sacred Reich you felt.

 

A beat, fast, soul enhancing, image ridden awaits

 

The quick drag of a friend’s cigarette as they headed to get something to eat,

mysteriously gone by the time they wandered back, small bite

of love on show for a few days,

and you convince them that have been gone for ten minutes

and it was beginning to smoulder past your finger, on the way to your lungs.

The brisk walk, happy and glorious, past kids of the same

age but who were dressed up to our

dressed down.

We would always ignore the cat calls,

The Neolithic barbed attempts to prove that

Rock-Metal-Thrash…music lovers were nothing but a disgrace

whilst they ended up doing time

for driving whilst under the influence of their own beat.

 

The door to this palace, this place of misplaced virtue,

hidden by bouncers who chucked you in if you wore

that week’s chosen

band or if the right blow found its way to the heart,

but nobody ever did want to fight these mean men in black

with a gospel of their own making,

who kept you waiting, freezing your Sunday

best off, but with the chance of meeting a like-minded soul

for a minute or two in line.

Only once did the line ever conceal a rightly ironed

T-shirt in which they looked at you with a withering sigh

pursing from their lips and the Script was never worn

in there again.  However it did lead to a brief encounter

with a girl named Andrea who took a fancy to the taste

of Newquay Steam and who never left my side all night

but who I never saw again, no matter

how hard I looked.

 

A cousin who knew his music backwards,

so much so that he at least found fame for a while

and acclaim as a member of a great Metal band himself,

tore strips off my attempted

poetry on the back of the peeled off beer label

but who would marvel at the way I could play

Ninja Turtle video games whilst drunk

and through growling, perhaps mostly through vapour

and the dog end of a cigarette, how much

I could remember of the latest album by Sabbat or Skyclad

but not the boss’ daughter’s name who I just used to say

was way too classy for her own good and what she needed

was to listen to some Paul Simon on a Wet Wednesday night in Wigan.

Having sex in an American lift, or words to that effect,

was Andrea’s favourite tune all night, it was

the place in which I went and got steamed after losing

a girl that meant much to me, my cousin finding me and pouring

water on dying oil.

 

In that time I had heard all that I knew would see me through,

across years of hair moshing to its own beat,

to the odd smile when I hear the

sound

of Creeping Death still living across the years

and Love in Elevator always brings a certain sadness to bear.

Where is the rampage of youth

the desire to listen to your heart and count your pulse

and watch it quicken.

Death is nothing more than a number one single away

and yet we all aim to have a lifetime in a heaven of our own

making.

 

Ian D. Hall  2014