…And all you wanted more than life

was to say you had slept with Jim Morrison,

it didn’t matter where or how, you just wanted that infamy,

the fame and glory, the smile of pleasure

the ring of tears when the camera pointed at you dressed in black

at the poet’s graveside, grieving but with a story to tell…

lots of stories to tell and not all of them yours to share.

 

You brushed hair in a certain style before I came round

knocking on the red wooden door, the only thing that

felt real for the rest

of the evening, even the sex felt orchestrated and timed to the sound

of a different bloodied and dying heart.

I took you in my arms and you grabbed for Jim,

you acted the part of my lover, I surely could not match up to him.

What was it as we sat and talked on your sofa till nine

and the bedroom decked out in pictures of another man’s life,

till work came calling and the poet that made you weep

for another time, died a little more as the sun came with joyous

intent and reminding you that you didn’t.

What was it, the bit of rough you so longingly searched for

but in a city supposedly full of refinement,

was I the closest you could get?

 

There is not a chance that anyone could live up to your ideal,

perhaps this was more of a lesson for me, for whilst

the poet is happy to be seen, he cannot be played by

someone else, you may as well dress a corpse to play my role,

in bed you may have suggested that.

The hair so neatly styled in that same old fashion

when I would knock on your red wooden door

would shatter into splinters each time I left,

I swore blind that I would never again give into your demand

for a poem again, I would not be the man you insisted I become

and yourself styled Morrison’s Hotel, tariff charge, one good

fumble, the music not to be anything but a Door’s tune

and for me to be who I could not be…

yet each time I went back for more, my drug of choice

before I was able to break free.

 

Ian D. Hall 2015