Where would I be tonight

if not by your side?

Easy to believe that I might be drinking,

toasting the year, burning Time,

setting my life ablaze

in the White Horse,

New York, whisky threatened

records and nervous poetic disposition,

the grand finale to match the Welsh bard,

drunk on my arse and grovelling in dirty rhyme

as those around me

misunderstood English

cool, the trilby

carefree on someone else’s head.

 

Where would I be if not

holding your hand tonight?

Smouldering away in The Bear,

drunkenly passionate,

words flowing like Guinness from the tap,

pure black and beautifully invigorating,

just to the point

where the greying red head girl,

a woman of opposite attraction

but who loved to believe in love,

of dreams past

has to remind

the misfit

how to keep the stanza up.

 

If not with you,

I would be dead

Drunk in another

White Horse, Bicester way,

howling at the moon,

howling with Ginsberg appeal, my own

appeal having been lost

over Time, the candles burned

by Kerouac and the odd shot

of adrenalin fuelled kiss

keeping me company

on the long staggering

split vision walk

to a home I didn’t recognise

but in which the bed was a stranger.

 

Tonight, I will wish

you the most beautiful New Year,

but in an East End pub

my mind would be on higher things,

of wrestling through a menu

written by the top shelf,

brought low by the karaoke

of remembering every word

but the notes hanging

in the wrong order

and I won’t care

as the White Horse whisky

does its one trick pony

impression.

 

If not holding your hand

on this night,

the sound of music past

playing in the mind,

then New Year’s day

and those that follow in its wake

would flounder,

would stiffen and curl

at the edges,

the damage and the dame

having worked their magic

would disappear

and in the end loneliness

would be the victor,

would see the New Year

start before Midnight.

 

Ian D. Hall 2015