Into the end of the bleakest night
I finally resolved
to shred the remaining memories
of you.
Old photographs
where once you grinned,
I thought in youthful
happiness, but betrayed
by deceit and the chisel of the sneer
of selfish vanity,
all went the way of the vigilant calm
of the machine, cutting with no emotion
through the last few years of never-ending scars.
Then
in silence I found a card, badly written
professing sorrow,
your words scrawled untidily
as if written by conviction
I’m not ready to say farewell
to the boy
from Selly Park
of integrity and standards
that far outweigh my own,
and yet I know he last said
goodbye to me in his own voice
on a distant date
that I didn’t remark upon at the time
but which now has been replaced with a softer,
unknown tone to which is filled with love
and smiles,
but which isn’t my Dad’s.
He looks like the one who hoisted me on his shoulders,
who cheered me on
Perdition
By Ian D. Hall
April…
The children loved to watch a hanging in the park; it was free entertainment after all, and the increasing noise, the chanting of the adults, their parents, their uncles and aunts, and occasional grandparent, meant that they were observing the ritual, the convention, with strict, but glorious observance.
Floating
Dreaming
Here on my slow island bed
Lost in the seas
And the Albatross Skies
So High
What- What is there to do?
Nothing I want to see
Except for the crested waves
Crashing off the mirrored versions
Of me
Floating
Dreaming
I witness you there
Circling with the Albatross
Touching the opaque wispy clouds
So High
Alone, Here I Lay
Youthful hands behind my head
On crumbling dreams
On Petit Bot Cliffs
Gentle-Airless
A rumble from distant wings
Floating
Dreaming
Where will I go to
When this dream is over
Where will you land
Now that the world is so high
What-What is there to do
Nothing I want to hear
Except for the sound
Of your
Mournful forgotten cry.
I
never wanted
to stand alone on the
peek,
for me it was enough to be
in the crowd and see it from
base camp.
Ian D. Hall 2023
You are the gold
that is injected
into my tired and weary veins,
but still
I feel
that my cracked
and broken
soul will never be
anything
other than Tupperware
in a dishwasher;
orange stained
from overuse and
un-washable
sauce deeply imbedded into my plastic
lid.
What if we have been mispronouncing the Grim Reaper’s name wrong for all of humanity’s time on Earth.
What if early humans were visited by the figure in black, the scythe held ungainly in the air as the imminent passing of the person was announced, and they asked of this stranger with the power over their very life, “And what do we call you, veiled outsider, so others may come to fear you; please say it aloud to my brethren so they may pass on your hallowed name as a warning…”
Lonely
is
the
sand
that
is
not
touched by the sea
Ian D. Hall 2022
White beaked Messerschmitts
take vantage position
on the decaying church roof
as they crowd and wait
with piercing eyes
the early morning frenzy
of laid down black bags
the parcel corpses of the bread,
too far gone for morphine,
and they attack on mass.
The streets are filled with caw bullets
sprayed
and laughed by brains
so small
these creatures of the air,
and yet they know
our habits,
Your life, in pictures,
is a reminder
of how I feel about You.
You are beside
My working desk,
You overlook me,
as I stretch and yawn
in the middle of the night, you
as a child
when I had to leave,
You
as an adult that has made me afraid…
Your presence
has filled me with love,
and it has driven me
to question, to anger, to fear…
I miss you always,