The urge comes and it takes strength
to quash it, to stamp on it, flatten it
lest it take me down dear heart,
to get on the train, to find myself
on a platform staring out across
a once abandoned town of memories
and haunt it once more,
but would you remember at all,
would you smile, playfully
slap on the back
and reach out to me,
the gentle reminder that we are still friends,
or would it be easier for you
now, before I board the train
You can call me a Tw**
I won’t take offence, call me a piece of
dirt, a shit, an arse, a f***,
Knob, Di**,
cuss me all you like, damn
me to Hell, liken me to porn,
if you feel cheap,
lazy even
forgo a letter, knock yourself,
find a better word than git,
Smeg is perfect, possibly,
it appeals to the Red Dwarf fan in me,
however,
don’t stand there and call me Hall,
that’s a No No;
you are not a N.C.O.
I have nothing against your left eye,
it is the pupil that you know will
pass its eleven plus
and go onwards to University
and despite falling in love
with many a pretty girl,
all mysterious and from a foreign field,
the pupil will become a good egg,
concentrate mostly on the study at hand
and leave with honours,
the gratitude of the pool table
and the smiles of the women
as a reminder of what it was to have
a good eye.
I was never in,
save if there was a new album
in which Monday mornings
spent flicking through covers
and memory
of songs heard on the radio
during the weekend
were too much for my psyche
to let go, the hook,
the lyric became my needle.
Never in, always out,
what was the point in self imposed prison, surrounded
by walls, decorated by posters to cover
the stark white oppression and unhappy warden;
now I stay in, the world has become
my prison, for the body and mind cannot
I might be a Manchester Blue,
so old school that I used to have slate
and chalk to calculate City’s
progress up
and invariably down the league.
A fan since the days of Dennis Tuert,
Willie Donachie and Asa Hartford, yet
still as the new season approaches,
I salute one of the special ones,
the soothing
Voice of Anfield,
the heroic stance in the box
of echoes and history,
the voice of football
in a world gone mad with the overpaid
and the undeserving, George’s timbre
And social media loses its mind…
a phrase that seems to strike panic,
what am I missing out now,
the in word, the gossip,
the click bait, celebrity rumour mill
going round and round
and round, till the spin dries and what
is left is nobody’s business
at all, the opinion of a guru,
the judgment of a stylist,
the belief of the uninformed,
does it matter, at all, truly…
all is gas.
Ian D. Hall 2017
Disconnect me
I feel my time here
is over
or at least no longer wanted
for I see it in every strange pair of eyes
that home may have abandoned me
sent me out into the cold,
and whereas before I could
see a way to move on,
to move aside
put on my shoes, pack a bag,
overfilled
with memories and the hope that I might
recapture them once day,
now I just experience pain,
loneliness
and fear
that all has been
Set a table for the auctioneer,
the gavel comes crashing down,
going once, going twice,
how long before the patient goes,
we bid for them, but only
if they live for six months or more
as the cost is too high,
we bid also
but can we inspect the merchandise first,
give it a good going over, see its history,
not a person, a thing, an item, cracked
and worn, smoked once, we don’t want you,
had a sip of gin at a nephew’s wedding,
Across the spectrum, from you to me,
we are told to be
patriotic, to shoulder the gun
and protect the country,
to fight for our right to be free,
don’t ask me if I could put a gun
to another man’s face,
eye to eye
you might not like the answer,
but I would rather not;
yet somehow being Transgender
makes you unfit to serve
under Trump’s bold vision,
so as an unfit, overweight
pacifist who you don’t want to see
pull a trigger, I would be welcome more
If I turned up at your door tomorrow, would you
think me broken, as we haven’t spoken
for a while, always the chin
held firmly, would you remember all
that I once did for you
or even the odd screw up, foul up,
because after all I am only human
and I have never labelled you perfect,
I have never seen you as the fixer
of the busted, the shattered or the ruined,
I have just seen you as the friend,
the final one who might just understand