Was there anything you couldn’t do,
a second dad to me,
my father’s best friend
then
and now and for as long
as I breath
you are a hero,
decked out in Bournemouth
red and black, yet
we attended Southampton games together,
football of any colour,
our finest moment
off the field
was to sit together at Old Trafford,
your first visit, my first victory in Blue;
on the back of the Daily Mirror
when Monday came.
You stopped at our house on Manilla Road
It has been impossible to ignore,
the shouts of derision,
the media insanity and lacking balance,
of course the people of Mos Eisley spaceport
would have dearly loved
to vote in someone with integrity
like old Ben Kenobi
but he could not be trusted,
better stick with Lord Vader,
a comfortable pair of hands,
a firm tight grip
on the situation
and in the end
it’s not like we fall for the rhetoric,
we are decent citizens
and have no interest in the scum
The final step,
the heart pushing
beyond
the rib cage
and the icy breath
short stabbing
inhalation,
exhale, laboured
fighting,
screaming for air,
the lungs near
collapse now
join Hilary’s Step
in man’s decline,
a monster,
once tamed, now
breathing no more,
dead, gone, the folly
of climbing the mountain.
Ian D. Hall 2017
We lose our capacity
to remember the first time
when as a toddler, the groovy
cherub child with sparkling eyes
and father’s nose, when we became
the pain in the arse,
the ache in the side of our parents head
and the cause of arguments,
we forget the joy
of the first time we asked why?
We rebel, we glory in poking
a hole in the absolute,
we saturate our speech with this new found word
and not realising the implication
it will have on our lives,
I will put my life
in the hands of the sympathiser,
rather than the terrorist
at No 10.
Behind that closed black door,
sits the heart of Government
and stained and festering it is,
for terrorism needs no guns,
the terrorist requires
no bullet, bomb, just the press
in which to carry out the threat,
get old, we will kill you off,
become ill, we will kill you off,
lose yourself in the fog, we will kill you off,
become unproductive, uncared for,
It was always the phrase,
“How selfish”
that got me, for if
you have never stayed awake in the glow
of the Sun’s universal embers
fending off the dark,
fighting it with sword and will,
you will never know the relief
when you finally realise
that you were the one
who could unscrew
the lightbulb.
Ian D. Hall 2017
I am a stranger,
so very strange,
in the town I live in
today, in the circle
and support group
I inhabit and even
if you look at my old
school report card
for Religious Education
during third year;
it will simply be scrawled,
who is Ian Hall?
I am a stranger, no sense, full of nonsense,
known only for dreadful dress sense
occasionally,
I am the stranger in my own thoughts,
I am the stranger lost in my own concept
It is but a vanity
to believe anything we do,
create, ultimately, means a thing.
We can only hope in the end,
that when time
chimes and begs us to depart the dance,
that we have at least managed
to make
one person smile,
one soul love us,
one mind changed
and one heart skip a beat
to know we have been in their life.
Ian D. Hall 2017
The handshake
from one who supposes himself to be God,
sarcasm overflowing and it is there
in plain sight, drool dripping in anticipation
of the take down, of owning a soul
and making them feel as stupid,
as insignificant
as an ant in a silver filled ant mound,
his home destroyed by the handshake
and the hose pumping hot toxic metal.
It was offered in a church,
both the biting sarcasm and the handshake,
both accompanying the sound of a section
of music that tinkled over the church hall pews
I don’t believe in burials,
outdated and morbid,
better to be free in the air,
to let your soul soar
through time than be in the ground,
cold, alone, aloof, who would want that;
yet if we still love each other
at the moment of passing,
I would want be safe with you,
let a future grave digger
find our bodies side by side,
holding hands
and perhaps your head resting
on my bony shoulders.
Ian D. Hall 2017