The sleepy Tamar
at high tide in summer
may have been the sound more gentle
to those ears of a Cornish Man
and Home Park love, Green
and Pilgrim, The Hoe and the Lido
just out of earshot and Mutley Plain
a place in another county;
yet for this South West Man, Green running deep,
Tamar running deeper still
and majestic, flowing football, he traded in Pastie days
and local derby smiles
to find the meaning of life
and complete the forty-two,
an achievement of high esteem
Their marriage was always the cause
of an argument, how could it not be
when they were always at war before hand;
the union laid down with ambassadors
forever at the birthing suite,
ready with hot water and towels
as a procession of children followed
who all left home with a single
solitary finger raised in the air
as they eventually told their parents,
sometimes nicely, sometimes
through gritted teeth,
that they were old enough, mature enough
to break away and live on their own
I would wait a lifetime
to kiss you, to feel that tender skin
now sweet with middle age
and soon to become lined, matured,
taken beyond the late teen I knew
to the world of womanhood
and with the next step,
Time’s next artistic breath,
near dust, near rust, near the echo of the youthful
freckled girl I once dreamed of;
I would wait a lifetime to kiss you
as it would show we had lived all our lives
in each other’s company.
Ian D. Hall 2017
Up close
I cannot see the point,
I have become my own shadow
glowing with false fire
in the darkness;
tomorrow in the bright haze of sunshine
I will still spend my time
in that same comfort zone,
because that cloak raven black
is a friend to me.
Ian D. Hall 2017
She met her old lover
on the street that night,
they ran into each other
by the corner of 77th and ‘Dam,
so she told me
and after much deliberation on her part
she found herself drinking a few beers
just out of kindness,
for she thought he was still crazy
though she still loved him
after all those years.
I wish I had met her lover,
I would have warmly shook him by the hand,
for in the way he dismissed her thoughts
An hour forward, Time again slides its hands
down my back pocket and fondles for change,
urging me to deal with the loss,
to make up Time and have an account settled early;
I wasted the moment,
I slept instead of being productive,
the type of action that would have a black mark
put aside you in a Kangaroo court of law,
the sentence…
undisclosed for now,
be satisfied, let your gloriously white teeth gnash
and grind…but hey, stop
for a minute and chew on this,
It is dangerous
to be so deluded,
that the internet for all its good
and ability to show the world
just how we strive forward in unity,
should we wish, gives a platform
to one so
bound up in her own con trick
that she can even call Australia
a place which doesn’t exist…
this modern day Atlantis,
packed to the brim with spiders
that will kill you, with Koala Bears
that are riddled with Chlamydia,
Kangaroos that made Skippy a star,
That made Paul Hogan a star,
The four in the morning
Buzz, the phone
lets out
a dying squeal of save me
in electronic Morse.
The screen is lit up
for a moment
with the legend,
battery low…
I sigh and continue to write helplessly
with a million words in mind,
all running towards
Oblivion
and I think to myself,
it’s not a competition
but I do know
how you feel.
Ian D. Hall 2017
I remember the conversation held
between the man in the stylish looking hat
and the woman who had asked him
about his inconsistent and doomed affair
and giving him advice on how to finish
with his lover; the fifty ways she mentioned
and whilst I only heard five that she recounted,
I hung around to listen further
as he pondered on how she would deal
with the same situation.
A moment, a second of silence
before she answered matter of fact,
“If all else fails Paul,
Ground down cocaine
derivative coursing through my early morning
veins, my dinner time blues and late night
saturated fat on old Jazz music
of which I cannot play a beat,
yet hear every note that the Sax man plays
in earnest down on 77th Street gun alley
where only the night before a man was killed for less
than murdering a rag time special
and looking at his killer’s broad
with a funny eye.
The late November sun catches my eye
and through the glass I take a look around the street,