There is no make-up that hides
the face beneath the skin,
my smiling expression,
sincere at least,
hides the sadness that I cannot
otherwise contain.
You can hide yours with all the eye
shadow you want, all the powder
and ruby red
lipstick coating the snarl, but
it will only ever be varnish
on the surface; underneath
you will always be vain and obnoxious.
Ian D. Hall 2016
I cannot remember your name,
I am sorry.
I remember your face
every time I close my eyes, I
have never forgotten you
but I cannot remember your name.
I know the first time I met you,
I can recall with ease the first song
I heard in your company,
and if you were a woman
I can remember the first kiss we may
have shared, that we felt possessed in its safety;
I strain though to summon up the memory
of your name and for that,
Alan Wells
was a hero of mine when I was younger,
when I first realised
what the Olympics meant,
what it could inspire,
what it could be
if not allowed to be dominated
by politics and cheats
or death’s unfavourable hand;
the dip
of the head at the line,
something I loved.
Nearly forty years on,
past the excuse of the biggest cheat
of them all, an athlete that destroyed
my faith, past vainglorious,
past deception and onto spectacle,
onto breathing legend and admiration
Was it wrong to believe
for a short while
that I could recapture a moment
in time,
fleeting perhaps,
the small gesture
of alluded art that I so desperately
wanted to be part of.
That to dream of standing
before you, the lonely virginal
player, steeped in the allure
of the greasepaint and the single
short monologue
in which to make
an entrance with,
to make people sit up
and take notice of,
was that ever so wrong.
Into drastic middle age, early death has been defied
Please don’t park on a drop down,
the unassuming slight
plunge in the pavement
at the end of roads,
the pedestrian walk way,
or even pram pushing mother
or wheelchair user,
find it quite difficult
to fall down an eight inch crevice
without either tipping over,
babies nose sniffing the asphalt
and stones cutting small scares
drawing blood on fresh skin,
or the anxious wheelchair user,
not having the energy to make sure
they don’t fall flat on their face
for the amusement of others,
For a short sweet while,
I was the fantasy in someone’s
romantic fiction,
the heaving bosom
on the well licked
page, thumbed
back and forth,
back and forth,
till she was sated
and I was forgotten, used
up and left hanging
in the middle of page seventeen…
for a while I was the hero
with wild hair, the broken man tamed,
the savage beast ridden and held;
all is a dream on this score,
after all, it was someone else’s
fiction.
I smile as I watch
on stage
a master grin
beguilingly
for the briefest of serene moments,
the Edinburgh rain bounce
on the age old cobbles
in New Town,
Georgian splendour,
Regency supremacy,
and after the show,
we talk cricket for a while,
for that is the only civilised
approach, the only thing to do,
when the covers are on the field of play
and the actor’s
innings
declared over
for the night.
Inspired by the actor Tayo Aluko
Stuck
in nowhere,
I hear the sound of
Explosions, of white noise
and false glory; stuck in
nowhere,
I remember you with sweetness,
with faded gloss
and dynamic static;
tell me
please,
I implore,
where did it go so right for you,
what point in time
did you become
so perfect
on the eye
and when did the scar
of all you had killed to get there
become rigid
and filled with pus
and decay.
It is the sound of another
name call, the roll of the tongue
of another insult
that leads me to believe that humanity
is headed
down a path
in which
people will find the quiet
thinning out
of people such as me,
to be good for humanity;
it is only a matter of time
before they go from name call
to roll call.
Ian D. Hall 2016
I feel steeped in your history
Athens
of the north
each time I breathe
in the rain,
that rusts my armour
yet builds my arsenal.
I feel your beauty
and I desire
nothing more
to be soaked to the skin,
dripping wet
on a boundless summer’s day,
to feel the chill of North Sea
air warm me
as snow swirls in August
and the sweat of Christmas Day
applauds,
Athens has nothing on you
Siren
and I am rocked