Tag Archives: poetry by Ian D. Hall

The Man Who Gave Me Nightmares.

I was driven to the dark side by you.

The psychological warfare you declared on my soul

was swift, brutal, embracing and total; for that is what you do,

the use of my fears, you coveted and stole.

 

You climbed into my bed and ravaged me late at night,

it is not an accusation, more of a memory of the first line

we shared, and then forever, I have kept you in sight,

even with you missing from the night time, your nightmares became mine.

 

I Want

Surely

there are no two words more dangerous in their combination,

than the pair that leads to the poison that is rank,

stinking jealousy

and the sickly covetousness of the  envious vampire like

drilled with suspicion and unhappy malice fucks.

There are no two greater words to cause such misery

on the shoulders of humanity than I Want.

 

Bitter jealousy and envy, the twin darlings of

the grasping I Want, mewling, mealy mouthed and despite

the odd good intention, such as I Want World Peace,

A Place Near Burnley (On The Day That Dara Came To Town)

There is a dwelling of myth and magic

deep in the heart of the British countryside,

a place near Burnley

where Polytunnels do reside.

They are grown in this place near Burnley

in secret, tested by Hamsters and a six foot Guinea Pig,

chased by unicorns and frolicking maidens called Rebecca

and mused over by a comedian whose reputation is big.

The Polytunnel holds many secrets

in the place near Burnley,

a shorter commute for the weary traveller,

closer than Liverpool anyway, surely?

When research is over

Console Dogma.

…and also it is the dead eyes of a psychopath that terrify me most,

your eyes staring back at me, staring back with coward

like jealousy oozing out, yellow pus filled, the small secretion

of envy wrapped in guilt, draped in opulent greed

and enveloped, bound and laminated in your own self belief;

hubris defied you and allowed you to stand tall with ignorance.

How far does the delusion go? Does it spread all the way through

to the point of no return and your words

unable to fathom the point of exit,

The Smile And The Howl.

That first day, I mean the very first proper day

when we had our first group session together

and you sat at the back of the room with what I

would have called the cool kids thirty years before,

leaving, stranding me beside the battered front desk

of a tutor who spoke too fast and in a language

that well as might have been based in Maths, Fortran or

Gobbledegook,

your blonde hair shone and shimmered as much as it did

for the following three years in which it was my honour

The May Queen.

In what seemed high above the clouds to the mortals below,

their daily grind and purpose-led lives and their enriched

and awkward filled lies, in once where Mad King March

in a fit of male ego led temper threw his army to the wind, scattered

and shown no mercy, punished and raged as the wind tossed

with ever greater stakes as control

was sought for peace of mind,

now stands, in serenity and cast iron beauty

the queen of all, for  none is fairer or bountiful

than Thrimilchi, to her allies Wonnemaand and to her lovers

The Citizen Of Honour.

On the day that April Ashley

became a citizen of honour

in her home town that was once rugged,

rough, the tumbled down

and decaying, you cannot but help raise a smile

and nod to the fact that acceptance is the most

powerful form of understanding, a lesson that rarely

gets learned and that we are all guilty

of displaying the disgraceful

ridicule to those whose hearts beat

in time with ours.

 

I saw her being interviewed once

by one of the greats of the new build city

The Courtyard.

It was a secret,

one of those places you

were not aware of

until you were properly ready

to understand the significance of the change

it would bring

into your life and the preparation

into the adult that would stand bare naked one night

thirty years later

as the world became a more lonely place.

 

I found myself recalling the piece

that landed me my first part

inside the hallowed halls of the most exciting building

in the whole of Bicester and started to hum it,

Be Still My Beating Heart.

Be still my beating heart

and stop racing along as if you are being wound up

by Time, slow down, don’t dart

along as if the most beautiful woman

had asked you to kiss her with no commitment

to ever take her to bed.

I never imagined I would go this way,

I had the image of finally finding out what boredom was like,

the taste of a life, stuck in a bed, only resting they say and I

would joke along that rest is what you do when you

The Old Knight.

The old knight, full of lines and a paunch that has returned

despite many battles of valour and graces won, esteem

held high in his land for him

and even those he has taken prisoner full of praise for his honour

in their captivity, this old knight finds a corner

in which to put his hands over his face and allows a tear to fall.

 

A world in which has changed since peace was sought and found,

a peace in which he retired his suit of armour, sure that the fight