Tag Archives: poetry by Ian D. Hall

Shall I compare You…

…Like when the dog farts and stares round for the intruder,

you shift the smell of blame of on your own shortcomings and feverish intent,

on anything that moves within your eyesight and dress your lies in robes of fur

covering the brown stain that appears on your underpants with money well spent.

 

The Cowering Chihuahuas and possessive Terrier smells just as fragrant

as the keen eyed Labrador leading the blind astray

and yet all are equal to the roundworm that feeds under the skin with skewed slant

Shall I compare You… full post

(192 words, estimated 46 secs reading time)

Wire.

There is still so much barbed wire surrounding the air between us,

gnarled and sharpened, it is only seen

when observed up close, through the flawed magnifying qualities

that a camera can capture on full zoom, or perhaps laid across

a piece of clear glass and seen through one eye, half closed, straining to scrutinise

the differences in opinion that has ensnared us, dangerously

and without feeling any empathy.

 

The barbed wire, svelt snake like, worm thin, scorpion sting,

is laid across mile upon mile of the territory marking out no man’s,

Wire. full post

(398 words, estimated 1:36 mins reading time)

How Easy To Dismiss The Shadow.

How easy to dismiss the five O’ clock alarm

and avoid by any means the next round of sentry duty,

how easy to roll your eyes, ignore the sound and keep calm

and once more doze in the arms of your chosen daily beauty?

 

How easy to dispense with the sound of a ticking bell,

the manipulative upstart of the daily uphill steep incline,

the kick starter which places you in Hell

and the sapper of strength, the dispenser of never ending decline?

 

How easy, I am never sure!

How Easy To Dismiss The Shadow. full post

(148 words, estimated 36 secs reading time)

Lady Macbeth Rides Again.

The paint is wet but that does not mean the words on the walls,

written with leisurely pursuit, are wrong.

What was the bitter pill you swallowed to lose the most feminine of truths,

the art of compassion and consideration

for all you serve, or is the serving just for self advancement

the chance to take one for the team by bending over

backwards in the fawning style of a clown, a quick one in

the castle

lobby as you will be remembered for the death and suffering of many.

 

Lady Macbeth Rides Again. full post

(463 words, estimated 1:51 mins reading time)

The King Is Dead, Long Live The Queen.

It was once said in the time of Prince February, the shortest

ruler with the meanest of dispositions, that Tiresias once exposed

the fallacy of droplets of Poseidon’s tears

outnumbering the grains of sand felt between the blue eyes of the tired

and miserable and multiplied

by the grains of sand felt beneath the hooves of the far flung desert camel.

 

February tossed this so called joke aside, as he wished he could

have done to Tiresias with his all-knowing twinkle in his eye.

“Absurd”, February was prone to mutter loudly as he paced the halls

The King Is Dead, Long Live The Queen. full post

(522 words, estimated 2:05 mins reading time)

The Laying To Rest Of Mad King March.

…With one last roar of bitterness and pain,

King March lets go, of his life as he knew it,

of everything that went before and understood

Lord Tiresias’ wise words

that were concerned with pleasure.

“Pleasure, not this agony of Regal state in which

My subjects below me run into shadows, hide in corners

and bow to me because I force them too, because

I am damned to always believe them to be

nothing more than baseless, they do not understand the

relating pressure I feel as lord of this once

The Laying To Rest Of Mad King March. full post

(397 words, estimated 1:35 mins reading time)

Mad King March Sees The Folly Of His Ways.

The last throws of his titanic, obliterating, rage upon him,

Mad King March sinks into solitude and reckless despair.

He had known all his life that his anger was wasted

on the faithful subjects who had grown to love him,

as they had every March before him, for Mad King March

understood that the time was at hand in which,

baring disaster, baring cosmic storms and ice so ravenous that would

carve death into the heart of the Universe, it was time to start

thinking of the future, the January babe, medieval child in arms,

Mad King March Sees The Folly Of His Ways. full post

(209 words, estimated 50 secs reading time)

If Not For Miss Dicks.

If not for Miss Dicks,

school would have been nothing but a waste of time for me.

Not to say I didn’t enjoy the time locked in a classroom,

some teachers positively nice, doing their job, as Mrs Gray

did, with enthusiasm in the face of permanent adversity

but there were others

for whom teaching was surely just a way to spend a few hours

away from home and the drudgery of living

in 1970s Britain.

 

If not for Miss Dicks,

I would have gone on to senior school

If Not For Miss Dicks. full post

(688 words, estimated 2:45 mins reading time)

Earth Hour.

Where does the time go?

When the clock goes forward by its incongruous hour

it sits in a bank somewhere off shore in an account

owned by a Time magnet, a man who twiddles his embalmed moustache

and thinks of the interest earned

on the sixty minutes deposited, we lose an hour, he gains seventy

million and will live forever.

When he gives that hour back in late October,

the month in which Time gets charged its annual V.A.T.

(Vanity Adulterated Time), we see not a single second

Earth Hour. full post

(155 words, estimated 37 secs reading time)

Modern Damocles.

The single hair that holds the danger aloft

is but a trigger in the minds of those with envy in their heart.

The crown unsettled, as if troubled by feet of clay so soft,

is not to be worn by one whose for lust of power is but a start.

 

I will not envisage a crown upon my head

nor will Damocles push me into the arena bold

for when all is not done and never mentioned, never said,

will my heart be cravenly sold.

 

Modern Damocles. full post

(167 words, estimated 40 secs reading time)