When you realise
that you have been nobody’s
afternoon idle dream,
that the role of shining knight
was reserved for whoever rode
the biggest horse
or that you cannot imagine
that the world would not be happier
without you in it, that your smile
counted for nothing
on a good day,
then everything else just falls into place,
that you are part of the ninety-nine
percent, even though
you feel alone;
truly and irrevocably in the way
in a room shrouded in people
We have allowed ourselves
to drown,
consented across the board
to be consumed
and driven mad
by want
and excess,
accepting
that
the bar code
that once was inked
and tattooed
on a brethren’s arm
is now
a status symbol
to purchase
things
more easily.
Ian D. Hall 2017
I clasped my hands together like a child,
before I found I no longer believed,
and as I lay on the sofa, hiding
from the dark, two in the morning blues,
I prayed;
not to your God,
not to mine of childhood nightmares
of Heaven and Hell,
but to the wider Universe,
to the ground in which our feet may tread
and to my ancestors,
please end this suffering
of a woman I love, I implored silently,
only once raising my voice when the strain
Is it right to wish you
Happy Birthday,
the land in which my grandfather loved
and would speak so highly of
as he sat in his favourite armchair,
Saturday glued to the horse racing,
picking up pennies won,
here and there,
after all, and I say this with the love
of someone who has held you just
as aloft as the grey haired man
who fell asleep one day in March,
three thousand miles from home
and dreaming of air so vast,
you was there before this day
I waged war tonight,
chemical warfare
in amongst the utensils, quickly
removed, shoved aside as
bombardment and napalm
rained down on the invaders.
I waged war,
against my better judgement
on a species intent on seizing
the momentum
whilst my back was turned,
whilst my guard was down
wind of their presence,
crawling through cracks,
damned ants, I waged war, thunderbolt
fists crashed, bleached top, powder,
not for the ant’s enjoyment or for their party
no doubt taking place in
an underground cave beneath
There is a tent under the flyover,
its green membrane door,
old and plastic,
flaps and coughs,
stuttering for a memory,
grasping at the once former etiquette of a visitor
calling at a friend’s house
without prior announcement,
the heavily and obvious cleavage
driven and the naughty never punished
stares of the early morning milk delivery
and the picture postcards
of a long dead era, no milk today,
no festival date by mistake
with a song of one hitting the high notes
and the lifting silver rusted pegs
No electorate voted,
yet money changed hands,
grubby back street pilfer
and a bomb waiting to explode
on the streets, ticking down
in Rotten Borough England.
There is a misplaced May Queen
out of her depth as she runs around the poles,
kicking other children out of her way
or bribing their parents
to do as she hopes to say,
a small innocuous pay rise of a few percent,
whilst sorry nurse, there is a food bank for you
here in Rotten Borough England.
There is always the moment, dear Time
in which I find that our mutual bond,
is caught between disrepair and the mime
of enjoyment, that we show each other how fond
we are of each other; the lie as we hold hands
and race against the tide you put before us
as they wear down the cliffs of the mind and lands,
crumbling, the path disappears without much fuss,
least of all from me, for I have no hold on Time
I have no control over its actions or accomplishments
I hurt myself last night,
indirectly, in the harsh light of a 20 watt shadow
but instead of beating myself up
and seeing people who have wandered
in and out of my life,
their times and happiness running
through my head, I chose to quieten
them all by looking at Google Maps
and the places where my own happiness
briefly
once stood like a monument
in a desert occupied by barking dogs
and rivers
damned up long ago.
Never trust Time
to stand still for you,
The sharp pain, numb
after a fashion,
hit me like a snake bite,
a bullet from a concealed gun,
digging away into my head,
yet somehow keeping me alive,
forcing me to recognise this new
possible threat,
a moment to join the rest
of the doses
of passionate warfare
raging, skirmishing,
full blown nuclear assault,
in this tired, deserted body…
I could tear an advert free
stained white T-shirt in half
and wave it above my head, frantically
calling out, “Don’t shoot, I am