The bar,
always the bar
with a silent moment
straggling behind,
failing
to keep up
with the excited and bubble in nose conversation.
I always met the most
interesting,
beautiful
and charming people
nestled in the bar fly mode;
you chiefly amongst them
dear Carole Labrum…
I raise a glass and toast your honour,
to the only person that ever drove across
two states to hear me talk
and ignore
the silence
wheezing and puffing
exhausted in the background.
Let the horns
blow gently in the background
as the instrumental choice
breaks their hearts, the soft
lament of winter’s approach
and spring’s forgotten haze
is only a melody of memory
played out down the years
with summer an extension
of the orchestra’s belief
and autumn the tumbling farewell;
let the horns blow gently
for you are a King
with compassion in your heart
as the instrumental break
shows only too well.
Dedicated to John Jenkins.
Ian D. Hall 2016
I expect nothing less
in a world where Donald Trump
can somehow become number 1,
than to see my festive only Toblerone
become a stranger to me,
the weird spacing now employed
now means I cannot look upon it
as if staring down the Valley of the Kings,
the heat haze and the curse,
an adventure in Christmas chocolate;
instead it is now the echo
of a drizzly Stockport day, menace
in the Lancashire mists and rain,
where is the adventure, the romance
of almost taking out the roof
Get to the first hour of December,
that new born minute
and somewhere in the world
you will stop breathing,
your chest will stop
and people will grieve;
the year has been the perfect assassin
with stealthy fleet foot,
yet there is still more time to play,
celebrity is always in vogue.
The thirty one days, counting
down because that is what we do,
we cross off the days in our heads
and with marker pen
on the free
and easy calendars that we received
Changes,
the world has been
through the wringer, the pulping
machine this last year, 2016
the year of the dreaded day
and the mincing machine
where reality has been reality,
in that everybody
eventually dies
or gets to play politics; changes
everyone, the shroud envelopes all
and in the grey black mist,
a crooked bony finger cocks slows
and asks you to join the dance.
Ian D. Hall 2016
I cannot see America
anymore, she has slipped away,
ghost like but on fire, flames
orange, red and cobalt blue,
the stripes scorched,
the stars starting to singe
and the great experiment dies
a little more each day,
in anger, frustration and with the word of God
upon their cracked and dishevelled lips;
ghost and fire,
I mourn you now
every which way possible.
Ian D. Hall 2016
You have become too big,
now I fear
that you will fail, spectacularly,
with liberty in hiding
and the prospect of internal war
grinding,
dividing,
chomping and salivating over your soul;
you are flat-lining in the heartlands
and the political elite never understood why,
you rebelled for a while
before falling into a coma
one autumn day.
Break apart, you
cannot live together in peace
and the bullet will surely
now seek revenge
upon revenge
upon revenge;
till in the midst of four Presidents
I can do no right
for doing wrong
and it does me no favours
to see the words come
back and bite me
with nibbling teeth,
drooling with spittle
foamed sarcasm
and the odd knee to the groin
verbal jibe.
How much simpler for the sharks
to swim and attack
at the same time,
false cartilage protruding and hitting
me in the ribs, softening me up
in a minute or two, making
me tender, making me scared
and tired, before ultimately
On Bay and George,
shaking hands with the glee
of a Bicester childhood
remembered
in an Ontario street,
pennies against the rails,
bent out of shape
on tracks
and over several cups
of coffee, no tea for me
as I found it doesn’t travel well
,
we reminisced in a place
of reminisce,
of memory and forgotten times…
except you applauded my memory
of those lost in the ether
and the sadness I felt
for them all.
The past was always a friend,
The black-out curtains hide
a multitude of sins
in the deserted night,
I can still hear your breath
escaping
but I cannot see your breast
plate move, only
by touch
somewhere in the dark
do I know that you are safe
as the Sun fails to rouse you
through any chink
in the curtains.
Ian D. Hall 2016