Where have the years gone?
they once seemed like glacial
tracks, slowly moving, through
King Street West and the now
forgotten memories,
half remembered storms
and thunder
in the mind,
too many days
now stand between me and then,
what could life have been
if I had the strength to cut my way
through the ice…
yesterday never knew
or cared.
Ian D. Hall 2016
They had demolished the Nunnery
on King Street West, death
to the practice, the calling
and the habit
moved on up the hill,
up the mountain
closer to their God.
Empty space and a hole
at least ten feet deep, rubble,
prayers now unanswered
as God hears nothing
from his sisters.
Ian D. Hall 2016
It hasn’t been all fun and games
along the way, the Progressive
Highway, the Punk Lane, Rock
Avenue, the odd Pop cul-de-sac
and runway Metal, the plane landing often
over the moped of forgotten misses
and lesser hits; it hasn’t been all fun
and games but for a thousand
nights the electricity
has kick started my heart
and made it thump
more than a kiss from
an English Rose
or Maple Leafed Lavender Girl.
It hasn’t been all fun and games
however, it has been the finest
Through the glass like Alice I fell
whilst still holding on
suspended
thousands of feet above the Earth,
tumbler ripping me apart
though no physical scratch
or open wound oozing blood;
the baseball stadium far below me,
let’s play ball, let’s play dare,
look down girl
and fall through the looking glass
high above Toronto.
Ian D. Hall 2016.
We flew
like wingless, senseless birds
oppressed by need,
taken by desire,
to see our band perform
in the crowds of Danforth
and from the view
of the C.N. Tower,
we saw daylight.
We flew because we could
and the pain
and joy it cost us
was worth it
one final time.
Ian D. Hall 2016
How did I end up with a surreal addled mind,
almost drunk, sepia toned
and full of exotic weirdness;
one straight linear dream in all these years
and that I can trace back to watching Threads
the night before, scaring the crap,
the very life out of me,
a cautionary tale, I
sometimes get too involved with these dreams,
too upset and confused by the appearance
of the unexpected, the false trail
and the shivering cold of plunging
my awake brain into working
what the synaptic dozy messages mean…
The choice to go
into politics, industry,
work and fleece millions
out of their hard earned dough,
by casually calling it an investment,
when really it nothing more
than gambling on a higher
stage, place your bets,
roulette wheel time,
money as safe as houses
in a time of repossession,
should be seen
as a life style choice,
not to be lauded
or having the craft
of the artist sully their hands
with handouts to those who benefit;
keep the hard working coin
If you poke the Bear,
you really should expect
to find yourself
on the end of sharp and dangerous claws
and yet we poke, we provoke,
we decide to inflame the situation
and now Satan is revealed,
the pulsing super penis
that the Bear holds between its legs
and starts to dribble its urine
on the world; Satan
so apt an name,
forgive me my non-existent deity,
I think we have screwed up
big this time…
the rocket fuelled penis
only needs a number
It’s like teeth, once
one gets pulled out,
falls through the gap
of the regimented neglect
or the dust that gets underneath,
the termite filth that snaps back,
then the keyboard never feels
or looks the same, bare tooth grin
in the corner, full set of dentures
perfect black tiles with tattooed
memory, yet one missing tile can speak
a thousand words
and misspell the one that is important,
the sentence incomplete, inadequate,
when the perfect smile is tinged
with a missing tooth.
I don’t need
to scale Everest
to know how difficult
it would be
to take each step,
to go
and place my tiny feet
in the
crisp white snow
and icy domain
and not fall to my death.
I don’t need
to swim the Atlantic
from the steps
of Cornish past
to the shore of New Jersey
and sit breathless
on the jetty and water weeds
of Benny’s Landing
to know how
take in a lung full of salt and knotted