If only I had kept all my tickets
from every train journey I had ever taken,
I have no doubt they would stretch
from here
to there
and back once more
and would only be exceeded
by the amount of music
I have filled my brain
with, track by track, song by song,
over countless miles
to Plymouth and my great grandfather’s
home by the cliffs in Saltash,
to Newcastle to watch a gig or ten
the hour it took to get to Birmingham
If it is an admission you want,
the words of guilt, the declaration
of remorse and complex
self reproach, then you,
my friend,
haven’t been listening to a word I have said.
Then again why would you,
why would you even lip read,
or give me lip service,
my apology, if that is what you require,
is not for you, it is too my soul
for having allowed myself
to fall into your clutches in the first place,
to sit and be mentally abused
and raped by simpering
The black ill favoured fly
is a perpetual nuisance
as it buzzes, dive bombs
and irritates me to the point
of wishing to cause harm
to the beast that spits
and tastes the sweat in the air
as I fumble for words in the semi
darkness, the gloom of soul
and thought. I pick up my
silver edged letter opener,
purchased from a Saturday market
in Greenwich and I wish I could find
the speed in which to take this
ill favoured black fly out
What was your message,
delivered by electronic device,
meant to achieve last night?
I know what it did to me
inside, to hear from you for the first
time in fifteen months,
and not like a friend who had been busy
with their lives, it happens, Time
gets away from us all,
nor did it place a sense of longing
to see you, to understand your loss
and own tragic demise;
all you did was piss me off, upset me,
cause pain in a heart that
It is the sign of the times
when the church on St. Andrews Road
displays not an encouraging word
on a billboard half hidden
by an instrument of Cosmic law,
the half blinding Sun and bedded down roots
of trees, seeking salvation in the quiet Earth,
but a for sale sign, proclaiming the new words
of profits…when a Church closes down,
even for heathens and dissenting voices
such as my own,
I feel the pain for the lost and lonely,
for now where do they go to sit
Her room, no stranger
to having the feeling
of outcast painted shadows
tip toe gently past thoughts
of music gods and erotic held
dreams of ghouls and demons,
is suddenly lifted by the sadness
that has crept over the room
as she sits silently on the end
of the half made double bed
and whispers good night to no one
as she listens to Pink Floyd
for the first time
and cries with wonder at
the message given to her.
Ian D. Hall 2016
I am an odd sock
with a partner in the wash, clean
and crisp when tumbled,
whilst I remain
unseen, possibly discarded
at the bottom of the laundry basket,
never quite being the one
to feel the detergent wash through
every fibre and rub shoulders
with the gods of tie-dye illusion.
I am an odd sock,
and where my partner smells so sweet
in the drawers I just remain dirty, tossed
hopefully into the bin
but always gathering dust
behind the fridge where I fall,
Political whitewash,
the washing of hands of the death
of nation, soldier
and the slaughter of innocents
and a Prime Minister in robes
and suits, with back handed
smile to the nation at all times,
no truth in this weasel words, uttered
with the prospect of the Hangman’s noose
now gone; the truth destroyed, the one
chance to put a man out to face
the barrel
of public opinion,
now just an illusion lost in dossier.
The nation, the soldier
and the million upon million
I have no Welsh blood
in me whatsoever,
so I will not cling to a team out of genetics
to make myself smile at their success;
even though I would love it dearly if they
against the odds
lifted a trophy that England
may have thought was theirs by some
divine football right.
However…
I did once date a wonderful girl
from Hunstanton who now
resides in Wales with a very loving wife,
I can
on a very clear day see beyond the shores
The snail upon my bathroom window,
I have no idea how you got there,
for did you fall from grace
or seagull’s beak, for surely
you never struggled, slimed your way
up the wall, fashioned by intrigue,
plotted and manoeuvred past your ability
to reach such dizzy heights;
you surely must have had help
to see beyond your narrow scope.
I understand if a seagull
or some other winged bird
spat you out because you tasted
off colour, blue, too raw, undercooked