I carry in my pocket bread,
two one pound coins, coal from the surround
we can never afford to put on
for more than half an hour,
and salt, it is not a fetish
but just my way of offering you fortune,
life, heat and wealth in the coming year.
I will walk across your threshold
with a smile and propose we shake hands
under your hallway light, twenty watt bulb,
may you be happy and know love
in the next twelve months, may your Sunday
lunch with family and friends
Lead me into midnight, let me feel the new
dawn rise, artificial construct though it maybe,
we all need to hear the chime of midnight
and the serenade of ships’ horns on the Mersey,
the minute watched diligently
by a Captain’s beard and the deck hand
letting off a series of fireworks into the cold
night air, no snow, perhaps rain
and the shower of memories to come.
Lead me into midnight where for a moment,
Peace reigns, there is no alarm
at the moment of surrender;
You received my parcel
on Christmas Eve,
plain
brown envelope
on the outside, nothing
to distinguish it from
the ray of beauty you told me
it contained when you opened it.
The stated fact that you opened it
at all meant a lot to me,
you could have just
left it on the table
and away from your tree;
decorated tastefully
but still something
you take down
and forget by
January the sixth.
Ian D. Hall 2016
I know I am
not everybody’s cup
of tea
but then
as I watch them stir their spoons,
plastic or sterling silver,
Hallmarked or fully
acknowledged that someone
with snot running from their nose
had licked it first,
I understand with a smile
that they drink
from the chipped cup,
the bitterest ground
coffee.
Ian D. Hall 2016
Your late night text message,
unexpected,
non demanding of return
and the only question
that was there on the ill-lit and cracked slightly screen,
was
How Are You?,
sent in unassuming type, sent with only
the thought that I might reply,
at some point.
How was I? I didn’t know,
I could lie and reply back
that I was on top of the world,
whereas in reality I was flat on my back,
no pillow to soothe my head,
and felt as if the weight of the world was upon me.
His death was unexpected,
in a year which had taken
an artistic hero of mine,
it was only in hindsight
that the quiet moment of finality
should take one of yours.
I did not grieve for the man you lost
as many tears had been spilled for the
musician that had abandoned me
but I mourned for the moment,
I stopped and immediately thought of you,
perhaps in your kitchen, holding a last cup
of tea on a busy day and the radio coming on
Nobody told me I couldn’t
so I walked along the single track,
a phantom sound
from somewhere close by
and the barb wire scratches the lens
of the camera as I try to take
a poignant picture; no guards,
the solemn vow of the past
being picked apart
rivet by rivet
as I get to about one hundred yards
down the track
and the fear still seeps through my shoes
as I imagine the terror that this final stop
in gas and smoke and bullet
Winter calls, or at least
the two week crush of bon accord
where the crush of last minute purchase
to secure favours in the coming
year are packed in so tight that there is no
escape from it all, the relentless must get this,
sprout after sprout after washed down, forced down
holding nose down sprout, cooked to death, force fed death
as the gargle and false puke noises outrank the endless
television adverts for the hot summer climes…
winter calls,
I don’t answer, not for the first two weeks anyway,
The sound of a million phones
is set to mute,
I know so many by ring tone alone
but none of them
now makes a noise; they may
as well be turned off,
put away in silence, the only
noise is that of a lonely bugle boy
playing The Last Post
to the voices of high functioning anxiety
that has replaced the signal
inside my head
set.
Ian D. Hall 2016
If you must wear the face of shocked indignation
be warned, it is not a look that suits you,
or indeed flatters the features that are surrounded
by the years of hard drinking
or perhaps moaning twisted forceful tears
you have wrenched out of those crow lined,
feather scattered eyes. When you believe in your ugly
mind that what you say at four thirty in the long
cold festive driven afternoon is anything but crass,
that your gutter waiting mouth, spit and drawl
running from the side of your lop sided lips