The bucket list always grows,

for what else is the point of being alive?

From the insane to the rationale, the desire

to the humble and all via the avenue

of memory and atonement,

I wish to tick every single thing off my list.

 

I have kissed a thousand women

and loved a few thousand more,

I have scored a solitary league goal,

right foot volley, very lower league,

I keep the press cutting as a souvenir, August

1989 against the Salisbury Deaf,

I have no memento

of the women to have brushed

their delicate lips against mine

save for the linger of faded perfume

stuck in my mind like a badly made

aftershave advertising campaign.

 

I have seen the setting of the sun

over a vast and beautiful ocean

but have no wish to see two suns

playing havoc on my bladder

and fighting for supremacy

in the winds of atomic destruction.

 

I have fought against fascism

in my own way and the day I ever pick

up a gun again it will be to dye

a black shirt red,

my bucket list grows ever longer.

 

I have seen football played on more grounds

that I ever wish to remember

and I have seen a hundred half time intervals

where the leading lady fends off the understudy man

I have written about so many bands,

Billy Joel and Paul Simon evades me, they hide

behind the press cutting, knowing

I will not look there,

but I have no wish to see

the end of days, I have no wish

to see the world at war once more, for it was bad enough

in black and white

in passed down memory

let alone living in the white heat

of dust and cloud

that comes with emptying

the bucket list.

 

Ian D. Hall 2015