You’re in the Waiting Room…
He’ll be coming soon
How are you today?
Won’t you step this way!
Now sit down in the Chair
Only the nurse is here
Why don’t you open wide
I’ll have a look inside…
It’s Just Terror ,Terror
in the Dentists Chair…
Now I’ll give you Gas or Novacain
that’ll soothe the pain
One good pull will do
Delirious I never knew
Pink Mouthwash rinse it out…
Gushing blood spit it out…
Make another appointment please
I’ll see you again next week!
It was like scanning a dial,
an old fashioned radio receiver
searching in the darkness
for Radio Luxemburg, static,
partial signal, lost, found, ear
splitting, brain numbing sound
as you close one eye in response
and try to shrug away as the dentist,
fiendishly and with enamel desire
starts removing the loose and the cracked,
the split and gleefully
finds the station’s pulse mark
and enjoys the hits coming forth,
in at this week’s number ten, a new sensation
drill baby drill.
There will always be happiness
to be found in the announcement
of love, it is the way of things,
we fulfil a need to see life
continue, to see it flourish
and avoid the rain
that some would bring just
by their presence; you cannot beat
the feeling of love and it is to be happy,
to be thrilled, when it happens to you.
Love, you are lucky my son,
you have found the one to hold
and admire, to care for
They tell me that Elvis is dead,
they showed me the carefully
snipped out press cuttings
they had saved since
the dreadful news broke,
back in ’77, every line
preserved, poured over,
taken out every now and then
and the days of tears that follow,
a single one
slowly drifting down the face
when it hurt too much
as I see them close the thumbed
to death, barely hanging on scrapbooks
and draws and bloated cupboards of memorabilia;
floods when the grief of Elvis
I don’t know why
but it got to me
that you didn’t see Terry
before he died.
I knew that you had an issue
with death, you had lived with it,
a day to day companion, an image
in the corner of the room
whenever you thought of a brother,
one not destined to be like you,
vibrant, easy going charm,
a devilish smile, rakish
but with sound heart beating,
but not for the dead,
it got to me because I realised
no matter how close we were
I nod my head to the leader
of the band playing my tune,
the signal that silently suggests,
if he would be so kind,
to go up the range,
make it beat faster, till I lose my breath
in the smoky atmosphere and sit
wide eyed at the dance, this mix of tango
and waltz, gentle and frantic
all in the space of a single ball room
to which I play the saxophone, sweat
drives with the speed
of an out of control Plymouth,
Inside those tunnels,
I imagined rats, gnawing, chewing, ready to bite
down and feast on my flesh, the gatherers
at James Herbert’s wake in Liverpool
that night, as we toasted the horror of man
and the brain that seized them all,
made the connection between sex and the
ability to frighten, the strange allure
of the thrill in every page,
was down in those tunnels even now,
sharpening his pencil, readying his wit
to kill us, one by one, by one
who knew how to extend the torture
Have you ever seen me
smile? Laugh even;
snort like a free-wheeling pig
as it bathes in the mud,
almost lose the ability to breathe
as the joke hits home.
Have you ever seen me smile
properly I wonder, I rarely
show my teeth when I do,
the ones where I am ready to bite
down with anger, the smile of revenge.
Did you ever catch me, earphones in
and my mind spaced out, high
on a Galton and Simpson trip,
Flying like a Brick!
Down on my luck
I have got absolutely nowt
But my Universal Credit
will help me out
By tomorrow I’ll be a benefit millionaire
that’s what it’s all about without a care!
The Day my UC comes in my account
It’ll re-float my sinking boat
Well I’m not stupid
I’m not even thick
Swimming in lumpy gravy
I’m flying like a brick!
I’ve got a Trout mask replica
Like Captain Beefheart!
John Hall 2018.
Have you ever seen me
cry? Not just a tear, a stab of relief
of physical pain mind you,
but a river, a rolling spiky ocean,
a steady flow of information
making its way down my face.
Have you seen me cry in frustration,
over a film, a whole class once did
in senior school as Boxer
the Horse was sent down
in place of the people; I wailed then.
Did you see me shed a silent,
inexplicable tear over the death