You used to take me out in to the garden
when I was no taller than your knee,
you would put me against the gate,
showed me how to stand
and then kick footballs at me
for an hour or two,
it was fun…
no, more than that it was the best
of times.
From there the old potato fields beckoned,
you played there as a boy, near the River Rae
and then you introduced me
to watching live Saturday football,
a visit to St. Andrews, you forced yourself
The hand was thrust forward,
a missile in manners that aided
the resentment, the cowardly tone
that carried sickly through the owner’s
clenched teeth;
“What’s your name again?,
unearned smug satisfaction
crept across his bland outer expression
and mocked the monster inside.
Don’t you hate those perfect grin toothed people
who live in sneers and the love
of leaving a scar for you
to itch and pull, the damage done
by ill manners.
Ian D. Hall 2017
Of course, we are not all self serving parasites,
whose job it is to frighten, to terrify,
to hold firm the country’s birch
in one sturdy hand
and press down the face
into the dirt,
the intoxicating germ driven bog, and make
those less fortunate, the unlucky, the desperate
and the betrayed suffer for the potent,
some might suggest rotten,
up to their eye balls in the defecation
and smeared toilet roll wipes
whims of their so called masters.
We all get too suffer this fate eventually,
Isolation, it is a fear more acute than
a room full of spiders,
for they at least
might be behind glass, snarling
away, venom rising,
wanting to taste your flesh; but they do it
only because they are hungry, not evil,
you are prey, not ridicule, as the first bite
goes deep into your skin
and the feeling of paralysis
comes over you in waves,
at least you know it is not out of hate.
Ian D. Hall 2017
I have never been fitter,
well in sarcasm terms anyway,
all this running in circles,
jumping through hoops,
clearing every hurdle
and pushing
myself forward
in a time
when all people want
is to be famous.
I just want to be able to live,
happy in the darkness,
not surrounded by obstacles
or contemplating the quick sprint,
out of breathe, out of touch,
just content to do the marathon
in my own time,
one foot
after another and to the beat of my own
The blank page of the diary
mocks me with a gruesome
eye, more so
than a verse unfulfilled
stuck in my mind,
eager to be released and kiss
the world, fight it
if it must.
The day that is blank
just reminds me that
Time has nothing to offer me,
not this day,
perhaps not tomorrow
and in a run of a week
where nothing is planned,
that gruesome eye burns
with greed, stolen
all that is worthy.
I first saw them together, him
in pain, her
concerned, a worried frown
etched deeply on her young face
and surrounded by
the faint whisper of hospital gowns
and nurse’s pulses quicken
as they take the temperature
of the mis-morning managed
roll call.
It was hardly the dreams
of Romeo and the girl on the balcony,
it was nothing like Taylor
and Burton, but
what love is wrapped in such gilded prose,
it is what it is,
I thought with a smile,
Four in the morning
telephone calls
are never moments of great news
departed from excitable lips;
come quick, the pub landlord
has said all are welcome to
drink the place dry,
you awake, good,
you have won the lottery,
come to your front door,
I have a million quid for you
in cash, blow
it all on excess, you
are being transferred to City, good
luck kid, the big time beckons;
Four in the morning shrill,
is like the fire brigade siren,
We dominated the arcade game
even at the end of the night
when half cut, you on Newquay Steam,
vapour trails followed your hand
as we took the Mutant Turtles
to the sound of Metallica’s
Seek and Destroy in Costermongers
every Saturday night to new extremes;
Searching seek… garbled mess of lyrics
following, yet in tandem
Dear Cousin,
we struck blow after blow
and we raised our beer bottles high
as we drove to victory
in Costermongers every Saturday night.
Just above my eye, the one
I nearly lost the sight in
as a boy, battered
and beaten for being wrong
in the criminal place
of Cooper School fields,
a foe hiding in the enemy,
that is
where the headache has lain,
a small worm perhaps growing fat,
cultivating more room
in which to sneak through
the mind fields
of veins and vanity;
a small chobble here, a bite
there, slowly wearing me away
to nothing,
a headache that is all it is.