The once smoky atmosphere of the bar,
now cleaned by regulation
but somehow losing its charm
in the modern day transformation
would always see conversation
take shape in the air
about who was the greatest
footballer that ever lived.
Names bandied round
like solid facts,
all different and full of truth in their own way,
I offered a Dutch master, poise and panache
the steady stroke of artistry,
drawn from memory,
painted with deft strokes and unnerving realism,
vivid with expression, imagination
Summer should only start at the moment
when the first ball of the opening innings
of the first test is sent down the pitch
by a bowler who has found an extra yard
since Christmas.
Whilst April and the wet dew of Spring
heralds the days when you can ignore family
for six months of luxury
of a set of headphones firmly
implanted down the ear
and the commentator’s eye finding
the slow drawn crease akin
to the artistry of Michelangelo’s David
and attendance of the
Girls were just girls
just like us, the boys, only
with the knowledge
that they were better in the class room
than most of us in trousers, even
at eight, somehow more acute, articulate,
annoying but we had grown up
with each one of them
and in the school playground,
we at least could at least be heroes
with the ball at our feet, even if we felt
foolish in the classroom, our conversations
about the beautiful
game muted by constant spelling tests,
who cared how you spelt suspicious ,
Bless you, sweet Ginsberg, you saw your generation destroyed by madness,
whereas mine, well we reaped what you sewed, crooked lines
of pop culture madness, here’s to the death of Pac Man,
junkie infused tablet eating, pill popping maniac,
spare the ghosts turning blue with cold, spare the next level up
for what did it prove in the end, that we were just part of Pop Culture,
that Generation X reaped the seeds of what was no longer normal
as we hid ourselves in the dark and chewed occasionally on food delivered
When you realise
that you have been nobody’s
afternoon idle dream,
that the role of shining knight
was reserved for whoever rode
the biggest horse
or that you cannot imagine
that the world would not be happier
without you in it, that your smile
counted for nothing
on a good day,
then everything else just falls into place,
that you are part of the ninety-nine
percent, even though
you feel alone;
truly and irrevocably in the way
in a room shrouded in people
We have allowed ourselves
to drown,
consented across the board
to be consumed
and driven mad
by want
and excess,
accepting
that
the bar code
that once was inked
and tattooed
on a brethren’s arm
is now
a status symbol
to purchase
things
more easily.
Ian D. Hall 2017
I clasped my hands together like a child,
before I found I no longer believed,
and as I lay on the sofa, hiding
from the dark, two in the morning blues,
I prayed;
not to your God,
not to mine of childhood nightmares
of Heaven and Hell,
but to the wider Universe,
to the ground in which our feet may tread
and to my ancestors,
please end this suffering
of a woman I love, I implored silently,
only once raising my voice when the strain
Is it right to wish you
Happy Birthday,
the land in which my grandfather loved
and would speak so highly of
as he sat in his favourite armchair,
Saturday glued to the horse racing,
picking up pennies won,
here and there,
after all, and I say this with the love
of someone who has held you just
as aloft as the grey haired man
who fell asleep one day in March,
three thousand miles from home
and dreaming of air so vast,
you was there before this day
I waged war tonight,
chemical warfare
in amongst the utensils, quickly
removed, shoved aside as
bombardment and napalm
rained down on the invaders.
I waged war,
against my better judgement
on a species intent on seizing
the momentum
whilst my back was turned,
whilst my guard was down
wind of their presence,
crawling through cracks,
damned ants, I waged war, thunderbolt
fists crashed, bleached top, powder,
not for the ant’s enjoyment or for their party
no doubt taking place in
an underground cave beneath
There is a tent under the flyover,
its green membrane door,
old and plastic,
flaps and coughs,
stuttering for a memory,
grasping at the once former etiquette of a visitor
calling at a friend’s house
without prior announcement,
the heavily and obvious cleavage
driven and the naughty never punished
stares of the early morning milk delivery
and the picture postcards
of a long dead era, no milk today,
no festival date by mistake
with a song of one hitting the high notes
and the lifting silver rusted pegs