I hurt myself last night,
indirectly, in the harsh light of a 20 watt shadow
but instead of beating myself up
and seeing people who have wandered
in and out of my life,
their times and happiness running
through my head, I chose to quieten
them all by looking at Google Maps
and the places where my own happiness
briefly
once stood like a monument
in a desert occupied by barking dogs
and rivers
damned up long ago.
Never trust Time
to stand still for you,
The sharp pain, numb
after a fashion,
hit me like a snake bite,
a bullet from a concealed gun,
digging away into my head,
yet somehow keeping me alive,
forcing me to recognise this new
possible threat,
a moment to join the rest
of the doses
of passionate warfare
raging, skirmishing,
full blown nuclear assault,
in this tired, deserted body…
I could tear an advert free
stained white T-shirt in half
and wave it above my head, frantically
calling out, “Don’t shoot, I am
A message from Pittsburgh
opened tentatively, a friend’s
smiling name searching across Time
and the glittering remains
of the Atlantic Ocean,
one crossed between us
and the bridge of comradeship
forged in a pub by the Avon
so long ago.
A picture of my boys, cheerful
and fledgling optimism bursting
from beyond their early bird uniforms
the headline of his electronic note
and yet underneath it all
I realised that Time has been a beast,
for my eldest boy is now a year older
Deluded misconceptions of what happiness can be.
This guiding light just blinds me, keeps me lost at sea.
We headed for the coastline hoped to reach the shore.
But gained no distance through resistance but my
persistence keeps me warm.
‘Its not what your lookin for,
that makes it difficult to find.
It’s not what your lookin for.
That keeps it on your mind.
Drifting with the current, heading who knows where
Incapable of anything, that shows how much we care.
I sometimes have to remember
all that I have seen
and felt,
touched, experienced
and lost,
for sometimes it feels like a dream,
one that my imagination
has stirred and fired off without warning;
I sometimes have to remember
the hands I have shook,
for in the skin I have
I collect their memories also
and in the end their thoughts bleed
into mine,
an honour to have been part of it all,
but I have forgotten
most of all that ever
happened.
We danced, you in blue
Denim and me,
uncomfortably sporting a black
bow tie, sweating because you,
dear you, a girl in my dreams,
whose blonde bottled hair
once covered your breasts
as you undressed
before me, a smile
tight on your Stockport lips;
we danced six years later,
holding my hand,
till dawn
when with sadness
and empty feeling in my stomach,
I awoke and cried a lonely tear.
Ian D. Hall 2017
Who needs snakes or Samuel J.
Jackson when you can bake
on a train,
a puddle on the floor with your D.N.A.
split and frying
like an egg on a car bonnet,
spitting feathers
for a moment’s release of an open door
and the rush for fresh-ish
air that comes tantalisingly in
as the rush for a seat to stick to is
uppermost in a puddle’s mind…
who needs snakes
or a hero to rescue you,
when all you need is a fan.
Here behind my own wall,
I take comfort in Roger’s words,
as my window on the world
is larger than the slit
of light afforded the guards
of towers old and still
have room to fire an arrow
full of quivers through,
although these days the window
also lets in the mad and the fanatical…
even crazier than me.
I sit behind a fortress of books,
periodicals, fiction,
with a stronghold fortification
of doors and clouded windows
my reality view,
is obscured by living.
Still not angry yet?
Say Boris,
ask yourself this,
a pound here, a shilling or two there,
is it all worth it when someone dies
when their dreams come undone
when sleep is supposed to be the safest haven,
hey Teresa, a face that only
a lemon squeezer could produce,
with cold lips and ambition
to craw back another pound,
waste the money that was never there
you said, for the magic money tree
doesn’t exist, as you sit on more money
than God, how many
Stuck traffic, a jam to end all jams
and bored rigid in a taxi, the counter
climbing breathlessly
up towards its own ticking Everest;
six in the evening,
a possible fight in the sunset eve
as tempers boil over
and there by St. George’s
Hall, a complex, but through my taxi
windows, silent and animated argument
began to unburden
itself in the Liverpool warmth.
As long as we sat there,
engine revving like a lion pacing
in its own cage, I expected the worst,